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Being More Like Slim, Helping Slim To Be More.

Every Wednesday I bump in to an old Maine friend named Slim.

For years I have followed him, what he had to say so simply, succintly, with just few timely words. Slim is a wiry, skinny shadow of a fellow, like me desperately in need of an extra ten pounds. But who not like me, says what he has to say simply. Not long winded, but keenly focused, to the point when he does speak up.

Slim is a town crier of sorts.

A Paul Revere in a good way with news to remind local folks that he cares about greatly around him that this weekend is the annual Meduxnekeag River ME Canoe race. Showing a glimpse of himself paddling through the white water for all he is worth to support a local cause, celebrate spring at the same time.

A friendly reminder for others to consider digging out the red, green canoe or blue, yellow or whatever color kayak you have not in use. Stored in the garage, neglected. That maybe you should get wet, out on the river water. Find a paddling partner.

Slim is active, has high metabolism.

You see him running in local fund raising marathon road races for a good cause. Suggesting you ought to take in a McGill’s outdoor community band concert, to support the local movie theatre, Cary Library.

You could call Slim a clothes horse of sorts.

Has an extensive collection of promotionally provided, advertising disclaimed items. With many sets of black, white, shades of gray ear muffs, winter knit hat and scarf sets. Cool head and wrist bands, high top Chuck Taylor sneakers, and sporting gear ranging from hockey skates, down hill skis, motorboats, baseball bats, basketballs, soap box derby cars.

Slim is slim, trim because he is rarely idle, his mind is in high rpm. He is passionate about his home town, having the right kind of fire in his belly about youth activities. And promoting all kinds of local worthwhile outdoor recreational events being in Maine full time. Not just for what only one vacation week a year can provide. Slim considers himself very lucky to live in a small Maine town. Does not keep it a secret.

Slim gives advice about when storms happen in your life, to adjust your sails to take full advantage of those high blustery winds. He grew up on a Maine farm, felt lean, mean poor potato years that hit below the belly, are like sucker punches. But became stronger because of it.

An eternal optimist, a dreamer with a practical side.

He learned early on not to expect life to get easier. But that the pathway to get more deeper meaning from setbacks that are really lessons, stepping stones means opening up your eyes, ears, hearts and souls. Surrendering. Considering others first, keeping his eyes looking up for guidance, needed direction.

Slim is not afraid to get his hands dirty, to dig in Mother Earth. Is a gardener of sorts. Knows the immense importance to tend and spend daily time in his private, spiritual garden. And what can happen if he does not and weeds, thistles, thorns, sharp stones quickly take over an untended garden.

Win or lose, Slim encourages local sports teams, any one in educational, music program competitions to give it your best shot.

Hold your head up high and know you gave your personal best. That the entire local community is proud of your accomplishments and you should be too!

Sometimes Slim is seen in public glimpses dribbling the orange round ball. Hunkered down with his hockey stick on the sheet of polished ice. Winding up for a lazer slap shot in the five hole to hit the twine under, between the metal bars. Slim is not the best athelete but works hard to improve, to encourage others that are talented in the local area.

With Slim it’s not about being perfect.

But to get living not dying. But more important to strive to be kinder, gentler, loving, humble, meek and mild. There is a playful side when you see him barrel racing on a horse to remind anyone around him about an upcoming horse show.

Eating cotton candy, munching on a fresh dough boy or an extra Italian sausage loaded, smothered with onions and peppers of all colors after watching a dusty, smokey Demolition Derby performance. Slim is not stuck in his home and gets involved in local events. Covers them a tad like a cub reporter.

Slim wishes anyone that can read him, he is pretty black and white, a Merry Christmas wearing his Santa hat or reindeer antlers. A happy, bow your head and be grateful Thanksgiving in front of a bountiful table of food of all sorts. Or wearing a pointed party hat with the always too tight kid sized elastic that stings your neck, blowing a noise maker to wish everyone a Happy Safe New Year.

Slim choses his words carefully, tries to only open his pie hole after considerable thought with week long pauses between what he does think needs saying. Opening his heart and mind up to ponder, consider and study, to listen first. I could learn much from his example being from two very verbal parents in a boisterous household of four boys growing up. Better at talking than listening.

I am an excitable boy that could benefit from working way way harder at relaxation, pauses and have taken a slew of steps that are working wonders to create a greater inner peace. Check out some of the earlier blog posts and sense, whoa. Something is up. Like the kids say, “it’s all good”.

Slim with his cheerleader megaphone is a rah rah rah, hoot, holler and root for his local area to brag up the many home grown special events.

Like the largest soap derby race city in the country for five years running. That is a testiment to the importance kids have, the area committment parents, neighbors show in their volunteer efforts.

There is nothing stronger than the heart of a local volunteer, especially when kids are the recipients of the effort.

Slim is a big kid with a soft spot in his heart for children. Slim in a not pushey way encourages people that he meets to get off the couch, go climb Mt Katahdin, to hike and bike trails, to snow sled, ATV and get out in to nature. To support local ME Rotary Auctions. Or Moosestompers Winter Celebration or investing in new chairs for the local Houlton ME performing arts center.

Skiing down one side of a local me mountain or hiking up the other side. Slim beams with pride about the largest soap box derby race so many worked on for the award five years running in his small Maine home town.

Wonder what Slim will talk about the next time I see him? Slim appears weekly as a cartoon in the local Houlton Pioneer Times, the only newspaper in the world interested in the Shiretown, County seat of Aroostook County. Get to Maine, small towns where people are connected, need each other and appreciate the outdoor four season beauty all year long. Not just one week a year on vacation.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com

May 1, 2012
Missed Cues From Being Too Tightly Focused Or Not At All.

Whatever Floats Your Boat, ‘er Kayak, Make Time To Get Out On The Water!

Easing up, pulling back and relaxing to enjoy life is easier with an empty nest when you are a full time single parent.

When your life was overbooked with kids, jobs, new relationships, it is very simple to miss cues. It is not as easy as it looks on television, in romance novels. Life is a non-fiction exercise right up to “The End” and the fade to black.

Getting too busy or comfortable can be dangerous too.

If all seems well and good at the moment. Brace yourself. Life’s rollercoaster challenges will test you with its twisting, turning, climbing, plunging ride. It all happens right on schedule in your life. Consider your role in the events too.

Don’t rely just on fleeting feelings or at the moment expectations seemingly being met in relationships either. It takes time, road miles and the stresses of real life struggles to see a person’s true colors. Including your own colors.

The right person will make you always happy thinking is unfair to that other person.

Life is not story book, living happily ever after without major effort from within, on your knees. They just signed on to a full time job on top of other irons needing tending in their fire. And will wear out, get exhausted and then retreat as you point out they are slacking, not meeting your needs.

This scolding will cause insecurity, resentment, lower self esteem and then communication to cease and bitterness to bloom adding to the confusion. There is another way.

Some of our needs are meant to be met by ourselves.

Many can only be met by God, not another human being no matter how well intentioned. At each stage of the rollercoaster life ride, you go through tunnels of joys like having children to raise and nurture. Other milestones like weddings, graduations, your first home, job promotions, service in church and your community to give something back.

But along with successes, death, sickness, setbacks happen to prove what you are made of, how strong your faith is. Diversions to hard places that test you to see if you were raised for unknown territories could mean no prior expectations thought out, no blueprint planning sessions or counseling leaves you in the dark worried, scared and quicker to lash out and turn to look for who to blame. Look within yourself.

Losing your parents is something all of us do.

Some don’t know who their real parents are. Or lost them when very young or have them but with weak or cut off connections which is a sad situation. But if your parents spent time with the kids visiting grave sites and sharing found memories of the departed you are related to while they added flowers, tidying up the stones, everything about death becomes accepted.

Death. It’s part of life, the final season for the short time on earth. Death helps us appreciate life when it is a loved one you saw faithful to the end. My parents were and the way they passed on helps me, my kids to realize be faithful, on your knees but never scared of death. And to get busy living not busy dying talks they have with you kick in.

At the Maine farm house with many a baked bean supper by the Jotul wood cook stove, my parents, kids were together. Learning, sharing, spending time together. Talking, discussing everything including death and how important it is to live in the day. To make today count by not lamenting something that happened yesterday.

You miss today stuck in yesterday.

And if you blame others for a poor past, make sure you don’t make the same mistakes again that contributed to it. You don’t look up and trust God that better days are in your future if you stay stuck in yesterday.

Move on, get grateful, full of hope and trust that through out your life you have been way way more fortunate than you deserve. And things can get even better if you dig in, get on your knees, die to self and think of being a better shaped servant for others.

Family is everything and older members have so much wisdom for the younger ones.

And out of the mouths of babes, you learn so greatly from your kids. And their full of goodness, unique keep it simple perspective. All adding up making you become a better person showing kids the right from wrong and it rubbing off as a reminder for yourself in the process.

Strong connections, life lessons and family talks, sharing that help your day to day. It is not just an event that now only happens on The Waltons or Little House On The Prairie reruns.

Those out on the porch with a coffee, kool-aid, iced tea and a fresh cookie talks are the meat of life’s lessons to glean, save steps and learn from. The rocking chair talks in the kitchen at coffee or tea time were better than any 55 minute total stranger paid professional therapy time. Enjoy, embrace, utilize your family and be glad you have them. See the joy the connection can create from within for all of you.

I miss my parents but know they are in a better place, not suffering. We all enjoyed them up in to their eighties with very active lives, a sixty year marriage. My kids benefited greatly from our day to day involvement whether it was Pizza Hut on Thursday night, picnics and camp fire cooking at a myriad of spots Maine is dotted with.

And unlike my three brothers who had families that did not live 1.5 miles away and see them daily, I think my kids got so much extra education far beyond what I, the local schools, church provided due to active, involved loving grandparents.

Older family members can prepare you for upcoming set backs and the education does not stop at eighteen or when they graduate from college four years later. The parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins too can help you see the cues you need to be aware of in any life situation. One of the best lessons I learned growing up on the farm with lots of weather, market set backs is be resourceful.

Be hopeful and see something good in the chain of events.

And to attack the problem, not the person if individuals were involved. Or take ownership if it was me, don’t keep making the same mistake. In a relationship, you need cues from the other person and if they stop caring, stop communicating, it is like a heart monitor that the sound and scope are turned off. Hard to know what is needed for treatment.

So can your church family if you are willing to open up, share and just listen. Nothing you go through is unique to you. We all need each other and grow up together to give our life more rich, fulfilling meaning.

Try to focus on your entire life, give attention to more than just a few areas of it.

Keep the balance, look and listen for the cues that present themselves if you are not too hurry scurry, preoccupied to see and hear them. Provide needed recreational pauses in your life to get rich enjoyment out of it. It is not just work, work, work, nursing home, funeral home. Can be so much more if you turn your hearts, eyes and ears skyward to ask God to show you your purpose. Where you may have missed a slew of cues needed to connect your life “dots”.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com

April 30, 2012
Spending Time On Your Knees Sunday In The Maine Garden.

Maine Home Gardens, More Than Food Is What You Get Fed. Get On Your Knees.

If you, me were hungry, without food we would appreciate it more.

We are all hungry, starving in many ways and may not realize it. Not know what is missing. The cure is an inside job.

Growing up on a Maine farm, my family like earlier generations knew the art of producing food for others.

Everything in farming dependent on factors outside our work ethic like weather, the market. Our skills to plant, cultivate, harvest a new crop each year meant possessing perseverance, discipline, plenty of hope.

For everything there is a season. And like the Red Sox, a new schedule to plant again meant newness, an opportunity to begin again fresh. But your own personal garden requires a different approach than large fields mass producing food. It’s special, personal, spiritual. Not growing just one crop like potatoes and a give it a rest rotation crop of grain. Lots of things have to be planted in that personal home garden. Tended, cared for and guided like a marriage. Or raising a family with kind, loving care. To provide needed home grown nourishment for your family table.

Food to feast on that you bow your head and appreciate, are grateful for and say blessings over not just at a handful of special holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter.

Unlike third world impoverished countries, we don’t all really appreciate the bounty of food that shows up three times or more a day in this country. Most of us have never gone without, been truly empty, hungry.

For starters, similar to your life, our personal gardens begin with preparing the soil to provide the foundation to build on. Like your home, healthy safe clean warm loving surroundings for the seed everything starts with just like you and me to germinate and eventually take root. Shoot skyward. We all need to keep looking upward.

To teach your kids to put the time in to tending their own personal gardens someday. To make them have daily pauses built in to their busy schedules. For priorities to get their hearts, minds, souls open for the same kind of needed nourishment for peace, contentment, love. To see what a labor of pure love for others looks like, demonstrated. The best part of a personal garden is giving the abundance of produce away to others to enjoy too.

There needs to be love shown inside not just outside the home. So your children have plenty of good clean water to drink, wash and bath with for cleansing. Lots of essential fertilizer applied in encouragement, guidance, affirmation and tough love to make sure they do more than just survive but prosper. Are grateful, cheerful, not boastful, not selfish and realize their purpose to serve others while here on Earth. Through out their lives to share their talents, skills, abilities to make the community, their homes, the world around them a better place. We need each other, learn and love together.

The sunshine in your home, like your personal garden is critical for the seeds, everything to start germinating. To sprout, to kick start the beginning of their life cycle. Removing rocks that Jack Frost creates a new crop of yearly means your life personal gardening does not get easier with practice. But you get stronger from experiences, good and bad. To weather the storms and develop a deeper meaning, appreciation in your life. If you are not busy living, you are dying.

Grass, thorns, golden rod, thistle weeds can choke, retard a garden so not having too big, a too demanding, expansive one that you can not manage is crucial.

To provide a sod free, smooth fine dirt bed to plant the seeds. And like kids that are as different as snowflakes, some seeds need more special attention. Greater spacing in the garden when planting to have the critical room to become productive, to prosper and do well. To have value, worth.

Like in life that you need to have physicals and annual job reviews to see how you are doing, your personal garden needs the same deep examination. To plan where the seeds you are going to plant go. To establish an order, a blueprint priority of what is important. To develop a balance so the entire garden like your life is being fed what it needs to produce a healthy supply of produce. Like a rich, fulfilling life of service to others. Love and kindness demonstrated with a gentle spirit.

And in that personal garden that you spend time daily on your knees tending, that you make a priority for your mental, physical, spiritual health, other things need to be introduced to protect it. Marigolds, scarecrows, hanging plastic swinging owls and fencing is needed to guard it from predators, invasions, destruction. Keeping things that are not going to help that garden out means constant monitoring. Vigilance to make sure it stays healthy.

Basking in the sunshine and you with the watering can, adding the right mix of encouraging fertilizer side dressed to increase the size, yield of the potential all of us like fruit and vegetables have. And maybe don’t learn about our skills until late in the gardening game. It is never too late to catch up. It is sad that some never get in the garden.

Is your personal garden like the rest of your emphasis in life put out front and showy, impressive to call attention to it with grandness?

Large and opulent with hired gardeners, fountains spurting and picture perfect manicured? Or tucked away out of sight, small, humble and placed in a quiet, hidden protective spot so you can be alone tending it without public attention?

As you listen to the small still voice inside your heart, mind, soul. That mixes in with the sounds of song birds, buzzing bees. As delicate butterflies float and land on the plant next to you. While you move forward to prune, transplant crowded vegetables needing your attention to other locations to have their better place in the sun. To provide them a better home that fosters growth, fruit, a purpose for nourishment to be enjoyed by someone else.

Garden seed spacing, elbow room, not crowded or too jammed in. So the garden will have the proper seedling spacing. For the greater good of the entire garden to maximize its return in food return. That you ultimately share with others. That is one demonstrated random act of kindness, love. Feeding someone who is hungry, needy. Watch their eyes light up when big shiny green peppers, large red juicy, earthy beef stake tomatoes, a baker’s dozen ears of farm fresh corn gets delivered by you to their home. Left with a kind note and smiley face.

You get it. You lift your head and see what others without gardens, not on their knees daily miss.

Shoppers too hurried that zip in and out of automatic doors. Frantically filling expensive carts with genetically altered, sprayed and gassed with who knows what food from who knows where. That is food purchased at the tail end of the movie from outside. Those folks miss the entire excercise of being on your knees, the struggle with pests, weather, bristering son and hard driving winds, rains. The same kind your life gets tested with to see what you are made up. That improve you.

You are raising home grown food that develops slowly, watching it grow on the vine. Trained, tended, watered and hoed by you for you, your family. And shared with other local folks who appreciate, need the rich in essential vitamins and nutrients produce to survive and live another day.

Like people soils are different too.

Some of us are more dedicated in our daily gardening routine. Work harder daily to prepare out inner personal garden “soil”. To produce better growing conditions for inner peace, contentment, joy, humility, humbleness, meekness. Thinking of others makes these types of gardeners better servants. To clearly see their purpose, talents, skills and abilities in this short life on planet Earth.

The best part of your personal garden you raise from start to finish is giving away the excess produce. The vegetables, fruit, flowers that you gladly deliver to others around you to enjoy is the best part. Kindness, sharing, reaching out to others and revealing more of yourselves is what happens if you start, keep working and developing your own personal bountiful garden.

Some seedlings like people are higher maintenance, a little finicky, stubborn and more delicate.

I am one of those but realize it now and working to improve. Requiring more individual time, love, kindness, understanding from others around me. Other plants like folks you know develop late in the season of life. And do needless damage that can not be taken back but that does not have to continue when we finally get it.

I have learned much today I could have benefited from earlier in my life. To avoid some of the pitfalls, mistakes that I was blind to see. The people I hurt blindly. Usually from busyness or not spending daily time, on my knees that I can only get in my simple, spiritual personal garden experience. Get a seed catalog. Till that plot of dirt you own.

Share the food and what you learn while growing it in that garden out back.

Then get off your knees, stand up and be willing to be an open book to others. Stop hiding, wearing a mask, running. Quit trying to run your own life alone and turn it over to God. Freely testifying for others to learn the lessons you encounter in your personal gardening experience. So others struggling can see why. So others can avoid some of the same mistakes you were not warned about. Or just were not listening to the cues. You can only change you.

You find you are never truely alone in your personal garden either. And your spiritual pantry, root cellar of the real treasure in life will fill to overflowing with pure love and joy if you are willing to get your hands dirty. So you eventually consider whatever happens to you is all joy. Taking nothing for granted. And learning to let go, trust something outside yourself to guide your life. Your kids are watching. They need to know what to do, how to live their lives from your shining example. Or on their own without it if missing.

They say some people are harder to love.

The expression is that hurt people hurt people and that many folks retreat, build walls to keep others away defensively. And to maintain loving relationships comes harder because they need more time alone. To be in that personal garden alone to see, hear, learn. To eventually understand more about the lighted path to a special, sacred place of unity, oneness in relationships. Take it to that next level that is just before the “best is yet to come stage” that only a long relationship of triumphs and setbacks can produce.

Don’t you want that kind of deeper comittment and to grow closer with someone? You have to be willing to trust, open up, be vulnerable and surrender. In the garden is where you learn to do that. To be less self assured, self contained and so tightly wrapped, unavailable. Not wearing the public mask that does not reflect what is carried around in your heart.

The mailman who calls me “Slim” brought me my garden seed catalogs this week.

I plant it alone this year with empty nest syndrome sinking in. But I am excited, know the size I can handle to enjoy it, get produce from it. And have the horse model Troy Bilt rototiller I inherited from my parents all serviced, ready to fire up. It will definitely be smaller than the family garden the last few years. I have learned my limitations. Easy does it.

The rototiller put through its paces to prepare the soil with the garden I already have thought out, planted in my head. Each plant seed or seedling needs its own individual spacing and depth. You will learn what to do next spring if you get it wrong and notice the mistakes this fall during harvest too. Each spring is a new season to start again, but armed with what you learned from previous gardens you sow and reap from in your life.

Roll up your sleeves, be willing to be vulnerable, open and honest about your fears, weaknesses as you head to your personal garden.

The work out will show you much about yourself, how you are built and why. And where long over due changes are blaringly visible like over grown neglected weed sections that need your attention. Because your kids are watching and need to learn they must plant gardens of their own. And how they need to be tended, watched over and sheperded so they don’t get out of control. Or are not fruitful to be enjoyed by others you love and care about around you. No man is an island.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com.

April 29, 2012
Ante Up Your Maine Home Property Repair 1.5 Percent Yearly.

Smooth, Cool, Solid And Natural. Maine Granite Counter Tops.

Maine home building, remodeling projects can take a back seat, be put on hold when hungry, expensive college accounts need feeding.

Had six college funds to divert funds to, direct monies to on top of other household expenses. For other “luxuries” like food, vehicle gas, insurances, braces, sporting camps …the normal load all of us carry. But down to the last pup with final year of college and it is all funded, stored away so time to loosen the money belt.

Time to take some of my own advice as a veteran Maine real estate broker who reminds all my buyers, sellers that 1.5 % of the value of a home needs to be plowed back in to the property each year. To maintain the Maine home’s value. And because if many Maine home repairs are let go, the damage from neglect is more costly in the long run.

Where to put the funds, which repairs first or later is like a room full of emergency room sick and dying patients.

Which ones to triage, the sorting out and allocation of treatment priorities to do the most good.

The “eenie-meenie-miney-mo” overall thinking that guides the selection of who’s next, who’s up? Items that are like spending money to save money with a more efficient heating system, beefing up the insulation are no brainers.

But the expensive hole in the ground behind the home for the pool that the kids will enjoy on hot summer days gets consideration too. But from a resale, in Aroostook County land of many lakes, that expenditure of dead Presidents does not come back at the Maine real estate closing. But those happy cousins, time together as a family and cookouts are something you can not put a price tag on. Because as Kodak ads remind “time goes by”. Make memories.

Cat Nap In Maine. The Snippets, Moments Are A String Of Magic.

If you are thinking resale, make sure to spread the TLC from the job jar items around the home to keep the place in balance. If you spend the whole nine yards on just the kitchen, the Maine real estate buyer will ooh and ahhh as they come in from outside.

But as they enter the harvest gold dining room with long matted shag carpet, the excitement stops.

The lub dub of their heart slows. Ice Ice cold baby starts to enter the experience. New vanity in the bath, replacing a broken bedroom louvered door, the clouded glass in the living room windows from a blown seal are small fixes that deliver big dividends. If done before the walk through and to gain the oohs and aahhs!

My friend, this year’s Governor of Rotary District 7810 Leigh Cummings told me long ago to remember to tackle the most urgent needs before the college nickel and dime starts. Because projects get shelved, delayed, put off because the money is needed for higher education and all the side drains having kids in college, away from home cause. He was right.

Now it is a time of catch up.

The second floor bath tub drain developed a small leak which gave me a perfect excuse to rip out the old and replace with new. Had to do that project. But being CPA bean counter wise and always thinking of resale is no fun. So lots of black granite weaved in to that bathroom total over haul. If you don’t plan to sell and want to loosen up, do updates the way you want not with fear of market resale return. It’s fun. Let’s you be creative. Stimulates the local economy.

Just did that with a lake home counter top of granite. And boy, do the guys from Extreme Granite in Presque Isle Maine have nice stone, do an expert installation. Their roadside profiling of large drop dead gorgeous granite slabs is like Sirens you can not plug your ears, cover your eyes to avoid. The displayed granite of every imaginable color and texture activated a tractor beam that pulled my Jeep off US Route One. They had me at hello.

After touring the granite inventory, I picked a color that would go with the existing decor and wow, is it pretty.

Practical Maine home repairs are typically how local residents tackle their building renovation projects. But the pride and beauty of a solid piece of continuous granite gleaming, shining is something you know will last. Was worth the investment for the wow factor alone.

What is your next must do Maine home repair? And if you could, like an over tired, sugared to the hilt excited kid at Christmas pick something above and beyond practical, what would it be? Outdoor hot tub? Sauna? Four season’s atrium room? Walk in closet like the movie Pretty Woman with all the built ins? Wall of angled glass, garden tub master baths the kids don’t get to use? A media room, music or hobby recreational addition?

Get busy living because if you are not you are dying is one motto that keeps it plain and simple. And the sooner you realize that relationships with others you know, love around you matter the most in life. It is fun to plan, dream together on the Maine home repair projects. Other areas besides work, kids like travel.

So loosen up with the money, how you allocate time and enjoy living more. Those around you will too. Don’t be so serious I found out is not bad advice. And learning to surrender needs to be part of the mix to keep your life in balance. Not too much of this area and too little of that one. Give yourself semi annual life reviews, make them physicals like important. They are. Become a better servant and learn your purpose in life in Maine for a richer, happier, better way of living.

Other blog posts….

A Twist On The Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs Story…

Why Kids Raised In Maine Turn Out Better …

The Walk To The Maine Lake Dam At 5AM …

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com.

April 27, 2012
Taking Time To Peek Inside A Person’s Heart, Including Your Own.

One Big Happy Family In Maine. Stay Connected. Learn From Each Other.

How well do you know yourself and wasn’t your favorite teacher growing up also the one that challenged you?

Your hardest teacher who kept you accountable. Made you believe you could do better, be more in an encouraging way? That was honest if you were slacking, trying to cut corners without putting the time, attention into the home work assignment and told you?

The outward appearance of the people you meet is what first gets your attention.

Or some rely on juicy gossip, rumor spreaders if you decide to let them do your thinking. With the public opinion of some more important than asking or taking the time to come to your own conclusion. Drawing wrong conclusions. Studying others, passing judgement based on not much happens a lot in our culture.

But getting closer, inviting in, allowed to see inside a person’s heart is a very fortunate but rare, elusive thing.

Because not all of us let ourselves take a serious, long hard look at the inside of your heart. You meet a lot of people that do not open up, that act, run and hide. That don’t dare to show you who they were yesterday, are today and working to be tomorrow.

Freely listing their weaknesses, greatest fears and why they have them is a healthier, honest approach. With no shame, guilt and knowing you have to be the same person inside and outside your home. Transparent if you are ever going to improve, grow more mature. But the truth is feared to scare someone away.

I like, love someone more if they do show me everything in time. Because you and I eventually figure it out any way. We all carry baggage. That opens up, can not be hidden for long. But we have to acknowledge we all have pieces we carry. Need to put down, leave behind with work.

Impressing others, giving an impression that you are something you are not comes from a steady diet of spin, marketing and being told it is all about you. Being happy and the center of attention twenty four | seven. Caring, sharing, kind and a loving heart and being a servant to others is where the real beauty is in a person. Inside that heart, not the layers and layers outside to appear glamorous, envied or full of pride and vanity.

People need to be tough skinned, tender hearted day in, day out.

When you are able to let your guard down which is hard for people that have been hurt and are hardened, then others that can help you see the soft spots. They also see the bruises, black blue and purple spots, stripes on your heart. That trust is important in a relationship to deepen it and not be just skimming the surface. For show.

Be your best but work to be even better. Don’t get comfortable or expect others to do all the heavy lifting, changing so your crank factor does not activate when you get frustrated, irritated. And automatically look around the room to see who is responsible. And they better cut it out. I did not say it is easy. I struggle with the same things I outline in my blog posts. But we help and learn from each other right when we compare notes honestly?

Surrendering. Waving the white flag is considered a sign of weakness. But being honest about your fears, weaknesses helps others be more sensitive and understand how you are built. Why you react the way you do that needs work, changing.

We need others to help perfect us along with being on our knees daily.

You don’t get help unless you ask for it. And it all starts with knowing you need it. That life improves when you understand yourself and are open, honest to get input from those your trust, who have lived with you long enough to make some interesting observations.

Listen to them, see if more than one friend, family member is pointing out things not with a harsh sharp tongue but out of love for you.

Lay your relationship cards face up on the table.

All of them, uh uh ahhh, that one up your sleeve too. Love does not let you keep any, hold back some for yourself when you trade hearts. When your concerns are the other person and yours become the other persons.

But keep the key to work on your inner joy, peace and to develop good character traits in your heart at the same time. There should be so much give and take, activity, communication back and forth to guide the unfolding process. You can not be free and easy if you are defensive, resentful or shut down and retreat.

Look up and take you eyes off those around you.

Avoid comparisions, keep your peepers on your own sheet of paper. Turn down the noise around you and listen to the small still voice inside that increases in volume, intensity the more time you spend on your knees, in prayer. Make it as important as air, water, food, shelter. It is.

Make the mental, spiritual shift of the need to “look good” outside to the world to working overtime to be pretty on the inside of your heart. So without words, it radiates, oozes with joy out of you so obviously.

To the point that those who have not seen you for a while stop, look and literally ask “What’s happening inside you?” And then without your response but just from your smile, they know without your answer exactly what’s up.

Keep it going, you are on the right track.

The one that is lighted, that shows you are worth your weight in salt afterall. No one else can fix you but they can guide you. And you can lend a hand in other people’s quest to live life healthier, more fully mentally, physically, spiritually. It can not be store bought and is all home grown natural.

Let up.

Change your focus and instead of nagging, demanding, sulking, withdrawing, put all that wasted emotional time and effort in to attitude improvement. Adopt the life approach to others that it’s you who needs to change, improve.

Your misery, pain and suffering is not caused by others who don’t meet your expectations. It’s YOU not measuring up to be better, to help lift up the many relationships around us.

Take a blank white sheet of paper.

List all the things you don’t like about the person nearest and dearest to you. Take another sheet, jot down the areas you are weak in, what you need to work on. Long list on your self examination right and very few items if any on the other person’s run down right? You see the point.

Our way of looking at problem areas, other people we don’t really know is flawed. Too easy to point fingers, sit back and get lazy in your own corner. Get out of the ring, stop fighting and start healing.

Spend time alone, away from people and search your heart, examine your life, and ask yourself hard questions. Be your own harshest critic. be humble, full of humility, honesty. And come to understand the reasons why you are the way you are, why life unfolds the way it does that you are directly responsible for.

The junk, gunk, dark stuff you want to remove, change.

And to reveal the areas of you that just need a little polish to really shine to be a good servant, to show all your passion, purpose here on Earth. Other people do not trigger your negative attitudes, you allow your bitterness to develop. But love keeps no score of wrong. Think about the meat of Ephesians 4:31-32 today. It was my lesson today.

31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. 32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

Maine, an easier place to figure things out because of less population, more beautiful four season surroundings.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com

April 26, 2012
Learning More About Your Parents After They Are Dead And Gone.

Learn From Others About Yourself, Your Long Gone Family Members, Parents.

Are your parents still alive and how well did you get to know them?

Your Mom and Dad are your role models and the source of how other relationships form in your life. Pretty important and you are lucky if you spent a lot of time with them.

They made you, love and nurtured you. Know you, can help explain things that come up in life that don’t seem in focus. Or that you don’t understand why. They covered the same ground years ago. You go through many of the same places in life that you sense, know they were here but years ago.

When I got home to Drews Lake last night, after supper I headed in a different direction than the norm. Getting out of your routine, shaking it up is wise in all you do to have new experiences. Bump in to old friends that maybe you have not seen for awhile. And to catch up.

I took a meandering path from Chickadee to Moose to Loon Lane through the woods, along the lake shore to head in the direction of Tall Timber Lodge.

I did not get that far and saw a light on at the home of Jimmy and Louann Ritchie. They were old neighbors for years across from my parents’ US Rt 2 Maine farm home.

Jimmy has had a heck of a bought with shingles that affected the sight in one eye.

Multiple ablation procedures for cardiac arrhythmia. One time the machine quit causing a rain out. Another a blood clot caused, added, not needed drama. But last night he seemed his old smiling, full of stories and enthusiasm humor self. And Louann, a Southern Aroostook school system teacher was glad I dropped in to visit with her four cats, all adoptees from the shelter!

The stories the two shared with me about how much they miss, enjoyed living next to my parents was heart warming. Dad would sneak over to bum a cigarette in his on and off again wagon tug of war to quit. Louann could relate as her struggle but success was equally tough. Louann and her two daughters enjoyed watching the Durham cows Mom and Dad raised.

Coming over to witness a calf birth on the what was always the coldest day of the year it seemed.

And helping to round up cows that got out because of a Maine moose with poor eye sight charging through to court and spark with one of the cows. He hoped.

Louann remembered Dad as a dreamer, deep thinker with a mind never idle and always churning with new ideas. She said my Mom was the governor that held him down to Earth with his tendency to soar and want to try new things. She was more moderate, disciplined and studied the new endeavor more fully, with more practical reason than Dad. They complemented each other well. And each knew how lucky each was. Showed affection in so many ways growing up that the four boys beamed to witness.

Louann agreed with me that Mom was Dad’s greatest asset.

Because besides his talents, intelligence, he had lots of insecurities from years of growing up in a troubled childhood in a drama filled alcoholic family. He lacked patience. Mom did not fault him for these scars but because he shared all, trusted her, she was his tender loving salve.

Trusting others to open up and bare your soul has to happen in a relationship. And it can not until you examine, accept and see what happened and why. You have to take inventory of what’s what. When you ask God to come in to your heart you learn so much. Everything, I mean everything gets exposed, a full review. Then start the hard work of understanding, cutting the chains. Purging of the bad. Replacement with inner peace, joy and acceptance to be better. New habits, priorities. Once the kids are up and out, you have tons of time their overbooked lives did not allow.

Not for awhile, forever on your knees.

You do once you know the truth, it sets you free. And you become an open book, testifying on your feet after being on your knees to help others making the same mistakes. But now armed with the why. Don’t sweep it under the carpet. Face the problems head on I have learned.

Mom had patience, was the real back bone with true love and respect for Dad but all happening, ripening like fruit on the vine. Slowly over sixty years of marriage. I am in awe of someone with long marriages where the two grew up together, went through all the same experiences. No gaps, pauses, missing sections in the life film reel. Who would not want that type of love, marriage, commitment?

Mom stepped up to remove dad’s slack and never threw his weaknesses back in his face in anger.

Did not beat him down to manipulate him or keep him down. He would not have easily been subdued. He always quickly landed on his feet with her help.

Back to his usual hopeful optimistic nature as a Maine potato farmer for 24 years, then a owner of a fleet of trucks, then a real estate appraisal career. That Mom helped make a success as his equal partner who worked just as hard as he did.

Dad did not get exploited by Mom and they worked together, not competed. But again, they started out very young, after a whirlwind short romance as he went off to war as a B 24 bomber tail gunner. The two wrote love letters daily and that deep love is what helped them go through the struggles every marriage has.

My parent’s struggles with poor potato years, financial tight spots because Dad expanded too quickly at the wrong time. Plus raising four boys to improve them, prepare them for life. It all made them one, working in unity, with oneness. They built the relationship and did everything together. Not just after work or weekends. But during the workday.

Stopping for coffee breaks while the sprayer was filling for the crops.

Mom taking supper out when he had spring planting or fall harvest when the weather meant better get it done right now. Not to wait or put it off. She grew up on a farm and understood what being a farmer’s wife meant.

You might think opposites would not attract because of being so different. But those differences are like extra colors in missing places in each person’s crayon box. Ones you are not born with, can not buy and only come from others with different colors you need. And you need to appreciate the strengths they have that you lack. And for affirmation, the same pride and respect, appreciation that helps the other mate beam, shine, do even better. Try harder.

My parent’s love for each other, for the family and the farm they grew up on showed me what a solid marriage takes with lots of work. I am not lazy but being gung ho is not enough. You have to surrender, listen.

Do not what you think the other mate needs, but what they tell you they need and want through communication. Listen to them before it is too late. Spend lots of time together and don’t let anything build up, fester, go untended to keep the love light shining.

I learn more from other people’s lessons than the trial and error method on my own.

Open up, share, communicate, connect with friends, family around you that you may have been too busy with kids, work to reach out to. Make time. See the healthy importance to fit it in.

Be willing to listen, contribute to grow together. We carry around many needless frustrations, setbacks and heartaches if you do not. I am looking forward to my next visit with family and friends that kids and work just did not allow enough time to connect with. Maine, famlies, friends, mates, other people are more important here.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573
info@mooersrealty.com

April 25, 2012