Pumpkin spice and everything nice

Thank God we are almost through the fall season.

If it were much longer, I would probably have a mouthful of cavities and a fat belly to match.

During this time of year, I scour the grocery aisles looking for new seasonal treats laden with my favorite fall flavors: pumpkin spice and candy corn.

My chiropractor told me that God gave us a sweet tooth for fruits.

While I do enjoy red delicious apples, muscadines, mangos and such, my sweet tooth goes berserk for  pumpkin spice and everything nice.

And this year, I found a real doozy: Pumpkin spice Oreos. The deep and creamy orange center is crammed between two golden cookies.

Add these to my already favorite pumpkin flavored products, and I’m a cookie away from being a pumpkin-spice addict:

Pumpkin spice doughnuts. Pumpkin spice lattes. Pumpkin spice creamer for my pumpkin spice coffee. Pumpkin spice Hersey’s kisses.

There’s even pumpkin cheesecake ice cream and pumpkin-flavored beer, I hear. I’ll pass on the beer, but am eager to try a bowl of the cold stuff.

Apparently, I am not alone in my addiction. According to Neilsen, sales of all pumpkin-flavored foods and beverages increased 14 percent in 2013 compared to 2012.

And in the last five years alone, pumpkin sales have jumped 34 percent, says the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Just to think, it was only 10 years ago that Starbucks introduced its pumpkin spice latte, which led to this craze.

Because of the popularity, some stores are stocking the aisles with pumpkin flavored products as early as July.

Not so lucky with the Oreos. They only debuted for eight weeks and are hard to find. As I was buying a bag last week at a store out of town, the Nabisco vendor said they were not restocking them this year. So I grabbed another.

There was a TV news report recently about a woman who bought a year’s worth of pumpkin spice lattes so she could enjoy them all year long.

Now that’s an idea. 

But on second thought, I’ll part ways with my newfound guilty pleasure until next fall – before I turn into a pumpkin.

Life is a balancing act

Life is a balancing act

Americans need to vacation more

 This column appeared in the Oct. 7th issue of the Pageland Progressive Journal.

By KIMBERLY HARRINGTON

Editor

My vacation was two weeks ago but I am still reeling from my mini-adventure.

My body is here but my thoughts sometime wander to somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, where turquoise and sapphire waters kiss white sandy beaches, where Bahama Mamas are always on deck and free spirits blow in the wind like tumbleweeds.

Ask any family member or close friend of mine and they will tell you how much I believe in balance. For every dollar earned, a dollar spent. For every hour worked, an hour played. For every “need” met, a “want” accomplished. For every love lost, a new love found. You get the picture.

Being that way keeps me content, satisfied and happy. I’m usually very good at keeping that balance in my life until this year.

I started this new job as editor in February and dived right into it. Three months later, my mother suffered from a slew of health problems that kept me on the road a lot to and from her hospital bed in Concord.

Then I had to direct my focus on getting my nephew/godson into college – a decision he made at the very last minute. This meant coming up with balances due minus financial aid, buying overpriced books and snatching up last minute supplies. Not to mention standing in line all day during the final orientation as my brain went into information overload.

Then my mother suffered another health crisis, losing sight in her right eye.

Now she is living home with limited vision, which necessitated a family meeting – and you know how those can go. Gotta love 'em, though.

After all was said and done, I agreed to move back with my mother temporarily. (That’s another column.)

So when my brother and his girlfriend broke up, and he asked if I wanted to take his already-booked cruise to the Bahamas, I considered it divine intervention to get me back centered. (God works in mysterious ways. The two of them are both ministers and who knows what sparks would have ignited on that ship.)

We processed the transfer and voilá, I was on my first cruise since 1995. I prefer flying to my destinations and getting all-inclusive packages so a cruise was a different twist.

Without giving you play by play, let me just say this vacation with my best friend, Patricia, was not particularly one for R&R. I didn’t sleep much, had two too many Bahama Mamas, ate like I had a high metabolism, danced like no one was watching, played in the water like a toddler, posed in pictures like super models, made new friends, slept at highway rest areas, and laughed til it hurt.

I had the time of my life.

After months of living on the edge, I jumped off – giving me back my balance.

My late night anxiety attacks have calmed. My stress level has evened out. It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Everybody needs balance and more vacations. As a country, we work longer hours and take less vacations than any other industrialized country in the world.

A study released in August by Travel Effect, a project of the U.S. Travel Association, revealed that 40 percent of American workers will leave paid vacation days unused.

Tony Schwartz, chief executive officer of the Energy Project, says, “the best way to get more done may be to spend more time doing less.” Living a life in which we work all the time and never prioritize recharging simply isn't sustainable – not for individuals, and not for companies either.

It’s OK, people, to relax a little and not feel guilty about it.

One of my own favorite columns is about a man I worked for at a hospital. It was his first job as chief executive officer and he was torn between climbing the corporate ladder of success, which meant long days and no weekends, to spending time with his new wife and child. After about six months on the job, he chose the latter.

The following is an excerpt from that column I wrote five years ago:

“Too many times we live unbalanced lives. We work more than we play. We eat at our desk more than we do at our dinner table at home. We wear more dress shoes and pumps than flip flops. We spend more time at work than we do with the ones we love.

It may sound cliché, but at the end of our lives, it’s time with our loved ones that will envelope our thoughts and bring us comfort. It will be the times where we played more that will give us reason to smile.

 Over the years, I’ve been given some great advice from successful professional leaders that I take to heart and try to live by: Don’t take work home with you; sometimes you’ve got to be selfish and put yourself first; work hard, not long; and work to live, not live to work.

True balance is getting up in the morning and putting on your work shoes, but knowing when to take them off and slip on your favorite pair of flip flops.”

Balance for you may not be a trip to the Bahamas. It may simply be a day off in your pajamas watching movies, getting home in time for dinner, or having a date night with your spouse.

To quote a poster on Pinterest: Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.

Rice case brings attention to domestic violence

Note: This column ran in the Pageland Progressive Journal in South Carolina on Sept. 16, 2014.

It’s still not easy to confess, even though I have in front of women audiences only several times before: I was a victim of domestic violence while in college.

And every time, it never failed, a woman would approach me after the program and say how surprised she was that I – the strong, professional woman she saw on the outside – would have put up with that.

She would almost be comforted by the fact that if it could happen to me, someone they saw in the community as a woman who “had it together;” it brought less shame that they were now experiencing it.

And it was that same parallel that gave me the strength to speak out publicly and help others.
I was new in journalism when a local woman returned home to practice law. I was assigned to interview her. She was someone I knew from afar growing up. 

She came from a prominent family. She was beautiful and successful and professional and now a lawyer.

During our interview, she told me that she wanted to focus on domestic violence cases. When I asked why, she said because she, too, had been a victim of it.

To say I was shocked was an understatement. How could this beautiful, confident woman ever be the victim of abuse from the hands of a man? Why couldn’t she or didn’t she just leave after the first hit?

Because it could happen to her – a woman I revered as the epitome of beauty with brains – I somehow felt less embarrassed that it had happened to me.

It was then that I started volunteering with domestic violence organizations, serving on their boards, writing more stories and telling my own.

It’s been a few years since I’ve had to share my story. But the recent news and video of former Baltimore Ravens football player Ray Rice has opened old wounds.

My top concern is not for Rice and his football career. My sympathy is extended to his wife, Janay Palmer. In her statement, released on Instagram, Palmer says she and her husband will continue to show the world what real love is.

I know it sounds ridiculous to us – and it will to her one day. But for now she is living inside the frame and can’t see the entire picture. 

One thing I know for sure and have learned over the years is that real love doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t abuse. And though it may sound cliché, if a man hits you once, he will hit you again.

Trust me, I know it’s hard to leave someone you love, to leave your best friend, to leave your partner. But abuse must be the deal breaker.

Domestic violence is the leading cause of injuries to women ages 15 to 44, more common than auto accidents, mugging and cancer combined, according to the U.S. Surgeon General.
The Violence Policy Center ranks South Carolina as No. 2 in the nation in the rate of women murdered by men. And most of those men are either husbands, ex-husbands, common law husbands or boyfriends to the victims.

There are plenty of times that call for a woman to stand by her man, but domestic violence is not one of them. 

Pop singer Rihanna realized that in 2009 after her then boyfriend, singer Chris Brown, assaulted her. She told Oprah Winfrey in a later interview that she went into protective mode of Brown because the rest of the world was beating him up. 

That’s what some women do. We nurture and protect others sometimes to our own detriment. We must learn to love ourselves and allow ourselves to be selfish when it comes to protecting us. I know it may go against how we were raised, but it is survival mode in the way of the world today.

Yes, abusive men do need help. They should seek counseling. But until they are proven to be healed and reprogrammed of that tendency to hit you upside your head and drag you like a ragdoll, your relationship with them is a casualty perhaps never to be revived again.

Women who find themselves in domestic violence situations and can’t leave immediately should develop a plan, which includes packing a bag with important papers, momentos and even evidence of the abuse such as photos; putting money aside; and leaving when your offender least expects it.
For more tips on how and when to leave, visit www.womenslaw.org.

While it can be heartbreaking to leave, it is even more heartbreaking to stay because your self-esteem also takes a major hit.

You never know when his wrath will surge again, so you walk on eggshells, not being fully capable of expressing yourself or being yourself for fear of being attacked.

Leaving at least allows you to see the whole picture from the outside and chances are you will discover it wasn’t a flattering photo after all.