Off the Grid

OK...well maybe "off the grid" doesn't exactly describe my situation, but I feel awfully isolated without a phone line. I've been borrowing a phone for local calls but it's not the same as owning a phone. There's no cell service at the lake which is kind of a good thing, but also inconvenient when trying to communicate with the rest of the free world.

I'm going to buy a cheap phone, have the line tested and...if all goes well...I should have a phone by the end of this week. What's more, phone line means Internet, means blogging, means returning to my online community.

In the meantime, I fall asleep to the calling of the loons as opposed to the calling of the telemarketers.

Be back soon.

Want Some Advice?

There's a kind of person that I'm not too keen about conversing with -- the know-it-all, advice-giving control freak. You know the type...the person that has an answer for everything. The person that's done everything and, incidentally, done it better than anyone else. The person has "forgotten more than you'll ever know" and has little reason to listen since it only delays his/her giving of advice.

I am usually patient and understanding and tolerant and non-judgemental, but I've had a recent run in with a know-it-all and the situation has been stuck in my craw ever since. Recalling the discussion even causes my stomach to tighten and my jaws to tense. I won't bore you with the details, but I will take a moment to dole out my own advice to the know-it-alls out there.

Listen.

People who have problems don't always want to hear your advice. Sometimes, people with problems just want someone to listen. Now, I don't mean that you have to sit and smile while Joe tells you his 60th problem of the morning, but I do mean that you need to be more discerning in your advice-giving ways. Exercise some restraint. Ask questions instead. Help people arrive at their own answers. Here are some phrases to avoid:

• "You need to..." If you slipped and said it before successfully breaking your nasty habit, follow it up with "slow down so I can hear what you are saying to me."
• "Here's what I would do..." Unless this phrase is likely to be followed by...."turn myself in to the authorities," I suggest you refrain from using it too. I mean maybe you would, maybe you wouldn't do whatever. Fact is, nobody knows for certain how they would respond in any given situation until they're in the thick of it.
• "I don't want to harp/beat a dead horse/beleaguer the point/etc..." If you have begun a sentence with any of these phrases or something similar, the fact is you are harping/beating a dead horse/frustrating us with your continued efforts to control our lives. If you didn't want to, you wouldn't, so do us all a favour and don't.

Here are some GREAT fillers for those awkward silences when someone has unloaded their personal tragedy upon you and you need to same SOMETHING.

• "I'm sorry that you feel this way./I'm sorry that this happened to you." It's a polite little acknowledgment to show how genuinely concerned you are with the predicament and how you wish it could be different for the person. Note the absence of any direction/advice in this sentence.
• "Whatever you decide, I'm behind you; I'm sure it will all work out." Unless this is the part where you should be telling someone to turn him/herself into the authorities, this phrase helps the person know that they have the power and the possibility to change their situation. The supportive tone of the comment means that the two of you can still meet for coffee now and then without the tension that follows a relationship having a history of spurned advice.
• "I can't imagine how you must feel. How can I help?" This is soooo much more appealing than trading tragedies to make one another feel better. What's more, it puts the brakes on that kind of intimate sharing if you're not so inclined. Besides, people don't always want to pick scabs with one another. If you weren't paying attention earlier, I'll say it again...People want to be listened to.

Remember, if you're decide to continue doling out advice you had better be prepared to be held accountable for any unexpected or unwanted results that may come from following your direction. Who wants that kind of responsibility? Give advice sparingly and reluctantly. Trust me, your life will be better and so will the lives of all the other poor souls who hand you the reins to their lives while they play spectator. If you absolutely cannot help yourself, then perhaps you should consider taking a course in Victim's Assistance.

That's it! That's my rant. It's not a big thing, it's just some kind of thing.

Thanks for listening. Feel free to leave comments. No advice thank you.

Schedule? What Schedule?

I have had a really difficult time setting and observing a schedule lately. Seems these days I have more tasks than time. What's more, since the warmer weather arrived I want nothing more than to spend my time outside with the birds, which makes it all the more difficult to focus on completing my work.

I can't believe that it's April already. Easter is coming up and I haven't got one chocolate egg in my possession. Luckily, hubby's enthusiastic shopping trip to the local Canadian Tire means that Easter gift-buying is done. One new bicycle for each kid. Is it any wonder they think their dad is a hero? He's not allowed to buy Easter eggs for hiding though. Few years ago, I asked him to stop in and buy some last-minute items. He arrived home a little while later with liquor-filled chocolates by accident. I took a trip to the 24-hour pharmacy at around 10 pm that night but the morning's hunt was an odd one. Gumballs, boxes of chocolates, M&M's in a plastic egg. I hid everything but a rabbit. Not your run-of-the-mill Easter Egg Hunt by any means.

We're heading up to Pembroke this weekend. I hope we get nice weather. Looks like it's going to rain all week, so hopefully Mother Nature will get it all out of her system and grace us with sensational weekend weather.

Here are some time-savers I have uncovered in the last two weeks:

• Salsa makes a perfectly acceptable spaghetti sauce.
• Saliva is a reasonably effective spot remover.
• If you want it to burn faster, add gas. Long story.
• If you read quickly, you can enjoy a foreign film in fast-forward.
• You can park just about anywhere if you leave your four-ways on.
• Writing goes faster if you abandon all rules of grammar and sentence structure.

I'd write more but frankly I'd rather check in on my blogger buddies to find out what's going on in their neck of the woods.

I'll stop and write when I have more time.

Annual Golf Ball Hunt

Every year, when the snow starts to melt away from the fairways, we don our mucky-boots and head out to find little dimpled treasures left behind from last year’s golfers. This past Saturday, we once again observed this annual tradition.

We started by searching the rough grass between holes one and nine. I found nothing. We headed on towards hole two and I scanned the long grass between the second fairway and the ninth tee. I found nothing. My daughter followed behind, scanning the grass left and right of where I had just been. She found four balls. My shoulders slumped. I wished I had grabbed my glasses out of the car. My little niece grabbed my hand and pulled me forward.

We passed the second green then the third tee. I kicked my way through the long grass to the right of the fairway. “Yeah!” I shouted. One white Dunlop nestled beneath a clump of long grass. I looked to my right. “Ooooh!” A yellow Titleist peeked out from under a small shrub. The fairway filled up with noise as we all stumbled upon tens of balls on the hill between the fairway and the fence. Pink, Dunlop, yellow, Nike, white, Callaway…we dropped them into Mom’s plastic carrying bag one by one.

“I’m going to find a ball,” said my five-year old niece. She headed down the hill nearly stumbling and, within less than a dozen steps she did find a ball; then another; then another. We followed the fence line along the fourth, fifth and seventh fairways as our hunt continued.

The creek was running. I stood and listened to the sound of the water splashing its way down the creek bed. I inhaled deeply the smell of wet grass, mildew and fresh, fresh air…the smells of spring. The others scanned the creek bed for balls and leaned forward to pull them out of the icy water. I followed the creek bed to where it disappeared into the bush. I love the water. I’m drawn to its movement and sound.

An hour and a half later, after collecting over 70 balls, we made our way back to the house. My five-year-old niece insisted on going the back way. We made our way behind the 8th tee and up the hill behind the house. Once we reached the top of the hill, the kids began to sprint down towards the house laughing and squealing.

There will be more hunts before the golfers return to the fairway. After each rainfall it seems that we uncover more and more balls. After that, our efforts will be made only to harvest those that we lose during our own game. Those, it seems, are far harder to locate.

90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper

As I mentioned in a previous post, I began reading 90 Minutes in Heaven last week and finished it earlier this morning. The book chronicles the accident, death and recovery of Baptist Minister Don Piper, and recounts his visit to Heaven on the day he died.

The book begins, "I died on January 18, 1989." Don Piper was in a terrible car accident on his way home from a conference. A prison inmate driving a tractor-trailer, lost control of his semi while crossing a narrow bridge and hit Don's car head-on, slamming it into the bridge railing. In effect, the semi drove OVER Don's car, crushing it. The time of the accident was 11:45am. The force of the collision was measured at 100mph. Don died instantly. Paramedics on scene failed to get a pulse and draped his mangled car with a tarp.

At 12:45, Baptist Minister Dick Onerecker and his wife approached the scene on foot, abandoning their car now in the long line of traffic unable to navigate through or around the scene. Despite receiving information that Don was deceased, Dick insisted on praying for him, saying that he heard the voice of God urging him to do so. At 1:15, paramedics were still unable to find a pulse and pronounced Don dead at the scene. Dick positioned himself inside the wreckage, placed a hand on Don's shoulder and began to pray.

The time between 11:45 and 1:15 is, I think, what Don refers to as his 90 Minutes in Heaven. He describes the gates of Heaven, the lights of Heaven and (most remarkable in his opinion) the sounds of Heaven. He says in the book that he gets frustrated trying to describe Heaven with words because there are none that adequately convey what he experienced.

He was pulled from the wreckage later that afternoon and taken to several different medical facilities. As he was wheeled into hospital emergency units, the trauma teams would just shake their heads, say that they weren't equipped to deal with the severity of his wounds, do what they could to stabilize him, then sent him to another hospital. Don frequently lost consciousness from the pain and would continue to do that through the weeks ahead, even as he began to heal.

I won't go into more detail. If you want to learn more, you can read the book. It is an interesting story. The whole point, however, is Don's experience with death and Heaven and his reluctance to discuss it or share it until several months after his accident. The fact that he was a Baptist Minister, I suppose, is intended to boost his credibility.

I'm not sure myself. I have always held to the notion that you get what you expect. If you think you deserve Hell, then you get fire and brimstone...or whatever your own idea of Hell may be. If you think you deserve heaven and angels, then you get the streets of gold, the company of others...or whatever you had envisioned you would experience on your day of delivery. If you believe in nothing...well...then it's over. You get nothing. The big sleep. No reunion with the departed, no shackles by a boiling lake of lava, no heavenly orchestras giving praise to the Lord in glorious fields of flowers. Just a casket or a crematorium and nothing more.

It's personal, I think. Believe or don't believe. Seems to me though that the happiest, most successful people I know believe in something. I don't think I know very many people that don't believe in anything at all. Everybody's idea is a little different but, whatever that idea may be, it seems that the very light of that idea, shines in even the most darkest moments of our life.

Truth is, it's just easier to make our way through this life believing in something.