Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.


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Are you ready?

Ready or not Christmas is coming!  My husband and I were in a retail store the day before Halloween this year and were shocked to see it all decorated with Christmas trees and enormous ornaments.   I meant to go back and get a picture, but I didn’t.  Time just slips away.  Now the big day is just a couple of weeks away.  Are you ready?  I’m not!

Today we put some lights up outside.  I love to see houses all decked out in lights.  I love to drive through neighborhoods after dark and look at all the colors.  Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy; sort of  Norman Rockwell-ish.  Here in Lower Michigan we’ve had lots of warm early winter days when we might have completed this task but our holiday lights didn’t venture up from their basement bins.  Today, with a big snow storm headed our way we couldn’t put it off any longer.

Remember last year when I put everything away in their holiday bins?  I was so proud of us, being so organized, everything in it’s red and green bin, labeled and ready for next year.

We packed all the lights and outdoor cords neatly away, so as to make this year so much easier.  I don’t know what happened.

Somehow the Grinch must have gotten into those bins over the summer, because the lights and cords were a tangled mess this morning!

But after much work I got most of it sorted out.  Katie helped.

And now I’m anxiously waiting for the evening to fall so that I can enjoy my very own holiday lights.  This year we put some on the smaller trees in the backyard. Can’t wait to see what the neighborhood deer think about that!

Have a wonderful rest of your weekend everyone!  Katie sends hugs.


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Are you missing Katie?

Somehow Katie hasn’t wormed her way into the last few posts.  And she’s not very happy about being ignored.   She has special things she can do if we ignore her too long…specially messy and/or loud things…so we don’t want to do that.

So with no further ado…..here’s Katie!

Have a good weekend everyone!  We’ll be getting snow, maybe a lot of snow…so I’m sure we’ll have fresh photos for all of you soon!


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Random thoughts

There are all sorts of thoughts bumping around in my work and holiday distracted brain.  None of them are significant enough to write a blog entry of any substance.  So here are some random thoughts I had this week.

While walking down the 4 flights of stairs at the end of a very long day of work:   If I had my druthers I would be living on that island  Kathy talked about over on her blog.    And that walking up and down the stairs each day isn’t really about the exercise.  It’s about avoiding conversation in the elevator.  Yep.  I’m a hermit.

While working in my cube:  I overheard a woman across the aisle bitterly dissing her parents  who were driving two days to visit her, but wouldn’t provide her a specific arrival time.  She thought they were so thoughtless, that they didn’t care that she had to have things ready for them but didn’t even know when they would arrive.  I bit my lip and didn’t tell her that I’d give a lot to have my parents driving cross country to visit me.  And that it wouldn’t particularly matter exactly when they arrived.  Just that they arrived safely.  Silly woman.   Someday she’ll know, like we all know eventually, what it’s like not to have any parents at all.

While driving to work early in the dark morning:  Note to high speed driver in dark sedan who passed  five of us traveling down the  narrow,windy dirt road in the last 1/2 mile before the stop sign.  What was so important that you had to be moving that fast?  That caused you to pass each of us individually, whether we were on a hill or a curve?  To risk your life, all of our lives and the lives of some innocent going the other way?  And when we all got to the stop sign and you, at the front of the line, had to wait while a string of cars went by on the main road, all of us lined up behind you, did you recognize how little time you had made up?  Tomorrow will you risk less?

This morning, while playing “where’s Mama” while attempting to distract Katie-dog from wanting me to get up and take her out in the dark early hours of a weekend:  I flung the sheets up over my face and waited; still, hardly breathing, I waited in anticipation of Katie’s pounce.  Except she didn’t pounce right away.  Not even a little bit more than right away.  I could hardly stand it.  I was just going to move the sheet a little bit, check on what she was doing, when I realized I had less patience than an almost 4 year old Sheltie!

And finally, Katie’s thought for the week:  Sometimes if you are very short you have to lick the condensation away from the front door in order to see out properly.

Have a great weekend everyone!


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Something old, something new

It’s the end of an era.  Last week we traded in my SUV.  The poor SUV had a lot of miles on her.  And the repair bills were mounting exponentially.

Still, this was the car I loved to drive, the car Katie and I used to explore parks and country lanes.  The car that took me home to the South and north to the peace of the forest and lakes.

Katie and I took it for a last run to the park. We had already taken her crate out of the back so she got to sit up front with me.

Hey!  Wait a minute Mom, aren’t I supposed to be back there?

She gets so excited when I pack up her stuff for a trip to the park, she runs to the back of the car and stands on her hind legs waiting to be lifted in.

I’m going to have to break her of that habit; it’s best that there be no nail scratches on the new car!  At least not right away.

This is so wrong! Where is my crate??

We had a good time at the park…

…we always do.  Then we took our last ride home.

Hey Mom!  You’re not getting rid of my car are you?  How are we going to go to the park without my car?

Don’t worry little girl….stay tuned!


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Last day of Indian Summer?

This afternoon, on what might be the last absolutely beautiful day of fall, Katie and I went out to play Frisbee in the back yard.  What a glorious day!  The forsythia is blooming!  Does this mean it won’t bloom next spring?

The burning bush has a few leaves left, shining in the last light of fall.

Katie had a blast.  She brought the Frisbee back to me most of the time.

Though sometimes she took it off with her for a personal adventure that didn’t include me.

After so much running around it was time to take a quick break.

Then it was back to the fun.  Come ON Mom, throw it!

OK Katie-girl….here you go!


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Seeing the light

Katie has been in rare form the last couple of weeks.  She’s up early, wanting to go out, wanting something to eat, wanting to play, wanting, wanting, wanting.  Sometimes I go to work early just to get away from her and her needs.

One early morning this week we had already been out in the cold and dark multiple times and as far as I was concerned she was finished with everything she needed to do out there.  I wasn’t planning on taking her out again before I left for work.

But once she starts whining she doesn’t stop.  Ever.  No amount of my admonishing works.  She might go lay down for a minute or two.  Ten minutes tops.  But like the Terminator …she’ll be back.

So I bundled up again and we headed out to wander around looking for the perfect spot for whatever it was that she deemed so important.

And look what I saw.

It might look like the tops of the trees still have their yellow leaves, but they don’t.  The glow at the top is the sun rising and just catching the tips of the trees.  We ran back to the house for the camera.

The sun continued to rise and the glow continued to grow.  It was astounding, and Katie and I ventured further into the back yard to enjoy it.  Quickly the entire trees were engulfed in brilliant warm morning light.

And I would have missed it all if I hadn’t had my girl telling me it was time to go back out into the cold on that early morning.

She even posed for me.

That’s my girl.