Archive for Contributors

Blinded By Love

10 April 2013 / / Comments Off on Blinded By Love

Have you ever noticed that when you start to really like someone–maybe even start to love them– they become more attractive?

At first you probably think he or she is cute with a pleasant demeanor and a few similar interests. Give it a few more months and suddenly your new partner is a physical specimen of perfection, with the “perfect” personality and hobbies that have now become your hobbies too.

It’s not unusual for people to idealize their significant others, and they often don’t realize they’re doing it until that relationship is finished.
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Working With (Pretty) Girls

9 April 2013 / / One comment

Sometimes it’s just plain awkward working with a member of the opposite sex.

I work closely with a woman who’s married, has a couple of kids, and physically is a knockout. We’ve been working together for more than one year. It’s going well. We have a healthy respect for each other, play off each other’s strengths, and people appreciate the product we produce.

She’s a hard-worker, mature, kind-hearted, fun, funny, and highly-skilled. Did I mention she’s also very cute? It can be a distraction. To keep things clean and professional between us, I more or less treat her like she’s a guy.

Therein likes the problem. She’s not a guy. Sometimes I find myself overcompensating to prove there’s nothing between us.
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Pa Ingalls Had No Fear Of Intimacy

8 April 2013 / / 3 comments

How many times have you said “I have intimacy issues,” heard someone say he or she has a fear of intimacy or that they know a person who’s afraid of getting too close?

I know of one person who never said that: Pa Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie.

Behold the clipped-on ribbon trim in my hair. It’s my Laura Ingalls braids.

I was a big fan of the TV show. I used to pretend I was Laura Ingalls and clipped brown ribbon onto my short hair except during the season when eldest daughter Mary went blind. Then I pretended I was her so I could act out the dramatic scene when she actually loses her sight.

The show centered around the Ingalls family living in rural Minnesota during the 1870s. I loved how emotional and close the family members were. Pa was always laughing or crying. And despite Mary yelling at Ma once and essentially calling her a whore, they always talked it out, embraced, and life went on. Nobody was paranoid about appearing vulnerable and Laura didn’t talk trash to one sister about another sister.
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Nadie En El Sepulcro

2 April 2013 / / Comments Off on Nadie En El Sepulcro

Nadie en el sepulcro.

It’s the Spanish translation of “no one in the tomb.”

It’s also part of a contemporary song the choir sings at church around Easter. The phrase sticks with me because I have learned in the last few months that really and truly, a seemingly bad situation can merely be one that forces us to see, recognize, and remember hope and joy.

The most recent Easter was different than the last few years. I was especially light hearted and happy as I walked into church. I felt optimism and hope like I hadn’t felt in a long time. This mass was going to be a little emotional. I could sense it.
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Mind Over Matter

1 April 2013 / / 2 comments

I belong to a networking group. It meets once a week to share and talk. The members are from various industries and I’ve met some talented smart people with backgrounds different than mine. I’ve made friends and great connections.

One day, the group facilitator Lynden led an exercise during which we were instructed to visualize ourselves teetering on the edge of a platform at the top of a skyscraper and then examine our real physical reactions.

Then, she instructed us to visualize ourselves on the platform again. But this time, Lynden said, we were able to fly to any destinations we wanted and do whatever we wanted. She then asked us to examine our physical reactions to that second experience.
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Reading My Thoughts

26 March 2013 / / One comment

Wild One, a contributor for sipandgogirl.com, and I have talked a lot about men. I love her insight because she’s less of an overthinker than I am. Both of us are very practical and down to earth but she’s less emotional than I am.

She sent me a text during an August 2012 conversation about not knowing the motivations of men.

Guys need to be like pop up videos with captions that we can read about what’s going on in the inside.

While it seems like a cool notion, it’s not really. The reason it’s not so great is because even if we were able to read people’s thoughts, those thoughts would probably not be totally accurate. That’s because people think they want or mean something.

But they don’t.
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Tales From Sip And Go Girl: “Pete”

25 March 2013 / / Comments Off on Tales From Sip And Go Girl: “Pete”

Pete had a PhD and was working as an assistant professor in public health at the university.

He’s also part of a Tale From Sip And Go Girl.

We met at a Starbucks, of course. Although we didn’t have the same area of study, we still were able to have a good conversation about working in academia.

This Starbucks was a small store at a busy intersection. It had a drive thru and the exit was just a mere few feet from our table outside.

A woman driving past us in the drive thru glanced in our direction. She glanced a second time.

Pete glared at her.
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I Know What You Need

25 March 2013 / / 2 comments

I worked one summer with a communication studies class consisting of business students required to take the course. The class was Presentational Speaking in the Organization and this time around I talked about needs and the ability to persuade people. Appeal to people’s needs and you have a way to manipulate them with communication including advertising.

It’s Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

This means I know what you need.

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Peeping Goes Both Ways

21 March 2013 / / Comments Off on Peeping Goes Both Ways

As a child, I spent a lot of time camping, fishing and hunting with my family. During the summer we spent nearly every weekend at the lake. We usually camped with aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins.

Starting at age three, all the kids and I had binoculars too. We didn’t have kid versions. My grandfather always got us the real deal along with real pocket knives and fishing tackle.

In the afternoon it got too hot on the lake in a boat. This is when my father, grandfather and uncle would set up lawn chairs and sit with their binoculars. As kids we thought they were watching boats to see who was catching fish or what kind of ducks were swimming in the cove, but what they were really looking at were girls across the cove.
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1 + 1 = 2

19 March 2013 / / Comments Off on 1 + 1 = 2

I used to attend a lot of weddings and I’m starting to think simple is just way better.

In my teens and 20s I had a mystic view of the wedding. There’s the music, the pomp and circumstance, the big dress the bride only wears once and then goes into a hermetically sealed box after being cleaned. Flowers magically appear along aisles in houses of worship.

Because I was known among friends and family as the person with the video camera and the know-how to use it properly, I shot and edited (with music of course) probably 10 weddings in two years. I was quite weary by the end of one particularly busy summer but I did really love the pageantry of it all.
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