GRIZ BEAR COMMENTS

What's it like editing a newspaper?

Sometimes folks ask me what it is like editing a newspaper and trying to keep up with information from all the communities in our coverage area. What some don’t know is that to complicate things a little further, I also care for a small church and Mrs. Griz and I, after having raised our children, “adopted” a 17-year-old daughter.

I will tell you that newspaper editing is not an easy job for a guy because guys tend to like to do one thing at a time until that’s done before moving on to another task - well, at least that’s the way I work. Editing andbuilding newspapers, on the other hand, requires quite a bit of multi-tasking, something I have to work hard at and sometimes just don’t quite manage to do very well. Unfortunately, I sometimes forget things and end production days in a state of confusion.

Rather than admit I could be losing my mind and the ability to remember, I tell people I have congestive brain failure. I do have all the ingredients for CBF. Mrs. Griz, a nurse with lots of experience in caring for the elderly, tells me I don’t have Alzheimer’s yet because I can still remember that Iforgot something after it’s too late to remember and I’d just as soon forget.

At the last newspaper I edited in Kansas, we used to have this joke in the office about finding ourselves wandering about in the hereafter. And it is so often true. I find myself wandering about here after something. I just can’t remember why I came here and what it was I was after.

I’ve also told people that if I have attention deficit disorder, editing newspapers has certainly brought it out in me. It seems I start one thing, have to move on to another and another and later find I haven’t really finished anything and can’t even remember what it is I set out to do in the first place - at least, not until it is too late!

Perhaps a recent breakfast illustrates it best. Since my grandson had already eatenearlier with his “Grammy,” our daughter was still asleep, and we were out of the rice milk I usually use when I eat cereal, I looked in the fridge for an alternative. There was leftover sliced ham from the previous night’s supper and there were some English muffins I could pop into the toaster.

Well, grabbing a couple English muffins for the toaster, I decided I could quickly fry a couple of eggs to go with the ham and put it all together with some cheese on the muffins. I started the steel skillet on the stove, went to crack the first egg on its edge when my phone rang. Either the shell was too soft or I hit the egg too hard, but part of the egg went in the fry pan and the other half oozed over the edge and down the side of my skillet and onto the stove.

Not wanting the egg onthe stove to burn, I tried to quickly wipe up the worst of it with a paper towel and avoid catching the whole mess on fire. Anyway, I missed the phone call because my hands were covered in raw egg. I did, however, manage to get the second egg in the pan.

I tried to return the call. It was another daughter. Even though I called back in less than a minute, my call went straight to voice mail because she was either leaving me a message or had moved on and was calling someone else. I finally reached her when it was time to turn my eggs.

As I said, I’m not really good at multi-tasking and my eggs were beginning to look a bit scrambled by the time I finally got them turned and found out my daughter didn’t want to talk to me anyway. She was trying to call her son- our grandson - and he didn’t answer his phone. I hung up and told him to turn down the TV show he was watching and call his mom.

The English muffins had long before popped up in the toaster but I still managed to spread a little butter on them, scooped out the fried eggs and even remembered to add a slice of cheese to both sandwiches before I sat down to eat.

About half way through my second egg muffin, I remembered the ham still in the fridge - the reason I had toasted the muffins and fried eggs in the first place.

It was too late by then. Maybe another morning will go better.

Randy Moll is the managing editor of the Westside Eagle Observer. He may be reached by e-mail at rmoll@nwaonline .com.

Opinion, Pages 6 on 07/20/2011