How to . . .

Every once in a while, it behooves a girl to brush up on how to deal with some of life's mildly unpleasant inevitabilities: spilled coffee, insects in your house, and your significant other doing generally mortifying things. Some advice from around the web for you:

How to get stains out of pretty much everything.  We all spill.  Some (i.e., me) more than others, but eventually, you're going to end up with deodorant on your black dress, red wine on your white jeans, or makeup in the bottom of your purse.  Arm yourself.  And if this list sounds daunting or you don't see your specific problem listed, bust out my weapon of choice.

How to decorate your house cheaply and with minimal regrets.  Caution (and, you know, wisdom) dictates that the way to do this is slowly and over time, but naked walls and no place to sit start to grate on even the most prudent of us after a while.  Don't buy things you don't love, but sometimes, you need to love cheap things, right?  

How to get knots out of necklaces.  In lieu of leaving your tangled jewelry in the deepest recesses of your jewelry box, never to be worn again, give this a try.  Your neck will thank you.

How to get rid of fruit flies.  Even the most cautious among us will find herself dealing with bugs at some point in her beautifully, previously, insect-free life.  Before you bust out the DEET and toss your produce, try this contraption. 

How to cope when your spouse embarrasses you.  I can't get over the irony of the couple in this story -- the husband is embarrassed when his wife tells a bunch of friends about how they fooled around in the woods on a hike.  She apologizes and feels bad . . . and proves this by telling the Wall Street Journal?  I wonder how that conversation went.  And speaking of your spouse embarrassing you in the WSJ: this reminds me of the time my husband was in it.  IN A BACKWARDS BASEBALL CAP.  

Saving grace: I wasn't there so I couldn't object.

Have you any tips to share?

(Mean Girls image from here; living room via Lonny; necklace photo from Etsy; jar photo by Annie Dean; Pedal Pub photo via the Wall Street Journal.)

"As is a tale, so is life. . ."

As graduation season is upon us, my usual reading outposts have been flooded with excerpts of commencement addresses, which, quite honestly, I generally ignore (much as I did at my own college graduation, nearly a freaking decade ago, ugh).  However, as a recent Harry Potter reader, J.K. Rowling's 2008 Harvard commencement address caught my eye, and I read it all.  Every word is wonderful, but the end, in particular, stood out:  

. . . I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, people who have been kind enough not to sue me when I took their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:  

As is a tale, so is life: 

not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

In addition to all of my beloved college pals (who are, no doubt, in possession of many an embarrassing photo), these people at commencement that year are awesome and I think we would all get along famously.  

And also these guys.

(Images: John Chase from Harvard Gazette; Jim Harrison from Harvard Magazine.)

Truth.

Apropos for the start of a new year, isn't it?  Funny (/frightening) how really potentially great things can be so scary they make you so nervous that you might throw up.    

Illustration by Wendy McNaughton, via swissmiss, from Explore.

Today's mantra.

I need to tattoo this to my forehead.  Or perhaps the backs of my hands would be a better spot, since it would be more visible.

While I'm doing that, check out other ladies' strategies for Getting [Things] Done over on Mimi + Meg (which apparently involves a lot of white desks, Apple products, and beautifully styled workspaces.  Perhaps my problem is that my office is ugly?); or swissmiss' excellent suggestions for carving more time out of your day.    

(Image by Bekka Palmer.)

The best work advice I've ever gotten

For Day 2 of Work Week, I'd like to share the best piece of work advice I've ever gotten.  I used to work at a big law firm.  When I was a first year associate, one of my assignments was calling a particular government employee to ask a question.  I called and called, but got no response.  So I emailed the team, laid out what I had done, and said that I hadn't gotten the person on the phone.  I apologized and said that I would try again the next day.  A moment after I hit, "send," I got a phone call from a fourth-year associate who was on the same case.

"Don't ever say you're sorry for something that isn't your fault," she said.  "You called the guy a bunch of times, and he didn't answer and he didn't return your calls.  You did your job, and you don't have anything to be sorry for.  If you apologize, it makes it look like you messed up, and you didn't."  She explained -- and she was right -- that especially as a woman, the tendency is to be humble and to be polite, which translates into apologizing when things don't go the way that someone else wants them to go, even if it's because of something you couldn't control.  But at work, while it doesn't hurt to be nice, it's important not to take the fall for things that aren't your fault. 

The takeaway: when you screw up, take responsibility.  People will respect you for it.  But when things don't go according to plan and it's not because you did something wrong, don't apologize.  It puts the blame on you when you don't deserve it.  It's hard at first -- the urge to apologize feels so natural -- but it's worth it in the end.

And in case you're curious, the second best piece of advice I got, but which sounds absolutely terrible: "If a partner calls you and you don't know why they're calling, don't answer.  And don't call back until you know what they want and what you're going to say."  As a first year I was aghast at how bad this sounded, but as the years went on, I learned that more often than not, it's a smart move.

I'm curious: what's the best work advice you've gotten?

Image: Mary Tyler Moore image via Pinterest, original credit unknown.