Thinking of Pizza, leave it to the Professionals

So, after leaving New York City at rush hour last Friday night, my wife and I eventually got home around 7:30PM.  I didn’t want to cook anything, but then remembered I had a three-month-old Paul Newman frozen thin crust pizza sitting in my freezer.  I had never had one before, but I’d heard Paul’s stuff was very good, and with all of the donations their organization makes…good karma needed to be coming my way.  We normally cook and bake out of the smaller top oven in our new oven “system”. I started preheating and then noticed the instructions said, “Do not place pizza on a cookie sheet, place frozen pizza on the oven rack.”  I didn’t like that idea, especially since the top oven/microwave gizmo does not have any racks.  The wife says, just use the bottom oven, that has racks.  Fine, now I have to preheat this bottom oven, which took literally 40 minutes.  Modern technology is a wonderful thing.  Once it was done, I opened the bottom oven door and there was a large cauldron sitting on the racks which at that point was glowing red.  The intense heat coming off it steamed up the peepers I was wearing. The wife says, you’re lucky it wasn’t a quilt we were storing in there.  

So, I cooked my Paul Newman pizza and now have to get it off the oven rack.  Luckily there was minimal cheese spillage, but I still needed to figure out how to get it off the rack.  I had gathered a collection of weapons to address the situation, as well as a very thin plastic cutting sheet.  My thought was, sheet is very thin, but strong enough to withstand sharp cutting, it’ll be perfect to slide under the pizza.  Naturally, in the back of my mind I’m thinking, this plastic time bomb is going to explode into flames after about two seconds of extreme heat.  As it turns out, I was able to grab the edge of the crispy pizza crust, and drag it onto the thin, very thin plastic cutting sheet with absolutely no issue.  Euphoria has now enveloped me; I have single-handedly conquered the Frozen Pizza Challenge.  But then I got greedy.  As I was masterfully pulling my pizza out of the oven, I noticed a small chunk of burnt cheese sitting in the craves at the bottom of the oven door.  (Keep in mind, I’ve never been a waiter) I decided that if I just reached back down, while holding my pizza on the very, very thin plastic sheet, I could kill two birds with one stone.  Big Mistake!  Before I could reach the burnt cheese crumb, a combination of things happened - a complete report from the crimes against humanity commission is pending.  Said pizza got wings and flew off my plastic sheet onto the floor…face down.  For about two seconds I thought I’d be able to quickly pick it up and the crispy browned cheese topping would stay intact.  Then my wife pinched me and I awakened from that dream.  She then reminded me, she never said she was going to eat the Paul Neuman pizza, but I did.  I spent the rest of the night picking dog hair off my tongue.

Lessons Learned:  First, always order your pizza from a professional, and have it delivered.  Next, the fact that the Burn Unit didn’t play into the story speaks volumes to my personal growth.  And finally, you would think I’d know better.  I do an AARP presentation on Brain Health.  In it, there is a section on Tips to Help with Focus.  Number three is Avoid Multi-Tasking.  Like when you’re sitting in the family room watching TV and decide you’re going to walk into the kitchen and get a couple of cookies, that your wife thinks she’s hidden.  But along the way, you see a dust bunny trying to hide under a chair.  You then decide to go to the closet and get the vacuum cleaner because you’ve lit a fuse, and this has to be taken care of now.  And from there, you’re off to the races.  By the time you get around to those cookies, it’s 11PM and you’ve upset your stomach just in time for bed.  So much for restorative sleep.

Where Focus Goes Energy Flows

Over the years I’ve tested out a number of volunteering opportunities.  I tried Habitat for Humanity for a week.  They have great people and are an excellently run organization.  But I came to the conclusion that putting dangerously powerful tools in my hands in conjunction with scary amounts of electricity clearly was not the best idea for me.  It would be like sitting in front of a bowl of Nitro and looking across the table, seeing a pitcher of Glycerin and saying, I think mixing these two would be a superb idea.  I also volunteered at St. Hubert’s Animal Welfare Center for a few months.  St. Hubert’s is another wonderfully run organization doing the work of a higher power.  There are many ways you can volunteer at St. Huberts.  You just need to keep in mind, not everyone gets to work in the puppy pen.  That and you might have an issue if your spouse continually pressures you to bring home new pets.

After a bit of trial and error, I’ve settled on a volunteering opportunity that suits me well.  Last year as I was leafing though my AARP magazine, I saw a small, almost hidden advertisement from the New Jersey AARP Speaker’s Bureau.  They were looking for storytellers…I mean presenters.  After getting over my fear of being responsible for leading our senior citizens astray when it comes to their Social Security and Medicare benefits, I signed up.  When presenting for AARP, you cannot modify their scripts.  Bad things can potentially happen if you do – think lawsuits.  But you can embellish your presentations with your own personal stories that relate to the topic.  Read – open season for Steve.  On a more serious note, I read a very handy formula for figuring out where to volunteer and how to get motivated to do it.  “People serve when their passion meets their discipline at a moment of opportunity.”  In my case, I had a passion for storytelling.  One of my disciplines is public speaking (or at least it used to be.)  All it took was an opportunity, which presented itself in an AARP magazine ad.

The three presentations I usually do are: Medicare 101, Downsizing & Decluttering -You can’t take it with you, and the Six Pillars of Brain Health.  The latter presentation being the one I have the most personal experience with, or lack thereof.  For instance, quite often I’ll take a short stroll to check on the laundry.  On the way though, for whatever reason my brain goes out to lunch and I happen to notice there’s a tumbleweed of dog hair on the floor.  Something clicks and I decide, “I better get the vacuum cleaner out and address that untenable situation.”  As I’m vacuuming, I’ll notice a bill that needs be paid.  Well I can’t leave that alone.  And then I’m off to the races.  I eventually grab that pile of wrinkles out of the dryer a day or two later.  I’m told that this kind of activity is somewhat normal, not a sign of impending doom.  Now if I leave the house, get in my car and drive off looking for my home, then I have a problem.  And the current wisdom on how to address my affliction is to stay focused and practice self-talk as you’re doing activities. Something like, “Hey Einstein, remember you got up for a reason and the bathroom was it.”  (But really, is this what it’s come to?  I have to start talking to myself?  But isn’t that a sign I have dementia?) Well as inspirational speaker, Tony Robbins espouses in one of his mantras “Where Focus Goes Energy Flows”.   Truer words…

During my presentations, my wife usually becomes my foil.  It’s a lot of good-natured fun and I really don’t mind sleeping at the local Best Western motel.  One more punch of my BW loyalty card and I get a free night.  I’m convinced I should have been an arctic explorer because I’m constantly skating on thin ice.

So the other day I was presenting to about 50 women.  As I stared out at the crowd, in an uncommon moment of brilliance I thought to myself, "maybe these ladies aren’t going to find you quite as funny as you think you are."  

The topic on that day was Downsizing and Decluttering.   This presentation is right in my wheelhouse, I know it backwards and forwards.  But I did have some technical issues getting my nine year old laptop connected to their large gangly display system.  Seems the Xfinity cable service installed at the facility decided that I wanted to sign up for their special offer.  Xfinity was continually taking over my screen with alerts that flummoxed my presentation.  Being that I’m technically inept, this became mountains of fun.  But the presentation gods were smiling on me.  Just before show time, my eeny, meeny, miny moe method of troubleshooting succeeded, without throwing my laptop through a window.  Now the real fun begins.  I’m 60 seconds into my talk and I have a massive brain fart.  I forgot a significant line in the presentation.  And I can’t go forward because the line I misplaced in the far reaches of my gray matter is what sets up the rest of the presentation.  I’m standing up there like a deer in the headlights.  Inside my head I’m furiously thinking, “What the…heck?  This is not happening to me now!”  I’m okay if it happens in the comfort of my own home, like when I’m hungry and I forget why I went into the kitchen. (Side benefit to this move: I get to unnerve and scare the you know what out of my wife and kids.)  But here, right now during a presentation – Not Cool!  So after what felt like standing silently for two hours in front of the United Nations Security Council, I looked at the group and said, “You should see me do the Six Pillars of Brain Health presentation.  I kill that one!”  Oddly, as soon as I said that, the line I was trying to remember came screaming back to me and the uncontrollable pounding in my chest subsided.  

P.S. – AARP also an excellent organization.