I have a goal to write a post for the blog about once a week. For topics, I rely on my keen awareness of the world around me, my self-deprecating wit and the seemingly endless stream of idiots who pass through my world. Typically, the problem is not what to write about but rather, which thing to write about.  This week I had the following options:

 

1. My life as a fast talker. Not as in fast-talking salesman but as in there are so many ideas in my head I can’t get them out fast enough. My daughter Maggie, also the good kind of fast-talker told me this week that fast-talking is her least favorite personal characteristic. I am not a fan of slow talkers; I want them to get on with it.
2. The Best of the Worst Doesn’t Need a Trophy – Maggie, the fast talker, explained to me why a trophy from the silver bracket is stupid. And don’t even get her started on the second place trophy in the silver division, which makes the winner the second best of the worst. I could have drawn tons of business correlations on this topic. 
3. A Volunteer, aka patsy. I had a tome running around in my head about the frustrations of a particular business owner who is helping with a fund-raising project for one of her children’s sports team.

But the winner this week is: Seeing the Forest for the Trees

 

I wrote something recently about companies who were thriving in the recession. I used VistaPrint as an example. We work with quite a number of printing companies and some were not happy about the reference to VistaPrint which is curious because I made a conscious decision to use them for precisely the same reason  - because we work with so many printing companies. The printing industry is in a world of hurt right now. One third of the volume they used to print has migrated to digital forms of communication leaving the industry seriously over capacity and drowning in “red ocean” as they lower prices to stay afloat. (Side note: if you lower prices to drive volume but there is 1/3 less volume out there, what are the chances that you can actually drive volume? If you can’t find more volume, aren’t you worse off than when you started?)

 

My kids like donuts. My husband likes donuts. Heck, I like donuts. They just don’t like me…well to be more specific, they don’t like my hips.  Having said this you would probably suspect that I run screaming and yelling into the night when someone in my family suggests donuts. You are about to be surprised.

 

The nearest Dunkin Donuts to my house is a Dunkin Donuts “Lite.” It is located inside the closest gas station to my home. As a person who has turned driving on fumes into an art form, the location of this gas station is of major strategic import. I use the term “lite” to distinguish this Dunkin Donuts from another one further down the road, which boasts a drive through and baking on the premises. This second one is also strategically placed as it sits just enough drive distance from the Richmond Olympiad gym for a hungry 10 year old to gobble down a plain bagel with strawberry cream cheese before hitting the floor for four hours of flipping, multiple times a week. Said gymnast’s Mom can grab a very large coffee before watching all of this flipping four hours at a clip, multiple times a week.

 

Back to the donuts. For years to the familiar chimes of “I didn’t have time to eat this morning” and “let’s get donuts” I have battled the donut demon. Traveling on the aforementioned fumes, with at least one and sometimes two sets of brown eyes pleading with me through the rear view mirror, I’ve been implored to stop for gas and donuts.  Sometimes, my resolve intact, I have braved a possible personal gas crisis and floored it, pupils fixed and dilated, as we passed the familiar orange and fushia sign. Other times though, in either a fit of motherly love or an inability to deal with the whining, I mean chimes, I would be compelled to stop. After pumping gas, I would enter the gas station, firmly willing my inner-donut-loving-self with a wishful mantra - just a coffee for me please, just a coffee for me please, just a coffee for me please. As I stood in line with my two daughters debating which variety to choose, I would gaze longingly and lovingly at the cases filled with bagels, muffins, donuts and the worst of all waistline enemies, the glazed apple fritter. Unfortunately, I would, on very rare occasions succumb to these temptations and order some…ahem, for the office, of course.