Creative Escape

I just returned from 3 fun-filled days where I was a volunteer at "Creative Escape" which is a huge scrapbooking event/workshop. To even put "fun-filled" and scrapbooking in the same sentence is a huge leap for me. Five years ago, about the only thing I would have put in a sentence with fun-filled would be a golf getaway with friends. But that was before I hooked up with my beautiful wife Lesli.

I say hooked up because we had already met more than 30 years ago when we attended high school together. Since we have been married I have been exposed to a whole new world of scrapbooking and cardmaking and it has broadened my horizons and made me a more rounded and better person. I could sit here and sing the praises of my beautiful, talented and loved wife, but this is about my transformation. I am sure I will sing her parises in a later post.

I still love to golf, hence the name "Shots from the fairway." If Lesli wasn't in my life my title would probably be "Shots from the rough" because things weren't as good as they are now. Being in the fairway makes the next shot a lot easier as any golfer knows, where in the rough, you never know how it is going to turn out. I feel confident that playing from the fairway I will be able to score well and be successful and happy. Ironically my golf game is not as good as it has been in the past, but I am a lot happier.

I have met a lot of awesome people through my wife and all of the wonderful people who love her. When I first would go to her store, I would feel like I was Mr Lesli, which was ok with me. People liked me because who my wife is, but I soon became Steve, or Stevie or Steve-O because of who I was becoming to them. It is funny because many people at my work, who have no idea who my wife is or who her friends are, call me Steve-O.

Lesli is quick to tell people about all of the good things that I do for her and how I support her, and when she does that it does two things. First, it makes me feel good about what I am doing and how she feels about me. Second, it makes me want to continue to do things for her. This is true with most people. I call it the self-fulfilling prophecy. I want to live up to her expectations of me and I think most people would feel the same way.

At Creative Escape, there was a very diverse group of women who attended. It was interesting to observe them and to learn more about them, and yes, to even help them. I was a helper in Lesli's class and it was my job to help the ladies if they were having a problem assembling the cards. I am not sure how some of them felt when a guy was showing them how to do something, but most were appreciative and maybe even a little amazed.

For Lesli's trunk show, which shows some of the projects she has made, she wanted me to make sugar cookies to give out with her business info. That meant that I would have to bake 640 sugar cookies. We had a catering business a couple of years ago and I still make treats for Lesli's regular classes. Many people know me as the guy who makes the awesome lasagna, the yummy salad or the BTS brownies at her store. I have a candy jar on my desk at work and Lesli says that $15 a month is not too much to have people like you. So I baked the sugar cookies.

I could never have anticipated the response that I would get from these ladies as they would come to Lesli's class or would see us throughout the hotel.I was the "cookie man" and everybody was saying how good they were and how thoughtful it was and how amazed that I would bake that many cookies. It made me feel really good about the effort that went into making them. It also made me feel good that my wife would have me do that knowing that I would be appreciated for my efforts. It made it that much easier to be accepted by these women because I was a man in a woman's world.

I told all of the ladies in the classes to email us and we would send the sugar cookie recipe, and I find this kind of funny coming from my background. Here I am, sharing recipes with ladies all across the country. I do enjoy cooking and I look forward to sharing recipes.

This experience has made me want to be a better person and to do the things that I know I need to do to preserve my memories and share with others. I am starting now.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed my thoughts.