Spring Has Sprung

Well, I think it is almost safe to say that spring is here. The days are getting longer. Temperatures are going up and the sun is shining. The four feet of snow that was in my yard is now down to a few patches dirty white hold outs, and my canoe is calling to the calm waters of the river in front of my house. The only problem is that the retreating snow pack is revealing my shortcomings of last fall.

It is an exciting time, the spring. Ever since I was a kid I loved the challenge of what I now call 'tactical hydrological engineering'. Trying to find ways to efficiently remove the water from the melting snow cover from my property without washing out my driveway or ending up with an indoor pool in the basement. When it comes down to it I guess it is basically playing in puddles. But let's not split hairs here. Let's just agree that the former sounds more grown up than the latter and leave it at that. Spring is also the time when the kids miraculously 'discover' where that toy went, that they just had to have last January, and was nowhere to be found in the house. There it is, half frozen in ice like some kind of prehistoric mammoth, revealed by global warming. Unfortunately, spring is also the time of year when my lack of enthusiasm for raking leaves comes into full view.

I guess I just hope that somehow with the beginning of winter that the yard pixies or the forest dryads or whatever, will decide that they just have to have all the leaves covering my yard and will use the cover of snow to remove all the detritus of the fall. Then when the snow melts, I will have no raking to do. The grass will green up and I can enjoy the summer. Well, sad to say, no such luck yet. The snow is now almost all gone and there are the leaves, mocking me from almost the same locations that I last saw them in before the snow came. The Horror! THE HORROR!

Depressingly, I have no other choice than to buckle down and begin the hated act of raking. On the bright side, the only thing that could be worse than having to go out and rake the yard, would be heading to the garage to tune up the snow blower in preparation for a snowstorm.

Someone Save Us… From Ourselves

No doubt about it humans as a species are a resilient lot. We are one of the few mammals on the planet whose young cannot take care of themselves for years. Think about that for a second. Most other animals are up and walking within a few minutes of being born, a couple of hours at most. Human children take a year or more to even begin to attempt walking and even then are unsteady for months. Humans cannot look for food, feed themselves or defend themselves for years. We depend on others for everything we need for years. Even now, when most of don't have to worry about defending ourselves from wild animals, we need help protecting ourselves from that even more dangerous opponent – Ourselves.

A quick search of the internet reveals the depths we have sunk to in an attempt to keep people safe. Just search for instructions and directions on everyday products and you will see what I mean. We recently bought a new electric iron and printed on the directions sheet was the following, 'Do not iron clothes while wearing them.' Other silly instructions I have seen or read about are:

Rules on a tram in Prague:
Beware! To touch these wires is instant death. Anyone found doing so will be prosecuted.

On a toaster:
Do not use underwater.

"I just can't understand why my toast comes out soggy and I come out crispy."

I can understand directions like these to a certain extent. At least they are trying to keep us safe. I mean, I know everyone has had the urge to dry their hair with the blow torch, so the warning to not use the blowtorch as a hairdryer is appreciated. But when the instructions include directions on how to use a particular product, it can sometimes get out of hand. Does anyone not know that a box of Lego contains small parts, or that some assembly, might, just possibly, be required when putting a jig saw puzzle together. My favourite in these directives was found on a bar of Dial soap – Unwrap and use like regular soap. "Well, no wonder this soap wasn't working right, honey. We weren't using it like regular soap!"

The list goes on and on and on. When you think about it though, common sense must not be all that common. Companies usually do not do things for altruistic reasons. If a company places a warning on a product, it is because somebody, somewhere, used that blowtorch as a hairdryer. Someone ironed their clothes while wearing them. Somebody touched those wires. So I guess the lesson is if these warnings and instructions apply to you then perhaps you should follow them. Just remember that your new food processor is to be used for processing food, not the other thing.

The Fitness Dilemma

Like most people, I have a few extra pounds on me. From time to time I get motivated and decide that I will bite the bullet and loose some weight. Then after a couple of days I slack off and go back to my previous life of sloth and indolence. What tends to push me into these get fit kicks is realizing that an activity that used to be easy for me is no longer easy. Things like spending a few hours on a mountain bike or canoeing all day, bending over to tie my shoes or eating supper without loosing my breath. I can sometimes fool myself about this by using the old "I'm getting older" excuse, but deep down I know – I'm out of shape.

Recently I read an article about these exercise balls that have been all the rage in the last couple of years. You know the ones, they're made out of stretchy rubber and you inflate them and use them for a series of exercises designed to help 'tone and contour' your abs, bum, legs and arms (and wash the dishes, do the laundry and mow the lawn). They come with instructions and a little hand pump to inflate the ball. By the time the ball is inflated with that stupid pump you are so tired you don't feel like exercising anyway. Maybe that's the real exercise with these things. Don't do the exercises, just inflate and deflate the ball over and over again. But I digress. The article I read was about a recall on these devices because of the potential of over inflation and the danger that they might explode when using them.

I have to admit that the few times I tried the one we have here at home, the first thing that went through my mind was "I hope this thing doesn't pop". In my mind's eye I could see myself flat on the floor with the remnants of the rubber ball spread out in the aftermath of a gigantic explosion. Furniture piled up against the walls, windows blown out into the yard, strips of rubber hanging from light fixtures and plants, maybe the kids up in the branches of the tree outside the window, the huge mushroom cloud above the house. Once I got the hang of it the ball was kind of a neat apparatus. But like most exercise devices, not one that would magically turn me into my 20 year old self.

In all of the times that I used the ball though, not once did I think about it being over inflated. Never even crossed my mind that it might explode because I put too much air in it. My concern was not that the ball itself was over inflated, but that I was.