Call Me

To all the people who told me not to worry about Brittany getting a job in Charleston – you were right. She arrived there on a Monday night, interviewed with a company that owns 5 hotels in the area on Tuesday afternoon and Thursday morning they offered her a job, starting as the front desk manager at one of the hotels; in training to be a hotel general manager.

While she was waiting for the call back; she unpacked, joined a gym and set up two more interviews, which she ended up cancelling because this was the job she wanted.

So have I stopped worrying about her?

Please! Has my mother stopped worrying about me? I doubt it!

Although Brittany still tells me most things, it seems to be getting harder to get answers to what I want to know.

I recently read an excerpt from a book called How Not To Act Old by Pamela Redmond Satran. It was a fun read and one piece of advice really jumped out at me because it was so true. “Don’t leave a message.”

She wrote that only old people leave voice mails. Young people just figure that the other person will see their number in “missed calls” and call back if they want or need to talk. She said if it’s urgent young people leave a text.

Brittany almost never answers an email from me unless I put in the subject line, “Please answer.” Then I will get an answer something like 1. yes 2. did 3. ok

I rarely hear back if I leave a voice mail and to save face (before reading the book) would end my message with “You don’t have to call me back, I just wanted to tell you this.”

The advice in the book was to say nothing. Just hang up. When your kid doesn’t answer their cell it’s either because they didn’t hear it, didn’t charge it, or saw your name and didn’t want to talk to you. If you leave a long message they’ll get annoyed and won’t listen nor call you back. But, if you say nothing you are speaking their language. Plus, they’ll think your news is so bad (or good) you couldn’t leave a voice mail. So they get curious – and call you back.

The first time I sort of tried this with Brittany it sort of worked. I didn’t want to just hang up, so I briefly said, “Call me.”

She immediately called her dad and asked, “Am I in trouble?”

CHANGE

Brittany is moving to Charleston, SC in a couple days. No, she doesn’t have a job down there, thank you for asking. And yes, she has a perfectly good one in North Carolina. (One that I wouldn’t mind having!) OK, it didn’t have health benefits and the pay wasn’t that great. But it used every bit of both her major AND her minor and it was fun!

Her apartment lease was up August 1st and to stay she would have to commit to another year. She said on her Facebook page (my not so secret source of information) she was ready for a change. Change. I used to like change…until this last election…

I thought her generation lived in a constant state of change. She and a friend were here last weekend delivering all of her “stuff” for me to store until she’s settled and he wanted to get his tires rotated at Sears. She suggested he call to see if there was a wait. He said he didn’t know their number. I handed him the phone book and HE LOOKED BLANK! Brittany said, “We usually just google numbers on our phones, but our phones are in the car.”

As she went out to get hers, he was flipping through the yellow pages muttering, “What do I look up; cars, autos, Sears?” I showed him the grey edged pages and said, “A little secret. With businesses, just go here and look up their name!”

While they were out they bought Brittany a GPS system for her car so she “wouldn’t get lost driving around Charleston for job interviews.” I told her I use Google Maps and it works perfectly fine. And it’s free! We did have fun while they were programming it though. I thought it should be my voice saying, “Don’t forget! Don’t forget! Turn now!” John thought it should have a male British accent. It took awhile for the system to acclimate itself and we joked that when it came out of the box and thought it would be working in Hickory it went into shock. It had hoped it would have an easy life in some town where the roads made sense.

So people have change every day. It doesn’t take a move anymore to have something different. Congressman Patrick McHenry sent me an email with a link to a You Tube video of a speech he made. USA Today just reported that Jewish people are now “tweeting” their prayers via Twitter to the Western Wall in Jerusalem! Everyone has to change all the time to keep up.

I read a movie review about a romantic comedy, which said, ‘In spite of the predictable ending it was a pleasant movie.” Why is predictable bad? I like happy endings! I like knowing there will be a happy ending. And I predict Brittany’s move will have one.

I’ll let you know!

The New Job

Brittany’s job is in full swing with no time for a learning curve! She managed her first wedding the last weekend in May. It was held outside by the lake and was beautiful. (I know because she sent me pictures.) Everything went according to plan except that earlier in the day the bride had gone to her house to get dressed and locked her keys in her car with the wedding dress inside. Bear Lake Reserve has no cell coverage so she couldn’t call her car’s emergency assistance to open her door. Her house was quite a distance from the Lake Club where everyone else was setting up the wedding so she decided to sit down and wait until someone came looking for her. An hour later they did and had to break the car window of her brand new BMW to get her dress out. Other then that; a perfect day!

When I talked to Brittany today she was buying 10 picnic tables for an old-fashion 4th of July BBQ. On her shopping list were also garbage can lids. Just the lids. Her boss thought it would look neat to pile the corn on the cob in them. She was also working on a Family Olympics Day for the weekend before and busy Googling ideas for games.

Every job she’s ever had has prepared her well in customer service, so she was the calm one; not at all surprised, when on Father’s Day 3 times as many people who signed up for the golf tournament and dinner just showed up. “No problem!”

While she can handle all of this with style and grace there are still things she leaves to her parents to take care of. Like finding her health insurance. The one negative about her new job is it doesn’t offer any. So John started doing the research; reviewing 16 policies. I was so glad I’m not a single parent! I can not make myself read terms and conditions! After a couple weeks and a lot of hours he found her one that wasn’t too expensive and got that checked off her list.

So I thought the least she could do was help me with something I was having a problem with. I wanted to get one of those Andy Warhol type pictures where you send in your photo and they make it into Pop Art. I had sent in headshots of each of the 3 of us. Hers came back saying it was too small, so I looked through all the pictures I have of her and they were too small too.

I called her and asked if she could get a friend to take a picture in the right size and email it to me. I could almost see her eyes roll and clearly heard the sigh. But, she sent it. And it was still too small. I called her again. Eyes rolled. Sighed. Sent another one. This one was taken outside and her face was in the shadow. A couple days went by before the third picture arrived with a message. “If you don’t like this one the next one’s going to be of another part of my body!”

Luckily this one was just fine because I knew she meant it and I sure don’t want her on the wall ‘cheek to cheek’ that way between John and me!