Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Category Archives: Katie


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Mashup

Did you know that’s a word?  Mashup.  I had to get a graduate degree in information to find that out.  And I’m still only vaguely sure what it means.  So for the purposes of today’s post, class, we will define it as a bunch of unrelated topics mashed into one post.

First up are technological problems.  There was the blog issue where it suddenly one evening stopped behaving in the way I’ve become accustomed.  Even with the graduate degree in information I have a phobia about technology.  And when things don’t work the same way they’ve worked before I get a little weirded out.

I’m trying to be better.  I really am.  And braver about clicking away at different things in an attempt to fix stuff without making other stuff worse.  But it’s still uncomfortable for me to do that.  And during the past two weeks we’ve been having cable issues here at the house as well.  Intermittent outages, little blackouts, for a few seconds, or hours.  So the odds of having internet work when I needed it were low.  The combination of blog problems, work problems and internet connection problems was, at times, overwhelming.

So I did what any good person does when technology lets her down.  I made soup.

I haven’t made this recipe before.  It’s the Weight Watcher version of potato soup.  I make another potato soup full of Velvetta cheese and bacon that is purely heaven but hardly healthy.  This one is full of onions and leeks, and though I’ve only tasted a bit of it as I cleaned up the pan, I think it just might be a different version of heaven.

And after the soup was made and put away Katie and I went for our weekly adventure. I’ve been wanting to take her on longer car rides.   I’m hoping to get her used to trips of greater and greater lengths so that we can explore further afield on weekends this summer.

So with high hopes, and virtually no planning, I loaded her up and off we went.  I got approximately 1/2 a mile down the road when she started complaining.  Loudly.  Seems I forgot to do the potty break prior to the loading of the sheltie.

So we stopped at her favorite local park.  I figured she’d do her thing like she always does, as soon as she’s out of the car, then we’d continue on our way.  But no.  We had to EXPLORE first.  Did I tell you it was cold yesterday?  We had blue skies and sunshine, but the temperature was in the high teens.

Yes it was very very cold.

Eventually she got her jobs done and I started back to the car.  She was like “WHAT?!  We haven’t done much of anything and this is MY FAVORITE PARK MOM!!!!”

But we headed off to MY favorite park, about 40 minutes away anyway.  Because I had the car keys and she doesn’t even have her learners permit to drive yet.

Once at my favorite park we headed out to the end of a point of land that extends into a big inland lake.  It’s a picnic area when times are warmer, but during winter it’s just a part of the park with no cars going by and no runners and nobody on bikes.  And it’s down a long hill so it’s sort of out of the wind.  Did I mention it was COLD out?

There are some big old hickory trees out there with the most beautiful bark.

There are lots of beautiful places to look at the lake and enjoy the sunshine.  It was almost totally frozen over with a smooth sheet of ice that reflected the blue sky.

We saw a pair of swans who were doing synchronized swimming just for us.

We had fun walking around and pretending it was summer.  Which it clearly wasn’t.

Then I had to go to the bathroom, so I loaded up the sheltie again and off we drove in search of an open restroom.   Once I got to one I debated leaving Katie in the car.  But I never do that..so she and I walked across a playground to the bathroom building.  Katie didn’t want to go in the big scary building.  But she did.  And she certainly didn’t want to go into the stall, even though I used the handicapped stall so she’s have more space to freak out in.  But she did.  And she was not OK with the fact that the toilet paper holder thingy squeaked.  A lot.  But she held her own and only tried to get under the wall to the other stall once.  But the flushing thing?  In a big empty concrete building with all it’s echos?  Oh boy.  That’s why she was on a leash.  Picture it, crazed sheltie, all four feet going, head down, pulling wildly on the leash and Mama just trying to get her coat back on.  Good thing we were alone.

So after the bathroom adventure we came home.  She was pretty quiet on the 40 minute trip home.  I guess she figured if she stayed quiet she wouldn’t have to go into any more scary places.

And for our third and final mashed up topic, husband and I went to see “The King’s Speech” last night because the TV and internet were down again, and we’d read all the hard copy magazines and newspapers we had in the house.  Technology let us down, so we had an old fashioned date night.  Not such a bad thing.  The movie is wonderful and deserves all the praise and awards that it has received.

When I got home the internet was back up, so I looked up more information about King George VI, his brother, Lionel his speech therapist and Wallace Simpson.  I guess I have a love/hate relationship with the internet.

Class dismissed.

 


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My day

I was thinking that having a blog that wouldn’t upload pictures might be, in a strange way, a good thing.  That it would force me to concentrate on words rather than relying on photos to tell my story.  And I even had a couple of thoughts I wanted to write about.

But another busy day at work has me whipped.  So I’m falling back on the photos to tell you all about it.

It started with the usual commute into the sun.  But it’s always good to have sunshine so I didn’t mind.  After a crazy  9 hours I left work to find it was snowing!

What’s with that?  Is this not the end of March?  Didn’t that Groundhog Phil guy predict that this year we were NOT going to have 6 more weeks of winter?  Wasn’t that sometime at the beginning of February?  I just don’t get it.

Once home we were sitting around eating some homemade Tuscan soup when Katie alerted us to events outside.

“There are deer out in my yard Mama!  Come see!  Come see!”

We’ve had four or five deer hanging around for a couple of weeks.  Tonight there were at least a dozen.

And most of them were eating bird seed under our bird feeder and drinking out of the birdbath.

These aren’t great photos because they’re taken from inside through the window with all sorts of reflections…but you get the idea.

It’s been an exciting evening here at the old King homestead.  We’re all still on guard, no rest for the Sheltie!

 


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Weekend extra extra…by Katie the Sheltie

Hi everyone, Katie here.  My Mama says I can write this blog about my weekend adventure because she’s too tired after spending the weekend grocery shopping and doing laundry and cooking and stuff.

See, yesterday after she spent the whole afternoon with Daddy’s Aunt Vi, shopping for clothes and food and such she got home ready to put her feet up.  She said they hurt.  But Daddy said I had been a very good dog all day (that’s mostly cuz I napped all afternoon while waiting for my Mama to come home)  and Mama should take me to the park! The PARK?! Yes Mama..that’s a VERY GOOD IDEA.  I got all excited and I don’t know why Mama was glaring at Daddy and telling him to shush up!

Well you know us sheltie-girls….once an idea about going to the park is in our pretty little heads…well…we’re pretty persuasive.   And you also know what a pushover Mama is.  So guess what?  We went exploring..just Mama and me.  Daddy stayed home.  I think he had his feet up but I’m not going to tell Mama that.

And you know what else?  My favorite park in the whole world was open!  It closes for the winter, but the gates were open yesterday so we went there!  And we had it all to ourselves!  There was still ice on the pond…but we heard red winged blackbirds calling..and even more special…we heard FROGS PEEPING!!!!  How cool is that!

Everything is still brown, but that’s ok.

Lots of good sniffings anyway, no matter what color the fields are.

We walked around the whole thing.  I don’t know how far that is, but I’m sure it’s over a mile.  Maybe lots more.  Hard to measure when you’re busy checking everything out.

I was pretty good.  I even did some heeling for Mom.  The only way she could get that picture was of our shadow.  Don’t we look good!?  OK…so maybe my butt was out too far and stuff…but I was paying attention to Mama and that’s what counts?  Right?  Right?

Anyways…we had a whole lot of fun and Mama even forgot her feet hurt.  She’s glad she went to the park with me, and I’m awfully glad we got to spend some time together when she wasn’t grumpy.  (You know she’s been sort of grumpy mad for awhile now, right?)

Mama’s cooking in the kitchen now, and humming along with the show tunes playing on the TV.  She said it’s fun to guess what show the song is from before she looks to see if she’s right.  I think that walk in the park did a lot for her spirits.

Glad to be of assistance.

-Your gal Katie…


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Too busy to know

I’m feeling  disconnected.   I’ve been so busy lately that I haven’t had time to post or even read very much.   Katie and I had school Monday night, I played in a concert Tuesday night and I worked late last night.  I still haven’t caught up with that lost hour of last weekend’s daylight savings time adjustment.  Here it is after 8 and I’ve just sat down for the evening.  Where is the time going?

So.  A little bit of this, a little bit of that.  Let’s start with Katie and school.  This week was our second week in the correct, ‘Novice Motivation’ class.   In last week’s class I felt like we were a bother for the instructor who clearly didn’t remember we used to come all the time.  Because Katie wasn’t up to the instructor’s expectations with heeling we were pretty much ignored.  A lot of eye rolling went with the ignoring.  About the only thing she said to me was “you’re a nice Mom.”  And she didn’t mean it as a compliment.  Even though Katie did a perfect recall and was perfect at her sits and downs she would hide behind me every time the instructor with her loud voice came near.  I felt terrible.

This week Katie and I practiced during the week, her Dad didn’t feed her just before class, and she was less afraid of the big noisy building.  And I was more diligent with my corrections when she wandered.  So Katie gave me a bit more attention, though not much more than the week before.  And on her long sit she laid down.  Twice.  So when we did the long down I made her sit.  She was not happy with me.  “All the other dogs get to lay down MOM!!!”   Her recall is still good.  I felt a bit better by the end of the class.  We haven’t practiced heeling this week at all.  I have too much going on and I need to make time for practice this weekend or I’ll be miserable at school again on Monday night.  It’s so hard to get there by 6:30 when I work an hour south of here and class is 30 minutes north of here and I have to swing by and pick up the dog.  OK enough whining.

Tuesday night we played a concert with the 7th graders again.  I didn’t have time to practice since our last concert, but it went OK.  Personally I think we played too long for those 200 7th graders to sit still.  But we DID have a captive full house audience!

Tuesday and Wednesday were really terrible at work.  I can’t talk about it but suffice it to say that if I could retire right now I’d be gone.  Again.  I hope it’s just a bad string of days and not the way it’s going to be into the future.  I’m very very tired.  OK.  Enough whining now.

So maybe it’s just as well I’ve been too busy to hang out here.  Because I don’t feel like I’m very good company.  Katie’s barking.  Again.  She barked for an hour last night at 2:00 a.m.  We finally put her in her crate.  It was heaven to sleep without her. Could be I’m a slow learner and she should be there every night.  We’ll see.

OH!  And I forgot the whole point of this post was supposed to be that I’m too busy to notice stuff.  It took me almost all day to realize why so many people were wearing green today.   I guess I’ve been too busy to realize the month of March was…well..(forgive me!)… marching on.  Here we are at St. Patty’s and I didn’t even know it.

I don’t suppose wearing green tomorrow would be the same.


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Winter slides away

Maybe it’s just me being hopeful, but this morning I could almost feel spring in the air.

Yes there’s still snow on the ground.  In fact it snowed yesterday and it’s supposed to snow again this weekend. But like the snow sliding down the windshield of the car parked out front I feel winter sliding away.

This morning Katie and I were out in the driveway practicing our heeling.  (I think I almost have it down now.  She says it’s about time.)  Across the street birds began singing and as I glanced that way I think I saw a flock of robins!  Squirrels are playing.  The SUN is shining!  The birch trees in the back yard are glowing.  And there are tulips poking their little green heads up through the snow by the front door.  Mostly I think spring is in the air because Katie wants to be OUTSIDE NOW MOM!  And she doesn’t want to come back in after our trip to the mailbox to mail our weekly letter.

I bet if I checked blog posts from a year ago I’d find that I was saying the same thing.  Every year I get my hopes up.  Maybe this year, after such a difficult winter, spring will slide into my world without first dashing my hopes.

Hope springs eternal.  So they say.


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Winter wonderland

Hopefully this is the last big snow of the season.  So with that in mind Katie and I went exploring this afternoon.  The trees and bushes, covered in wet yet fluffy snow, were beautiful.

We wandered around a small park in a nearby town.

Katie found her agility skills very useful today.  She got to “walk it” across dogwalks…

and “jump” across small creeks…

and  “climb it” up big hills.

We spent about an hour exploring…

…and when we got home the sun came out and is melting the snow!  YEA!!!


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How to color a black and white weekend

It’s snowing here.  Big wet white flakes.  The sun is hidden and any grass that had emerged is covered again.  And they say we’ll get 3 more inches tonight.  My world has threatened to turned black and white.

But thankfully I didn’t have to sit here and watch the snow pile up.  No I did not.  Today the community band I play with participated in a concert band festival.  Twelve community bands from across the region were invited to play for judges comments and incidentally for the other musicians hanging out waiting for their own group to go on.

Each band played a program lasting approximately 45 minutes.  They started at 9 in the morning and the music kept on until after 6 p.m.  We were the fourth band up and played  Sousa, Gershwin, Hazo and other composers.  Everything went magically, as often happens on concert day.  I had to concentrate on concentrating, afraid to get lost in the music for fear of forgetting to come in when I was supposed to.  But it was tempting to just go with the moment.  And it was so much fun.

It’s always interesting to play in a hall you’ve never been in before.  The sounds are so different in every place you play and sometimes cues you’re used to hearing don’t sound the same once you’re on a new stage.  On the other hand the clarinet player next to me and I both jumped at one point when the gong in the percussion section was hit.  Apparently it had been in the music all along, but we’d never heard it before!

We’d been warned by our conductor that the adjudicator assigned to us was tough; a retired band teacher who still teaches private lessons.   And we haven’t yet heard the comments she put on tape during the actual performance, but she walked into the room where we assembled after our concert to hear her verdict and told us that she had been enjoying the music so much she had forgotten to write any comments down!  She did mention that we could do more with dynamics; many community band have issues with dynamics.  Like she says, every band can play loud and fast…the good ones can play with feeling, soft, loud, fast and slow.  We did quite a bit of that…but we could do more.  Needless to say we were thrilled by her comments on the things we did well.

After we were finished I slipped back into the auditorium to sit with my husband and listen to two more bands.  One was a band I played with more than 15 years ago.  Many of the players I’d known were still there…some with gray hair or no hair…but recognizable even from the audience.  I enjoyed listening to them very much, especially when the conductor who had been there so many years ago came out to conduct one of the pieces.  It was as if the band perked up and played especially well for him.  And I was glad I had the opportunity to see him.

And the second band was the one my Aunt plays with down near Ann Arbor.  I’ve never heard them play. Often their concerts this past season were weekday nights or nights we had concerts ourselves.  So it was especially fun to listen to her group perform.

I have to thank my husband for going with me.  He sat through four bands..and concert band music can get a little old after several hours of it. Especially if you don’t play an instrument.   But he’s a trooper and I appreciate it.  I made him some cookies tonight as a thanks.

And of course Katie-girl wanted to know what she got for having to stay home alone most of the day.  So I took her out to play in the snow this evening.

Somehow as she sits drooling on our feet as we enjoy the oatmeal cherry raisin cookies I don’t think that was exactly what she was hoping for.

Silly girl.


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Wrong class

I decided Katie and I needed to go back to school, in order to get that last leg of Rally that she needs to earn her Novice Rally title.  But it’s so hard to find a class I can get to while working full time almost an hour away.  So tonight I decided to take her to a drop in class of novice obedience.  I figured we could work on our heeling and get ourselves ready to try for that last Rally leg.

Except I read the schedule wrong.  And got myself registered for Open Obedience..which is a drop in class, but they are doing stuff we’ve never done.  Like dropping on our recalls…and jumping over stuff to get a dumbell that we don’t even own…

The class started out with the long sits and downs…the very first thing was a 5 minute down with the owners out of the room.  Poor Katie.  She went into her down and then watched me leave with sad brown eyes.  I told the instructor we had never done this without me being in the room, so he let me go back out after a couple of minutes.  She was much less stressed.  This was my first indication I was no longer in a novice class.

Regardless, she did the five minute down and the 3 minute sit without moving.  Good girl!

But heeling?  Well, that’s the reason we need to be back in school for sure!  The instructor honed right in on us and gave me quite a few tips.  Katie didn’t like him and tried to hide behind me every time he was near.  Which didn’t help our figure eights either.

And when I turned around after crossing the ring for our first recall I couldn’t even SEE Katie because a big German Shepard was playing with his Mom, his rear end in front of her and his tail slapping Katie in the face.  And she was sitting there stoically waiting for me to call her!  As soon as I opened my mouth, before I even called her she was on her way to me.  And she didn’t stop and sit in front of me like she was supposed to; she ran around behind me to hide.  Poor puppy.

After that it was pretty much downhill.  The instructor politely suggested that perhaps we weren’t ready for Open.  No kidding.  I thought I was in Novice!  Next week I need to try to get there at 6:30 when the Novice class is running…rather than 7:30 when I THOUGHT novice was happening!

Katie say…”GEE MOM!  What did you get me into anyway?!”  She’s sleeping now.  Probably having nightmares!