Box Top Hell

In early March, I had Bill’s car detailed while he was in China. I emptied the car – a relatively minor task as his is only driven to a parking lot every day. Whereas with my van, I need multiple bags to empty it as the inside looks more like a rocket ship that has been on a five-year mission with no link to outside resources or disposal systems. I cleared everything but the ice scraper; it was lodged so tightly under the front seat that I couldn’t get it to budge. I left it for the detailer to deal with. It wasn’t until a little spring snow storm that we realized the scraper wasn’t in the car. I called the detailer and told him it was missing. His voice was hesitant. I confirmed that it was bright orange and asked him to hold onto it for me. He agreed. The snow melted and the ice cleared for a few days, and I never made the left-hand turn to get the scraper. It snowed again. It melted again.

Mid-April after another light snow, I finally stopped in on a Saturday morning. The detailer wasn’t there but the mechanic who had space next door was working, and he came out of the office that they shared. I explained my mission, and he told me to have a look around.

Standing outside of the detailer’s cleaning bays was set of metal shelves, the kind you build and place in your garage for storage. On the first shelf was a collection of at least 25 ice scrapers covered in a light coat of snow! I immediately understood. “Oh my gosh, these are his Box Tops!”

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Box Tops. Those little pink rectangular ¾” x 1” shapes you cut out of cereal boxes, cake mix boxes, toilet paper packaging – aka: garbage, collect them for your school, and send them in with your kid. Then some poor schmuck neatly trims each one of thousands and tapes them to a piece of paper, submits them to the Box Top Company, and receives pennies per Box Top. Actually, I just researched the value, and it is 10 cents per Box Top that the school gets.

Liam’s school has a Box Top fundraising program, so I thought it would be good for him to be responsible for cutting them out and collecting them. Every time I opened a package with a Box Top, I put the empty in a large clay crock in the hallway next to the mudroom. In open view so we would see it. In open view so when it overflowed we would trip on the garbage.

Weekdays were scheduled with activities and the calendar never included “Box Top trimming.” Occasionally, on the weekends I would get the scissors out and set up a Box Top trimming station, but Liam would get a couple trimmed and complain: sore fingers cutting the cardboard packaging. I would finish.

Fourth grade progressed this way: September through June. Ten months of “this would be a good job for Liam”; then I would trim them. Out of desperation, Bill also picked up the overflowing packaging occasionally and trimmed the pieces out of the garbage. We persisted and by the end of the year had a small baggie full of Box Tops. When the school newsletter announced the end of the Box Top campaign for the year, Liam took them to school. Relief was imminent: from homework AND from Box Top collection.

At the end of last June, I pulled out forgotten backpacks that had been shoved into corners of the mudroom. The annual unloading of backpacks from the school year ensued. In the outer pocket of Liam’s backpack was the baggie full of Box Tops. I cussed. I threw them away. I officially declared the Malcolm family incapable of collecting Box Tops.

This last school year, Liam’s efforts were focused on using his agenda book, making sure the right books came home each night, packing all the homework to return to school the next day, plus reading, writing, and arithmetic. And I wrote a check to cover the Box Top assignment, plus extra guilt dollars. I’m confident the school made off much better financially by driving the Malcolms into Box Top hell.

Yes, the ice scraper collection clearly reflected a task my detailer simply could not get his head around. I felt for the guy, but I was not happy to see no bright orange scraper on the shelf. Wishing I had made this left-hand turn weeks ago, I stepped into the messy shared office hoping it might be inside. Propped in plain view on another set of metal shelves: Bill’s orange ice scraper. I bet that bit him every time he walked through that door.

Our big clay crock holds wooden swords and bows and arrows now. Medieval weaponry. Much less stress than Box Tops.

Buttfulnes

On the half hour drive home from Will’s school yesterday, I asked him how long he thought it would be until there was a drone-like service that would pick kids up at their house and take them to school. Not through the cow path streets of our town but as the crow flies. A direct arc from house to school. Will estimates it will happen within his lifetime: 50 years. Maybe Jetson travel will be fully realized by then. This made me think of other arcs that would be useful. A simple shot of energy that would launch me from one spot to another – in a clean, clear, linear fashion.

I rode an arc this when I got home from Iowa Tuesday and walked into the house. Normally, I bounce like a pinball between tasks in my house. Within the first ten minutes of walking in the door, I had thrown out a dead plant, watered the live plants, emptied a vase of expired tulips, and arranged a bouquet of flowers from the three beautiful bunches Will and Liam had picked out for me for Mother’s Day. Not bad. I had been mindful of all things in the plant world for approximately 20 minutes.

Then the spring-loaded rod on the pinball machine let loose. The fridge needed to be cleaned. A pile of laundry needed to be thrown in. Sheets needed to be folded. And, would I ever write a Hump Day Short on a Tuesday again in anticipation of sending it on the actual Hump Day?

Late Tuesday afternoon, I dropped Liam off at his baseball game 45 minutes early for practice then went back home to work for 20 minutes on Boy Scout paperwork. I dropped paperwork off at the Scout Master’s for signature and drove on to the game. I set my alarm so I would remember to leave in 45 minutes to take Will and another boy to scouts. With that alarm set, I thought that all I needed to do was sit and watch baseball until that alarm went off.

However, the temptation to pull out my cell phone and stray my attention away from the ballpark – to answer one more email, send off a confirmation carpool text, pay a bill – was fierce. I repeated this mantra, “I am sitting here watching a baseball game.” With mind tease after mind tease, I repeated that sentence.

Wouldn’t it be helpful to have an arc from my butt to my brain with that direct input? If only my butt had control instead of my brain. For wherever it is, there I am. Now that is mindfulness. Or would that be buttfulness?

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I write this with my pants zipper down. Despite multiple attempts after I got dressed, I could not create a neat, concise arc from my closet to the junk drawer for a safety pin to anchor the malfunctioning zipper. Still, the lunches were made, the kids were delivered, and the writer is writing.

When you think you are doing everything right...

I have a seasonal dysfunction every spring: too much in my head to draw out complete, concise thoughts on paper. I write this Tuesday evening in the library. After an hour of trying to collect current thoughts, I’ve decided to send this to you. I wrote it last September and stashed it. When I uncovered it this evening, the brittle emotions had worn off enough so that I can send it to you.

I don’t often refer back to the breast cancer days, but this is important stuff you should know about.

September 22, 2016

When you are doing everything right...

I went to bed last night thinking about my friend who is scheduled to have a mastectomy today. I woke up thinking about her this morning – and praying that the cancer was only in the breast and that it hadn’t traveled to any lymph nodes.

Our lymph node system is like an interstate highway carrying and dispersing liquids throughout our bodies. And if a little cancer cell gets caught on an on-ramp, whoosh, there it goes: out of its local area, gradually making its way out and crossing borders. Then, the chemotherapy police are called to seek out the cells and blast them.

Before I had my lumpectomy in 2009, my surgeon ordered a biopsy of my first lymph node: the sentinel node. It came back positive for cancer, so when I had the lumpectomy, the surgeon took eight lymph nodes out from under my arm. One fell swoop to hopefully scoop out any neighbors that might also be harboring cancer cells. Only the sentinel node was found to be guilty.

My friend and I were both diagnosed with Invasive Ductal Carcinoma, but different formations that called for different treatments for each of us. Mine was one smallish tumor with another small satellite tumor, and cancer cells had broken off and headed for an on-ramp. Thankfully, it was only found in one lymph node, but because it had escaped, the big guns were called in.

Chemo rushed around through my body for 16 weeks looking for breast cancer cells. Then, 6-weeks of radiation to quell any cancer activity in that breast. Consequently, my left side looks like I’ve been through a radioactive battle marked by four green tattoo dots. My breast is still intact, but smaller on that side and the skin is a different hue: a ghostly-white with a ghostly-green-ish tint. I didn’t have a mastectomy, but I do have remnants of a tiny, purposeful Chernobyl.

September 24, 2016

My friend has a major recovery ahead of her as tissue heals and reconstructive processes proceed, but her lymph nodes were clear. The “what next” for her will be ironed out in the coming days. Hopefully, since the nodes were clear, no chemo will be necessary.

Today, I had my seven-year checkup with my breast surgeon to go over mammogram results from last week. This time I stayed calm the seven days between the mammogram and the appointment. I didn’t get a call back to have another mammogram, so I was confident there would be no news. After the last MRI in the spring, a change in my right breast resulted in an MRI guided biopsy. It came back clear. I didn’t need news like that again, but I knew the chance of seeing anything new on a mammogram was slim for me.

At the office today, my surgeon was late returning from the Breast Center where she was doing procedures. After waiting 15 minutes, I agreed to see the nurse practitioner, and after, “Wow, you are getting out there! Seven years!?!?” she confirmed all was good with my mammogram. Next step: an MRI in six months. I’m on the 6-month alternating plan between MRIs and mammograms – and probably will be for life.

Then, she asked if I had received the letter from the radiologist about dense breasts. When I said I hadn’t, she left to get me a Dense Breast information brochure. I didn’t need the brochure; I know I have dense breasts. I knew that’s why I had to have chemo.

On mammograms, dense breasts appear clouded with white mass. Breast cancer also shows up as white on mammograms. If a woman doesn’t have dense breasts, breast cancer is easy to spot: it’s a white spot on an otherwise mostly black x-ray. However, 40 - 50% of women DO have dense breasts and for them finding cancer on a mammogram is like looking for a teaspoon of vanilla ice cream with flecks of vanilla beans inside a gallon of regular vanilla ice cream. When she returned and started to explain this, I had to let her know. “I know all of this. I know I’m an MRI girl.”

“Well, now the state of Massachusetts has passed a law requiring radiologists to notify women if they have dense breasts; to let them know that the risk of undetected breast cancer in a mammogram is higher than those women whose breasts are not dense.”

I sat stunned letting this information soak in. There is now a law to inform and protect MRI girls in Massachusetts!?!?

Over half of the states now have these laws in effect. For my Midwest friends, Iowa and Illinois are in the process of creating similar laws, but Wisconsin has taken no action. [Check out your state on this map from DigitalImaging.com](http://www.diagnosticimaging.com/breast-imaging/breast-density-notification-laws-state-interactive-map).

I think that if my friend and I were identified as MRI girls years ago, our lives would be very different now. She wouldn’t be lying in recovery waiting for her body to mend. I wouldn’t be feeling the effects of early-menopause thanks to the year of aggressive treatment, and now the 10-year treatment plan for breast cancer. Much would be different. I am thankful for life, but I want the lives of generations ahead to benefit from the knowledge that I didn’t have. My friend and I thought we were doing everything right with annual mammograms.

This is an excerpt from the letter I found in the mailbox when I got home from my check-up:

“Massachusetts law requires any patient whose recent mammogram shows dense breasts to receive more information about what that means and where to find answers to additional questions.

“Your mammogram report describes your breasts as being dense. This means that there is more fibrous and glandular tissue in your breasts than there is fatty tissue. This is a normal pattern that is seen in 40 - 50% of women. While dense breast tissue is a common and normal finding on a mammogram, it may limit our ability to detect breast cancer and may indicate an increased risk of breast cancer. However, it is important to know that having dense breasts is not abnormal.

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“You may want to make an appointment with your referring clinician to discuss your test results. Your provider considers several risk factors such as family history and results of prior breast biopsies before determining if additional screening should occur.”

Indeed, if you are an MRI Girl, you have a right to know.

For near-future generations, this could be a huge part of early detection, leading to fewer intrusive treatments, and fewer breast amputations.

End.

Today, on the upside… My friend had chemo but is now done with treatment and is doing very well. And, I just had my 8-year all-clear check with my oncologist – which makes for a very Happy Hump Day!

The Management of Knowledge

By nature, I am a worker bee, not a manager. Give me a specific task, I will do it. I’m happier doing a small project all by myself than taking on a large project and delegating pieces out. As a volunteer for a local non-profit organization, I've recent;y had “small” tracking projects challenging my patience. At the peak of the issue, five of us were gathered in my dining room. It was really a project for three of us, but it had sourly splintered off. Four of us were at the table while one, the Distributor of Knowledge, was self-ostracized against a wall. I play the Mediator at the table.

The oldest of us, the Master, has the most knowledge but has a hard time communicating it to the one charged with the responsibility of distributing knowledge beyond this room, the Distributor of Knowledge. We have all known this for a long time, and we’ve found workarounds, which is how we ultimately came to be five instead of three around the table.

As a back-up, we briefly had an Assistant Distributor of Knowledge that occasionally worked with the Master but who is not on site in the dining room. Yes, a sixth party, without a face at the table. However recently, without notice and in the middle of the project, the Assistant Distributor of Knowledge refused to talk to the Master. It was either a communication issue as the Master is sometimes difficult to understand, or it was a geographic issue since the Assistant Distributor of Knowledge couldn’t physically join us at the table.

I decided it was easier to bring in my Undying Assistant than to attempt breaking the silent treatment of the Assistant Distributor of Knowledge. In negotiation strategies, this is known as avoidance.

For a long time, my Undying Assistant accepted information from the Master and forwarded it in one of a couple workable conveyances to the Distributor of Knowledge. Then with no warning, the Distributor of Knowledge absolutely refused to accept information in one particular form – the only form the End User (a third party, nowhere near the table) would accept this critical information. Taking a collaborative approach, I negotiated for hours, and finally, the Distributor acquiesced and distributed the information in the appropriate format to the End User.

Shortly thereafter, I realized that while accepting that particular type of information seemed like a move in the right direction, the Distributor of Knowledge now rejected the first type of information and would only accept the second! We had words. Trust was broken. No amount of discussion could change the Distributor of Knowledge’s mind. We had fallen victim to a non-effective, aggressive conflict management strategy.

Desperate for a workaround, I called the fifth party to the table, Amicable Solution – a very friendly sort with no previous connection to the project, just a good working relationship with the Distributor of Knowledge on other projects. I assigned the Amicable Solution one task: to take information from me, the Master, and the Undying Assistant and pass it on to the Distributor of Knowledge in the format the Distributor was rejecting from my Undying Assistant.

All worked relatively well, but it was challenging as the Amicable Solution wasn’t dedicated solely to my project, so I frequently had to adjust the schedule to complete certain pieces of the project.

Exhaustion from managing this project clung to me like a dark, heavy shadow.

I felt I was approaching what I defined as critical mass. However, in talking with Bill about the definition of critical mass, he had a different interpretation of this two-word phrase. From a scientific, math-brained perspective, critical mass is having just the right amount of something to complete a task. I asked my son, 13-year-old Will, what he thought. He pulled it apart grammatically: Mass is the amount of matter in an object. Critical is important. That was slightly closer to my definition but still not right on.

The day after the dissection of the term critical mass, all hell broke loose. The Distributor of Knowledge refused to communicate with my Undying Assistant AND the Amicable Solution. I wasn’t about to approach the Distributor with the hope of a collaborative solution. Trust had been broken.

I was powerless. I was past putting the time in to find a peaceful resolution that would work for all parties. I considered calling in an Outside Mediator, but if the Outside Mediator brought us to a resolution, I had no confidence in the Distributor of Knowledge to uphold the resolution when the Outside Mediator walked out the door.

Truly, a clear definition of critical mass -- as I define it -- hit me:: a heavy, shitty, cumbersome, unmanageable mess – more akin to “critical condition” of a patient in the hospital than using minimum resources to complete a job. Maybe the term I was looking for was Maximum Capacity?

I let the Distributor of Knowledge sit twiddling his thumbs. I knew what had to be done. I recruited a replacement with more capability – a Distributor of Knowledge 2.0. I have not yet integrated 2.0 into the project but intend to this week. In addition to this change, I believe it’s time to ask the Master to step down. There’s a Master 2.0 that will be more efficient.

With fingers crossed, next week at this time, there will only be three of us working on this project – with all lines of communication completely open.

Have you negotiated situations like this? Fortunately (?) for me, this was with inanimate objects, with parts played as follows:

Undying Assistant – my computer Master – the old computer with tracking software Amicable Solution – my son Liam’s computer Assistant Distributor of Knowledge – my husband Bill’s printer/scanner Distributor of Knowledge – the &^#*% household printer/scanner Outside Mediator – someone with IT knowledge Distributor of Knowledge 2.0 – the new printer/scanner Master 2.0 – an on-line tracking website

As for the Distributor of Knowledge, I believe I have found a new home for my former colleague…

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8 Thoughts

Today, I managed to collect very, very random thoughts in eight completely unrelated paragraphs. Will is 13 years old and will be a freshman in high school next year. When he was six months old, we brought him home from South Korea, and he was the length of his now 13-year-old shin. Liam is 11 and spends more and more time in the bathroom with hair gel. Quiet time in the bathroom is no longer a science experiment with a toilet brush; it's working out how to get the handsome-dude-thing going for middle school.

If there is a tiny bit of mold on the crust of a slice of bread, is the whole piece moldy? When I worked in an Italian deli, I learn that with a chunk of nice, expensive cheese, the mold is expected and trimmed. And the chunk is salvaged. I'm betting on the same being true for a slice of bread.

Two men are in the quiet room in the library talking aloud. In my quiet room in the library. In my quiet room in my library. I sound like a two-year-old. As do they.

I recently read that writing about emotions is healthy for the reason that journaling gets them out of your head and onto paper where you can re-process the meaning and you might discover the real meaning isn't what you have held in your head. Like dumping raw reality that's pumping through your brain onto paper, sifting it around, categorizing it, then re-interpreting the information, perhaps into a truer reality. I think of a brand new deck of cards. The stack looks fine, even beautiful, just out of the box perfectly ordered. But, they aren't ready to be played yet. With a few shuffles, they are re-aligned for their purpose.

One fall day, a woman died and left behind instructions for her ashes: They were to be spread in her garden, where she had spent a good portion of her life. Her husband refused help from the gardener to spread her ashes. Her husband spilled some of her on the garage floor. The gardener swept her up. The husband spread the rest of her in her favorite flower bed. Knowing the ashes would blow away in the approaching winter winds, the gardener covered them with leaves. Seeing the accumulation of leaves, the husband raked them up and dumped them in a compost heap at the back of their property. The gardener retired. Plans will be made. Plans will be changed.

After a Sunday afternoon matinee with friends, we had a long drive home in traffic. What should've been a 20-minute ride became an hour. When we dropped off our friends at their house, their daughter, who occasionally gets a little carsick, hopped out and flung herself spread eagle on the ground. I so badly wanted to go home and do the same thing. Just lay flat on the ground and stop the world from spinning. Let everything on our schedule just fly right over me as I lay still. In the winter time, I love to make snow angels and to lay silently inside their perfectly shaped skirts and wings. I have yet to flop spread eagle on the ground in the scurry to the end of the school year, to the beginning of summer. Somehow making snow angels justifies this action.

A young writer wrote an article about her writing ritual: Up at 5:00 a.m. Meditate for an hour. Run 10 miles. Sit down to write. Mine was mapped out similarly: School drop-off. Workout. Sit down to write. But I snuck in "water plants" before the workout. And that water reminded me that I should empty the dehumidifier in the basement; we'd had a little water earlier in the week from an unknown source. I stepped on the rug in the back room in the basement, and it was soaked. While she was meditating and running, I was schlepping tubs to the garage and calling a plumber. And, it was a self-inflicted leak. I didn't unhook the hose from the outside faucet last fall and the pipe burst. Hence, the dumpster outside our garage. I wonder what she wrote that day?

Trinity Sunday, our pastor calls children to the front for children's time. Liam is with other kids to the side of the sanctuary making crafts as Sunday school has ended for the year. He joins the small group on the steps leading to the altar. To get the meaning of "Trinity" across, our pastor sits next to the kids and asks them to describe him or herself in three words. Most hesitate, unsure of the right answer. Except for Liam. With a grin on his face, he says something to the pastor, but her mike doesn't pick it up. I suck air. To keep the audience in the loop, the pastor, also smiling, repeats Liam's three words through her microphone: "Naughty, crazy, and generous." And something to the effect of, "And Mom is holding her breath!" She closes the lesson with the reminder that no one, nor God, can be summarized in just three words. Amen.