Uncategorized | Change Is Hard

June 13, 2010
by dawnkinster 8 Comments

Ants, 38 seconds, and goal achieved.

This morning when Katie and I went out to do her business I noticed this.

It looked like my husband had spilled a bit of peat while he was planting trees yesterday. I didn’t think much about it. But it isn’t peat. Can you think what else it might be? Does a closer picture give you a better idea?

I didn’t think so. I’d need a close up lens on my little point and shoot camera for you to really see what this is.

It’s tiny tiny tiny red ants! I don’t know what they’re doing, but they seem intent on doing it together.

After Katie finished doing her business I went out for a 4 mile run/walk. I’m working back from an injury that occurred almost two years ago. It’s hard.

My rules for this run/walk were simple. Run a minute, walk a minute. I allowed myself to run longer than a minute if I felt good, but never less than a minute. And walks were never ever longer than a minute. Those of you that have done sits and downs in dog obedience know how long a minute can be. I have it from a very authoritative source (me) that 38 seconds feels like a minute. I glanced at my watch at least once every minute for 54 minutes during the run…and often the first glance showed that only 38 seconds had gone by when I thought for sure it had been at least a minute!

Aside from the normal red winged black birds that circled my head when I ran through the swamp I also got to see a swimming muskrat, and munching young groundhog, a couple of chipmunks scurrying across the road, a giant crow jeering (ahem..cheering) me on and a myriad of other birds flitting across the road in front of me.

The morning was misty, cooler than it’s been, gray skies. Just a touch of rain falling gently on the back of my neck. So peaceful. Except for my labored breathing. Four miles seemed longer than it did years ago. During mile 3 I began to realize that most of my energy was being expounded moving me up and down rather than efficiently moving me forward. I tried to lengthen my stride, an attempt to get home sooner rather than never. But as a car approached and I began to move off the white line of pavement that I’d been running on I realized it was taking me five steps just to get both feet on the shoulder. Obviously my stride hadn’t lengthened at all! LOL

Turning into my subdivision, 3/10 of a mile to go to my driveway, I was relieved but also hot and smelly. My right knee was beginning to twinge, and I was pretty sure I had a blister on my left little toe. But the mist was cool on my face, and I knew I was going to reach my goal. Eventually. I ran the last three minutes home, because it was downhill.

And because I could.

June 11, 2010
by dawnkinster 7 Comments

Lambie, the tunnel, and the park

Katie would like to explain to all of you how to play “Lambie in the Tunnel.” So, as interpreted from Katie-speak:

First you need a lambie. And a tunnel, cause you all live too far away to share mine. Not that I’m particularly good at sharing anyway. Wait! Mom! Edit that out!!

Then you get your human to throw lambie into the tunnel. You can get her (or him) to do this by standing in front of her (him) with lambie in your mouth and making your big brown eyes look pathetic, as if no one has EVER played with you in forever…or at least in the last ten minutes.

This is where it gets kind of theoretical, so listen up. You can either run around the tunnel to the other side, then run as fast as you can, scooping up lambie as you go through the tunnel, and drop it at your human’s feet. Or you can chase lambie into the tunnel from the same direction as your human threw it, scoop it up and run back to your human, either outside or inside the tunnel.

Or, and this is the best part, if you want to make your human feel really silly you can just look at her (or him) and stare as if it were beneath you to run through this silly tunnel, much less collect a lambie at the same time!

Then, after you retrieve the lambie a few times beg to go for a ride to the park!

After all, you deserve a park trip, given all that retrieving you’ve done.

Enjoy sitting in the shade and watching the little league kids play ball. Then resist totally when your human says it’s time to go home.

In this way you keep your human in line. This is very important, as you all know, to any Sheltie-girl ( or boy!).

June 10, 2010
by dawnkinster 4 Comments

A different dog

Remember last week when Katie shut down half way through the morning Rally class and about 20 minutes into the evening Agility class? How I was trying to figure out what happened…was it too much school in one day? The wrong food, or amount of food eaten prior to the second class? The heat? Me???

Today I didn’t take her to the morning Rally class, something I felt a bit sad about. I really want to try to get our second and third Novice Rally leg, and I need the classes (Katie doesn’t) to keep all those directional signs straight! I scheduled a mammogram during that time instead this morning, so I guess I was somewhat productive!

Then this afternoon, in between planning and planting trees, I fried up six boneless, skinless chicken thighs, with the intention of cutting one of them up as tonight’s “value” food to be used during agility class. Katie was very interested in the frying process, her little nose just wriggling. Plus, since she was so interested in the chicken she totally left her normal afternoon dinner alone, and eventually I just picked up the bowl and put it aside. She never really ate much at all prior to class.

We got to school early and walked around the building a bunch. Got all her business done, got her re-acclimated to the building. Initially she was a bit hesitant to go inside, but once there she seemed pretty OK.

And the best thing? We didn’t do any teeter tonight!!!! WHAHOOO!!! We started out with a series of jumps! Katie loves to jump. We did the broad jump and a bunch of regular jumps in a pattern. On our first time up I kept Katie on her leash and was telling the instructor that I wasn’t sure how Katie was going to do tonight, given last week, when all of the sudden I felt a tug from the leash and realized Katie was RUNNING toward the broad jump, the first in the series. I called over my should as I ran to catch up, “Well I guess she’s going to do just fine!” And she did.

The other half of the class, those with bigger dogs, was across the ring doing tunnels, weaves and the tire. It all looked complicated and when we got over there Katie and I went first, so we didn’t get to see anyone else attempt it. It was a curved red tunnel, then jump, then a double jump, then tire, then another curved (but blue) tunnel, then weaves then jump, then back through the red tunnel the other way.

Right.

I set Katie up in a sit in front of the entrance to the curving red tunnel and as soon as I got her leash off she was racing for that tunnel. She has a tunnel at home that seems to be permanently set up in the living room and we play all the time “chase the lambie” (her favorite squeeky toy) through the tunnel, so I guess that’s working! She burst out of the red tunnel, took the next two jumps and the tire at full speed and then totally balked at the blue tunnel in the corner. It was a dark corner without much light, and the tunnel was dark too. NO WAY, NOT GOING IN THERE! She actually turned away and jumped back through the tire, and back over two jumps to get away from me! LOL! We tried a few times, but no go, so we skipped the scary blue tunnel and did weaves and jumps and the fun red tunnel no problem!

The second time we got to run the course I ran on the other side (the outside edge of the curve) and we were going so fast she just sailed into the scary blue tunnel and I had to RUN really fast to beat her out the other side to get her into the weaves. She did the whole course no problem! WHOOO HOOOO!!!!!!!

Then the whole class got together and we put the two pieces together. We did the tunnels, tire stuff, then went back through the red tunnel and over to all the jumps. She even ran through the blue tunnel with me on the inside and I did a front cross after that to get her into the weaves. KATIE WAS PERFECT!!!!!!!! And grinning the entire time. She got a jackpot of chicken and cheese after that last run! Such a girl!!

So….was it the fact she hadn’t had school in a week? And no school that morning? Or was it the chicken thighs? Or was it that I tried to keep her excited and engaged the whole class and didn’t worry about much? Or was she just having a bad day last week?

Only the Sheltie knows.

June 5, 2010
by dawnkinster 10 Comments

A river, more peonies and…Shakespere?

My Friday afternoon began with a bit of canoeing in Ann Arbor on the Huron River with my Aunt B. We canoed from the canoe livery in town to just below the Barton Pond dam. They said it was two miles of river up to the dam, but it was really more like canoeing on a beautiful lake.

It’s been a fair number of years since I’ve been in a canoe for any length of time, and today my behind is letting me know that I sat for a good long time on a hard aluminum seat! I’m surprised my arms aren’t expressing their displeasure at the amount of work I forced out of them yesterday as well. Of course they may be waiting until I’m less suspecting. Like tomorrow.

The pond and river were wide and smooth most of our way up to the dam. On the way back a storm was coming in, the winds picked up and we had little white caps to maneuver. There was no stopping to rest aching arms, as the head wind would blow us further back up the river whenever we stopped paddling! It was a challenge that we won!

Later in the day we had a lovely picnic lunch at Nichols Arboretum in preparation for watching Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Nights Dreams” which is being done Thursdays through Sundays through the month of June. Here’s a link to the Ann Arbor Newspaper’s review which will also tell you a bit about how the play is done in this beautiful outdoor setting. For those of you in or near Ann Arbor, you really should go enjoy this event. It’s unique and wonderful and set in a place so beautiful you can hardly believe you’re lucky enough to be there.

We had a marvelous time. The play began in the peony garden, so I got to take more pictures of the beautiful flowers. They still look good, though some are not as beautiful as they were last weekend.

The audience gathered in chairs and on blankets along the hillside to watch the opening act; the setting the stage, as it were, of the love between Hermia and Lysander, and the arranged marriage Hermia’s father has made between her and Demetrius, and of Helena whose overwhelming love for Demetrius has been scorned.

After each scene the audience picks up and moves to a new “set” within the Arboretum. This makes the production fun, even for people who don’t love Shakespeare. Each setting seems perfect for the action that takes place there; the hapless couples become more and more confused wandering through the forest on that dream filled night.

The audience gets to see it up close and personal. The actors are so close that you can see facial expression, hear most of the words and watch the prat falls as they race up and down the hills of the Arb.

We enjoyed the fairies dance among the trees in the woods, listened to the magical music played by nymphs on the hillside, and laughed at the antics of the band of Pucks causing trouble on this midsummer evening.

And then it began to rain.

During the last minutes of the play the thunder rolled and the skies opened up. Rain poured down in buckets, the production was called for rain and we all ran for our cars. I haven’t been out in rain like this since I was a little girl. We got soaked.

But we laughed all the way back to the car.

June 4, 2010
by dawnkinster 5 Comments

Update

Thought you’d enjoy laughing with me. This morning Katie asked to go out and I figured she needed to “go.” So out we went, and she ran straight over to her mini teeter, jumped on it, ran to the other end, stood 2o2o and looked at me with expectant eyes. Lucky for me I had a few pieces of kibble in my pocket. Then she jumped off, turned and ran across it the other way and wouldn’t get off to go do her job. In fact I had to bribe her to come back inside! She was going to stand on that teeter till she got what she wanted!

She’s kinda stubborn.

May 30, 2010
by dawnkinster 8 Comments

Dreams

So do you dream? Do you remember them after you wake up? Are they in color? Some of my dreams stay with me through the day, some of them have stayed in my memory for years. I had one of those this morning that I’ll share, just because it was so odd.

Our family’s truck crash attorney J was driving me and all my siblings from NYC to Chicago in a van to attend some sort of conference. Before we left the city we were in a parking lot in a part of the city that was … well… let’s just say photogenic in a grubby and gritty kind of way. J is outside the van on the driver’s side talking to Jo the director of our nonprofit. My three siblings are scrunched into the back seat. I’m sitting in the front passenger seat, the door open, and trying to get my camera to turn on to take a picture of a building and the debris around it that actually are in some really beautiful colors, when a big and old cadillac convertible shows up, stuffed full of really big guys and they are mumbling about some white bxxxx taking pictures, and suddenly I’m feeling really threatened and I tell J to stop talking to Jo and lets get going.

“Good idea” says J and he gets in the van and we are pulling away, but now he’s talking on his cell phone, ordering something…and then we’re in a parking garage and there are all these groups of Broadway dancers practicing their routines, all in their spangly costumes, bright colors, lots of sequins, lots of high kicks etc and we’re trying to drive through and around several of these groups and I still can’t get my camera to work.. then we get near a stairwell and someone is waiting there. It’s a waitress with the lunch that J had ordered! There’s a hot dog wrapped up in a white paper napkin, and a styrofoam plate of chicken, just a drumstick and a breast, bone in, and something else on another paper plate, and a manhattan (drink) in a real glass! And it all gets handed to me along with a knife and fork also rolled in a white paper napkin.

I’m holding all this and Jeff is driving (we’re out on a road somewhere now) and I’m considering what to do with all this food, and especially the manhattan (which is a drink from WAY back in my college days!) and I tell J that he can’t have the drink because he’s driving and he said it was for ME because I seemed “a little stressed and needed to relax” so I had all the food back to my three siblings to split up, along with the one knife and fork and settle in for the trip sipping my drink.

Then we’re in a very crowded conference room and I’m glad there are so many people there. J says he’s going to start things off by playing a video that “insurance companies use to get you convinced of their side of the story.” And he starts this video and everyone (but me and my siblings) is on their feet yelling that “yea, that’s what they told me but that’s not what happened” and stuff like that. It’s very noisy and the four of us are just sitting at the tables watching.

I’m sitting next to P, one of my brothers, and my sister B comes up to our table and crouches on the other side and says, very earnestly, “Here’s an idea, what if for EVERY PENNY you have you pay 10 cents in taxes? Wouldn’t that help with the problem?” And P and I look at each other and I ask B, well where would you get the 10 cents if you only had a penny? And she gets very consternated and says that after the meeting she’ll explain it better, and goes back to her table. I look at P and wonder aloud if maybe she said it backward? That for every 10 cents we pay 1 cent? But that would just be a flat tax and that had already been discussed. Meanwhile the participants are still yelling at the video of insurance companies.

I’m pondering B’s tax solution, trying to figure out what she was talking about when Katie the dog shakes her dog tags, a sign that it’s morning, and time to get up and go outside.

So….what did you dream about last night?

May 26, 2010
by dawnkinster 5 Comments

Of rocks and people

Kathy, over at her blog Lake Superior Spirit connected me to Suzi at her blog Laundry Line Divine, who was putting together a day of photographing rocks. Yes. rocks. I immediately thought about all the wonderful rocks I photographed while I was in northern Michigan along the shores of a Great Lake. You can see some of those photographs here. (Scroll down to the March 23rd entry to see an example.)

But I suppose that using photos from weeks or months ago would be cheating. I think the whole point of this exercise is to head out and find something interesting that I might not have noticed before. Or maybe noticed before but not in the same light. Which brings me to the beginning of my search for rocks.

I was re digging the vegetable garden this morning and noticed the rocks I had used to mark beds last year. But they weren’t very pretty, or even particularly interesting.

So after the garden was dug I wandered around the yard, considering how I wanted to approach this “rock assignment.” We have rocks in our landscape out front. Most were brought in, so I don’t consider them part of the natural way of things. But one of them was from our own back yard, so it’s special. I used to sit on it when it was in the backyard, I called it my “contemplative rock” and was sad when it got moved to be incorporated into the garden wall. Though sometimes I still sit on it.

I felt like there must be other uses for rocks – other ways that people have incorporated rocks into their lives, so I set off on my bike to see what I could see; looking for the elusive rock that spoke to me. Lots of people use rocks around here, often to mark their lot lines, to line the road or to present the entrance of their driveways.

Sometimes light on stone was interesting.

But still I was in suburbia, and what I really wanted was something more rural. Say…a stone hedgerow in a farmer’s field. I headed out on more rural roads, peddling away, up and down hills, through mud…and then I caught a glimpse of something way back off the road.

Venturing up the little used track…

… I found this…

…which I recognize is not a rock…but wait! As I was wandering around taking pictures of this amazing structure I realized I was staring at the answer to my quest. How the original farmer used rocks…and in a beautiful and functional way. The foundation of this old barn was built from rocks, probably from the farmer’s own fields.

I never did find a fence row of rocks…but I’ll leave you with one photo of rocks that I love. I’m cheating in that I took this last fall. I can’t take credit for creating the rock sculpture, just for appreciating it.

Thanks for inviting me to play. It was interesting to think about the way people and rocks interrelate. And I’ve learned to appreciate the rocks right here at home, while remembering my favorite rocks from far away.

PS: This one is a cheater photo too..it’s from the Lighthouse at the tip of Leelanau Peninsula in northern Michigan. Another bit of evidence about man’s use of rocks throughout history.

May 22, 2010
by dawnkinster 7 Comments

The promised wood peony photos

I know I was going to show you this beautiful plant..then I got distracted with truck stuff. So…on a lighter note, look at this!

Wait a minute! That’s a picture of Katie! “So Mom, aren’t I prettier than some old flowering shrub?” Well, yes baby you are, but this post is supposed to be about the flower!

It’s about 3 feet tall, doesn’t get cut back like standard peonies, blooms earlier and is just stunning! This is the first year I’ve had it, I bought it with a friend last fall and wasn’t sure it would survive the snow and then this spring the nibbling of our local deer…but apparently none of that bothered it!

I am so pleased I think I’ll go buy another one! Now…back to our regularly scheduled Sheltie…

May 21, 2010
by dawnkinster 5 Comments

A new website for the Truck Safety Coalition

I was going to write today about my woody peony which is in bloom. It’s beautiful, and this is the first spring I’ve had it. But just moments ago I received an email from the Truck Safety Coalition that our new website is up. So of course I went to see.

Click here to see it.

I got caught up in the memorial photographs. Many of the more recent ones have little bios about the people that were killed. If you have a strong heart go there and look. The pictures are alphabetical and I only got as far as the C’s before I couldn’t see through the tears and had to stop. Maybe we should revamp the new website again so that this list flips back and forth, sometimes A-Z, sometimes Z-A…because I don’t think anyone will be able to look at all of them, and those at the back of the alphabet deserve our attention as well.

You can also listen to a few stories, short video clips of some of us talking about our losses. Tissues will be needed I’m afraid.
There’s a lot of important information on the site, and if you ever have anyone you know that needs us, just let us know. I hope you never do.

Dad’s last name was Badger, so I saw his picture among the memorials. It’s hard to see it there, he just shouldn’t have had to die that way.

Thanks for all your support when I ramble like this.

May 20, 2010
by dawnkinster 7 Comments

Backyard goofing off

Katie’s dad built her a few jumps, and sometimes we take the chute and/or the tunnel out to play. Last night, given the perfect weather, Katie and I couldn’t resist having a little agility fun in our own backyard.

Which way do I go Mom?