The meaning of life, from an unexpected source

I had the opportunity to catch a glimpse of Oprah Winfrey's program last Monday. Her guest was an author, Geneen Roth, who has written a book about women’s relationships with food and their relationships with God. The premise of the book is that if you get things right with yourself and with God, then you can probably structure a healthier relationship with food; you will have less of a tendency to fill up the emptiness with food.

Oprah had read the book, clearly believes in the content, and along with Ms. Roth, was enthusiastically offering her commentary and taking questions from the audience.


Several members of the studio audience asked questions about family mealtimes, dieting, busy schedules, etc. One particular question was a bit unstructured. The viewer seemed discouraged that she was never quite able to get ahead professionally. The question may have also had an underlying inquiry about food, but I don’t recall that now.


I was busy putting dishes in the dishwasher and as Oprah started to answer this question, I stopped to listen. Then I walked closer to the television. It was a watershed moment: Oprah was giving this viewer the essential answer to life. Right there. In person. And everyone, including me, got the added benefit of receiving this important piece of information too.


It may sound like I am dismissing Oprah’s communication as a bit of trivia, but I am not. Quite the contrary. The secret that Oprah shared is a fundamentally important lesson and while a lot of people know it, it is still elusive. This knowledge becomes easy to misplace in the multi-tasking, multi-threaded, deadline oriented lives that we lead.


Oprah told her viewer, point blank, that the starting point for her (and all of us) was to humbly give thanks to God for the many many blessings in her life. Live in that place of gratitude. And be thankful for the things that are yet to come, including the experiences that will teach us lessons. You are not to cast about comparing your life with what you perceive as bounty in others’ lives. You do not know the burdens they carry because you do not walk in their shoes. Look at your own life, connect with God in your heart and walk forward in joy.


Now, I’m not trying to put words in Oprah’s mouth. There are no quotation marks; she didn’t say this exactly, but it is what I heard. This singular all-important message. The central meaning of life. The key to human happiness.


I doubt that this viewer, who showed up at the Harpo studio earlier that day, had any inkling of the gift that was she was about to receive. A gift that has the ability to change her perception of everything. I didn’t expect to receive it either, randomly tuning in to see Oprah’s program for about the third time in my life. But it is a miracle that I did and I am ever so grateful.


Thank you Oprah.

Passages

There was once a girl, the second of three children, who found herself growing up in a middle-class American family. Mom and Dad both worked to provide the opportunities they wanted to give their children and the parents did their best to nurture their three kids.

The second daughter was plagued with a variety of challenges that affected her judgment and behavior. By the time she was an adolescent girl, telling lies and acting out in a harsh, belligerent manner toward her parents started becoming more and more common. Her self esteem suffered due to chronic body weight issues that undoubtedly aggravated her behavioral difficulties. Her parents, not knowing how to respond in a caring, supportive way that demonstrated to their daughter the consequences for actions deviating from acceptable social norms, struggled not only with her, but with each other. It was a time of family crisis.

After high school, the daughter tried leaving home to attend school, but that path didn't suit her and she returned. Old behaviors resurrected. She tried finding employment, but a career choice seemed elusive and jobs were random. Lying was preferable to truth telling. Blaming was preferable to taking responsibility. Hostility was preferable to peaceful coexistence. Still, her parents tried to support their daughter in finding a pursuit where she might derive happiness.

After she turned 21 and renewed her attempt to make her way independently, her personal difficulties increased. Her debt escalated and attempts to hide the debt from plain view made the situation far worse. Her actions were criminal in nature. If she found herself unable to pay a bill, she invented an excuse, told another lie, slandered another’s reputation in the process.

Finally at the breaking point, her parents excused themselves from her life. Without wavering, they both asked her to leave their home permanently, attend to the problems looming in her life, and not return until she was capable of making amends. They were worried, almost sick. Months passed of no communication. The daughter felt betrayed and angry that her parents had turned their backs on her.

Then one day she drove over to her parent’s house and found them at home along with both her siblings. Tearfully, she took a step, and admitting she was ashamed of her cycle of bad behavior, asked for forgiveness. She wanted a chance to repair what she had damaged by demonstrating that she was trying to change the person that she was.

But there was more. She was also expecting a baby. And it was complicated. There was no upside to be found in the situation, save for the fact that she felt blessed and joyful at the prospect of being a mother.

She is going to make her own choices, guided by advice from her obstetrician, counselor, friends and family. Everyone has a particular point of view. But in the end, the only view that matters is hers.

I do not know what will happen. I hope for the best. I pray that she may find steadfast strength and the comprehension to acknowledge her life in the present tense and make choices based on where she stands in that life, humbly taking responsibility for herself and her yet unborn baby.

Rhythm

There is a rhythm to our lives. Activities, relationships, interests. These things seem to emerge and we fold them into our lives. And then, sometimes, they fade. The strength of the relationship diminishes, and acknowledging this, we allow the cycle to continue, unfolding that part of our life as needed. Other interests, previously dormant, seem to emerge. Other activities surface that need our attention. We refold again and again.

And so it is with this blog. While I have found it an outlet for an enormous amount of creative energy, the natural rhythm of writing has ceased for now. It may begin again at some time, but I prefer to follow my inspiration in the other directions where my creativity continues to blossom.

Thank you for sharing this little part of my life and for offering so much inspiration through your photos, essays, poems and stories.

3rd vein

It’s been another weekend of activity. Oil changes, pool cleaning, ceiling fan installation, window shade hanging. Mixed in with a little bird watching, sipping coffee in the sun and keeping company with the dogs. My oldest dog’s mobility has been declining of late and it has me worried. For the past 9 months or so, he has been taking some medication that has helped to sustain him, but last weekend that medicine was no longer sufficient.

Thankfully the veterinarian remembers him and understood that I was reluctant to subject him to the stress of a visit to that office, particularly in his current situation. Through a telephone consultation, she prescribed a new medicine. It is the medication of last resort for him and she had given me this warning 9 months ago when we embarked upon his prior course of treatment.

It is a steroid targeted to reduce inflammation around his spinal cord and restore his locomotion, dispensed in a declining dosage over a period of two weeks. Moving into the second week, it appears that this current dosage level does not seem to be as effective as the previous level because he is beginning to lose track of his back feet again. But he is still able to walk and remains alert with a good appetite.

The steroid has some side effects. I read about the medicine online. It is so difficult to tell whether the side effects I observe in my dog are merely annoying for him or whether they are making him truly uncomfortable. I’ve started giving him an extra dose of his “doggy tylenol” just in case.

In our society we want to act in a humane and caring manner toward the animals who are our companions in life. We want to prolong their lives as long as they are happy, alert and comfortable but we also want to inject human logic into balance. At what point has the animal’s discomfort dipped below the equilibrium of sustaining care?

I’m not presently equipped to be a participant in that determination. And in all honesty, I’d prefer not to be part of that process. I would prefer that my beloved dog travel the journey of his life to its complete end without my involvement, if at all possible.

This process makes me focus on my program more than ever. I have to let go. I have to let each day unfold through God’s grace. I realize my tears come from the sadness of a loss that has not yet occurred. And each tear keeps me away from the joy of my precious Jackie’s life. Living in the now.

Learning (still) to let go

I’m not sure why this popped into my head, but it did. And unfortunately now the thought has become a free radical, taking up too much space in my consciousness while I should be concentrating on another far more important task. In my experience, the best way to banish a pesky thought is to write it down on paper; get it out of my head and put it elsewhere. OK, so electronic writing is not exactly the same, but it might work.

Cristy and I are going to a wedding on Sunday and the groom is a particular friend of mine. He has a large circle of friends, some of whom I know on a first name basis as acquaintances. I would recognize them if I saw them and would feel comfortable smiling and exchanging a sincerely pleasant greeting.

Once, a number of years ago, the groom-to-be and I went to hear a musical performance at a local venue. We took a seat at our table and chatted, waiting for the band. Two other individuals from his circle of friends entered the place and took a seat at the bar. My friend gave a slight wave and nod to both. Shortly afterwards, one of them walked over to our table and exchanged a quick greeting with my companion. I knew him by name, but had never had a personal conversation with him. I smiled as they spoke, looking at him, prepared to extend a warm hello. But to my surprise and utter humiliation, he abruptly turned and walked away without even acknowledging my presence. Not a nod, not a glance. It was the sort of snub that might be discussed for pages in a Jane Austen novel.

I think the blood was rushing through my ears and I could not quite hear if my companion attempted to make up a possible excuse for his friend’s rudeness. But, of course I did my best to brush the incident aside and focus on enjoying my evening.

I will likely never forget that stinging breach of manners and I suspect that this friend of the groom’s will be at his wedding. But of course, why wouldn’t he invite his friends? And the fact that he might be there makes me mildly uncomfortable. As though the same experience might repeat itself again. As though I will attempt to maintain a safe distance from this individual in order to avoid the opportunity to repeat the ugliness and shame.

In some step-oriented programs that focus on being-here-now, I might be accused of obsessing about a possible future event that may or may not happen. And that accusation would be true. By placing my consciousness in the future and permitting my imagination to cast a worst-case-scenario, I set myself up to choose a single outcome, from the millions of possible things that might happen. Furthermore, I choose to shift my focus away from the primary purpose of attending the wedding, sharing my friend’s joy, truly the only reason I want to go at all. But worst, I shift my focus away from the here and now. The tasks I should be attending to, the peace and happiness I could be percolating in my heart right at this moment.

Hmm. That’s better.

Best made plans

Dogs have a way of outsmarting us humans. We make plans and execute our plans carefully. Then a dog comes along, casually sniffs out the one single deficiency, and in a nanosecond, topples the fruits of your labor, all the while wagging her tail happily.

This is the way it has been with the doggy door.

Developing a plan for restricted canine access to the dog run area of the yard throughout the work day was an essential element of our initial move-in plan. We carefully planned a location for the door, selected a contractor for the installation, planned the design for the perimeter fence around the dog run, planned for the exterior pathway leading to the door and purchased all the requisite materials.

It seemed like a reasonable plan. Dogs would have the freedom to stay indoors or outdoors during the day, would not be subjected to the risk of falling into the pool, and on lawn mowing days, we would simply pop the cover over the doggy door and they would stay safely indoors.

So we executed against the plan. Mucho time consuming. No small expense.

Flaw #1 – commercially-made doggy door covers are designed to trick humans into thinking that they are actual barriers. This assumption is false. The simple pop-on doggy door cover we have can be removed by a crafty canine in a matter of moments. It is no match for a dog with an agenda.

Flaw #2 – temporary fencing is temporary, at best. During the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, we installed some deer fencing at my old house to keep the dogs inside the yard after the back fence blew down. It was very effective as a short-term solution. We decided to take this success and expand it to a larger scale, for a longer duration, by using deer fencing to cordon off the perimeter of the dog run. However, because of the variable terrain and other factors, there were weaknesses in the fence that the dogs quickly identified. Quick, as in instantaneously. Scaled the fence, no problem. Over the subsequent months, we (and when I say we, I actually mean Cristy) have conducted countless repairs to this temporary fence to remedy each breach of integrity.

These two initial, but fatal flaws in our logic resulted in a ripple effect of downstream problems, exacerbated by our attempts to outwit our clever companion dogs with creative solutions to these problems. Each activity, consequently falling into the aforementioned mucho-time-consuming and no-small-expense categories.

The remedies seem to be the most obvious. 1. stack up some heavy things in front of the doggy door blocking access to the door. 2. get a professional to build a real fence.

OK (head hanging in embarrassment), OK.

Fencing contractor completed the work yesterday. After we return the leftover lumber to Home Depot, I can start working on getting the leftover splinters out of my hands and maybe, just maybe, put the doggy-door episodes to rest.

Too optimistic? We shall see.

Another weekend project

I asked if I could use her cordless drill and she said yes. I had high hopes of completing a little project on my own. I wanted to convert an unadorned vestibule in our home into a photo gallery. I had found some ledges on sale at Target and had plans to use these ledges as the basis of the photo gallery look I was seeking.

The plan seemed easy enough. Theoretically. Still, I was a little apprehensive. After all, I was about to drill some holes in our walls.

I got my supplies together: eyeglasses, snowman pencil, measuring tape, level, manual screwdriver and drill. When Cristy saw the snowman pencil she knew I was serious. She decided to evacuate to a place of relative safety where she would not have to observe my palpable nervousness.

I marked, measured, drilled and successfully hung the first ledge. I replicated the process exactly and hung the second. My confidence soared. Feeling that drill move the anchor into the dry wall was incredible. It felt secure. Why had I been so nervous? I would have this project knocked out in 10 minutes, tops.

Then there was a tiny bump in the road. The fittings for the third shelf didn’t match up with the anchors I had installed. Hmmm. I had done everything exactly like the previous two. I kept hoping for a miracle, trying to get the ledge to fit, badly marring the paint in the process. I was sweating.

I stepped out onto the back porch to admit my power tool deficiencies and solicit advice for proceeding. The first thing she said was: Isn’t hanging shelves fun?

No. It isn’t. I hate the bastards who invented shelves.

Plan B – install two new anchors a half inch over from the previous two. I measured the openings on the rear of the ledge again and verified that the measurement was not identical to the first two ledges. I needed to modify the distance between the anchors.

I don’t know whether it was my escalating panic or just a case of bad luck, but Plan B failed too. On to Plan C – half inch over in the other direction. Triple measure, mark, triple measure. Success.

Five more went up quickly after the setback. The gallery is far from complete, but the visual anchor is in place and the second round of photos will probably go up next weekend.

I need some recovery time.

ENJF

I have to admit that I don’t know what these initials mean exactly, but I do know it has something to do with a personality profile, in the Myers-Briggs vernacular. It’s a label, and humans love to label things, people and places. I attended a presentation today and the speaker touched on the topic of introverts and extraverts. Many people in the room gave an audible acknowledgement that they were intricately aware of this distinction and strongly identified with one of the two personality types.

I was sitting at the front of the room closest to the speaker and had been paying close attention throughout the presentation. She was making eye contact with many people in the room but had not made eye contact with me until this precise moment. She looked at me directly and said: you are the introvert, right?

Uh, well apparently so.

The extroverts in the room voiced their agreement with this hypothesis.

The speaker resumed her presentation, acknowledging that extroverts are often guilty of interrupting others when they are speaking, but don’t much seem to mind when they themselves are interrupted.

I try not to interrupt others. I try to listen and respond as appropriate. Sometimes I find myself waiting, waiting, waiting for a break in the conversation so that I may broach a new subject, ask a question or introduce an idea. I would consider it rude to interrupt a conversation in progress to serve my own needs. But sometimes conversations have their own momentum and the lulls I seek just don’t present themselves. The extrovert speakers keep talking and other extroverts keep interrupting in a swirling cycle.

I was talking with my brother yesterday. He is an extrovert and I hold him in high esteem. But when we talk on the phone it is a difficult experience for me. Yesterday I had wanted to ask him something in particular. But as I was listening to my brother talk, the story he was telling, as is typical, kept getting longer by the minute. Eventually, he had to interrupt himself in order to cut our conversation short and answer a call from a client.

I never got a chance to interrupt him and ask my question.

I know that I am an introvert. I work well in a quiet atmosphere and don’t need to interact with others to keep my creative energy engaged. I prefer to minimize my time in meetings unless they are well structured. I have fun in social situations, but I am never the life of the party. I prefer to take a supporting role.

But this word, introvert, this label, seems to convey other information. As though we introverts seek to limit our interaction with others or hide from the world. Today’s presenter did not use these precise words, but she did paint a picture of introverts in similar broad-brush terms.

And I begin to think that being an introvert, governed by this part of my DNA, inhibits me from living a richer, happier life.

On the other hand, I would not wish to be one of those people who chronically interrupt others when they are speaking or verbally arm-wrestles others for the microphone.

So excuse me while I send my brother an email to ask him my question. It is not the quickest way to get a reply, but at least I can use this strategy to communicate a complete sentence.

Dunce hat

Today is my day to wear the dunce hat. I hate these days, but they drop into my life once in a while.

I had a dentist appointment this morning, but had forgotten the time; I thought it was in the afternoon. Thankfully I scheduled it for 8:30 and still had plenty of time to make it to the appointment after I got to work and checked the calendar. And thankfully, there were no startling discoveries as a result of this appointment that would require another more invasive dental appointment.

I left the dentist's office and returned to my car. As I backed out of the parking space I heard a loud crunching sound. It was the sound of one of those big parking garage pillars bashing in the side of my car. I don’t much care for these pesky pillars in parking garages, for precisely this reason. I have had more than one altercation with them in recent years.

My car is actually fine, as long as I don’t need to use the side-view mirror or open the driver’s side door too awfully far.

Just another reason I don’t need to be driving a big expensive car. Most of my driving mishaps tend to occur when I am backing out of a parking space. Pass me the pointed hat please.

Spa treatment

My little guy Tristan is a stinker. And I’m not talking about him being a cute little rascal either. Although he is. I’m talking about this really bad habit he has of finding stinky stuff outdoors to rub against and getting the stinky smell all in his fur. He stinks. He’s a stinker.

He did it about a week ago. When I get home from work during the week, there is usually a lot of animal activity. The dogs start running around the house and yard. Barking ensues. Toys. Sometimes the little dogs decide to give the kitty a requisite chase around the kitchen. But then it subsides and I feed them and then take a seat at the kitchen table while i get busy with some little project.

So last week I'm sitting there and noticed an unpleasant smell. I was hoping it wasn’t me, but I couldn’t quite pinpoint the source. Later, Cristy noticed it too and we both decided it was Tristan. It was not a good smell. That evening, he got the spa treatment. Shower, shampoo, blow dry. He is a furry dog, so this is a rather time consuming activity. But afterwards, he was soft and clean and sweet smelling for approximately two days.

Then he found another stinky spot outdoors and felt compelled to transfer the fragrance to his own fur. I tried a shortcut this time – a household wipe. We didn’t have any baby wipes and hey, he’s part of the household, so why not? I wiped it over the fur around his head and neck, where he likes to rub in stinky spots. It helped. Not a permanent solution, but better than nothing.

This morning as I was leaving the house, I noticed a very pronounced smell outdoors. A skunk. Undoubtedly a skunk that probably had an unfortunate encounter with an automobile at some point during the night.

So, even though my little sweetheart Tristan is indeed a stinker, there are still some creatures in the world that carry around even a bigger stink than him. By the way Tristan, your next spa appointment? Coming up soon.

Learning, living

Another way of looking at my 49th birthday is the realization that yesterday I started living my 50th year. I accidentally overslept, went to work, finished a task, sent some thank you notes, did some laundry, completed an income tax return and prepared some food to get me through the week. I left a few tasks incomplete, but there are no dire consequences as a result. I will get to them.

Fifty is a rather significant milestone. It has a lot of depth, symmetry and context. Mathematically, you can express fifty in many different numerical combinations.

Maybe I’m getting more like that too.

I paused to consider what I can do with the days in my life that come next. There is nothing I can do to change the days that have come before. Perhaps that realization is a perfect place to begin.

Old memories bubble to the surface from time to time. Some memories are not exactly pleasant and I wish things might have been different. I wish I might have been wiser, made better choices, felt more confident, had a stronger connection with my faith, my voice, my desires.

Going forward, I’d like to grab these memories as they surface and dissect them, extracting every lesson, every grain of truth and each strand that connects me to God. I have been given the opportunity to live another day, this day. A chance to expand my own depth of humanity and embody symmetry in my life with a healthy balance between reason and creativity. A chance to express my individuality in many combinations of interests and pursuits. A chance to reflect the golden love of God, that precious gift in my heart, as I interact with people all around me.

But only if I am willing to learn from the experiences of my past, those lessons from the divine. Honor the mistakes, understand the difference between me then and me now. Illuminate the path ahead with a brighter candle, lit with faith, love, forgiveness and courage.

Life's busy season

Sometimes life has a busy season. Odd though, it’s been busy for as long as I can remember. That’s the baseline, but for the past 12 months the pace has accelerated. Almost nonstop. Leaping from one large-scale activity to the next, one holiday or social gathering to the next. A treacherously long list of items crossed off, one at a time. Cross off one, add two. Cross off two, add four.

Thankfully, we’ve lately crossed off more than we’ve added, but there is a very large-scale activity looming in the near future that will have a ripple effect on our list. These individual tasks haven’t really reached a critical junction in terms of an impending deadline quite yet. We’re planning a wedding. This June. 3 months away. That critical junction will soon be here.

On the one hand, it’s not a big affair, no significant fanfare. But on the other hand, it’s our wedding, for goodness sakes! We want it to be special and memorable and lovely. We’re doing almost everything ourselves: hand-drawn flourishes on each hand-written invitation, home-made decorations for the house, in-house catering (courtesy of the sought-after Cristy&Diane catering co), arranging our own hand-tied bouquets, even holding the happy event in our home.

From here, about 100 days away, it seems as though it won’t be a problem.

OK, perhaps not. But let’s look at it from another perspective. Factor in a handful of additional activities that will hit the calendar over the next 100 days, but are not on our current list: 6 birthdays, 2 graduations, 1 school choir performance, Easter, Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, Father’s Day.

Uh, well. I’m still optimistic.

I think it’s just the tempo of life. My hypothesis is that when I was younger I had less of an appreciation for the level of effort involved in keeping a balanced life moving forward smoothly. I’ve had to re-calibrate my baseline, or maybe just adjust it to compensate for this realization along with the possibility(?) that my ability to multitask has diminished through the years. Hmmm. For some reason, I seem to be OK with that.

Thank goodness I still drink coffee.

Red carpet moment

I’m going to be 49 soon. In one week. If I were to consult an actuarial table, I would be certain to learn that more than half my life has already passed.

Since I started writing this online diary and reading others’ blogs regularly, I’ve tried to keep an honest perspective about a variety of circumstances that weave through my daily existence. And then a bit earlier today, I read an essay by Katrina at Ordinary Day Journal. It made me recall a watershed moment in my life that opened my vision to see an alternate path. One that I eventually took years later.

As a youngster, and even as a young adult, I had the feeling that I somehow stood apart from the rest of the population. And not in a bad way, like I had body odor, but in a secretly special way. As though I had some unique talent, skill or intelligence that one day, the world would acknowledge. In the meantime, I worked really hard to accelerate my career. Honest to goodness hard work. But, I don’t know, in the back of my mind the thought was always there – what I was doing now was merely a resume entry for the grandeur that would surely come next.

However, one day it occurred to me that my life was exactly as it appeared to be. I was not being considered for a Nobel Prize, was not an esteemed author, a notable composer, nor an accomplished entrepreneur. The word that bounced around inside my head was mediocre.

Mediocre.

It sounds considerably harsher now than it felt at the time. But it was as though an old fashioned alarm clock had started ringing. Noisy and persistent. Pay attention—this is your life! I had a middle-class American life. Nothing to either brag about or feel ashamed of. But since I was subconsciously waiting for the proverbial red-carpet moment for my life to begin, I let my days slip past without much notice. Until that alarm clock bell.

I don’t have all of life’s answers, because I am still learning, still finding the questions along each day’s journey. Like Katrina, and so many other bloggers that keep my perspective in check, the best I can do is acknowledge the present moment steeped in as much gratitude and joy as I can locate in my heart. And thankfully, I find that it is overflowing with both. Gratitude produces joy, which produces more gratitude.

As I read in a birthday card once, the gift of this day is the day itself. So, bring on 49. I am almost humbled to tears that I have had so many days to live and breathe, walk and talk, smile and love. And my gratitude escalates with each additional day.

Lost + found (squared)

In December, I lost (misplaced) my driver’s license. That misfortune cost me several hours down at the DMV office waiting in a crowded, stuffy room to apply for a replacement. In January, I found it. In my car of all places. It apparently had spilled out of my purse at some point and fallen between the front passenger seat and door. Once I actually opened the passenger side door, it was easily visible. I just hadn’t bothered to look there previously.

At the time I found it, I was on the way to walk down the street and collect the mail, so I just placed it in the pocket of my jacket. As of yesterday, it was still there. I don’t wear that jacket very often, but with the cool weather, it has definitely gotten some wear of late. And every time I place my hand in the pocket, I notice it with surprise.

But since I don’t really need it, I haven’t done anything with my old driver’s license. Haven’t filed it. Haven’t destroyed it. It’s just there, in the pocket of that jacket.

Last night I went to fill up my car with gas and pulled on that jacket for a layer of warmth. Then somewhere between removing the gas cap and paying for the fuel the driver’s license fell to the ground unnoticed.

And someone else picked it up. And apparently googled me and found my blog. She left a message on my blog in the wee hours of the morning that she had my license and offered to mail it back to me. She’s a blogger too. I visited her blog today and found it very inspiring.

How awesome is that? (Well, not the part about me being completely irresponsible with a piece of personal identification.) The other part, about the cool person who tracked me down and offered to return my wayward driver’s license. Bloggers rock!

The elusive handyman

I was in a colleague’s office a few months back; there were several female homeowners present and the anxious topic of discussion focused on finding a capable, reliable, affordable handyman. None of the homeowners had husbands, but that is somewhat inconsequential since I don't happen to believe that husband and handyman are synonymous. (And don’t go thinking that I’m a misandrist, guys, it’s just that some jobs require a person with a proper set of tools and experience.)

I have been working with contractors on residential projects, large and small, for over a year now, and I am nearly certain that the handyman is on the endangered species list. There are no shortage of painters, landscaping crews, carpenters, tiling installers, electricians and fence builders. And we’re not afraid to get our hands dirty either: we both have done a remarkable amount of work that could have been outsourced to a handyman or other contractor. Last spring I used a chisel and hammer to remove hundreds of pounds of ceramic tile from the floor of my old house. Cristy built a fence for a protected dog-run in our backyard. We have changed locks, doorknobs, air filters and garage door codes. Hung book shelves, shoe shelves, curtain rods and plastic bag dispensers.

But so much of the routine maintenance of home ownership is beyond our skill and experience. As a result, we joined the pursuit to find a handyman. This is not as easy as we first believed it would be. The first hurdle is to get someone to return my call when I happen to locate an individual that appears to be in the true handyman business (rather than a sheetrock/painting contractor). And when they do return the call, it is hard to get them agree to show up.

We’ve gone through three so far. All have performed some services, but it is a long list and after crossing off a few tasks, and going home with a handful of cash in their pocket, they just seem to lose interest.

I found the website for a possible fourth contender and clicked on the “Contact Us” button to send our list of tasks to see if they might be interested. Just wanted to be very upfront – it is a random list of carpentry-type chores, not a glamorous kitchen remodeling project. But someone called me the next day to say they wanted the job. Wow, I thought that was great. He wanted to come by and look at the particulars so we could agree on a price. Even better.

I proposed Saturday.

He hesitated. Said there wasn’t anything booked, but he just wasn’t quite sure. He’d get back with me.

Right.

Relationship road trip

Had lunch with a friend on Friday. She’s the mother of twins, has 3 siblings and as nutty a family as you can imagine. Fair to say she has an excellent perspective on life, her own priorities and a healthy set of values that she desires to pass on to her children.

We talked about navigating relationships through tolerance and honesty. I admitted that even though that is my intent, I have been known to get stuck in my head. When that happens, what I’m thinking on the inside doesn’t match what I’m doing or saying on the outside. That, of course leads to all sorts of self-imposed conflicts.

Years ago, I came up with an analogy for relationships that I think is still a fair representation. My hypothesis was that relationships are like road trips. You have a vehicle, maybe 2, maybe a caravan if you’re bringing along a lot of stuff. You have some tools, perhaps a map, a compass, a flashlight; hopefully they’re in working order. Then you go.

Hopefully you both go the same direction if you’re in different vehicles. You might take different roads because one of you wants to take the freeway fast lane and the other wants to meander through the small towns along the way. Sometimes there’s a thunderstorm and the driving conditions are perilous. Sometimes there’s a traffic jam and you’re simply stuck for a long time inching along but making no progress. It’s frustrating. Sometimes you’re hopelessly lost or out nearly of gas, praying for a service station as you round the next corner. You’re frightened. Sometimes you’re not even sure why you’re driving in the direction you’re headed.

And then sometimes it’s just glorious. The day is sunny and you’re driving along together in the same car without the caravan of stuff and the breeze smells so sweet and you’re holding hands. And if you’re like me, you have your Barbie sunglasses on. And you both feel peaceful about where you’re headed.

Maybe the exact route isn’t entirely mapped out. But the direction feels right and you have trust, gratitude, faith and love.

The rest will work itself out. You might have to fix a broken radiator or flat tire along the way, but you know what? Everyone has to make those accommodations.

I’m happy now. And I once heard someone giving a presentation say “this too shall pass” when referring to her own happiness. But that’s OK. I think I know how to find this road again if I happen to veer off as a result of my own internal craziness. I have trust, gratitude, faith and love.

Finding a metaphor in the mundane

The correct tool for the job turned out to be steel wool. Worked like a charm. Scrubbing that burned-on residue from the bottom of the soup kettle was relatively quick work once I got the steel wool engaged.

Yesterday I made corn chowder and started by boiling pearled barley with some onion and celery. Barley gives the soup texture and makes it taste chowdery. But in my poorly managed multi-tasking frame of mind, I neglected to keep watch on the barley and consequently the water boiled out too quickly leaving the starchy grain to burn. And stick to the bottom of the kettle.

After discarding the contents, I tried an old remedy that has always proved successful for me in the past – boiling soapy water in the kettle. I think I read it years ago in a newspaper column. Probably Hints from Heloise.

But it didn’t work. Usually that technique makes the job of cleaning so much easier. No scrubbing even required. Not this time.

So this morning, as I was physically scrubbing the pan with my steel wool, I found my brain casting about searching for someone, something to accept the blame for the situation I was in. I landed on Heloise. Damn that tips column. Load of baloney!

Then the scrubbing was over and I almost had to laugh. So ridiculous that I would be trying to escape responsibility for something so insignificant, a minor inconvenience. But I was. Yeah, I’m human. Give my idiot card a punch.

Coincidentally, this is precisely the topic that one of my favorite bloggers recently presented in a very humorous way. Karal, at the orange chair. Check it out.

On forgiveness

I read an essay by Kristen over at Motherese about forgiveness and it has been occupying a space in my consciousness ever since. Her blog has a way of doing that.

"…to forgive is divine."

I am trying to come to terms with the way I process through forgiveness and take inventory of the associated judgmental feelings stored in my bank of memories. For me, forgiveness is a pivotal closure event in acknowledging a complete set of circumstances around a sorrowful event or moment in time. Forgiveness allows me to assemble that sorrow, place it in a box, close the lid and offer it to my Higher Power. In exchange, I ask for peace. The peace I receive washes away my hurt and helps me regain my sense of wholeness. The sorrowful event may have been substantial and the whole person that I am on the other side may be different than the person I was before.

That is to be expected, is it not?

But how much judgment am I carrying with me as a consequence of the experience?

About three years ago I met a woman who was a recovering alcoholic. I have known more than one alcoholic in my life and I am familiar with the whirling vortex of drama that often goes hand-in-hand with these personalities. However, I was drawn to her personality and we became friends. We socialized and assembled a small circle of friends. Her recovery was difficult and she drank from time to time. The effects of her alcoholic binges were never productive. She was ashamed and told lies to cover up the truth.

And then I had a little Christmas holiday party at my home. I invited a few friends and it was a relatively quiet gathering. Food, drink and conversation. She arrived, already inebriated and proceeded to indulge more. She became emotional, hijacked the thread of the party’s general conversation, and her behavior made me very uncomfortable.

She apologized the next day by sending a text message, or maybe an email. In my heart I forgave her and I know that I communicated this to her through email.

But my judgment about her changed. I mentally formulated a boundary regarding the kind of relationship that I was willing to participate in with her going forward, as a pure consequence of my collective range of experience with her. Our friendship cooled. Over the next year, we continued to talk from time to time and exchange email, but only saw each other once, for lunch. While she made numerous vague suggestions that we make plans to socialize further, I did not feel compelled to encourage the suggestions into anything more concrete.

It is possible that over the past twelve months she has taken some strides forward in her recovery and is a much more responsible person. My opinion, informed by my judgment, has not had an opportunity to evolve due to the far more casual way in which we currently interact. Consequently, there is a chance that my opinion is no longer valid.

But I do not know. I have not received enough information to make a revision.

C’est la vie.

I forgave her for the behavior that I considered to be inappropriate, within the construct of our friendship and I harbor no ill will toward her now. I placed the lid securely on that box. I am at peace.

But on the other side of that forgiveness, I changed.

Real life reality - the customer experience episode

There is a cost associated with providing customer service. To stay in business, companies load those costs into the price of the items they sell. To remain profitable, they have to keep operational costs as low as possible. For some companies that have slender profit margins, revving up the volume on customer service is not in the cards. Processes are streamlined and automated. So when problems occur, their customers find that they share a portion of the burden of sorting things out.

Here’s an example, from a recent episode in our own real-life reality series. (who needs television when you've got real life to keep things exciting?)

We purchased a product from an online consumer electronics outfit in early January. We had been watching the price points carefully and selected an optimally priced item, actually an exceptional value. A week or so later we received an email giving us the contact information for the retailer’s delivery services vendor so we could call and coordinate delivery with that firm directly.

Cristy called and selected a delivery date. We have both received a number of shipments to our personal residences through the years, and in our collective experience, freight companies contact the recipient with an estimated delivery window, say a 2-to-4 hour window, so the recipient will actually be at the premises when the shipment arrives. Given this experience, Cristy anticipated that the shipper would call in advance to give her an approximate time, but they did not. They just arrived at the house. Someone was (thankfully) at our house that day and received the product in our stead. It was in a large, bulky box and the delivery person did not have a dolly; they both carried it into the house. But we were dismayed when we arrived home to discover it was the wrong product. And not just a little bit wrong, but really wrong. It was way, way more expensive than the item we purchased.

Cristy called the next day to sort it out. The online retailer had no idea how this mistake might have occurred; they were shocked. Their plan to remedy the situation was to dispatch the delivery company back to our house to retrieve the product and when it had been returned, they would ship the item we ordered.

The next week, we were back on the delivery vendor’s schedule for the pickup. It was one guy, again without a dolly. He did not know what he was supposed to get or who he was supposed to invoice. He man-handled the box out to the truck by himself and drove off without securing the box inside the back of the truck. Cristy watched in complete disbelief, certain that the product would fall over and break as soon as he turned the first corner. Then as if to heighten the drama, she noticed that the strapping around the box had badly cut into our wood floors. The driver had pushed the box directly across the floor without covering it first. Nice.

She called the online retailer again, to notify them of both the damage to our property by their vendor and the incredibly high possibility that the product would be returned to them damaged because of the freight company’s failure to properly secure the cargo within their vehicle. The online retailer suggested that we initiate a discussion with the freight service company to pursue a remedy for the floor scratching.

Over the next couple of weeks, Cristy spoke to no fewer than 5 people at that freight company about the incident. None of them had any idea what to do. It was as if this was the first time in the company’s history that an incident of this sort had occurred. Completely frustrating (for us). Someone finally gave her the telephone number of an insurance company to file a claim. OK.

In the meantime, we received an invoice from the freight company since they had to make a second trip to our house to retrieve the equipment mistakenly delivered. I attempted to resolve that with an email to the online retailer’s customer service group, but it appears that “online customer service” is not actually staffed by humans. All replies appeared to be computer generated and were not oriented toward solving problems. Cristy called someone at the customer service center and received agreement that they would handle the mistaken invoice.

About the same time, our originally ordered product was approaching; we received word that we could again call the freight company to arrange delivery. Cristy called and selected a day, but the day came and went without a call to her. She called again and they said they would get to it the next day. On my way home the following day, Cristy told me that the delivery truck was en route to our house. Thankfully she had called to check, because again, they failed to contact her. They arrived shortly after I got home.

The very nice delivery man informed me that he had instructions not to enter our house, so he would leave the product either in the garage or outside on the front porch. I opted for the front porch. The product was strapped to a small pallet and he moved it from the truck to our porch by see-sawing it back and forth on the corners of the pallet. He opened the packaging to confirm that the product was intact. I signed the receipt form and he left. When Cristy arrived, we carried the item indoors and disposed of the packaging ourselves (except for the pallet – waiting for heavy trash day).

At the end of the episode, we received what we ordered and the online retailer offered us a small cash rebate. We have a badly scratched floor for which we need to buy a rug, the cost of which will not be covered by the cash rebate. And we still need to begin a conversation with the freight company’s insurance carrier to pursue a possible reimbursement for the floor repairs.

As retailers shift their business models to strictly online customer interaction, the cost of doing business also shifts to the consumers. The two companies in question? CircuitCity.com and YRC, Inc. Buyer beware.

Every silver lining has a grey cloud

I attended a personal relationship workshop once and one of the topics addressed resolving conflicts productively. It is such a happy set of circumstances that I sometimes recall these bits of minutiae from years ago because it gives me pause to consider how to process circumstances that trouble me now. As I have gotten older, I’m more at peace with taking my time around suboptimal circumstances. There’s always more to the picture than my view permits, but often, even within my view, there are probably things I don’t see because I fail to look closely enough. Taking extra time helps me focus more clearly.

Often, when faced with a conflict, I am tempted to focus largely on the perceived failings of the other individual in the conflict: the things that they are neglecting to do or say, the things that are inaccurate, unrelated, perhaps even fictitious. I am likely to take personal offense, and unfortunately, adopt a slightly (dare I say it?) rigid attitude as a result. My skills of perception start to shut down as the flashing-red-light-buzzer begins sounding in my head, a warning that conflict is approaching.

Back to the workshop. The relevant lesson is: how many of the perceived failings, of which I am quick to assign to the other party, are also true about me? Probably more than I care to admit.

I’m having a bit of a conflict with my boss at the moment. Actually not so much of a conflict as a falling-out. We are communicating less and less. She is busy-busy-busy. I perceive that her lack of attention to my work indicates that its importance has diminished in her opinion, and even worse, in the opinion of the rest of the organization. She praises the quality of my work but doesn’t read it, doesn’t provide the substantive feedback and direction that I need to make progress in this highly conceptual task.

I am having a difficult time seeing the larger picture since my inclination is to focus on my perceptions of her negligent management skills, where my personal job is concerned. Because, naturally, it's all about me, right?

Is her busy-busy-busy schedule affecting the other staff members that report to her? Well, yes.

Is there anything about my behavior that might be contributing to the circumstances? Well, maybe.

Is there anything that I could be doing that could possibly lead to improvements? Well, probably.

But I don’t know exactly what. Yet. I need to go back and reflect on that question from the workshop.