Do you know what Roy G Biv is? I didn’t. It stands for red, orange,yellow,green, blue, indigo, and violet, the colors of the rainbow. Yesterday I went over to my local nursery to find examples of those colors. You can see other interpretations at the original post, or see a few of my favorite shots here, here and here. And don’t miss this one, it’s wonderful!
Katie here.
I’ve been bugging and bugging mama. Every single day I ask her if I can tell all of you about my adventure visiting my friends Ricky and his sister Callie, but mama said I had to wait my turn. Obviously she has forgotten that I am a princess. Though I don’t know how cause I remind her daily.
Anyway, mama and I were taking Callie my teeter and some weave poles cause Callie is an awesome agility dog and I don’t really like to play on the teeter, so we took daddy’s truck. That meant mama couldn’t put me in my crate in the back of the car. So guess what? I got to sit up front with her!
This is my daddy’s truck!
My boyfriend Reilly sent my mama a seat belt and she got me a harness and I was her copilot! I’m not so good at reading maps, so she used Garmin to find our way, but it was awesome being up front. Mama says, though, that when we’re in the car I’m still going to be in the back seat cause it’s safer back there. Whatever mama.
I was a good girl and didn’t bother my mama at all except when I wanted to get out and do my business. Then I just stood up and stared at her. She’s pretty good at reading my mind so we’d stop at the next rest stop and I’d get to sniff around a bit before we moved on our way.
Resting at a rest stop.
After a long time (OK, 5 hours) we got to Ricky and Callie’s house! Ricky and I are old friends so we weren’t that excited to see each other, but Callie was very excited to see me! I guess she’s never seen a real life princess before.
Beautiful Callie
I tried to be very regal, but it was totally hot that day. Mostly I sniffed around the yard and hung out in the shade with my mom and Ricky and Callie’s mom. I wasn’t interested in playing on the teeter or running weaves but it was fun to watch them do that!
Tandem teeter!
And guess what else? I figured I’d have to come clean and show my mama that I can do stairs after all. Outside I had no problem going up and down the deck stairs, but inside I would only go down the stairs, and only if my mama was going down. Then I’d race down so as not to be left behind, which startled mama the first time.
Handsome Ricky!
The next day we went for a walk in the park. It was still so HOT that I was pretty slow, always lagging behind. My mama decided we better not go too far so we cut the walk short. We’ve decided we will visit again sometime when the weather is cooler!
Going to the park!
I had a really good time. I think if I was around other shelties every day I’d learn to play with them. Poor Callie really wanted me to play but I just wanted to sit near my mama. She even offered me one of her favorite toys and I wasn’t interested. Ricky says he understands and we just hung out together.
Me and Ricky near the pool.
Mama and I left that afternoon, heading home to daddy. It was a long drive home because weather wasn’t very good and we stopped a lot along the way. I pretty much rested my eyes the whole way, no sleeping, but a lot of head nodding. Toward the end I put my head down and with a big sigh fell asleep. My mama laughed at me, but I think a princess is allowed a little nap, don’t you?
I really want to thank Ricky and Callie and their mom and dad for letting me and my mama visit them! We had a lot of fun and we’re looking forward to another visit sometime!
Posing for the camera.
Reflections
It’s Monday morning, sometime before 7:00 a.m., and I’m up and out the door. Only as I’m backing down the driveway do I remember all the past Monday mornings when I’ve headed out about this same time on my way to work.
Early morning.
But this morning I’m not going to work.
I’m headed out to a hillside I’ve noticed over the years. Yesterday on our way to somewhere else I noticed the grass was a beautiful golden brown and I knew I had to get back with the camera soon before the farmer turned it all into hay.
As I park on the side of the road, pausing to let commuters zoom by, I begin to smile. I smile because it’s a beautiful day, the sun just topping the trees, small puffy clouds in a blue sky, a cool breeze gently tossing the grass.
Field of grass.
And I smile because I’m not on my way to work.
Driving leisurely back toward home after capturing the field I stop at a local park to enjoy the glassy pond.
Swimming hole.
Sigh.
I’ve got to say that even weeding is looking pretty good to me right now.
Summer arrives
Dear Dad,
I’m thinking about you today, sifting through pictures, reaching back, oh so far, for the smallest memory. Not that I don’t think about you every day. Both of you.
Remember all the great trips you took us on every summer?
Going on a trip!
I went camping up north a couple weeks ago. I thought of you as I put up my spiffy modern tent alone. Remember the big heavy green canvas tent we all camped in? How it took forever and more than a few hands to get it up? How it smelled like wet tent when it rained and you told us not to touch the walls or it would leak? Remember how we used to fall exhausted into sleeping bags scratchy with sand every night after full days at the beach? How we roasted all those marshmallows over the fire and you ate the our burned ones? Those were the days.
I remember, too, how you could fix anything.
Polishing the fender.
I don’t know how you learned the way everything worked and how to make it work again when it broke. But you did. We’ve been using the tools in your workshop to fix things around the lake house. Seems like you had one of just about everything. And we keep finding little notes like the one written on a stud in the garage about when the driveway was last sealed or the house stained. In fact we found the can of house stain you left for us, labeled by you, so we were able to paint that new fascia board to match.
And did you see I retired this month? I’m not sure how you reacted to that because I’m still pretty young.
Catching some shuteye.
I remember when we were kids how you’d come across us sitting around somewhere and you’d ask us what we were doing. We knew we better come up with something because if we didn’t you’d have some chore waiting. I was thinking about that this week when I spent two whole days doing absolutely nothing. That felt kind of uncomfortable. I guess I was expecting you to show up and ask me what I was doing. Napping never seemed like a good answer in those days, but I’m hoping you understand. I’m thinking you probably do.
And remember how you used to read the Sunday comics to us, even when we were old enough to read them ourselves?
Once upon a time…
You read a lot of stuff to us, guess that’s how I turned into a reader. And a story teller. I wouldn’t mind hearing you tell one of your stories one more time now. We sure laughed around the dinner table a lot growing up didn’t we? Back then I didn’t know all families weren’t like that. I just figured laughing until our sides hurt and the tears ran down our faces was typical at dinner tables across the country. Turns out not to be true, but I’m glad it was that way at our house.
Remember all those family portraits we took? How we’d gather in one spot, get ourselves all arranged, and then you’d set the timer on the camera and rush back to get into position before it went off? How so often it wouldn’t go off at all and you’d go back to figure out why, and then it would flash? How we used to laugh.
Oops!
This is one of my favorite pictures. Not because it was perfect, or we were perfect but because of the laughter. Even though half of us were sick with the flu that day we couldn’t help but laugh because this was just so typical of us.
Anyway, I guess I could go on, turn this into a long eloquent thank you speech, but you were never so much about long speeches. You were more about doing. Judging from the photos and notes on Facebook (do they have Facebook in heaven?) there are an awful lot of very special dads up there with you. I was thinking maybe you could organize a dad’s club of some kind, maybe go around and fix stuff for people. But then again, there’s probably not a lot of stuff that needs fixing there.
So I guess you’ve earned a nap. The best you can do is watch over all of us and give us a sign now and then that you’re around. Maybe point us in the right direction when we’re looking for something in your workshop.
You taught us good Dad and we’re getting by, all of us, day by day. But it sure is hard.
Love,
Your Kids
1990
Because I think we all need to take a breath and see something beautiful…
…because even in the midst of evil and pain there are still beautiful things.
Because there is hope.
Always.
Hope blooms
Beauty at the end of an ugly day.
Conflicted isn’t even the right word for how I feel today. Maybe there is no word that accurately reflects my feelings, and perhaps the feelings of a good portion of the American population today. But I like to think I’d recognize the right word if I saw it.
I thought, for a moment, that I recognized it in President Obama’s statement when he paused and said that at some point we’d have to address how someone who wanted to do harm could so easily obtain a gun. There was anger there, and I too felt anger. But in an instant I knew that anger wasn’t the complete feeling. This time the gun was obtained legally by the father and given as a gift to his son, the shooter. I don’t know how gun control laws would have changed that.
Maybe the feeling was intense sadness. Not personal grief, nothing like the families in Charleston are going through now, but still intense sadness. And a feeling of familiarity because we’ve seen this before. And it all seems so senseless, so hopeless.
Maybe that’s it; maybe what I’ve been feeling all day is a hopelessness. There seems no solution. The 24 hour news talks about race relations and how it’s so much worse now than it was when the President was elected in 2008. How hate seems to be so much more blatant.
Still I circle back to the issue of guns. I’m no proponent of guns. I don’t have any experience with them, and frankly they scare me. But I agree that people have a right to have a gun. And I agree that it’s hard to tell when a person is carrying evil or craziness or a combination inside themselves. This shooter exhibted signs, the news says, signs someone should have noticed.
Yet his father gave him a gun for his birthday.
I don’t know who is more crazy, the young man who committed the unthinkable last night, or the father who didn’t pay attention to the signs. The combination was lethal.
We need to open a dialog about guns and mental health. But if this country could not make progress on settling gun control or mental health issues after the 2012 massacre of more than two dozen innocent people in Sandy Hook what makes us think that we can have a relevant discussion now? When will it be bad enough for us to recognize that we have to sit down, throw out the politics, and talk.
So I’m back to anger. Maybe that’s what we all need to feel. Anger that it was so easy for the shooter to get a gun, so easy for him to kill innocents. Anger that we don’t have adequate mental health programs. Anger that we continue to cry and rant but don’t resolve. Anger that people’s lives are being lost while the politicians use this and other similar tragedies to support their own, preexisting stances which are bought and paid for by special interests.
Anger tinged with intense sadness, shadowed with hopelessness. That’s what I feel as the sun sets on a long and tragic day. How about you? What dialog are you willing to start or become involved in? What word accurately describes your feelings about all of this?
Let’s talk about it.
Do you know what these are?
Deep in the basement these wait for their season; one filled with snow drifts and cold. But that’s a long way away. I hope.
You can see other interpretations of off-season at the original post. Or check out a couple of my favorites here, here and here.
Dogwood in morning.
Two weeks into retirement and I find myself continually confused. In a good way.
I don’t wear a watch and since I’m not sitting at my desk with a computer monitor and phone, both declaring the time, I have no idea as the day progresses what time it is.
Turns out it doesn’t matter.
I go to bed when I’m sleepy and Katie-girl gets me up in the morning when she’s not, generally earlier than I’d wake on my own. But that’s no problem, we go about her business and then go back to bed. Or not.
It really doesn’t matter.
Peony in pink.
I don’t know what day it is either. I suppose that will become more of a problem when I schedule appointments or volunteer for something. Or set a deadline for a some project.
But at the moment it doesn’t matter.
Predictably, the good intentions I had for retirement — going out for a walk every morning, spending an hour a day weeding flower beds hasn’t materialized. It’s rained you know.
Excuses, excuses.
Damp poppy
But the good news is that in retirement there’s always another morning. Nothing has to get done today, there’s time tomorrow. And the next tomorrow.
Which still surprises me. And leads to naps in the middle of the day.
The definition of retirement turns out to be time.
What a luxury.
Clematis center
Change Is Hard 