Toastmasters Speech #1 - The Icebreaker

I recently joined the Top of the Morning Toastmasters group. It meets right here in Oldsmar, at 7:30 on Wednesday mornings. I understand your disbelief in the idea of me being anywhere (besides my own bed) voluntarily at 7:30 a.m., but Wednesday is also the day that Mother goes to the senior center, and I have to set my alarm for 6 a.m. to make sure she's up and has coffee before her van arrives. I'm up anyway, so it seemed like a good plan.

And so it has proven to be. This morning I gave my Icebreaker speech, which is the first project in the Competent Communicator's workbook. I have actually done this project before, but that was over two years ago in Kerrville, so I thought I'd just start all over, since I hadn't gotten very far anyway.

The Icebreaker Speech is supposed to be for four to six minutes. I ran through it last night with Steve, who clocked me at a little over five minutes. He cautioned me about being nervous and talking faster than normal, which would speed up my time. This morning, I concentrated on speaking at an even pace, and ended up talking for 8 minutes and 12 seconds. There's a timer's light box that gives the speaker cues on how much time is left depending on what lights are lit. I didn't even notice the light box until all the lights were lit - and I had no idea how long they had been. Oh, well.

I'm including the prepared text of the speech below, but since I didn't practice it as much as I should have, it's not exactly what I said. I missed a couple of things, and added a couple more, but it's basically the same.

One of the things I found very interesting was my opening. I've been trying to figure out who I am and where I am going, outside-world-wise, for the past few years. Maybe this is the answer, and I just have to figure out exactly what that means.



My name is Kay St. John, and I am a story-teller. My friends and loved ones are well-acquainted with the phrases “I have a story about that” and “Do you want the short version or the long version?” The short version will tell you all you need to know, but the long version is usually much more entertaining.


The memories of my childhood and the knowledge of events in my family are stored in my brain as fables, cautionary tales, fairy tales, and bedtime stories. I’d like to share a few of those with you this morning.


When my Papaw, Daddy’s daddy, was a small child, his father was killed in a logging accident. He left a widow with three young children, one still a babe in arms. Her husband’s family members offered to take the older children, as they were old enough to put to work but she would have to figure out something to do with the baby. She thanked them, kept all her children with her, and did laundry for men in the logging camp to support her family. This story taught me that mothers in our family take care of their children.


When Momma and Daddy first married, he was fresh out of the Navy, and worked a small farm as sharecroppers. I grew up hearing about how Daddy had chopped wood for the stove and Momma had used the pump on the porch to draw water to be heated on that wood stove for my sister’s baths when she was a baby. After a few years, Mom and Dad packed up and left Magnolia, Arkansas for Lubbock, Texas, where my brother was born. Mamaw, Daddy’s mother, was very upset and told them they were going to starve to death in Texas. Daddy replied, “What’s the difference? We’re starving to death here.” That story taught me about taking initiative.


After Lubbock, where my brother was born, the family moved to Houston, where I was born. When I was about a year old, Daddy was laid off from his job. He went to Dallas, where he found work, worked for a week to get a paycheck. Mother had packed up the house while he was gone, so when he got off work that Friday, he rented a truck, drove to Houston, they worked all night packing up the truck, and then drove back to Dallas with Daddy driving and Momma, my 14-year-old sister, 7-year-old brother, 1-year-old me, and the dog, all in the cab of the moving truck. When we got to Dallas, to the house Daddy had rented, they unloaded the truck so that it could be returned within the 24-hour rental period, so they wouldn’t have to pay the 2nd day truck rental. This story taught me that sometimes you’ve just gotta do what you’ve gotta do.


With my sister being fourteen years older, I heard many stories about her childhood and adolescence, many of which had to do with her being a normal rebellious teenager – and being vocal about her opinions and intentions. I don’t know that there was much difference in how many times each of us was grounded as a teenager, but I was NEVER grounded for something I had yet to do. The stories of my sister taught me that if I could control anything, I could control what came out of my mouth.


Now I tell my own stories – of how while my children were growing up, I got my bachelor’s degree on the 17-year plan. I attended school and worked part-time, taking college classes in between PTA meetings, piano and swimming lessons, and serving as Lutheran Sunday School and Vacation Bible School teacher, Cub Scout Den Mother, Girl Scout Leader and High School Band Mom. I sewed summer play clothes, Easter dresses, and Halloween costumes. My alter-ego was OmniMom – omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent Mom. I loved it.


My degree plan was based on the idea that as I had been reading anthropology, sociology, and psychology for fun, it would be nice to have a piece of paper indicating that I knew a little bit about at least one of these subjects. After only four years at the University of Texas at Dallas, I graduate with a BA in Psychology, with a Sociology minor.


I spent five years working in a small halfway house for people coming out of the psych ward, and then another five years working at a much bigger halfway house for parolees and probationers. My pay was about the same, sometimes a bit less, than I had made as a bookkeeper while I was working my way through college. And after ten years, I was quite ready for a break from direct client contact. I went back to bookkeeping.


A little over three years ago, my long-widowed mother decided she no longer wanted to live by herself way out in East Texas. I had moved from Dallas to Kerrville shortly before that, and we agreed that she would sell her house and move to Kerrville to live with me. I thought I would be getting a roommate, but during the move I realized that she really shouldn’t have been living alone as long as she had, and I had to become accustomed to being a caregiver for my mother. We have both come a long way in our new roles since then.


I also have a great story of how I came to move to Tampa, but it’s a pretty long tale in and of itself, so I will save it for another time, except to say that I will be getting a new name in less than three weeks.

Basic Unity Principles

As noted previously, I attended a service at the Unity Church of Palm Harbor yesterday.  I received a visitor packet which included a copy of the Basic Unity Principles, as outlined by Connie Fillmore in her book "Keys to the Kingdom".  I think these principles are the closest thing I've seen to my current belief set.  However, after attending the Lutheran church for almost 20 years, it seems to me that Unity services need more singing.

Basic Unity Principles

1. God is absolute good, everywhere present.

2. Human beings have a spark of divinity within them, and Christ spirit within.  Their very essence is of God, and therefore they are also inherently good.

3. Human beings create their experiences by the activity of their thinking.  Everything in the manifest realm has its beginning in thought.

4. Prayer is creative thinking that heightens the connection with God-Mind and therefore brings forth wisdom, healing, prosperity, and everything good.

5. Knowing and understanding the laws of life, also called Truth, are not enough.  A person must also live the truth that he or she knows.

I went to an unusual writing workshop yesterday. It was given by Janet Conner, author of Writing Down Your Soul: How to Activate and Listen to the Extraordinary Voice Within  and presented at the Unity Church of Palm Harbor. She gave a short talk at both the morning services and then had the workshop there after a light lunch for attendees.

I had borrowed her book from the library a few weeks ago, after reading a small piece she wrote for the Unity daily meditation magazine "The Daily Word".  She talks about using a form of journaling as a prayerful, meditative practice, carrying on a dialogue with God, something along the lines of Neale Donald Walsch's "Conversations With God".

As I had already read her book, and had actually started the meditative, interactive journaling she describes and promotes, I was a few steps ahead of some of the other participants.  We listened to music designed to put us into a meditative brain-wave state, and what kept popping into my head during our writing session was that I needed to start writing, and specifically that I needed to start blogging again.  I haven't written much of anything here since moving to Tampa, but it looks like I will be soon.

Synchronicity

Since moving to Tampa in Fall 2007, I have yet to be fully, happily employed.

I have worked at a "medspa" where clients came for botox, laser rejuvenation and the like. Every time someone walked through the door, I wanted to hug her (it was usually a her) and tell her that she looked just fine! I also started looking way to closely and worrying way to much about my own signs of aging. It was not a good fit for a feminist social-worker type.

I not-briefly-enough did bookkeeping for a paranoid-schizophrenic who was suspicious of my motives in asking him about the charges on the credit card bill (so I could code them properly for the general ledger entries).

I worked several months at a local bowling alley. It was actually pretty fun, except my number of scheduled hours varied widely so I never knew what my check would look like, and I sometimes had to work as late as 3:00 a.m. Even though I'm a night owl, I'm not THAT much of a night owl.

My last job was at a call center, verifying information for private colleges on people who had expressed an interest in pursuing their education. This sounds great, right? Except that most of the people "expressed their interest" through pop-ups on job boards that they thought were part of the application process, or because they thought they were submitting their information to win a new computer, video game console, Wal-Mart gift card, etc., etc., etc. So what I initially suspected was a phone sales job, but was assured that it wasn't, turned out to be a phone sales job. I did finally get past that, and didn't mind the job so much, as it was only about a mile from the house, but it was less that 30 hours per week - and, oh yeah - I'm not really a sales person. It finally became apparent to both me and my employers that it was unlikely that I would be able to make their expected quotas.

So, here I am, once again job-searching. My panic has been only slightly delayed by my small tax refund. I'm trying something different, though. I've signed up for the volunteer training class this Saturday with Suncoast Hospice. I have applied for a couple of positions with them since I've moved here, but even though I have ten years social service experience, I don't have any specific hospice experience. I thought that it would be a positive use of my time and also might segue into something more.

Tangentially, my son had a singing valentine delivered to his wife by four tuxedo-clad members of Dallas' Vocal Majority, a very talented men's chorus. He sent me a video, and it was wonderful. I've thought about doing something like that from time to time, so I searched for a Tampa women's chorus and found Toast of Tampa, an affiliate of Sweet Adelines International. I went last night as a visitor, was voice-placed as a baritone (upper alto) and paired with a Buddy who, if I pass my audition, will be a mentor to me for the next year or so. It was wonderful to be a in group of over 100 women singing 4-part harmony and really enjoying what they were doing. The director was great, and every person I met there was very nice and very friendly. I believe I have fallen in love.

Oh - and my buddy, Liz? Turns out she's a nurse for Suncoast Hospice.

Always Be Nice

Always be nice; a lesson I learned very early, along with most other women my age, and the one which has been most problematic for me, I think. Even in writing this blog, I have been very careful about the topics I post, so as not to give offense to whomever. I don't like conflict and avoid confrontation when at all possible. I really thought it was mostly just me, but I'm realizing that it is how most all women are socialized.

Kate Harding's recently column at Salon addresses part of this issue/problem in reference to the recent shooting at a Philadelphia gym:

Because we're taught to be polite, submissive, and generous even when men are making us uncomfortable, we automatically reach for the "nice guy, but..." out. Then the guys convince themselves that "nice" is a dirty word, and charlatans like Steele profit from telling men who hate, fear and objectify women, who feel entitled to women's bodies and enraged when they're denied access, that they just need to stop being so gosh darned nice to women. And then one of them snaps and starts killing women he describes as not even looking human to him, and we're all like, "Huh, didn't see that coming. "

Harding also references a June blog entry by Harriet Jacobs about "how women's socialization leads to the very behavior we're blamed for if we have the poor judgment to let ourselves be raped", which I recently ran across and forwarded to all my young women relatives.

I've sometimes cringed at my daughter's more in-your-face attitude and style, thinking she should try harder to be "nice". I'm glad she didn't take that lesson to heart as much as I did from my mother. The old adage is that nice guys finish last, but the greater truth is that too-nice girls never even make it to the track.

Coffee

I love coffee.

Well, actually, I love coffee once I have added enough sugar and cream (real cream, NOT non-dairy cream substitute) to turn the nasty, bitter, black liquid into something that actually tastes as good as it smells.

I did not drink coffee until I reached my mid-thirties, when a good friend lured me to Starbucks and bought me a White Chocolate Mocha latte' (cappuccino? I still don't know which is which...) and I discovered that you can make almost anything palatable if you add enough cream and sugar to it. After spending more money than I ever should have at the local Starbucks shop, I broke down and bought a small coffee pot that made just enough coffee to fill the insulated travel mug that came with it.

That was sufficient for a number of months, but, we all know how addictions progress. The same friend who took me to Starbucks (Thanks, Joy!) later gave me a French press that made very nice, smooth coffee in larger quantities than my little travel mug set-up. After that came the 4-cup coffee pot, which is really misnamed because it only filled my coffee mug twice. Four cups, indeed. Then came the 8-cup coffee pot, you know, in case I had friends over who wanted coffee. When Mother moved in with me, I started making a 6-cup pot of coffee every morning, but sometimes when I went back for seconds, I would find the pot empty. This meant I had to start preparing an 8-cup pot of coffee every morning, just in case we both needed extra on any given day.

Now, over ten years after that first Starbucks experience, I have graduated to the 12-cup monster shown above. (I got it free from Gevalia by signing up for their coffee subscription service, after I forgot to turn the coffee pot off one day, and Steve found it 15 hours later, when he smelled something roasting at the other end of the house.) The spiffy new black-and-stainless pot has a clock/timer that allows me to set it to come on at a certain time, but more importantly, allows the coffee pot to turn itself off after two hours. Now I don't have to worry about burning the house down with Mother in it.

Mother is drinking less coffee these days, so I'm back to brewing six cups every morning, an amount she and I split approximately 70/30. She has her coffee with a little cream in a regular coffee cup. I have my coffee with a lot of sugar and cream in a large mug (my favorite shown above - thank you, Sweetheart!). Sometimes in the afternoon, I will finish off the morning's pot by making a nice, creamy iced coffee to drink on the way to work, as long as I don't intend on trying to sleep before 2 a.m.

Bingo

Mother recently started going to Adult Daycare at the Tarpon Springs campus of the Neighborly Care Network.

I was worried that she would be insulted by the very large "Adult Day Care" sign in the front of the building, but I just don't think she makes any kind of connection with it being like day care for children. Even though I don't believe she would be able to live alone again, she is still capable of staying at home by herself during the day, so her attendance is more like an enrichment program for her.

The program is 6.5 hours per day, Monday through Friday, but Mother just attends on Wednesdays. I drive her there to arrive around 10 a.m., and the van brings her home around 3:30 or 4:00, depending on which van trip she is on that afternoon. The van could pick her up in the morning, too, but we would have to have her ready by 8:00 a.m., and she doesn't really want to be gone from the house that long. When we first moved here and looked into this program, she was very reluctant to go, much as she was with the Take Five Club in Kerrville. After I started working closer to full-time hours, I think she was getting more bored and lonely, and so was more open to the idea. Plus, I insisted. The day before her first day there, she told me that since it looked like it was going to rain the next day, she...and I interrupted her to finish the sentence that she would be going anyway, because in Tampa, it could very well rain every day from June through November. I think she stuck her tongue out at me.

Her first Wednesday afternoon, one of the activities was playing Bingo, and she won a teddy bear. She set it on the couch, and when Steve got home, she very proudly showed him her Bingo prize. He asked her what she had named it, and she said she hadn't, but later told us that she had decided to name it Honey Bear.

The following week, she came home with a pastel-colored Beanie Baby rooster. You can see him in the photo above, leaning against the table lamp. His name is Cock-A-DOODLE-Do (emphasis on the "DOODLE" - go ahead - say it out loud). The third week - no Bingo, so no Bingo prize. But the fourth week - another teddy bear! This one is Sugar Bear, and s/he sits with Honey on the end of the couch Mother sits/lies on to watch TV during the day. Add in the two teddy bears that my niece has sent with floral arrangements for Mom's birthday and Mother's Day, and we now have a total of five stuffed friends hanging out in the living room, helping Mom watch Bret Maverick and Roy Rogers outsmart the bad guys on a daily basis.