Hey Bunny! You got any treats?
Princess Katie sends Easter greetings
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Still experimenting
I think it’s been more than a year now that I’ve been trying to cook meatless meals. We started out eliminating red meat, and that’s been a constant ever since, except for an occasional night out.
I’ve talked about trying to cook vegetarian and even vegan on this blog. How it was a learning curve and a slow process. How I felt clumsy, how worrying about meal planning and the actual preparation seemed to take up the entire day.
In the beginning there are tomatoes.
You’d think after a year it would get easier. But it hasn’t, though now I have most of what I used to think of as odd ingredients stocked in my pantry, so shopping is easier. The actual searching for recipes and the chopping and stirring and roasting, well, it all still takes a lot of time.
Tonight I made eggplant parmesan. It was supposed to be vegan, but I used real parmesan cheese and cow’s milk, so it was only vegetarian. I have to say, it was better than any eggplant parmesan I’ve had in any restaurant. I’ll make it again for sure.
Yummy.
We’re trying to eat meatless meals about half the time. Sometimes we’re doing that even more than half our meals. I haven’t really seen a difference in our health, but I have to believe we’re better off eating like this than consuming heavy meals with meat as the main course.
And another benefit I just noticed today; all that produce piled up on the kitchen counter sure is pretty.
I guess we’ll just keep on experimenting.
Colorful and good too!
WordPress Photo Challenge: Security
A woodpecker felt his family would be safer if they had a back door. So he remodeled a bluebird house in our yard.
Additional egress required a little ingenuity.
But then he never moved in. Guess he still had security issues.
Surprise!
Katie here. No I’m not the surprise…you knew I’d pop up again sooner or later. I’ve been mostly resting since we got home from our grand adventure. I still get my mama up really early every morning, but then we go back to sleep. She seems to need more sleep these days. Guess she’s getting old.
Anyway.
Yesterday afternoon it started to snow. Mama made me go sit in it.
Really mama?!
She thought I looked pretty with the snow on my fur. I thought she was being ridiculous. I mean, when it rains I don’t make her go stand around outside do I? Oh. Well, yes I do, come to think of it.
Ahem.
Mama was surprised that so much snow had stuck around when we got up this morning. It was all over the tops of trees, but didn’t seem to get to the shrubs underneath. She says it was really pretty and we ran outside to take pictures.
Hey mama, come on out, the snow is great!
Well. She took pictures, I spent the time sniffing stuff, checking to make sure it was all safe you know. But when she called me to COME! I ran right over to her. I love doing that because, as you all expect, mama has a treat for me. Sometimes I run with my eyes closed, dreaming about that luscious treat.
Running for joy in the last snow of the season.
Mama was fascinated with how the snow emphasized the shapes of the trees…
Birch branches outlined in fresh snow.
…sometimes, she says, you don’t notice things like this until the snow points them out.
Look at all the cool shapes out there!
And then do you know what happened? The sun came out! Man oh man that sure made stuff even prettier!
Blue sky and fresh snow…with a little bit of cloud action.
Look at all the colors!
A special moment in time.
The green of the pines and the yellow of the forsythia buds next to the white shrouded birch trees was spectacular! I almost didn’t notice but mama pointed it out to me. She’s good like that.
But my feet were getting wet and cold and I was hungry. After all I’d only had one tiny treat and it was way past time for breakfast. So I made her take me inside. But that didn’t keep her from taking more pictures as the hungry birds stopped by for breakfast too.
Incoming chickadee!
I guess having a little spring snow isn’t all that bad, mostly because I know it will be gone by this afternoon.
Already melting.
And this weekend is shaping up to be warm and sunny. I’m going to get mama to take me to my park. Or maybe a couple parks.
A girl can hope anyway.
Waiting for summer.
Spring redux
Spring. It happens in waves across the country. When Katie and I were in the South we saw spring in all it’s glory. We reveled in the sun and warmth. We forgot that it wasn’t spring everywhere.
One reason to be in the South in the winter.
And then we drove home, north into the gray skies, leafless trees, muddy trails. Cold. It snowed this week.
Why is it snowing??
It was a shock, but all is not lost. As Katie and I explored the yard this past weekend we found traces of spring. Daffodils are popping up from the wet cold ground. So are some of the perennials. The bleeding heart is reaching for the sky.
Purple pink sprouts pushing up through last garden debris.
It will be in bloom sooner than you think. And the monkshood is peeking out too….
Monkshood, excited to see the sun.
..it will bloom next fall — which will also be sooner than we think.
Katie and I went for a walk in her park this weekend. The sun was out, the water was blue. It felt like spring had arrived.
Mama! Is it spring now??
We weren’t fooled. We know, here in Michigan, that winter will take at least one more swipe at us before April ends. But don’t tell that to the goldfinches, they’re already changing into their summer gold.
Hey lady! This feeder needs to be filled!!
Katie and I are very lucky this year. We get to watch spring arrive twice! The daffodils are all done down South. But here they will be arriving any day now.
That’s a very good thing.
You’re going to make me pose with our Michigan daffodils next week aren’t you mama!
Happy Gotcha Day!
Ten years ago we went to ‘look’ at a sheltie puppy.
Hi sweetie!
Who were we fooling? Of course we were going to come home with her.
First night on her sofa.
I hope she’s as happy as we are to be together.
Hi everyone!
“Democracy isn’t a spectator sport.”
I’ve had a good winter off, playing on the beach, watching light move across water, sleeping in, napping mid-afternoon. But it’s time to get back to work.
Work!??? You’re right; I’m retired. So what work am I talking about?
There are many of you new here at Change is Hard. You probably haven’t heard me talk about trucks and safety and my family’s story. You probably think my life is all about photography and travel and a special little dog. And sometimes it is.
“You can turn grief into action.”
But sometimes it’s about grief and loss and preventable crashes. And honoring the memory of my dad who was killed in December of 2004 by a tired semi driver who fell asleep at the wheel while going 65 miles per hour on a freeway in the early morning hours. A driver who failed to see the lights of emergency vehicles up ahead, the people working to clear a minor crash that had occurred earlier. A driver that didn’t notice the traffic stopped in front of him. Didn’t see my dad in his little red car until it was too late.
My dad was a guy who lived by safe rules. He had retired ten years earlier from a career managing chemical plants, inherently dangerous places. He made us all wear our life jackets in the boat when we were kids. He drove with us around and around the neighborhood when he taught us how to drive a stick shift car, until he was satisfied we could operate it safely. He helped my sister build her house in Tennessee, complete with extra roof brackets to hold the roof down in a tornado. Just in case. He carried an emergency contact list in his wallet, listing the four kids and spouses with work and home phone numbers. That’s how they knew where to find us after the crash.
“Hope in the face of difficulty.”
So after we got through the initial days filled with disbelief and unbearable grief, when we were moving into sad confusion buffeted by unrelenting grief, we began to ask questions. How did the driver not see all that traffic ahead? Not see all the emergency lights? The road was straight. The sight lines clear. We searched the internet looking for anything about truck crashes.
And we found the Truck Safety Coalition.
It’s an organization made up of the families of people who have been killed or injured in preventable truck crashes. It provides support to families and it works to change the way things are done in the trucking industry. Sometimes that means working to change regulations and laws. Sometimes that means working to change perceptions among people that drive trucks. Sometimes it’s about educating people that drive cars. Sometimes it means meeting with legislators and staff, or truck company executives, or members of other safety groups. Always it means honoring the memories of those we’ve lost, honoring the lives that have been changed forever of those who were injured.
It means trying to save lives
Every other year the families meet in Washington DC for a few days. We tell our stories, we sadly welcome the new families — those whose losses are recent, we talk about issues, resolutions, how to make a difference. And we go to the Hill and talk to everyone we can. Legislators, Regulators, the Press. Everyone. Sometimes they call us the ‘crazy truck people.’ That’s OK with us. Whatever gives attention to our issues.
“Even when you’re 100% right getting things done requires compromise.”
The conference is coming up next month. I can feel the tension escalating among my Truck Safety “family” already. Facebook is abuzz with truck issues. People are becoming stressed. Or depressed. Or hopeful. Or everything all rolled into one. Attending the conference brings it all back again for us. Yet it’s hard to stay away. “It’s like attending the funeral all over again.” says one mother who has been fighting for truck safety for more than twenty-five years.
The title of this post, and the quotes interspersed throughout, are from former President Obama’s July 2016 speech. I wrote a few things he said down on a random piece of paper way back then and that paper has found it’s way back to me this week. As I gear up for a difficult few days in Washington I thought they were appropriate. Hopeful. Democrat, Republican or Independent, the world would be a better place if we could learn to compromise. I’m hoping we find a bit of that during our conference this year.
It’s probably the most I can expect.
Reboot
We’ve been home one whole day, moving swiftly into day two and I’m trying to get my bearings. Cupboard doors swing the opposite way of those at the lake house, the dishwasher stacks differently, I turn the wrong way headed to the laundry. I forget what I’m doing in the middle of doing it. I think part of me is still in the South; hence the random photos of our trip in this post.
Katie seems to have settled back into home life easier than me.
Neighborhood dog at the lake. Don’t know his name.
I sort through piles of paper; brochures from places we visited, lists of items to take, maps, advertisements. I come across a page, torn from a notebook, that I don’t recognize. But it’s my handwriting, obviously quotes from something I was reading. I don’t remember writing these down, I don’t know where they came from, don’t know who I was quoting.
But they seem pertinent in a general sort of way.
Beautiful tree near Jacksonville Florida.
I think this paper must have been in the car or on a table prior to the most recent pile of travel debris being deposited. I think maybe I wrote these down after the election, when I was feeling frustrated and fearful. Not that I’m less frustrated or fearful now, just more accepting of what is.
Or maybe not.
Beautiful birds at the Jacksonville Zoo.
Regardless the quotes will serve me well when I write my next post about an upcoming trip to Washington. Yes, the truck lady will emerge once more as there is work to be done, lives to be saved, families to comfort.
Playing with my girl on the beach.
The work doesn’t end just because a person takes a break. Nothing is resolved and everything is still important. The strategy may have to be adjusted, tweaked, but the end goal is still saving lives. It’s even more important now that the trucking industry has the Persident’s ear.
Stay tuned.
Another favorite lake.
