Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.


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Dream elevator

I woke up this morning still half in a dream.

I was at the hospital getting ready for some procedure.  The nurse told me to go down the hall to the bathroom to get water and to drink four cups.  I already had one paper cup very full of water, so I walked down the hall in my hospital gown trying not to spill that one.

I couldn’t find the bathroom and someone told me there was a drinking fountain on another floor, so my sister and I (she just magically arrived) got on the elevator, me still holding my cup of water.  But the elevator wouldn’t go anywhere, the door wouldn’t even shut, so my sister got off the elevator and walked around the corner and called back that there was another elevator over there.

So she and I got on that one, the doors closed and it began to move sideways, and quite fast.  Then we were coming out from an underground parking deck and we were in some sort of commuter van, in the next to last seat, with hospital employees in the two rows ahead of us and a driver who was headed across a major street into the employee parking lot.  The people behind us in the last row of seats were also hospital patients who had been trying to find something in the hospital and had erroneously ended up in the van, now across the street from the hospital in the employee parking lot.  All wearing hospital gowns.

So the female driver of the van looked at all of us as we climbed out of the van and told us she had to wait there for a certain number of employees to show up before she could go back to the hospital and we should try to find another way back.

I’m still carrying my cup of water, trying not to spill it and thinking it was very rude of the driver not to take us back to the hospital immediately when Katie jumped on me and announced a new day had arrived.

I hope the dream is not a prophecy as I am going to the doctor this morning, but I’m not expecting to end up in the hospital, nor carrying a full cup of water around with me.

Katie feels she saved me from an even worse ending.  You never know.

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Weekly photo challenge -light

This week the WordPress photo challenge was light…and not just light that makes a photo interesting but the actual source of light.  Once again I had a few ideas that weren’t all that practical.  It’s so easy to get overly ambitious when it comes to photo challenges.

But when I drove into my driveway this evening I realized I had light right there in front of me.

Home

Home

Stop by WordPress to see other interpretations of light.  There are already over 800 comments; randomly click a few and see what you find.  There’s still time for you to show us your version of light as well!

Meanwhile I wish you all the warm light of home in this holiday season.


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Goal met

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I’m not particularly good at follow through on ideas.  Even ideas I really think, at the time, would be fun, or good, or responsible or even required.  It’s hard for me to commit to doing anything every day.  But somehow I knew that writing a blog each day would work out just fine.

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Especially in November when I had so much going on, so many activities to mine for blog material.  I only had one day when I had nothing to say.  I probably filled that one with pictures of Katie.  I am lucky to have photogenic filler.

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NoBloPoMo was fun.  I’d do it again.  The only down side was that sometimes more important topics were too soon covered up with insignificant fluff, just because the sun came up on another day.

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Today’s post is brought to you by random photos that never had a chance to shine in the craziness of November.  Hope you enjoyed being overrun by me and my family.  I already know you smile when Katie shows up.

So here she is.

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Ice cream in November

Chilly little calf

Chilly little calf

It’s cold here in Michigan.  Really cold. (20 degrees F  which is -6.66 degrees C).  We have been spoiled with a very mild fall…

I'm looking at you

I’m looking at you

…but I think winter has finally arrived.  And what do we do to celebrate winter?  Where do we go when our toes and fingers go numb on the daily walk?  What do we do the day after Thanksgiving when the world seems to have gone shopping?

Got any ice cream for me?

Got any ice cream for me?

We visit the local dairy farm and get extraordinary ice cream!

A four legged ice cream maker

A four legged ice cream maker

Of course…don’t you?

Sweet.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!


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Family time

I hope all of you in the States had an opportunity to spend some of Thanksgiving day with family or friends.  We traveled down to the farm where my Mom grew up  and spent some time with family over a wonderful meal.

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Lots of talking, lots of laughing, lots of eating.

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Perfect.

While there we took my brother, who hasn’t been back on the farm in many years, on a quick tour of the barns where we all used to play.

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It was very cold.  Especially for my brother’s girlfriend who is from El Salvador.

We noticed little things while exploring the barns, like what my uncle used to call a patented barn door handle…

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…and a clamp in my Grandfather’s shop…

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…with a view of the old farmhouse through the shop window.

While we were wandering among the barns huge flocks of sand hill cranes flew screeching overhead.  There were at least 3 groups of them, each as large or larger than this group:

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This is not a great shot, I took it blindly up into the sky without being able to see what I caught, then cropped the heck out of it so that you could see something of what we saw.  It was so cool.

Barns, birds, family…

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…you can’t get much better than that.

And to top it off there was pie.   Happy sigh.

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How far would you go?

I was distractedly listening to CNN while cooking up some holiday goodies Monday night when I heard the President dealing with the immigration hecklers in San Fransisco.   Apparently he was there to talk about immigration and many standing behind him  as he spoke were members of an immigration advocacy group.  One or two began to shout, asking him to exercise his executive powers to help their cause.  Many began to chant.  He took it in stride.

I understand their passion for their cause.  But he is the President.   On the other hand when will those folks ever again get this close to someone they believe can fix their problem?  So they chose to make a statement.   Were they brave?  Or were they stupid?

I have an issue I feel the same passion for.  I have often wished that I could just sit down with someone as powerful as the President and explain things, ask for help.  But I’m sure I could never, ever, heckle him at a public function.  Protest outside the venue perhaps, but never to his face, never interrupt his speech.  In fact I don’t think I could interrupt any public official’s speech.

So I’ve been thinking about this.  Thinking about the public officials I’ve met, the ones  I’ve asked politely to help us in our cause.  Thinking about how little progress I’ve made.  Wondering just what exactly it would take for me to be brave enough to demand that help publicly, even rudely.  Maybe polite doesn’t work.  But who knows if rude works either.

What about you?  Do you have something that matters enough to you that you’d heckle the President of the United States?  Do you think it was brave of them?  Or stupid?

I’m undecided.


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Weekly photo challenge – Unexpected

This week’s WordPress photo challenge is Unexpected.  I have a photo in mind, but as I mentally work through my schedule for the week I realize I’m probably not going to get there.  That felt disappointing.

And then I was going through photos I took on a drive down to Ann Arbor Saturday afternoon and found something.  I took this through the windshield of a moving car.  At the time I thought the light on the lines was…well…unexpected.

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All I have done to this photo is crop it, taking out the noise of the rest of the street scene.

And that other unexpected subject?  It might show up later.

Unexpectedly.