Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

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Reconstruction

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You know when you watch people on the news after a tornado or a hurricane has ripped their lives and homes to shreds,  how they look around with tears in their eyes, in shock at all the damage, but still grateful that they’re alive?  And how they always say that no matter how bad things are, regardless of their terrible loss, that they’re going to rebuild?   Well, I always wonder how they’re doing after the news trucks and reporters have gone on to other stories.  How they are months later when the really hard work of rebuilding is happening and no one is there to notice.

In a smaller, more personal and more human way I’ve witnessed something similar; the destruction of a lifestyle, of a commitment, of certainty.  The confusing disbelief, the crazy anger, the debilitating sadness;  the hopelessness, the exhaustion, the constant and wearing questions and lists.  And as time went on  I’ve also seen the hope shining through the tears, the growth of a human spirit, the strength  growing, and the rebuilding beginning.  Out of disaster, disorder and deconstruction, through heartache and hard work, comes a new life.  Here’s proof that reconstruction is possible; that’s it necessary and difficult, but satisfactory and joyous all at the same time.  Even when no one is watching.

Congratulations little sister on your reconstruction of a deconstructed life.  You’re on your way, no time to look back, the future is yours now.  Go with it.  I’m proud of you.

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Another tricky-T day!

Katie will, about 80% of the time, “roll over” when asked now.  Even if I’m not right there luring her over!  She only rolls to her right;  going left is not an option at this time!  I figured out how to make my camera shoot some “video” but try as I might I can’t get it loaded into this blog.  So here are a couple still photos.  You’ll have to use your imagination!

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Do I have to roll ALL the way over Mom?

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Oh, really?  Well OK.

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Geeze Mom, if I do all the work, the least you could do is get all of me in the picture!

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I still think “Shake” is more fun though.

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We’re going to try a new trick for next week…can’t tell you which though…cause we don’t know!

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Sad little garden

Last fall I said I wasn’t going to plant another vegetable garden.  Too much work I said, too little payback.  Could go to the neighborhood farmers’ market and get things cheap, support my local farmers, bla bla bla.  And this spring as usual I was sucked into the illusion that I would have better luck, an overflowing garden filled with lush foliage and vegetables.  Enough to share with the neighbors, to make it all worthwhile.

It’s mid July now.  If you squint at the garden you can sort of recall that once upon a time, many years ago it used to resemble a fruitful garden.  This year, however, it has not lived up to my expectations.

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And what appears to be an empty bed, toward the back on the right?  That was supposed to be my green beans.  I planted after Memorial Day and only three bean seeds germinated.  Then some sort of bug ate all the leaves off the three plants and they died.  I replanted just before I left for the 4th of July, and about a week later I had pretty little rows of green beans, about an inch high.  I was delighted.  Then something came and ate everything down to stubby little stems.  So.  No green beans.  I do have some beets and some chard though.

And three, maybe four tops tomatoes.  Not even many blossoms.  And something ate one of my tomatoes.  Already.

vegetable-garden-2009-009 vegetable-garden-2009-007It’s been a cold, wet summer.  We’ve had a couple of days into the 90’s but mostly highs in the 70’s.  So maybe it’s not my gardening skills.  But still.

On the other hand, the perennial garden seems to like the chilly weather.  The cone flowers are unstoppable of course, but  other things are pretty this year too.

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So next year I’m not doing a vegetable garden.  Going to go buy my produce at the farmers’ market.  Yep.  Not going to put all that work into three tomatoes, no siree.  Going to plant flowers in that space instead.  Or turf.  Maybe make it into a big ole rock garden.  Yep.   That’s what I’m going to do…bla bla bla.

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Here's Daisy

Essex and Deacon’s dad asked us to show you a picture of Daisy, our very first sheltie.  She was such a good girl when I met her while dating my husband.  She didn’t get on the furniture, sleep on the bed or bark too much.  She loved to fetch the tennis ball for as long as you were willing to throw it.  Then her daddy and I got married and she moved into my home.  I spoiled her and by the time she died a year or so later she  enjoyed snuggling on the bed with me whenever daddy wasn’t around.  She also learned about people food at my wedding shower when guests thought she was cute.  Poor girl, she was just getting used to being spoiled when she died of a blood illness.  No sheltie of ours since has had any concept about staying off the furniture or the bed.  Wonder why?  LOL!

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This is Daisy, running in our backyard shortly after we got married in 1990.  I haven’t found many pictures of her, though in this one she’s smiling, like she always did when running around the yard.

Then there’s Katie.  We’re still working on “roll over.”  She will now do it while I’m slightly away from her.  I don’t have to lure anymore.  But she’s sneaky.  While I was messing with the camera, trying to figure out how to make it convert to video, she got up on her hind legs and stole the rest of the “good” treats off of the desk.  Guess she was tired of having to work for them!  So far I have a few fuzzy still photos of her rolling over.  If I figure out how to use the video, then figure out how to upload it, you’ll see the trick next Tricky-T day!


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When we go to our favorite park

This evening, feeling bad about a trip to northern Michigan that I didn’t get to take today, I decided to compromise with a walk in my favorite park with my girl Katie.   It’s about a 30 minute drive; we arrived early evening.  It was 76 degrees and quite humid.  I carried treats and a water bottle, plus the camera and a doggie bag to pick up any deposits we might leave.  I felt like a bag lady.  Katie was quite impatient with all my preparations.  She was ready to go Go GO!

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As it was quite warm we stopped every quarter mile or so for a drink, but mostly she was just doing the “Sheltie prance” right down the bike path.

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Of course there was much sniffing along the way.

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And of course, lots of times I made her pose for me near beautiful places.

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Katie and I had quite a long discussion when we got to the 3/4 mile mark, but she wanted to keep going, so we turned around at the one mile mark.

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Which turned out to be a mistake.  We should have turned around at 3/4 of a mile.  Shortly after we started back Katie just stopped walking.  We goofed around for awhile, got a drink, sniffed some stuff, then she trotted off.  We rested each quarter on the way back too.  During one rest two sandhill cranes flew overhead, squawking madly.

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It took us more than an hour to walk the two miles.  The sun was going down by the time we got near the car.  Low evening light makes for pretty pictures.

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We got to watch a family of geese and a few ducks on the way back too!

Happy girl!

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puppy pictures

We were sorting out some boxes that have been packed away for a very long time.  In one of the boxes I found the “baby book” of  Bonnie, our previous sheltie who died at 15 years February of 2007.  I can’t resist showing you some pictures of her, and compare them to similar pictures of Katie.

This is one of my favorite pictures of Bonnie, investigating things when she was just a few months old.  Compare it to the picture of Katie, also a few months old and I can hardly tell them apart!

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And here’s the infamous, hang out in the dandelion field photo of each of them:

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And a couple of our favorite winter pictures.  I think Bonnie was just a year old in this photo, Katie is about the same age.

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I have been very blessed to have lived with three shelties in my lifetime, the first being Daisy  who came with my husband when we got married.  They have all been a joy!


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Yesterdays

It completely slipped my mind Saturday, when I was so busy with my list of things to do, that it was the fifth anniversary of the day Mom unexpectedly died.  I knew earlier in the week that Saturday was the anniversary, and I remembered again on Sunday while watching a special about the life of Walter Cronkite.  When they talked about his wife of 65 years I thought of Mom and Dad, married 52 years when she died.  If they had lived another 13 years they’d have been 88 and married 65 years.  I was doing the math when I realized that I had missed the anniversary.

I don’t think that not noticing the anniversary of Mom’s death, on the day itself, means I love her less, or mourn her loss less.  I choose to think that some healing has occurred, a bit of the overwhelming sting has lessened, gotten a bit more fuzzy around the edges.  Loosened it’s grip on me.  This is such an interesting experiment, this walk through grief, if it weren’t that I had to lose two of the most important people in the world.  It used to scare me when people whose parents had died many years ago told me they still missed their parents every day.  I was depressed to imagine living with such an intense pain every single day.  So it has been good to come to know that yes, you miss them every day, but it is a manageable pain, livable.

So today, as I’m baking bread I think of my Mom, and the last time she was in my kitchen.  I don’t have that loud wailing going on inside of me anymore.   It used to shriek “Moooooommmmmm!” constantly, interfering with thought and logic and every day tasks.  That’s subsided and in it’s place is just a warm, slightly sad, quiet place.  I can still conjure up the wailing, if I think about it too much and sometimes I do it just to prove to myself that I can, that she’s still right there so to speak.  But it’s not interfering so much, and the pain is a little softer, and I can say for sure now to other people who are just at the beginning of their loss that someday, in their own time, it will get better.

Another lesson I’ve learned from my mother.  It will get better.

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To do list

I have a whole day off, no work, no previous commitments.  It’s been awhile so I have a few things I need to get done today.  Here’s the list:

  • Go for a run.  It’s been too long since my last attempt and if you don’t keep up you have to start over …again and again.
  • Make some bread.  I have a cookbook from my library with some great bread receipes in it and a whole new concept about storing unbaked bread dough so that you can bake bread every evening if you wanted fresh for dinner.  The book will be due before I ever get to this unless I put it on “THE LIST.”
  • Wrap a shower gift.  The wedding shower is tomorrow.  I purchased the gift weeks ago but it sits unwrapped.  I need a card too.  Darn.  That means a trip to a store somewhere.  What was I thinking when I got the gift?  That I’d use a marker and just write her (and my) name on the box?
  • Vacuum.  Have dog.  And husband.  Haven’t vacuumed in maybe three weeks.  Enough said.
  • Laundry.  See above.
  • Finish reading “Reliable Wife” by Robert Goolrick.  It’s a very good book and it was due back to the library two days ago. I’m on page 169 of a 290 page book.  Being a librarian means you have no time to read all the good books you see coming and going.  It’s a job hazard.
  • Take the dog to the park.  She’s already whining and it’s just barely 7:00 a.m.  Obviously she hasn’t read “THE LIST” yet.
  • Help husband dig up the roots to a tree he removed so that we can plant something there that doesn’t have suckers that grow up through everything.  I’m hoping it rains because I don’t have time.
  • Weed, especially the vegetable garden.  My little stubby beans are being overrun by non-vegetable matter.
  • Update the resume and write a cover letter for a librarian position that is 59 miles away.  It’s become apparent that I will be on lay off, maybe next week, maybe the end of summer, certainly prior to the end of the fiscal year this fall.  So it’s time to start looking again.  Maybe I should do this first.  Well.  Right after the run.

Katie girl, you better hang on tight, Mama’s going to be moving fast today!

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Truck drivers can be heros too

On one of our busiest freeways last night a couple of truck drivers saved some lives, probably even their own.  Apparently a car, speeding around a curve  on I-75, drifted from it’s lane and crashed into a tanker truck which was hauling thousands of gallons of fuel.  A semi truck driver, seeing what was unfolding, moved out of the way to give the tanker more room.  If that driver hadn’t been paying attention and had collided with the tanker an explosion would have occurred immediately, probably killing both truck drivers and perhaps other people as well.  As it was, the tanker rolled over, its driver was able to get out of the cab and scramble up the embankment, the semi driver was able to stop and run from the area, and all the other drivers of cars were able to run away from the area as well.  The tanker exploded into a huge fire ball seconds later, flames shooting 100 feet into the air.  The heat from the fire caused a major overpass to collapse on top of the trucks.

Last night as I watched live footage of the flames everyone wondered how many fatalities there would be.  Firemen could see multiple vehicles  but the fire was so hot no one could check to see if any were occupied.   I went to bed wondering how many families would get that awful telephone call.  This morning a miracle shows its face.  No one died.  Only three minor injuries.  It’s amazing, and yet it isn’t.  People paying attention while they’re driving is the key, whether they’re truck or passenger vehicle drivers.

Last night a observant truck driver saved lives.   As I’m quick to criticize truckers who make errors that cost lives, it’s only fair to acknowledge that truck drivers can be heros too.

Here’s a link to the story:  http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/15/michigan.tanker.fire/index.html


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Another sweet picture book about a dog

Here’s another picture book that came across my desk this week.  It’s called “Always” and it’s written by Alison McGhee and illustrated by Pascal Lemaitre.  It’s the story of a little dog that is “the keeper of the castle.”  The pup talks about the things he does to keep the castle safe, like taming squirrels, ambushing enemies and “protecting the blanket.”  It’s a sweet book, and would be enjoyed by anyone that has a dog, because that’s exactly what our dogs do.  They protect our castles.

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