I only see my bookkeeper in person once or twice a year, so when I stop by her office for an annual review, I make sure to bring a good cabernet and fun cocktail napkins. Peggy looks fantastic. She\u2019s got new energy and a bounce in her step when she comes to meet me in the main show room of minimalist design steel and glass.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow the f\u2014are ya?\u201d she asks while trotting back up the stairs where she rents office space. Peggy talks like sailor, a non-issue while living in the culture of hot guys who race snowmobiles and take awesome photos of snow dust and big trucks. Her building mates fabricate amazing photography and huge scale graphics and advertising wraps for billboards and vehicles.<\/p>\n
I like that her office is “Montana practical,” but with pretty girl touches too: a bright teal cabinet, photos of her hubby and dogs, a cute love seat with throw pillows and beaded tassels. I park my handbag and dripping coat on the floor before taking a seat in an office chair by the desk.<\/p>\n
She pulls out wine glasses and a cork screw and deftly opens the bottle with a pop and a sniff of the cork, \u201cNice.\u201d Her husband is a chef and she appreciates a fine vintage. She sets the bottle aside to breathe while she brings up spreadsheets on a computer screen the size of my dining room table.<\/p>\n
While we chat and laugh, Peggy who is my saving grace when it comes to all things payroll and numbers (!) not-to-mention a multi-tasking extraordinaire, pours us 2 ounces each and we get busy telling about life and work, her brilliant strategy for softening my nerves about accounting details and tax percentages I can never quite keep straight.<\/p>\n
Peggy and her husband just got back from a week of camping with their dog in the desert sun, which is absolute paradise for Montanans in the month of April. The winter\u2019s been long and deep, and colder than a witch\u2019s you know what…in you know where. I glance out at the large second story office window where a line of monster trucks with fancy detailing and big wheels are parked outside in a new industrial maze of steel buildings. Today all I see is total white out, a blizzard of all thirty forms of precipitation bulleting out of the sky at steep and swirling eastward angles. This after what must be 30 some straight weeks of ice block living.<\/p>\n
Peggy\u2019s telling me how when her phone first lost reception out in their desert oasis, she felt a little panic. That was just before settling in and opening her mind and chest to the deep aaaahhh of no distractions. Bright sunshine, red sands, wide blue sky. \u201cEighty degrees of pure bliss. We were just getting getting the hang of the quiet when it was time to come home.\u201d She pushes my completed tax forms for first quarter with addressed envelopes across the desk. \u201cSign here, and here. Send a check with this one.\u201d I want to kiss her.<\/p>\n
She seamlessly continues her story, \u201cThe crazy thing is that when we got home I realized I\u2019d not missed my phone or watching the news, which I watch daily.\u201d She took a sip of wine. \u201cI get all up in that shit. It makes me bat-crap crazy. Angry, anxious. Can\u2019t sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n
Peggy tells how she decided to continue her news fast. She\u2019s young, but already this side of cancer. Among other decisions such as healthy eating, doing yoga, and working out, she’s decided a brief scan of a written\u00a0<\/em>news brief that is delivered in hard copy to her building is more than enough. \u201cYeah, I skim it quick while walking between the mail box and Dave\u2019s office next door. It\u2019s pretty balanced in perspective and doesn\u2019t get me all riled up. It\u2019s good. I\u2019m sleeping and I\u2019ve even started dreaming again.\u201d<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n I was thinking about how long I\u2019ve gone without watching the news… pretty much my whole life. Truth is, I\u2019ve worried about my resident apathy and negativity, but I\u2019m also acutely aware of the sensationalism and the emotional manipulation that those who watch a steady diet of the nightly news endure, and consequently seem relatively unaware of its effects on their daily wellbeing. And, commercials. Mercy sakes. For a kid who never watched television, commercials are a total brain suck. Do you ever wonder how the media gods determine the content with which to pummel a particular viewing audience? Over and over and over in one episode of Survivor<\/em> we have headaches, depression meds, high blood pressure… The message is clear: you only get to watch<\/em>\u00a0realty show adventures because you are already half dead.<\/p>\n Political wrangling, the president\u2019s tweets, and bombings in the middle east do\u00a0<\/em>effect my life. They involve human beings I care about. But what truly impacts my life today, in this moment? Friends. Family. Jesus. Hormones. Calories. Weather. Airlines. Caffeine. Our neighbors. Public Education. Bookstores.<\/p>\n My top three have nothing to do with our leader, world events or the economy. So why would I let the news ruin my life? Like Peggy, I get the highlights. I ask my husband for the big ones, and pray as I can.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the only way I know to carry sunshine, and blue sky through months like April.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I only see my bookkeeper in person once or twice a year, so when I stop by her office for an annual review, I make sure to bring a good cabernet and fun cocktail napkins. Peggy looks fantastic. She\u2019s got new energy and a bounce in her step when she comes to meet me in the main show room of minimalist design steel and glass. \u201cHow the f\u2014are ya?\u201d she asks while trotting back up the stairs where she rents […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,17],"tags":[68,23,24],"class_list":["post-284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-snap-shots-of-the-daily","category-whole-person-health","tag-health","tag-humor","tag-montana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.donasofia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.donasofia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.donasofia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.donasofia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.donasofia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.donasofia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":719,"href":"http:\/\/www.donasofia.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions\/719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.donasofia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.donasofia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.donasofia.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}