Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

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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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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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Heartbreaking

This morning we woke to ice covered roads.  Freeways everywhere were being closed because of crashes involving multiple cars and trucks.   I crept slowly all the way to work wondering why this winter has been so brutal; so many horrible commutes this year.

While driving I was listening to talk radio which was listing closed roads and crash sights.  I saw lots of cars in the ditch, but mostly just hung on to the wheel and kept moving slowly behind the car in front of me.

Thankfully I made it to work just fine, but lots of other people weren’t so lucky –  including the driver of a pickup truck that slid into and under the back of a semi.  Ironically just this week there has been national news about the rear guards of semis not being strong enough to deflect a vehicle; that they are giving way and people in cars are continuing to slide beneath the trucks.  It’s another thing we need to work on, along with side under ride deflectors.

Here’s the video about our roads and the truck crash.

While I was posting the information of today’s crash to the truck safety website I came across this story, which is even more heartbreaking because it involves two young boys who were in a car last August that was hit from behind by a trucker who fell asleep.  Their Mom was killed, both boys were seriously injured and  of the boys has brain damage. The father who was not in the car at the time of the crash is writing almost every day about how life is different now, about his new reality.  I could only read a few entries, some from the beginning last August, some from recently.

These events have steeled my resolve to keep working.   Sometimes I get mad, sometimes I’m just overwhelmed by it all.  Sometimes I’m confused about how to feel.  And sometimes I get tired and want to rest, to give up.  But these families remind me once again that we can’t rest yet.

Sorry to bring up the truck issue again, it just seems like the more I know the more I notice.

Be safe out there.


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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!


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The art of writing letters

Writing letters… is that something that disappeared in my mother’s time?  Have twitter, facebook, bloging and emails eliminated the time worn tradition of touching base through paper and a stamp?  Does instant automatically equal better?

I’ve been considering these issues because I used to love to write letters.  And I grew up in a letter writing household.  Though we lived only a hour away from my Grandmother, my Mom wrote a postcard to her every week.  Mom’s writing was tiny and got tinier as the space in the postcard began to fill up.  I remember her finishing the last sentence by running it up the edge of the postcard, and I used to wonder if my Grandma used a magnifying glass to read them.

In turn, many years later when my Mom lived in Alabama and I was still here in Michigan I restarted the tradition.  Bonnie the sheltie-girl and I would get up every Saturday and write Mom a letter, using a computer and regularly sized paper, which we hurried out to the mailbox so that the mailman would pick it up that morning and she’d have it by Wednesday.

We did this every week for years…until email happened along.  When we found the almost instant connection the letters dwindled.  Yet after her death I found all those letters I had sent bound together, safe in her desk.  Through my tears I recognized the value of a letter, the way you can touch them over and over, knowing they were touched by the person who took the time to send them to you.  They are tangible evidence of thoughtfulness and care and love.

So I was intrigued by a challenge presented by PJ on her blog Books in Northport.  She challenged all of us to slow down a bit and commit to mailing one letter a week to someone between now and Memorial Day in May.  It doesn’t have to be the same someone.  You can choose to mail a letter to someone different each week.  You can delight many people.

Like I was delighted this week when in the mail arrived a card from Bree, Reilly’s Mom.  She makes handmade cards which are lovely, and she sent one to me because she knew I would be a bit depressed by all the snow here after my wonderful week in sunny New Mexico.  Now that’s what I’m talking about.  The unexpected, the smile that comes in the mail, the realization that someone thought about you and took some time to send you something to tell you so.

Reilly’s Mom just had a contest to give away some of her artwork.  I’m hoping those that won the cards will use them to brighten someone’s day…one card at a time, one note at a time, one stamp at a time.

I’ve accepted PJ’s challenge and mailed my first letter to a friend I’ve been out of touch with last week.  This week I have someone else in mind.  When I think about it, there are a whole lot of people that I’d like to touch base with more often than the Christmas letter.

I bet if you think about it you have a whole list of people that would enjoy hearing from you too.  Why not join me in the challenge.  If you have time to spend 30 minutes watching TV during the week you have time to touch someone’s life, to bring a smile to a face, to let someone know they were thought of.

Pretty cool.  And thanks Bree!

(All cards photographed here are Bree’s artwork.)


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Sleepy puppy…and Reilly's game

Over at Reilly the CowSpot Dog’s blog there’s a contest brewing.  It’s especially designed for those of us with “zoomie” dogs.  You know the kind….they never slow down and it’s rare to catch them snoozing.  We have one such dog…and most of you have met her.  But getting a photo of her sleeping is not so easy.

Just when you think you’ve got that perfect shot…

…she opens those eyes.

You try again…

…but she always hears the camera as I turn it on.

Sometimes she sleeps upside down, like she did the first night she was with us…which is when I got the first photo above.  And even now she sleeps that way when she’s really comfortable.

But sometimes she’s more shy.

Once in awhile she falls asleep outside, even in the winter.

You might have noticed by now that she’s quite the pillow hog.  Which is why we call her a princess…as in the princess and the pea.

But mostly she’s just our silly girl.