Resolution Solution

I was recently asked to speak to a group of women about marketing a new home based business. I was told I would be on at 12:30 for a roughly 30 minute talk. Somehow wires crossed (a nice way to say someone fucked up royally) and in actuality I was suppose to be speaking at 11:00. (I swear it was 12:00, I have the original phone notes…honest)!

I walked in a mere hour late to a silent room of 250 women with empty plates and clinking forks. Once spotted, I heard a gasp as if they saw the second coming of Christ. (Unless you re Jewish, in that case it would be the first)

Then a … “Oh thank God she’s here! Let’s give a warm round of applause for our key note speaker Lisa Wynn”! I hear a few lame claps among whispers.

There I stood in my winter coat holding a bag of literature blinking in the doorway of the County Convention Center, feeling as if I were in a bad naked dream where you can’t locate a classroom and your legs won’t move.

The only thing missing was that feeling of falling.

In dead silence I walked up to the podium as if walking to the gallows. It was so quiet I could hear my hair grow.

Where were my damn notes.. in my purse? I began to dig now. I unearth a pen with two TUMS stuck to the side of it and a dried up lip-gloss wand.

I did what I do best when befuddled or ready to cry.

I made some lame joke about embracing your inner Franklin Planner and how my speech was about becoming a successful business person, which included confirming things.

I was pitting out my new red shirt.

And here I thought I was running early and stopped at Wendy's to down a chicken sandwich and a Frosty in the parking lot, while singing to Sisters Sledge on the radio.

Thankfully I recovered quickly and had an hour long lineup of people wanting to talk gleaning 21 new members to my business group.

Somehow, I always fix stuff.

It's the nurse leftover in me. I cannot stop trying. Cannot fail. Nothing can die.

Not on my shift.

My friends and family say I "make them nervous". They ask how things always happen to me that:

A) Don't kill me and

B) I don't wind up in jail for.

Someone said to me today: "Why don't you make a list of New Years Resolutions..you know, be less spontaneous for once."

Ok, for those who really know me, and God help those who are just getting to, I have always been known as a fly-by-the-seat of my pants sorta gal. I don't like structure, or tight schedules. I was forever driving on fumes and getting tragically low in my check book through college and beyond.

Like to three cents.

I have been known to sleep in box cars in Greece, too tired to care that rats shared close quarters, went paddle boating naked in Austria (as a cruise ship strolled by honking its horn with 2000 passengers screaming off one side.) I was held as a prisoner by two mafia members all while refusing to pay extra for "water" at their hotel, I visited 16 countries on $600 and came home with 15 bucks leftover, 600 pictures and a killer tan.


I have held three jobs as a single mother, started six companies over the course of ten years, if I include the cleaning toilets gig, watched people be born and watched people die, navigated the Tokyo subway system at 3am drunk and smoking (I don't even smoke), spent three weeks on Patong Beach Thailand, missing the Tsunami that washed it away by five years,three days and two hours.... swam in a cave in Phi-Phi Island off the coast of Vietnam, and rode an elephant through the rain forest after a mud slide. (Don't ever scream while riding an elephant going up a hill...no traction on those big round feet)

I have successfully changed a tire in the dead of a Minnesota winter on a 79 Dodge Polara at 47 below windchill, broke into and stole blueberry muffins from a bakery after a night of binge drinking with my old roommate Cheryl, ran into Harrison Ford on the beach in La Holla Ca, literally, and almost crashed in a 747 en route to Hawaii in 1986. (Rocking and praying takes on a whole new meaning here...)

Every day is an adventure that I could never plan even if I planned it.... and with that, stuff magically happens to me, good stuff, good people, good times, incredible memories.

Maybe God feels sorry for me and is making up for lost time because he was really busy with other things when I was a kid. Perhaps due to the fact that I was raised by a sect of evangelical freaks who thought dumpster diving was Christmas shopping and powdered milk was good, or knocking the wind out of a kid was fair punishment for not hearing your name when called for dinner.

Whatever the case may be, just maybe he is blessing me now with rich life experiences and good friends.

My brother Jeff regularly mumbles “only you” and rolls his eyes every time I excitedly tell him another "Lisa" story as he likes to call them, which usually consists of how I happened to sit next to Oprah on a misconnect flight from Toledo to Chicago and how she wants me to do all her PR and then hands me the key to her house in case I happen to be in the hood…well not that, but close.

I get pretty lucky not trying, For 2007 will try not to try more. That's when life happens. When we don't plan, resolve, resolute, plot, schedule and make silly lists for ourselves.

I kinda like it that way.