Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

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No adventure? REALLY?

Katie here.  I just wanted to tell you guys how disgusted I am with my Mama.  Yes.  My Mama.  She was home for three whole days and did we go on an adventure?  No we did not!  She sat around and said she was tired.  And told me to go lie down. 

Oh sure I got to go to doggie school and I love doing that.  I especially like running recalls and coming in crooked.  I like how that makes my Mama look all frustrated and stuff.  Makes me grin, but you can’t tell cause of all my fur.  And I get lots of attention from everyone else there.  Sort of makes up for being ignored at home.  Doesn’t make it totally OK though.

She says I should be happy that we camped out in our yard for two nights straight.   B.O.R.I.N.G!  I’ve graduated from the stupid back yard!  Didn’t I prove that when we went camping at a real campground?  There were lots more interesting sounds and smells there.  At our house it just smells like grass.  And sometimes a stupid bunny.  Geeze.  I’m not a baby anymore.  I want to go on a real adventure.

Face it Mama.  You let me down.  I think you’re getting too old for adventures.

Geeze Mama!

Geeze Mama!


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Remember the Augusts of your childhood?

Remember when you were a kid and August lasted forever?  Long lazy days of heat and fun?  I guess once adulthood shows up August loses its luster.  But for me this particular August has gone on forever.  Let me share why.

Parking lot mayhem

Parking lot mayhem

I work in a pretty big building; 4 floors, 3 wings.  Several hundred of us work here.  At the beginning of August they began redoing the parking lots and they started with the lot outside our wing.  As you can see it wasn’t just a resurface job.

There are three lots that surround the building, each lot will take about a month.  For the month of August we in our wing are parking offsite about a mile away.  We take shuttle vans back and forth to that lot which sounds worse than it turned out to be.  They have five vans, each seating 10 passengers running nonstop between our building and the lot especially in the morning and evenings, but also at lunch if you want to go to that sort of effort just to run out to eat.

We have watched the progress while trying to block out the constant pounding of heavy machines, the beeping of trucks backing up, the shake of our monitors and the floor under our feet.  In the early stages the noise and vibration was overwhelming.  It seemed like they were moving the dirt from here to there, then back again, and we saw no progress.   But just last week they started paving.  We were excited!

Harley paver

Harley paver

Our lot is finally finished…and I only have two more days of riding the shuttle back and forth.  After a long day it’s difficult to wait in line to catch a ride over to your car.  On the other hand, we’ve gotten to know people we never would have spent time talking to when we could park on site.  And people are actually laughing  and kidding each other on our 10 minute trip.

FINISHED!

FINISHED!

Heard tonight, from the back of the van:  “We should have sing-a-longs!  (starts singing…the wheels of the bus go round and round…) We could tape it and put it on YouTube!  From the front passenger seat “I have some duct tape in my purse.”  From the back of the bus while still singing she interrupts herself to say…”Tape as in video, not as in duct!”  From the front of the bus…”With your singing duct is more appropriate.”  The entire bus laughs as we unload for the long commute home.

That’s another story – my commute.  It used to be 40 minutes each way if no one made any mistakes that would cause problems.  Now days it’s more likely an hour.  A lot of the time, particularly on my trip home it looks like this.

Nothing but brake lights

Nothing but brake lights

And nights when there’s a big act at our local outdoor arena?  Forget about it.  Tonight Maroon 5 AND Kelly Clarkson are playing.  I didn’t even try to get home via the freeway.  It’s a big holiday weekend coming up too, and half our state will be on my freeway heading north for a last camping fling before summer winds down.

So my month of August has looked a lot like this:

On the road. Again.

On the road. Again.


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Combining some of my favorite things

This morning Katie and I ventured out to the garden looking for flowers to put in the beautiful vase that Truck Safety Coalition presented to me this past spring during our Sorrow to Strength conference.  (See?  Some of my favorite things; Katie, flowers and Truck Safety.  And you didn’t think I could find a way to combine them into one post!)

I haven’t been out in the garden for awhile and it was a beautiful, sunny, warm morning.  Katie immediately plopped down to enjoy the sun on her fur, closing her eyes.  I set about clipping blooms.  Pretty soon I had enough, and I called out for Katie to follow me back into the house.  She did, reluctantly leaving her sunshine to race me to the front porch, trailing her leash behind.

I got myself, the bucket full of water and flowers, the scissors and Katie inside the front door, closing it behind us with my hip.  The door didn’t close right, but I figured I’d come back and shut it the rest of the way after I got the flowers into the vase.  This is what the flowers looked like when I was finished:

Truck Safety vase with garden flowers

Truck Safety vase with garden flowers

Then I went back into the kitchen, cleaned up the water on the counter, put the bucket away, the scissors back in their drawer and commenced to make myself a peanut butter sandwich.  Katie barked – one yip.  I ignored her.  She barked again.  I called her to come and she didn’t.  She’s so stubborn.  She yipped again.  I told her to shhhhhhh as her dad was still sleeping.  She yipped back.  Darn it all….Katie…be quiet!

Then it struck me that she hadn’t been under my feet in the kitchen while I cut the flowers and put them in the beautiful vase.  Nor had she followed me into the dining room where I took my time photographing them.  And she wasn’t back in the kitchen with me even though I was making a sandwich.  Very odd.

So I went searching and there she was, out in the foyer at the end of her leash, the handle of the leash caught in the front door which had not closed correctly when I pushed it with my hip.  That I was going to go back and check after I put the flowers down.  That I forgot all about because I have no short term memory.

I won’t tell you what Katie said when I started laughing as I released her from the leash.  I don’t think it’s printable.

You FORGOT me Mama?!?

You FORGOT me Mama?!?


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Watch the space station

Husband, Katie and I just came inside after spending about 5 minutes out in the yard staring at the sky.  He has a NASA app on his I phone that alerts him when there’s the potential to see the space station going by overhead.

It’s the coolest thing.  You can find a list of when it will be overhead in your neck of the woods, even without an app, by checking out this NASA website.  There’s an alert on that site too, I don’t know how that one works…but if you have an I phone or  clone odds are you can find the app my husband uses to alert us shortly before the space station flies overhead.

Often this summer he has announced “space shuttle alert!” and we rush outside.  We’ve seen some pretty spectacular flights.  Earlier this week it was right over our heads.  Made me want to wave, because certainly if we can see them, they can see us!  Right?

What’s truly amazing to me is to know that a few minutes, sometimes moments, before we see it it will be flying over a faraway state, say Idaho..and a minute or two after it’s above us it’s out over the Atlantic.  Amazing.

Check it out.  Even if you don’t live out in the country I bet you can see the space station.  It’s a bright clear white…like a big star…but moving, depending on the angle, pretty fast.  If you’ve got kids, wake them up and go outside.  Watching the space station is a family friendly activity.

Can’t think of a nicer way to spend 2 or 3 minutes on a warm summer night.


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Frying pan musings

I woke this morning to remnants of a dream floating almost out of reach.  My mom was in the dream, along with me and someone else I can’t quite place.  We were talking about modern  kitchen tools.  Specifically the discussion centered on how the latest electric frying pan had a searing function to keep meat juicy. Trust me I have no idea how that would work in a frying pan or why my brain came up with this concept.

In my dream I recalled my mom’s electric frying pan, the one she took with us when we camped, the old pan without a nonstick surface that had to be scrubbed after each use.  I asked Mom if it had any special features, and whether I could read the manual.  “A manual” she exclaimed, “a manual?  You’re kidding right?  I’ve had that old frying pan for over twenty years.  If there ever was a manual I have no idea where it is now.”

As I began to wake from the dream I thought about my own electric frying pan, newer, with a surface that keeps the worst burned food from sticking.  And I realize that in twenty years I won’t know whether there had ever been a manual either; in fact I probably won’t even know where the frying pan is.  I woke doing the math and was startled.  In twenty years I will be older than my mother ever was.  Huh.  That’s an odd concept – to be older than my mom.   It took me a few minutes to digest.

Two weekends ago I went to a wedding that happened to be on my mom’s birthday.  I was sitting next to a college roommate at the reception, a woman I’ve known for over thirty years.  She mentioned that it was her mom’s birthday.  I was incredulous.  All these years we never realized our mothers shared a birthday.

Country wedding.

Country wedding.

So I’ve been missing my mom and I guess this dream was a way for us to have a visit of sorts, though I would choose something more interesting than an electric frying pan to discuss if I ever had the chance to talk with her.  I think.  On the other hand that frying pan held good memories.

This morning I lay in bed for a few extra seconds, remembering.  Then I hugged the dog and began to get ready for another day.  Tonight maybe I’ll make dinner in my electric frying pan.

And talk to my mom about the old days.

First time motherhood.

First time motherhood.


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Camping experiment results

Arriving

Arriving

As many of you know Katie-girl and I enjoy sleeping out in the backyard on warm (and sometimes not so warm) summer nights.  If there’s no rain predicted we leave the rain fly off the tent and watch the stars until we fall asleep.  I’d like to do more camping with her, further from home but she’s a Sheltie and Shelties bark which made me wonder about how she’d behave in a campground.  So I booked a camping site at a local KOA, one located only one exit up the road.  And last night we went camping for real with a backup plan of scooping her up and heading home if she barked too much at night.

This is my campsite!

This is my campsite!

Turns out she doesn’t mind being in a tiny campsite right next to other people (and their dogs) at all.  She’s interested, but not particularly offended by their presence.  She watched them until it got dark and then she settled down with a sigh on her pillows in front of her window and went to sleep.  During the night she got up a few times and settled somewhere new, sometimes up on the air mattress with me, sometimes somewhere else in the tent, but she’s always been a dog that sleeps in multiple places during any one night.

Watching the neighbor's campfire.

Watching the neighbor’s campfire.

She woke me around midnight with a series of soft yips but I don’t know what bothered her.  Maybe she just woke up in a strange place and was confused.  I tickled her tummy and we both went right back to sleep.  She barked about 4:45 a.m. but it turns out the next door camper was out with his dog, whose tags were jangling and he was coughing himself.  She had to let him know he was infringing on her space.  I told her ‘no bark’ once and patted her head and she settled back down with another sigh for an hour or so of sleep.

And then it was 6 a.m. and she was UP!  Want to get up now Mama?

Hey Mama! You awake?

Hey Mama! You awake?

Huh?  How about now Mama?  I really do have to gooooo!

We went out and found a good place, then went back to bed for another hour…when many people in the campground were up including neighbors on both sides of us, so we got up, packed up and went home.

Sheltie sized window. Perfect.

Sheltie sized window. Perfect.

She was a very very good dog.  I’d go camping with her again no problem.  Not at this particular campground which was crowded and noisy and not near anything interesting.  But for this experiment it was exactly what I needed; lots of people, lots of dogs, lots of noisy cars…radios, TVs, bikes, you name it.  She wasn’t distressed by anything other than an early morning walk by the neighbor dog dangerously close to her bed.  Cant fault her on that.

I think she’s a natural camper!

Can we do it again soon Mama?

Can we do it again soon Mama?