I know, I know. You desperately want to give the Donald Trump shaped troll doll (complete with giant, fuzzy, yellow hair!) to the lone Republican in your office during the Secret Santa gift exchange. It would be hi-lar-ious, you tell yourself as your plop it into your Amazon cart.

It’s not. Don’t do it. Back away from the keyboard. Quickly.

The office Christmas party and gift exchange/ white elephant game, can be a hoot. It can also be the fastest way to win a one-way ticket to the HR office.

Let’s make a short checklist, shall we?

Do you work at:

• Rolling Stone
• A newly minted, legal marijuana exchange
• The Saturday Night Live studios

If you checked yes, you are probably safe to give just about anything you find funny. Chances are your co-workers will too.

Did you mark no? Carry this list with you in your wallet when you do your shopping. 

For the office gift exchange I will NOT buy anything that has to do with:

• Politics
• Religion
• Sex

See, simple, right? Now, depending on where you work, alcohol-related paraphernalia may need to be thrown on there as a safe bet too.

So what is left, you ask? Are we all doomed to lame, scented candles and bags of crumbling homemade cookies that our co-workers’ children made while fighting off this season’s latest cold?

No, there are creative and funny gifts that can win you points even with the guy that keeps accusing you of stealing his crusty, leftover meatloaf from the office fridge.

• Cool office gadgets – USB cables shaped like animals and various characters are all the rage and they are inexpensive. Paperweights, magnets, even trash cans and funky pencil holders can be fun, functional and appreciated. Win, win
• Food – good food. Not stuff you make at home, unless your sausage balls are all the rage at the office parties and people are throwing down to get to them. Then go with the sausage balls. Otherwise, buy a few pieces of expensive chocolate at the best shop in town or some other delectable treat. One piece of chocolate that they would never buy themselves is a delight to open when the guy next to you is looking down at a daily cat-a-day photo calendar.
• Gift cards – you simply can’t go wrong. Book stores, dessert stores, even $10 to a restaurant is much appreciated.
• Socks – Let’s be clear. Cool socks, not the aloe infused fuzzy socks they pull out of storage at big box stores every holiday season for people to blindly throw into grandma’s stocking. Rather, socks with a nifty design or picture on them, i.e. flamingos, bananas, or their favorite cartoon character. Slightly goofy and funny but still relatively safe.
• Include a hand-written note. Did you pull a name in the drawing of someone you truly appreciate having as a co-worker? Tell them. Include a short, sincere hand-written note with your $10 treasure to tell them just how much you value both them and their work in the office. It will make their day.

Are you exhausted? I’m exhausted.

We are in week two of the school year and I can barely keep my eyes open. Our days have been a blur of back to school activities, packing lunches, (attempting) to make descent breakfasts, homework and a return to evening practices for every sport and activity imaginable.

And this is just what we have to do to manage our children’s school year. Any of us adults heading back to school this fall will have to add managing our own classroom studies and activities on top of the list.

It’s a lot. But there is a magic word to help: lists.

We have five children and two very busy, full-time careers. Lists are my BFF.

Each night I end my evening by reviewing the day’s to-do list and compiling one for tomorrow.

It allows me space to breathe, prioritize and give myself easy guidance to turn to when I’m feeling flustered. In our house, if a task doesn’t make the list, it simply doesn’t happen. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t add the phrases, “bath time” and “make snacks” to my list. Because I do.

And that’s what I love about lists.

When I sit by myself to write up the list I am able to think through how I hope tomorrow will go. Notice, I said hope, for plans change, often. It rains. Practice is cancelled. The school nurse calls. To the doc we go. The dog gets loose and the whole day is shot as you drive up and down the neighborhood calling his name.

My lists help manage that chaos. After I’ve triaged the unplanned events of the day, I can turn to my list to see what I’ve missed and what I can still salvage of my plan.

At the end of the day, I have a nice list to reference of items that didn’t get completed, and add those to tomorrow, or even another day. I include not just appointments, but what needs picked up at the store that day, what phone calls need made, what meals are on the menu and even whose laundry day it is in our house.

Turns out, making a list has mental health benefits as well. Psychology Today says making a list has the following benefits:

1. Provide a positive psychological process whereby questions and confusions can be worked through. True purposes surface.
2. Foster a capacity to select and prioritize. This is useful for an information-overload situation.
3. Separate minutia from what matters, which is good for identity as well as achievement.
4. Help determine the steps needed. That which resonates informs direction and plan.
5. Combat avoidance. Taking abstract to concrete sets the stage for commitment and action. Especially if you add self-imposed deadlines.
6. Organize and contain a sense of inner chaos, which can make your load feel more manageable.

I say making a list brings peace. At the end of the day I have a sense of achievement as I look at everything I can cross off the paper. And, I can fall asleep easier without being shaken awake, suddenly remembering something that has to be done. It’s already on my list.

So, grab a notepad and make your list. Meanwhile, I’m going to go cross writing this blog off of mine. 

On Memorial Day my husband was thanked everywhere he went for his service. Yesterday on the Fourth of July he was thanked again, everywhere he went, for his service. Even on Labor Day last year he was lauded and praised.

Are we the only military family that is slightly irritated and perhaps appalled by how little Americans know about their own holidays?

Sure, my husband appreciates being thanked when he wears his Iraq Veteran hat. But it makes him more than a little uncomfortable when people are focused on him during Memorial Day weekend and not on honoring those who died in service to their nation.

It also makes him a lot uncomfortable when people spend that weekend focused solely on barbecue, storewide sales and drinking and never once head out to a veteran’s cemetery to raise flags or participate in a Memorial Day ceremony, but that’s another blog. 

Yesterday he was thanked again. But the 4^th of July isn’t about veterans. On July 2nd, 1776, the Continental Congress voted in favor of independence, and two days later delegates from the 13 colonies adopted the Declaration of Independence, a historic document drafted by Thomas Jefferson.

From 1776 to the present day, July 4th has been celebrated as the birth of American independence.

In my husband’s mind this day represents our ability to come together as a nation and fight for the freedoms that he has sworn to fight for today. It is about the birth of our nation, not soldiers.

And Labor Day, that isn’t about the military either. It was intended to honor all of us. The day pays tribute to the contributions and achievements of American workers. It was created by the labor movement in the late 19^th century and was designated a federal holiday by Grover Cleveland in 1894.

Thank your veterans, yes, absolutely. But maybe the biggest thanks you can give them is to participate fully in the American experience that they have fought dearly and lost much to protect for you.

Celebrate American holidays. Vote. Volunteer. And above all else, appreciate this nation and care for it with as much vigor and love as they have. 

When American actress Meghan Markle weds Prince Harry this weekend she will take on a title much more important than anything royalty could bestow upon her. She will become a military spouse.

Prince Harry served in the British Army for ten years, rising to the rank of Captain. He served two tours in Afghanistan.

While visiting the U.S. several years ago, he told Michelle Obama and gathered military families that his tour in Afghanistan “changed his life.”

Since then the Prince helped create and support the Invictus Games, an annual world-wide sporting event to celebrate wounded warriors and give them an opportunity to compete athletically. The inaugural games, held in London in 2014, drew more than 400 athletes who competed for five days in front of a crowd of 65,000 people.

He has trekked with injured service members to the North Pole. He told British GQ, "This extraordinary expedition will raise awareness of the debt that this country owes to those it sends off to fight - only for them to return wounded and scarred, physically and emotionally. The debt extends beyond immediate medical care and short-term rehabilitation. These men and women have given so much. We must recognise their sacrifice, be thankful, so far as we can ever repay them for it."

Prince Harry’s dedication to his brothers and sisters in arms is the focus of his days. Now, we welcome his new bride into the fold.

Though she, thankfully, will never experience the hell of deployment or the exhaustion of a PCS, she is our sister in arms.

Like her husband, she is certain to kneel to tend to our wounded and bow to honor our dead. We are thankful for her service as she makes serving her new military family a focus of her days too.  In turn, her military family will envelope her in love and devotion.

Welcome, Meghan. We’re glad to have you. And, we’ve got your back. Always. 

My husband retired from the Army five full years ago. It feels like a lifetime ago.

Five years without ceremonies, packing, early morning PT or deployment - five years without uniforms to clean or friends to say farewell to as they moved on to their next duty station.

We’ve settled quietly into civilian life, in a tiny town with a routine schedule that we once envied during our busiest PCS.

Our military life seemed gone, though I often longed for it while I sat in carline at the same school now, for five long years. After three years I felt the itch to begin packing and looking at maps and felt anxious, as if I was missing … something. By four years I was longing to get the heck out of here. At five years the routine has settled in and so have we. I now dread the idea of moving again.

Our military life, our military friends seem so far away. This week I was jarred from nostalgia and reminded of just how tight knit and wonderful our military community is.

My teenage son is traveling to two scout camps, 1,000 miles apart. The travel day from one and to the other falls on the same day, meaning my son will miss a bus and has to find his own way between Indiana and Florida.

That was the easy part, we could fly him without an issue. Getting him between the camp and the airport on one end and between the airport and the bus traveling through Florida was the sticking point.

Our military family rescued us. One retired friend in Indiana, now a state trooper, happily offered to pick our son up during his rounds, an hour out of his way, and drop him at the airport. His badge will easily get him through security to help our son make sure there are no travel issues.

On the other end, my husband’s former commander, and close friend, was delighted to pick up our son and not just play catch up with the traveling bus but also have time to discuss our son’s upcoming Eagle project him. The former military commander is also an Eagle Scout and spends as much time as he can helping other scouts achieve that goal.

Just when I felt at a loss our military family was there to support us, even at 1,000 miles away in two different directions. And after five years, though our military life feels a lifetime away, it is very much a part of us. The friends we made there were truly friends for life.

Who else out there felt like a rock star when scientists reported last year that people who swear more and are messier are generally smarter?

Yep, I was suddenly awesome.

Soon after, researchers in Belgium and Miami conducted studies that concluded that people who stayed up late and slept in were generally smarter, more productive and more creative than their early to bed early to rise counterparts.

Heck ya, all my most bothersome traits were suddenly a goldmine of success.

Until now.

This month Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine reported that night owls also have an increased risk for diabetes, psychological problems and risk of dying.

Uh oh.

The study tracked nearly half a million adults in the United Kingdom over six years. Researchers believe the night owls in that study who suffered physical ailments were fighting an internal battle – their internal clock which preferred the night couldn’t keep up with the outside world which operated during daylight hours.

Also, researchers said members of the study who identified as night owls were twice as likely to report having a psychological illness.

So, what to do? Work on resetting your internal clock.

The researchers suggested gradually setting back your bedtime until you were going to bed at a more reasonable hour. They also said to ban all use of technology in the bed. Eating right and exercising should help too.

So, I while I mourn the loss of my late night hours where I felt more productive and creative, it is problem time to start setting my alarm and for my fellow night owls to do the same. Never fear, eating of the early worm not required. 

Anyone else struggling with the Facebook decision? To delete or not to delete, that is the question.

I’ve had a handful of friends announce that they planned to go dark, a kind of semi step into life without posts but without deleting their account completely. Others have disappeared from Facebook with nary a farewell post.

When the news broke recently that Cambridge Analytica was collecting, keeping and using our data against us, people were aghast. But did you ever notice the weird toy of the moment you searched on Amazon seemed to haunt you in the advertisements on Facebook? That the set of shelves you put in your cart on Overstock.com was suddenly advertised every single day on your Facebook feed. Yeah, it wasn’t exactly a secret you were giving yourself over to advertisers with every letter you typed.

Though I still question how, and why, my non-seafood searches led advertisers to believe I would be interested in fishing lures. That ad popped up far too often to make me comfortable.

And Facebook isn’t the only creepy internet stalker. According to a recent report by CNN there are 2,500 to 4,000 data brokers in the U.S. who buy and sell personal data a trade known as surveillance capitalism.

Think Facebook is collecting a lot of info? Your phone is the biggest tattle tale. According to the CNN report your cell phone can give up your place of business, home address and any place you spend time. Uber, CNN reported, used the free flowing information from cell phones to track its users’ one night stands.

Yep, forget worrying if your best friend will give up your secrets. Your phone will tell everything.

So, in this age of digital information vomiting our first instinct is to give up the site that seems most obviously turned against us, Facebook. But in reality, it doesn’t seem like walking away from one site is going to make much of a difference.

And few of us are willing to leave that cell phone at home, turn off the internet and go dark. Technology has spoiled us. It is easy. It is convenient and dang, who doesn’t like sharing a good meme?

Instead, I have accepted a challenge by a friend to go what you might call, grey. I’m not deleting Facebook. But I’m not checking it every day either. I’m not going to post my thoughts or reactions to recent events in the news and I’m not going to document my child’s every victory.

Instead, I’m going to be more selective about what I share and the photos I post. I’m going to make a point to call and email the friends I am on Facebook to keep up with in the first place. A 10-minute phone call is far more satisfying than a one-line response on a photo. 

Facebook has its advantages. We can spread important news quickly to the right people. When a distant family member is ill it is helpful to have those constant updates and photos. When there was a major bus accident near our hometown several weeks ago, we were able to mobilize volunteers and collect needed items in two hours flat.

I think Facebook has its time and place. But we don’t need to use it everywhere and all day long. Use Facebook as a tool, not a crutch. Turn it off, talk to your friends over coffee, with your phones left in your purse. Call your second cousin and ask her how the 5K was, don’t just like her photo.

And print that photo of your kid in the class play and put it on the refrigerator. It will bring you far more joy on a daily basis than logging in to a phone ever will.

Operation Purple Camp has become a touchstone for many military kids dealing with deployment and injured service member parents.

Unfortunately, each summer as donors dwindle, the camps are held in fewer locations around the nation. The summer of 2018 is no different.

This year just 12 Operation Purple camps will operate in 11 states, down considerably from the program’s early years when local camps clamored to host the program.

It’s the same crunch that non-profit military and veteran organizations have been feeling across the nation. Last year the Washington Post reported that “the needs of the veteran population are increasing at the same time that the base of support for veteran services is shrinking. And it’s because of those trends that veteran nonprofits are evolving in ways that open them up to criticism.”

The Post’s special report, “Charting the Sea of Goodwill” showed how corporate, philanthropic and individual donations to the veteran and military-related nonprofits were overall on the decline. 

The staff at the National Military Family Association is careful to offer spots at Operation Purple Camp to children of military members who have recently, or are currently, deployed, and to children with injured parents. They are also careful to spread the love and not give repeat visits to the same campers every summer.

Each of my oldest children were granted a spot in different years during my husband’s deployments and the week long camp proved crucial in lifting their spirits and helping them to cope with the distance.

If you live close enough to a camp to attend, I highly recommend you apply.

And if your children have aged out or are no longer in need of the camp’s services, I highly recommend you donate to the NMFA to help fund the camps. Our military children need the support of their entire village. Let’s make sure they all have what they need.

Find locations and registration info for Operation Purple Camp at this link:   

http://www.militaryfamily.org/kids-operation-purple/camps/

“Mom!”

 “Are you done yet?”

 “Can you stop yet?”

“We’re hungry.”

“We’re bored.”

“He hit me.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Why are you still working?”

“Do we have school tomorrow?”

And that and a nutshell is a snow day while working at home.

If you’ve ever worked from home you know that your day is nothing like working in a regular office. We are often at the computer earlier than our in-office counterparts. We type through lunch, because hey, no one can see you ungracefully shovel that warmed up lasagna into your mouth while you continue typing.

Home-based workers may tell you they actually get more work completed in a day than in an average office. There are no distractions. There is no office gossip. You don’t have to waste time matching your belt to your shoes before you head off for a lengthy commute that might make you late. You just sit down and work.

But on the flip side, when calamity traps our office counterparts in their homes, they are free for the day. Meanwhile we are left to muster through whatever nature sends. Last week the unthinkable fell: snow. And here on the Gulf Coast, where snow doesn’t happen, we had two snow days - in a row.

There was no fun, fluffy snow to play in. Just ice. There was no opportunity to go out and play for the day. Temperatures dipped below freezing and in the land of short shorts and flip flops, few of us keep scarves, gloves or even long pants at the ready.

We were all trapped inside, while I worked. Or tried to at least.

I stopped my typing every 10 – 15 minutes to open snacks, reload movies or dig out another craft from the emergency stash in the bottom of the closet. Cups were spilled, popcorn was burned, glitter was sprinkled. Everywhere.

By noon I had given up. I let my boss know I’d be back online after bedtime that evening to finish up. Turns out, she hadn’t lasted past 10 a.m., trapped in her own snow day hell of paste, play dough and diaper duty.

Working from home is great. I love it. I feel I’m more productive and less exhausted at the end of the week. But at the end of our unusual snow days, I’ve never been more thankful for the hardest workers I know, teachers.

Writer Charles Chu recently wrote about the benefits of being lazy.

In fact he wrote that “lazy people make the best leaders.”

Someone please hide that article from my children and burn it. Twice.

During the week’s I work long shifts, by Friday I have to wade through a sea of clothing to cross their rooms. When I wake in the morning I find their dinner dishes still neatly tucked in their assigned spots at the table. My middle child has a habit of dropping his trash in the middle of the floor and then stepping over it for the next three days until I pull my hair out as I scream at him to stop and pick it up.

But I assure you this is not the type of laziness that Chu is advocating for.

Instead, he wants us all to remember that while hard work may pay off, it doesn’t necessarily allow for creativity, unusual inspiration and lucky breaks.

Chu recalls the book, “The Wiki Man” written by Rory Sutherland , vice-chairman of Ogilvy Group UK. In it, Sutherland stresses how important breakthroughs in any field were made simply through unplanned luck. He points out that at one time Microsoft hung whiteboards along its office corridors so that ideas produced during hallway conversations could be documented because those accidental meetings were often more productive than the scheduled ones.

A recent study by the University of Minnesota suggests that people with higher IQs also sit at messy desks. The study suggests that people who spend less time cleaning and more time worrying about important issues are smarter. Not to mention, messy environments, scientists believe, inspire a creative workflow.

Business Insider quoted psychological scientist Kathleen Vohs who said, “Disorderly environments seem to inspire breaking free of tradition, which can produce fresh insights. Orderly environments, in contrast, encourage convention and playing it safe.”

I personally agree.

As a writer I have to carry notepad and pen, and use the voice recorder on my I-phone to record my best work as it flows carelessly through my head while I drive mindlessly down the interstate after eight hours of straining to find the right words.

Project ideas taunt me in my dreams. I work late night hours to flesh out ideas that flash through my brain while I’m boiling macaroni and cheese for dinner. A free, relaxed, lazy mind is a creative mind.

And my desk, piled high with papers and books, I’ll have you know I can find anything I need in a flash. I can’t vouch that the constant threat of an avalanche of papercuts makes me more creative but I’m going to own it. As it is what I tell my boss when he insists I rein it in.

So. Stop thinking. Let loose. Go get a coffee and forget about your current assignment.

The answer might just come to you.