Drops of Awesome

Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson

Archives for May 2016

Are You Really Going to Let Someone Talk to Your Friend Like That?

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friends1I was recently speaking at a high school. The topic was Drops of Awesome and my mission was to convince the students of two things.

  1. You are so much better than you give yourself credit for.
  2. You can improve who you are and become who you want to be almost instantly, depending on the next tiny choice you make.

The kids were amazing and receptive and the energy was fabulous on a level I’ll remember for the rest of my life. I hope they were as affected as I was.

I started our hour together by telling them about my high school friend who used put-downs as a fun and hilarious relationship building tool, ala – “You’re such a dork! Let’s go get lunch,” or, “Okay Loser, what are we gonna do after school?”

This wore on me and eventually we stopped hanging out. But then I told the girls about a much more destructive friend I made in my young adult years.

She constantly put me down, told me I wasn’t good enough, that my efforts always fell short. When I succeeded she told me it was luck and when I failed, she said I deserved it and she’d always known I was incapable of doing anything well.

As I described this friend to the kids in this high school class, there were several audible gasps.

“That is so mean!” one girl exclaimed.

These teenagers were more than a little horrified that I’d let someone talk to me like that, which is good, because those kind of put-downs are horrible. I should never have let anyone talk to me that way. In fact, I should try to stand up against that kind of negativity whenever I hear it, regardless of who it’s directed at.

What made getting rid of this nasty friend so tricky was that she wasn’t some outside person. It was my own inner voice, holding me back from success, setting me up to fail, kicking me when I was down.

I would say terrible things to myself that I’d never say to a friend or even an enemy. Do any of these sound familiar?

-Of course you’re late. You’re always late.

-No surprise. You made a crappy dinner again.

-I swear you’re the only parent incapable of remembering to turn in a field trip form on time.

-You look so fat today.

Would you ever say things like this to another person?! Would you ever stand back and watch someone say things like this to one of your friends?!

I’d like to think that most everyone would stand up for a friend they saw being treated so poorly. So it’s time to act like your own best friend and stand up when you hear your inner voice spewing garbage like that. (I know we’re getting all kinds of split-personality-ish here but that’s okay. Is it? Yeah, I think so. Okay, I agree.)

So, you toss a box of cereal on the table when you get home from work and tell the kids to eat quickly because you’re already late for baseball.

In your mind you hear, “No surprise. You made crappy dinner again.”

You answer back, “You know what? I made dinner again. I’m feeding the heck out of these kids.”

“But this isn’t healthy. You’re probably the only mom who does this.”

“I’m positive I’m not the only mom who does this and that doesn’t really matter anyway. This isn’t how we ALWAYS eat. This is called baseball season. While I’m on the bleachers, I’m going to make a list of all the awesome meals I have made in the past and that I plan to make again when life gets back to normal. And for now, I’m going to feel good that I remembered to buy cereal. Also, I’m about to be sitting on the bleachers again for three hours. D to the ANG! I’m the nicest mom ever.”

Do a few things for me this week, precious please.

  1. Notice when you’re being a jerk to yourself.
  2. Fight back.
  3. Don’t let anyone talk to your friend like that.
  4. Eat some cereal for dinner so I can feel better about myself.

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Sunburnt

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**Originally posted on Deseret Book’s Time Out For Women Blog January 2013**

Sunbeams are warm and lovely, vibrant and life-giving. But if you get too close, they will incinerate you.

This was my line of thinking as I drove away from church last Sunday after my first week teaching a room full of Sunbeams with my husband Dan. Our new calling is to teach the three-year-olds at church, including my sweet, occasionally potty-trained daughter “Wanda”.

We taught them that they were children of God. We also taught them to sit in their chairs for the lesson and for sharing time, that dresses should be used to cover our bodies, not our heads, and OH-FOR-THE-LOVE-if-two-of-you-sit-still-at-the-same-time-for-30-seconds-I-will-buy-you-all-a-pony.

That’s what we taught them.

What they learned was – Sister and Brother Thompson love us, sharing time is long, and moving up to big kid primary is a lot like getting kicked out of the Garden of Eden. One week you’re playing with cars and trucks and snacking it up in luxury, and the next you get to follow up sacrament meeting with an hour sitting in hard chairs in a huge room full of big people, followed by another hour orbiting hard chairs in a prison cell with two crazy dancing grownups waving pictures from the gospel art picture kit. HUZZAH! By the sweat of their brows, indeed. Big kid primary is hard work. For everyone.

And it’s a big change from the Young Women organization, where I’ve been serving for the past six years. I like to think of it as mini Relief Society, only better. You get to teach them the gospel and they actually learn it. There’s something amazing about being part of their lives right at the time that they’re deciding who they are and what they really believe. Also, in the Mia Maid class, the girls are loving and sweet and they notice everything about you.

“Sister Thompson! Did you do something different with your hair? I love it! That is the cutest dress. Where did you get it? OhMyGoshYourEarringsAreSoFUN!”

In primary they notice things about you too.

Halfway through sharing time I noticed one little boy staring up at me intently. He was stroking the hair on my arm.

“Sister Thompson?” he asked.

“Yes, honey?”

“Why do you have so much hair on your arms?”

“It keeps me warm, I guess.” He looked unconvinced, squinting his eyes suspiciously.

“No. I think it’s because you’re gonna grow up to be a daddy.” He then reached down and plucked one of the hairs from my arm. And then another. I didn’t scream. I didn’t even tear up.

With the Young Women, I’m a fashion maven. In sunbeams, I’m a Yeti with man arms. Oh, how far we fall.

The class pretty much ate us for lunch. There was crying, yelling, jungle-gyming it all over the chairs, kids lying on the floor moaning, refusing to participate. It was amazing.

But I refuse to give in. Dan and I brought our four man-arms home, rolled up our sleeves and got to work. We have a plan. We have activities. We have stories. We have cheddar bunnies, and scarves that can be used for dancing or tying people to chairs. We spent this Saturday night preparing and packing the bag and then repreparing and then repacking the bag. We were almost ready.

And then I remembered that I’d planned on printing out pictures we’d taken of each of the kids to use in our lesson tomorrow. So, I pulled them up in Photoshop and…

Look at their FACES! Look again. For realz. I cannot stand the cuteness. It cannot be stood for.

Yes. I have the best calling. Ever. Sunday may be total chaos and the only thing they learn might be that we love them. But that’s okay. We will sing and play and look into those little faces and know that we’re doing a good work. And we will wear long sleeves. And carry hand sanitizer.

Dead Animal O’Clock

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I have a thing about dead animals. They make me cry.

When I’m driving down the road and I see a deer carcass or a dead bird smashed to the asphalt, its wing flapping in the wind, I gasp and tears well up. I hate to see animals hurt or killed.

It’s not like I’m a huge animal lover. I am not a cat lady and as I’ve been working on the edits for the third Drops of Awesome book this week, my editor needed to point out that I hadn’t included any questions about pets in a book that asks questions to help the user write her autobiography. It just didn’t occur to me.

But I can’t stand the thought of a dead animal.

Even though I passionately hate the mice who sneak into our garage, it is gut-wrenching to me to dispose of their bodies from the traps. I fall apart.

So, today when I saw a large squirrel dead but still perfectly formed lying in the middle of the road next to Wanda’s bus stop, I lost it a little. It. Was lost. My friend Stephanie and I had just returned from a bike ride and we had no kids with us. I knew that as soon as they got home on the bus, they’d see the poor squirrel and I wanted to spare them that trauma. Even worse, what if a truck drove by and smashed it to pieces and we had to walk by it’s caked-on guts every day for the next six months? I couldn’t bear it.

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I told Stephanie I’d dispose of it if she’d provide the shovel and moral support.

Then, just as I was approaching the beast, she suggested that maybe he was just stunned and as soon as I touched him he might jump up and run toward me.

This was not helpful.

We decided on a two-part approach. First I would poke said beastie with the tip of the shovel. If he made no movement, I would proceed to phase 2, wherein I would push him with the shovel across the road and into the drainage ditch for the coyotes to mange.

She started recording.

There was something about the soft feeling of the shovel touching the squirrel’s belly that sent a shiver through my whole body. It wasn’t pretty. I asked her to stop recording.

But she started again.

And caught my finest hour in pixels.

Because that’s how heroes DO!

I thought it was over.

The kids hopped off the bus and I headed home and retired to the solace of my favorite chair in the corner by my favorite window, working on work and watching Wanda and her friend as they played outside.

When what should fly past my ear but a giant bug. No. Not a bug. A bird. A freaking bird was inside my living room.

It landed on the window sill a few inches from me, flapping it’s wings frantically and slamming into the window over and over again.

I screamed and dropped my water bottle on the floor, wetness spilling everywhere. The bird also started spreading “wetness” all over my window sill. Bird poop. In my living room.

I called Dan for moral support but he was in a meeting. I took some semi-hysterical video tracking the bird.

“Girls,” I yelled outside, “You left the door open and now there’s a bird in the house.”

I heard my neighbor laugh from her house next door.

“Do you need my help?” she asked.

“YES!”

“Seriously? Okay. I’ll be over in a few minutes.”

While I was waiting for her, I closed all the blinds in the house except the ones on the window where the bird was thrashing and opened the front door to entice him out. I grabbed a broom and started shooing the bird toward the screened-in part of the window, thinking if he was near the screen, I could push it out and let him free.

I can’t adequately describe the feeling of adrenaline that was coursing through my body as I worked to get this crazy bird out of my house, a bird who moved sporadically, frequently startling me, and who I knew could fly up in my face at any moment, freaking me out and very likely pecking the flesh from my eyes in a Hitchcockian display of terror.

It’s like that feeling you get when you’re poking a dead squirrel in the middle of the road with your shovel, knowing he could jump up, run along the handle of your shovel and start climbing up and down your face while you scream and flail around like a psychobot.

After I moved the bird where I wanted him, I put down the broom so I could have two hands free to remove the screen. As I did this, he dropped out of sight behind my long, dark curtains. I quickly closed those curtains as well, those curtains which hang in an area behind the end table, an area that has become the dumping ground for my church bag, the kids’ piano books, and a bunch of other stuff. Arg.

With the blinds all shut, the living room had grown dim.

The bird was in the mess. In the dark. And he’d gone silent.

No more flapping.

No more pecking.

Silence.

Did he die of fright and fall into my church bag to fester? My neighbor had arrived by this point and she helped me pull items one by one out of my bag, looking for a dead bird.

Nothing.

In the dim light we moved the chair. The end table. The piano.

Nothing.

Ever.

We never found the bird.

I see the writing on the wall. At some point in the next couple of weeks, I will move a cushion or a piano book and BAM! Dead rotting creepy bird carcass!! It’s an exciting game we’re playing here.

My neighbor asked if there was ever really a bird or if I was possibly losing my mind. After SquirrelGate 2016 earlier this morning, I almost doubted myself.

“But no,” I told her, “I have video proof of the bird.”

Then I showed her this.

A minute of me hysterically trying to creep up on a bird that never quite makes it into the video.

Good proof, right?

She looks at me.

“It must be on the other video.”

And here it is.

So the bird is real. And the squirrel is real. And the terror is real. I wanted to find the bird so badly at first, but I’m at a point where I don’t so much want to find it now. Ever.

They say these things happen in threes. I don’t think that’s possible. Because if I have another run-in with a helpless and/or deceased animal today, I will perish as well. And then there will be four dead animals.

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Drop Kick – Using Drops of Awesome to Teach My Kids (and myself) to Pick Up Our Dang Shoes

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about finishing things. I’m not talking about finishing a race or finishing a college degree or finishing your grass roots campaign against the evil sheriff of Nottingham. (I ask you, Brother. Are you gonna finish what you started?!) I’m talking about flushing the dang toilet and putting your blow dryer away when you’re done with it. I’m talking about WHERE ARE MY SHOES??!!

I am great at cleaning my house. Super great. I have a lot of practice because I’m also really good at trashing it. I go through phases where I’m really consistent about cleaning as I go. And then I have a hardship like a toothache, or a busy week, or a good YA novel, and I fall off the wagon.

I do better at being consistent when I’m counting Drops of Awesome, when I’m congratulating myself for every small thing I get done, but due to some of my habits and routines, I have set up a system where I need to do a million more Drops of Awesome each day than I should really have to. I make my life harder by not following through and completing basic actions. So I have to go back and clean up after myself over and over again.

Take my blow dryer, for example. I frequently have to go “clean my vanity,” which involves putting my makeup, blow dryer and face wash away. This only takes a couple of minutes to do but it’s a couple of minutes I could be doing something else. And there’s really no reason it should be its own task at all. Part of drying my hair should be putting away the blow dryer.

Think about an action or a routine that you do on a regular basis and ask yourself, “At what point do I consider my action complete?”

Can you imagine using your blow dryer and then just dropping it to the ground as soon as your hair was dry, with the machine still running? No way. Part of “drying your hair” involves turning off the dryer when you’re done. I also always place my blow dryer on the counter rather than just releasing it from my hand and letting it crash to the floor.

I get a Drop of Awesome for turning it off then and another one for placing it on the counter.

Then I look at that action and ask myself, how can I kick this up a notch? How can I get one more Drop of Awesome by taking this action just a tiny step forward? I call this a Drop Kick.

So, for me, the blow dryer Drop Kick was to, in one motion, unplug the blow dryer as I’m turning it off and place it under the sink, never letting it touch the counter. Because this was a revolutionary move and so out of my usual routine, I would say, “Drop Kick!” every time I did it. It was me, improving one of my daily routines, just a Drop.

Soon it became a habit. And I almost never have to “clean the vanity.” It has become self-cleaning.

Now, you may be great at blow dryer follow-through. I’m so happy for you. But is there anything in your life that you could kick up a notch to make your day go more smoothly?
I sat my kids down a while back and asked them to each think of one Drop Kick they could focus on for the week. They picked things like, “Don’t let my backpack out of my hands until I reach the backpack shelf,” and “Don’t let my shoes touch the ground in the front entry.” (There was some coaching involved.)

For two of the kids, this has made a big difference. The front door clutter is down and they have a much easier time finding their stuff when they need it.

Another side benefit of this common vocabulary is that if someone forgets, rather than saying, “Wanda, pick up your backpack,” I can say, “Laylee is doing a great job Drop Kicking her backpack. Wanda, did you remember your Drop Kick when you came in?”

It’s a subtle difference but the cute catch-phrase really helps the medicine go down. And we’re building new, improved habits every day.

What do you want to Drop Kick this afternoon? Pick one thing that you could do a tiny bit better!

Sad, Mean, and Sort of Enjoyable

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I love the way Wanda’s mind works. I’m sure I still love the way Laylee and Magoo’s minds work too, but unlike with Wanda, I’m not privy to a constant stream in voice and writing of every thought that has ever passed through their brains. I have an open internet connection to Wanda’s thoughts. The older kids send me text messages.

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On the walk to school yesterday, Wanda asked, “Do you know what a patteroller is?”

“Nope.”

“It’s that thing where the cops carry a big stick around and if you don’t go to school or do something else bad, they hit you with it.”

“I was not aware of this.”

“Yeah. We learned about it in music class. There’s a song that says, ‘Run children run. The patteroller catch you.’ I just like to think about that.”

“Well, I have two things to say to you. One. Did you know there’s an even more polite way of referring to a ‘cop’? I like to call them, ‘police officers.’ Two. I don’t think police officers chase kids with sticks anymore for skipping school. I think that song was written a long time ago.”

“Yeah,” she replied, “It’s from… like… 288 or something.”

Yes. It’s a song written about local law enforcement when Diocletian was emperor of Rome. Those were serious times.

She spends a lot of time thinking and overthinking everything and then telling me about it. Take this simple homework sheet for example.

The teacher read Goldilocks and the Three Bears and then asked the kids what they thought about it.

Check yes or no. Was it good or bad?

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Sort of.

Why, sort of?

Wanda responds.

mean and sad

And it makes sense. It IS sort of a sad and mean kind of story. Chick breaks into a family residence, uses or destroys all their stuff while they’re out battling the obesity epidemic with some family exercise. When she’s caught, she books it. What kind of a story is that?

Sad, mean, and sort of enjoyable.