So here’s my quiet effort to help you overcome that plague of nighttime peacefulness.  The first choice you have to make while you are lying there wide awake is: Do you want to stay up or try to get back to sleep?

Things to Do if You Want to Go Back to Sleep

• Read a good book, not a thriller or something super-involved. But a positive book with happy endings and life lessons, not something that will give you nightmares if you finally do get to sleep.  I find the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” books perfect for this.
• Write Thank You notes.  This will help you feel a little productive and spread some joy to others while you are frustrated by lack of sleep.  Change your frame of mind and you might be able to sleep again.
• Wash and fold a load or two of clothes.  I find the rhythmic sound of a washing machine very soothing and clothes fresh from the dryer are sooo lovely.  In fact you may find yourself falling asleep in a pile of clean laundry.
• Have a snack. My mother swears by warm milk, I find toast and jam to be helpful, you may discover peanut butter and jelly to be the magic potion. Our bodies are programmed to wake us up when our blood sugar is too low, so a little snack may be just the thing!
• Make lists! Often the reason you aren’t sleeping is because your mind is crammed to the breaking point with various chores, obligations and work-related minutia.  Dump those items out of your head and on to paper and you may be surprised how fast you can get back to snoozing.  If you want to be super-efficient, keep a tablet and pen on your bedside table to get those items outta your head without getting outta your bed.

Things to Do to Make the Most of Staying Up

• Learn something new.  You’ve been granted several extra hours that you don’t normally have, so take advantage of them!  Even if you just watch QVC for an hour, I guarantee you’ll learn something you didn’t know before.
• Clean house. Nothing will make you feel better about missing sleep when dawn breaks and your house is sparklingly clean. Although you may want to wait to vacuum until everyone else is up.
• Read that thriller.  What the heck, if you are going to be up anyway, go ahead and read that nightmare-inducing book. At least you won’t have to worry about the bad dreams tonight!
• Knock out that back-burner work project, find your tax paperwork or fill out insurance forms. Do something that you normally avoid like the plague so you can feel that smug sense of accomplishment as the sun comes up.
• Go online.  You will discover an entire world of people (perhaps some of your friends) who are not sleeping either. While they may be third shift workers, or living six time zones away, there is something comforting about not being the only one in the whole world who is awake.

If all else fails, follow my wise Aunt Mary Francis’ advice, “Your body has decided you don’t need any more sleep, so just focus on the fact you have extra time to do things.” And you know what?  She’s right.  I’ve found if I tell myself that I got as much sleep as I needed, I function much better all day.  After all, even if you can’t change your circumstances, you can change your perspective!

Now, how about you?  I’d love to hear your best ideas to beat back insomnia!

Student housing cooperatives, unlike housing co-ops in big cities, are a concept that originated in the 1930′s when a very charismatic man by the name of Kagawa barnstormed across the United States “preaching” the doctrine of student cooperative living. Basically, in that era of economic deprivation, it was a concept of self-help and hands-on learning.  Sound familiar?

What evolved more than 75 years later is a limited number of student-managed housing units that offer significantly reduced room and board costs in return for students managing all the day-to-day aspects of running a house–cooking, cleaning, and even basic maintenance.   How much, you ask?

During the 2012 Purdue school year, the very cheapest cost for room with a roommate and 15 meals a week is $7, 488 (eight-month contract).  That rate is only available in a male dorm. Because Purdue has very limited co-ed living options and all are more expensive, the cheapest “female’ comparable room and board option in a dorm is $8,202.  Being a girl in Purdue dorms will cost you at least $714 extra.

Enter stage left, the Purdue Student Housing Cooperatives, which started during that aforementioned barnstorming tour and are still going strong these many years later.  The Student cooperative unit that I am most familiar with, the women-only Twin Pines, is not the highest priced, but it is certainly at the top end, charging $3160 per year for room and 15+ meals a week (eight-month contract). The least expensive co-ops are charging less than $3000 per year.

Currently Purdue is charging $9,478 for two semesters of tuition.  So the cheapest dorm room and board+ tuition (assuming no increases) for four years is an astounding $67,864!  Four years of living in an above-average co-op reduces that burden to $50,552, a $17,864 savings!  It’s like getting a scholarship–without having to earn an A+ average.

But wait, there’s more!  What if I told you I could take an average teenager and turn them into a responsible adult who knows how to do basic home maintenance, cook, clean and pay bills? All for the very low cost of a couple of hours a week.  The trade-off in cost is off-set by the students who live in cooperatives, well, cooperating to manage the house.  They do all the same types of basic chores that you do in your own home, but they have a lot more people to share the burden, so it works out to 3-5 hours a week in most cases.

From my perspective, I was doing less chores living in Twin Pines than I did living with my parents.  On the other hand, I learned a great deal about planning menu, cooking and shopping for food for 28 women. I also learned how to fish rings out of plumbing, manage a largish budget and plan special events.  All of these are skills that I, sadly, use more than my hard-earned Purdue degree. I won’t even bore you with the life-long friends spiel, because you’ll get those one way or another at college, no matter where you live.

If you have a student who is attending or planning to Purdue or one of the other Universities that offers student cooperative housing, I strongly urge you to encourage them to attend the recruitment sessions (click here for more info), it could take a HUGE burden off of your pocketbook and their student loan balance.

And for those of you who are smirking and saying, “Oh yeah, what about apartments?” In Lafayette (not West Lafayette where campus is located), the cheapest student apartment I found was $425 per month, for a 12-month contract, no food, no electric, no cable or internet. That’s $5100 a year for a room without board! Even if you manage to get an eight-month contract (pretty much unheard of) you’ll be paying $3,400 a year, not a bargain by any stretch.

I realize that group living isn’t for everyone, but the price of admission to college doesn’t have to be decades of soul-sucking servitude to your student loans, there are ways to attend college without breaking the ban. So go forth and save!

If you have a student attending another university, click here to search for student housing co-ops in other locales.

You know that old saying, “Man plans, God laughs”? I am happy to say God had a lot of laughter from this quarter over the past year.  When we closed down the non-profit I was heading in December of last year (because the project was complete), I had HUGE plans, that I shared with everyone, to “test-drive” retirement for a whole month.  Take time off and do only things I wanted to do, nothing else.

So we kicked the year off with a cruise because that seemed like a great way to start retirement, wouldn’t you agree? We took the “Love Boat” cruise to Mexico and enjoyed all of those fabulous ports of call from one of my favorite childhood TV shows.  My parents were on the cruise with us and I had the thrill of introducing my Mother to snorkeling and we both para-sailed for the very first time. What a Blast!

It’s a good thing I started the year off with a bang, because what followed was a year of chaos that I wouldn’t have been able to create, even if I was a really talented sitcom writer.  Devastating family illnesses that included an unprecedented nine surgeries, disaster responses of biblical proportions and even meeting President Obama on the front lawn of the White House were just some of the high- and low-lights of the year 2011.

Being invited to the White House was amazing!

However, between the tears and the laughter I learned a great deal about myself, my family and my friends.  In this vein of self-discovery, I share these lessons with you:

• I learned that I can trust my husband to pack the clothes I need for a business conference, a feat that still leaves many of my friends (and his) dumbfounded.
• I learned that humor will get you through just about the worst days of your life.
• I’ve learned that “quality time” can be found in unlikely places. Walmart, anyone?
• I’ve learned that while we may have to “parent” our parents for a while, we also have to be willing to let them out on their own again.
• I’ve learned to fight hard for my family, friends and values, even if others don’t understand why or think I am being too aggressive.
• Most importantly I’ve learned that forgiveness is important to my sanity, the distance of time and place can help make many things more bearable and the lessons I remember best are the ones that I learned in the hardest way.

What does 2012 look like? Who knows!  I’m just along for the ride, hanging on for dear life and spitting out the bugs that get stuck in my teeth along the way. All I can say is that we’re off to a rip-roaring start!

What’s in your 2012?

My husband and I were very lucky, we had friends close by to help, we had some basic disaster recovery/mitigation knowledge and, quite frankly, he’s a bit of a McGyver, and was able to rig up pumps and other devices to help limit the damage to our home.  A few months later, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity came my way, a chance to head up the local long-term flood recovery program. For the first time ever, I could combine my passion for disaster with my practical PR side–a marriage made in heaven!

We have accomplished a great deal more than anyone really planned or expected, but I’ll be honest, I certainly didn’t think it would be such a struggle to get this done.  I DID think it would be hard work and that people would become tired and worn out, I just didn’t anticipate the barriers thrown up by other non-profits.

I totally get that everyone doesn’t think exactly alike and that there are going to be disagreements and that solutions are going to be frequently knitted together out of compromises–that’s not what I am talking about.  I am talking about real, systemic problems that force non-profits to be competitive with each other instead of cooperative.  Everyone is so busy fighting over the scraps, that they miss the 5-course meal that could be sitting right in front of them.  Sort of the Stone Soup idea, if we all worked together, we could all eat better (and I am ALL about eating).

It’s probably naive that I didn’t notice this the first time I worked for a non-profit, or maybe even the second time, or maybe it just wasn’t as obvious then as it is now.  Who knows?  The point is, it’s here and I don’t want it to stay.  It is not a productive way to do business (yes, non-profits are businesses) and it certainly doesn’t deliver more, better or faster services to those who need them the most.

I don’t really know what the answer is, but what I do know is that my job here is done.  We’ll be closing the doors of our long-term flood recovery program on Dec. 17th, 2010.  The organization will transition to a group that helps get the community ready for the next disaster AND it will be completely managed and run by volunteers.  I’m actually thrilled about it.  It seems like the model of a non-profit that meets the needs of the community and then shuts down, or in this case, morphs into a lean, mean volunteer machine is a far better model than an organization that goes on and on just because it’s always been there.

Since I knew that my time was limited and our organization was well-funded, I had the luxury of not having to involve my ego or my continued lively hood in every decision that was made.  It was VERY freeing!  And completely stymied many of the non-profit executives I worked with.  They really couldn’t believe that I didn’t have an ulterior motive or a hidden agenda, it was difficult for some of them to accept this and focus on the work that needed to be done.  More importantly, many of them wondered how they could access the bounty of funds that our agency was given, it was almost like sibling rivalry.  “Why can’t I have that toy?  I’m older!”  To say the least, I felt like I spent a lot of time on the defensive explaining why whose funds were given to our agency and what they could (and couldn’t) be used for–never a comfortable feeling.

Regardless, as I said, my job is done, but not my work.  I have decided that it’s time for a new start for both me and the non-profit world.  I know I can’t personally change all the issues I’ve seen, but I CAN change how I approach the causes I care about and the organizations I give my time and energy to.  So, with that in mind, I’m setting out to look for my next adventure and a new beginning!

I’ll keep you posted on what I find and I’d love to hear what you are doing to make your community a more wonderful place to live.

I have a real talent for procrastination.  Like many of you, if there is something I HAVE to do, I can come up with 62 other things to do instead. It’s not usually an admirable trait or one that is sought after by employers, but if you harness the energy of procrastination, you CAN make it work for you.

1)      Forget all that eating a frog stuff (if you don’t know what I’m talking about go to www.amazon.com and look up “Eat that Frog”).  Instead of trying to get your hardest task out of the way first, find a harder task to do that you would like to avoid even more than your original task.  It’s all about perspective.  I usually find that the dreaded task just needs a basis of comparison AND you still have a task you can avoid.

2)      Make a game of it.  Sometimes when I just can’t get moving on something I’ll open up an on-line game with a short play time between levels, for example www.Pogo.com has dozens of solitaire or puzzle games that average a couple of minutes a round.  I’ll play one round, then do one little part of my dreaded task.  Then I’ll play another round and do another part of the task.  I continue this process until I am done.  Again, not the most efficient method, but at least I got the darn project done!

3)      Forget about it!  Sometimes if you put something off long enough, it turns out to be a blessing in disguise.  Either you avoid doing work that didn’t need to be done or priorities have changed and you have saved some time and hassle.  This is obviously a little dicey, but I have had more than my fair share of tasks that I REALLY didn’t want to do fall into this category.  Maybe I’m just intuitive about what the best use of resources is (which is another blog) or I could be a world-class procrastinator.  Either way, it always feels good to mark something off your list without having to do the work!

And, yes, for the record, I AM avoiding something else I don’t want to do by writing this blog!

Until Next Time,

Your PR Chick

I’ve never really liked “reality TV,” but for a long time I didn’t really stop to think about why.  However, I’ve had some time to consider it lately as I’ve been sleeping poorly because of “reality life.”   I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s because people aren’t nice to each other.  In fact, they are encouraged (by the producers, I guess) to be downright rude and mean.  After the week I’ve had (which is only 3 days over), I don’t need more of that kind of behavior, I need a WHOLE lot less!

Like many people I could stand to be a lot nicer myself. I’ve also been a lot more conscious of who I spend my time with because I’ve found it’s easier to BE nice when I’m with nice people (obvious, huh?).  But even with intense focus and concentration, I still have a hard time being nice to everyone, every day of the week.

It really helps to remind myself of how fortunate I am.  I am so very grateful for many things that others may take for granted (air conditioning being a BIG one).  Of course, it’s easier to have that “attitude of gratitude” if you’ve actually been without aforementioned AC. But then I went to see “Sex and the City 2″ with some friends this weekend and I found myself getting snarky about their lack of gratitude for their privileged lives and their “ugly American” travel style.  In other words, I was being hateful about them not being nice….go figure!

As I continue on this journey to the Land of Nice, I’d be delighted to hear how you stay “sweet as pie” when the mud is being flung in your general direction.  And I promise to appreciate each and every comment.

While I feel badly today for those Tenessee families, I feel even worse for them in the upcoming years.  Note that I said YEARS, because the floods will impact their lives for far longer than you might think.  Nearly two years after the flood that covered our community for just one day, we still have families who don’t have permanent housing, who are still waiting for the promised “solution” of a buy-out and who can’t seem to resume their pre-flood lives.  Children cry when it storms and yet many people in our area think that everything has returned to normal.

My heart aches for the days, weeks and months of frustration, anger and hurt that those Tennessee families will be facing.  It ends up being far more devastating than the actual flood.  The applications to FEMA, insurance carriers and the SBA are hard to focus on when you are trying to salvage your belongings.  And, in our area, many middle-class families didn’t think they would qualify for FEMA because they made too much money (any homeowner can apply for FEMA help, regardless of income). They were wrong and they suffered for it.

The inspectors who come out from the various agencies (government and insurance) seem to be operating off of completely different sets of rules.  One inspector might claim that you had minimal damages, while another might consider your home totaled. There just seemed to be no rhythm or reason to the system.

While most families were able to get help and support for their various claims, it still took a lot of time and effort.  Unfortunately some families are just too disheartened or tired to make a fuss and as a result, they often get the short end of the stick from the very agencies that were put in place to help, including the insurance companies that they had religiously paid monthly.  Add to that the insult of a declining economy over the past two years and you have a true recipe for suffering.

Countless families have since filed for bankruptcy, been split by divorce or needed mental health help.  In many cases these family crises could have been avoided if certain types of community support were in place sooner.  But a community that has never HAD a large disaster is at a huge disadvantage, they simply have no experience in recovery.  The long-term recovery groups that started after the June 2008 floods in Indiana have been learning as they go. While they have done many, many things right, most of their directors and volunteers will tell you that there are a few things they would have done differently. For the last several months, those groups have been trying to gather up best practices and capture them for future use.

I hope that some of the lessons we’ve learned in our area will be able to help the folks down south recover faster and stronger than we did.  At the very least, our community is much better prepared to handle the next big thing that comes along to rock our world.  So, to everyone in Tennessee who was flooded, hang in there, we know how you’re feeling and we wish you a quick recovery.

This is a video made one year after the June 2008 Floods & Tornado in Johnson County, Indiana.

Long post WARNING, bear with me.

As a long time Red Cross disaster services volunteer, I have a unique perspective on what is currently happening in Haiti and I want to share that with you.  Within hours of any large-scale disaster I usually receive several phone calls from friends and family asking me if I’m on my way to the latest calamity.  It’s a fair question since I’ve spent more than 17 years responding disasters all over the country and because I’m part of a special team that typically deploys within hours.  In the case of Haiti, my answer has been “not yet.” I’ll get into the reasons why in a minute.

The very next statement is typically something like, “I wish I could do what you are doing or help in some way.”  And my answer is always, “You can do what I’m doing and there are hundreds of other ways you can help as well.”   I’ll share with you some very clear-cut steps you can take to help Haiti from Home.  But first I need to give you a little disaster background.

I think that it was fairly apparent from the video footage that we’ve seen from Haiti, that there was a huge amount of infrastructure destroyed.  But for most Americans, that really doesn’t mean much.  At the worst, we are usually without only one or two pieces of our infrastructure functioning at a time.  Perhaps the phones don’t work, or the power is out, or the water isn’t drinkable, or a road has collapsed or a bridge is out, but it rare for us to have the “perfect storm” where all of those situations strike at the exact same time.  Even our worst natural disasters rarely have that happen in this country.  And when a disaster like Katrina strikes, help (food, water, shelter) is only a few hours away.

Haiti is an island.  This complicates an already unbelievably complicated situation even more.  Without an airport and a seaport functioning at capacity, it’s like trying to move without arms and legs.  Even if the resources are ready to go there, they can’t be moved in country fast enough. Ever single square foot of space on a plane or a ship becomes incredibly valuable.

Earlier this week I read a story in our paper about a local dentist who jumped on a plane and headed to Haiti. I’m sure you’ve heard similar stories in your area.  They make me so very sick and sad.  Now, in his defense, the dentist had been running a clinic in  Haiti for 20 years and probably had some relationships and language skills that made it easier for him to be there. He has apparently been doing some basic medical things like helping set broken legs and deliver babies. So in that sense he was probably a better choice than you or even me.  But I still think it was very selfish.

In a disaster situation like the one in Haiti, it’s not enough to have basic disaster experience or speak the language or even have resources. You MUST have highly specialized skills that are appropriate for the initial stages of a calamitous disaster–water purification engineering, food distribution specialization (which is extremely important to help avoid riots) and medical trauma skills.  Anything less right now is literally taking the food and water out of someone’s mouth.  He filled a space that could have been filled by someone with more skills and his presence there may have actually caused someone’s demise.

It is arrogance to believe that just because we have a particular set of skills and resources that it’s enough to give us the “right” to go help in a country that has such severe needs.  If my many years of disaster work have taught me nothing else it is this:  even I with my mass casualty disaster experience and basic French language skills am not the best person to deploy at this time. Later perhaps, but not now.

Let me tell you about the member of our team who was sent to Haiti.  She’s a trained trauma flight paramedic with thousands of hours of experience, she’s multi-lingual and she has years of experience working self-sufficiently in third-world countries.  I’ve worked with her on mass casualty disasters and she’s level-headed and calm.  And, this is important, she’s the only one from our team there right now.  We have over 50 team members who could go, but a very strong case has to be made that it is worth the risk that we might not do more harm than good.

And let me tell you something else, there is no hurry.  Yes, there is a crisis in Haiti and millions of dollars, thousands of people and dozens of hospitals are all pouring into that country.  But this disaster isn’t gong to be over tomorrow, or next year or most likely, even this decade.  It’s going to take billions of man hours, dollars and people to help Haiti recover.  It won’t be done overnight.

So what can you do?  You can raise money. That’s the big one.  Don’t collect clothes or water or food to ship to Haiti, it won’t help.  After major disasters in this country, Hurricane Andrew or Hurricane Katrina, they have had to destroy truckloads of wasted resources because they  weren’t the right thing, they became mildewed and unusable or they didn’t get to where they were needed.  The only thing worse than having no help is having the wrong help.  Shoes for your feet won’t fill your belly.

I’m not sure why people are so reluctant to believe that money is the best way to help.  Perhaps this disaster will be the turning point in that mindset.  If you must collect clothes, have a garage sale and send the proceeds. Or host a bake sale, it doesn’t matter how you raise the funds, raise them! Remember that money has power far beyond what it can purchase, it can also  re-start a nation’s economy, making sure people are employed and able to help themselves as much as possible.  (And while I’m on the subject, I think this would make a great economic thesis topic for a graduate student–hint, hint.)

I promised to tell you what you could do to help here at home to make an impact on Haiti.  We all have a lot of problems in our own backyards, so remember that as you read this list:

1. Raise money for a trusted charity! (I know you’ve already heard this one, but it bears repeating because it is THAT important!) Remember that there are already dozens of disaster charities in place in Haiti who can use your support, Red Cross, CARE, and many others.
2. Those same groups have needs here at home.  Volunteering with them locally may help free up resources and better trained volunteers for Haiti. Find your local Red Cross here.
3. Train for the next disaster now.  Disasters happen all the time.  A house fire or a flood may not seem like a big deal (and usually doesn’t get near the media attention), but trust me, from my own personal experience I can tell you the most profound disaster you will ever experience will be the one that happens to you. And someone who is trained to help can make all the difference!  Getting training now will also allow you to be ready to help during the next big disaster.
4. There are amazing groups like Crisis Commons who are using their technically skills at Crisis Camps all over the United States (and Columbia now too!) to help solve issues that have been presented to them by various non-profits and others in the know.  So far they’ve worked on more than a dozen projects.  even if you aren’t technically inclined, they need to people to help them out. Check them out here.
5. Use social media to spread the word about the amazing things that are being done to help in Haiti.  Let’s celebrate as much good news as possible! And, of course, you can use social media to help raise awareness and funds–have some fun with it.  Rally your friends to sponsor you in a crazy dare (notice I didn’t say dangerous) or offer to publicly humiliate yourself if they’ll send money to a designated charity.
6. Join a completely non-disaster non-profit agency as a volunteer and dedicate your service to the people of Haiti.  Every time you give of your time and talents, you make this world a better place, whether it’s in Haiti or at home. And isn’t that the real point?

If you absolutely feel like you have to go to Haiti at some point to help:

• Plan your trip for at least a year from now, if not two.
• Have a clearly defined reason for going,beyond just “helping.”
• Get specialized training beyond what you may already have.
• Practice self-sufficiency, try primitive camping for a week or more.
• Learn Creole.
• Establish a support system of people or an organization in Haiti.
• Raise money to fund your trip and take enough with you to make a difference.

I am amazed by what a small group (more than 400 people) can do when they apply their time and talents to solving the worlds problems!

LIVE Feed

http://planetrussell.posterous.com/coveritlive-widget-for-crisis-camp-haiti

Learn More about Crisis Camp

http://bit.ly/73rlDN

*Thanks to @planetrussell & Cover It Live for sharing this resource.

Sponsorships are available for a variety of businesses and at several different price points.  Contact Jane Weisenbach at 317-881-1953 for all the details.