We went to see “Sweeney Todd” in Detroit this afternoon. Can’t say that I liked it. When we got out of the theater it was raining. We stopped along the way home for supper and by the time we went back out to the car it was snowing. A lot. All bets are off regarding spring.
I know I said weeks ago that I was done predicting spring. After all, it keeps getting cold and wet around here after a few days of teaser warmth. I’ve lived in Michigan all my life; you’d think I know this. But each year I find myself pulled into the excitement, think that winter is over, get all happy and such. And then it snows. Or freezing cold drizzle descends. Disappointed again.
So this year I declare myself free from the whole spring anticipation frenzy. Free to enjoy each day for what it is, whatever it is. Not going to look forward or become disappointed if things don’t go exactly right. Not going to be sucked in again. Not this year. No siree. Not me.
Hey! Did you see that the goldfinches are turning gold? In little bits and splotches the male feathers are turning from drab green to bright yellow. Must be it’s finally spring! WAIT! I didn’t say that!
Darn. Sucked in again. 🙂
Last night on “The Tonight” show Leno had as his first guest Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State. What a gracious and well spoken woman! Regardless of your politics you just had to respect how she voiced her opinions as well as her honesty when she said she didn’t miss her old job. At all. She likes waking up in the morning, reading the paper and “not having to do anything about anything I read.” Imagine that!
She’s planning on writing two books. Of course every Secretary of State writes a book after they leave office, so she’ll be working on that one. But when that’s finished she is going to write a book about her parents. She grew up in Birmingham AL and was friends with one of the three school girls that died in the 1963 church bombing. She said her parents didn’t make much money, but gave her every opportunity because they believed in education. I sort of teared up when she called them extraordinarily ordinary, because that’s the way I view my own parents. They didn’t make much money either, but they gave us the best they had, and they did the best they could. Wish everyone could have an extraordinarily ordinary childhood!
I’m looking forward to reading the book about her parents. Somehow I think it will be a lot like reading a book about my own.
Last night I had the pleasure of attending a concert put on by the University of Michigan’s Department of Musical Theatre. It was a 25th anniversary concert, with past graduates, many of whom have gone on to Broadway in New York City, both attending and performing. They also featured the soon to be graduating class of 2009 and others currently in the school.
The concert consisted of bits and pieces of the many musical productions the department has staged over the past 25 years. The voices were strong and the supporting University Symphonic Band was wonderful. There were funny moments from comic theater and poignant moments as well. Like when a large group was singing “What I Did for Love” and I realized how significant the lyrics were to their lives; that they didn’t regret anything in order to do the thing they loved, preform wonderful music to adoring audiences.
The concert was long, three and a half hours, but you could tell those past and present students that sat in the audience between their own brief appearances on the stage didn’t want to leave. It was a giant homecoming for them, a homecoming of such talent as was hard to believe. And it was a joy for those of us privileged to be able to sit and listen, to watch them glow.
Sometime during the evening it was said that the state of the arts is a good way to measure the state of humanity. Last night humanity soared.
To celebrate the first day of spring I bought some pansies. Though it’s only 34 degrees the sun is shining, and now I have these smiling faces on my doorstep. A pretty good combination, sunshine and flowering plants. I think I’ll sit a bit and enjoy.
Katie and I went to another fun match last night. It was a spur of the moment decision and we hadn’t practiced at all since last weekend. She was pretty unfocused just walking around waiting for our turn, and she wasn’t much more focused in the ring. I couldn’t get her to heel near me, she got distracted by a mirror along the wall that we walked toward, and off leash she was mostly out of line. She DID hold her sit and down even without me talking to her, though I did have to point at her twice.
The judge said that Katie isn’t ready to be off leash and that I should use a shoelace to get her to heal where she’s supposed to. I agree she doesn’t seem to know where she’s supposed to be. I think I need to start again with the “watch me” healing to get her back in position. Plus Katie sat twice at each halt. This is coming from me correcting her when she doesn’t sit close enough when we stop. Now it appears if she doesn’t get a treat she thinks she’s wrong and she scoots over. SIGH. Wonder how to fix that??
After our run I was talking to another lady. She told me that when you do obedience the dog can’t have any tags on, so I need to get another collar to use for obedience showings. No one ever said that before. And then she poked her finger into Katie’s side and said “and she’s FAT too!” which actually is something I’m beginning to notice, that Katie may be getting overweight with all the treats of training.
So all in all, not that successful a run, though it only cost $5.00 and I learned quite a bit. We have so much work to do! Sometimes it seems overwhelming! But the park near us is open again, the one where we worked every day last summer. So back to work we go!
Yesterday early evening I took Katie to another metro park for a walk. You might remember that we went out to my favorite park last week and walked while watching ducks and geese and swans. That park is quite a distance from home, so this time we went to a closer park. It’s not as fun to walk in because it’s mostly just fields and woods, and it’s over a mile before you even get into the woods! The first mile is down a BIG hill beside a hilly field. So that means on the way back the last mile will be up a very big hill.
It was very windy at the park during our walk. Katie started out excited and eager to get going.
We headed down the hill with her sniffing along the edge of the bike path, checking out each blade of grass. So we weren’t moving very fast. Eventually I got her moving, though when I asked her to “heel!” she looked at me like I was nuts. I totally forgot I was carrying chicken in a pouch. That probably would have motivated her!
We stopped at a bench, and thinking of the picture of Josh on the park bench after his grooming appointment I tried to get her to sit on it.
She didn’t like the bench at all, and this picture was taken just before she leaped off and asked me what the heck I thought I was doing! So we kept walking down the big hill. On our last long walk in the park she walked 3/4 of a mile out and 3/4 of a mile back to the car. So today I figured maybe we’d walk 1 mile out and 1 mile (up the big hill) back to the car. She seemed pretty agreeable to that. But at 9/10 of a mile (they have all the 10th’s marked off on the bike path) she sat down. Period. Wasn’t moving any further. In any direction. Great. We talked about it for awhile. I told her I couldn’t carry her 9/10 of a mile up a big hill. So we rested a bit, then turned around. She kept wanting to continue on the way we had been heading, but I wasn’t going to get us into any more trouble than we were already in. We stopped at every park bench to rest, and she conned me into carrying her for a couple of short spurts.
I took pictures along the way as something to do while we were resting.
Then with 1/2 a mile to go I remembered the CHICKEN! Oh yea. CHICKEN! I asked her to heel and showed her the chicken and guess what? All of the sudden she was full of energy! She trotted next to me like a perfect dog. Like the dogs I had seen walking with their people the way dogs are supposed to walk! She heeled almost perfectly the whole 1/2 mile back to the car. Even after I stopped giving her treats.
We got back to the car, she drank a little bit of water and we headed home where she fell asleep for the rest of the evening. I need to carry water and some sort of container with me when we go for walks this long. And remember not to lengthen our walks by too much too fast. Just like any athlete, she can get injured if we do too much too soon. Gotta think of her as my athlete in the family. Certainly isn’t me anymore!
This morning Katie and I went to our first obedience fun match! It was really a 4-H kids dog obedience match, but there was a ring for novice adults and their dogs, so a couple of friends from our last obedience class went with their Shepards, and I went with my Katie. It was less than 5 minutes from home, and it only cost $10, so how could I not go? I took my camera and one of the husbands took a few pictures, but the lighting was terrible, so what I share with you will be grainy. Still, it’s Katie in a ring doing WELL!
Katie did her heel pretty good… most of the errors were Mom, not dog…though she still doesn’t like to be right next to my leg. She sat instantly each time I halted, without me having to tell her, and she came like lightening on her recall. When I asked her to finish (going around me to sit on my left, which she does just beautifully at home) she walked around behind me but didn’t come sit next to me. Turns out there was something behind me against the wall that she had to investigate! They cleaned that up after our run. LOL! She did great on the sit stay (see picture above where she was distracted but didn’t break her sit!) and even made it all the way to the end of the 3 minute down stay!! That was the longest three minutes of our lives! She shifted a bit and I knew she was thinking about wandering, but she didn’t! GOOD GIRL!. We did two runs, the second off leash, and she did just as good that time too. I am so proud of her!
One of the friends brought her family which included two little girls, ages 7 and maybe 4 years old. They were instantly in love with Katie; she is so much smaller (and “fluffier!”) than their 8 month old Shepard. Katie isn’t used to kids and initially backed away (once all the way under the chair I was sitting on, I had to tell her “TUNNEL!” to get her to come back out to me!) each time they approached. But by the end of the morning Katie was playing with the older one, and tolerating the younger’s more intense petting. It was really good for her and I’m proud of her for that too.
And even better? There was no food allowed in the ring, so she did all that work without getting a treat! I gave her treats in between runs, and told her what a good dog she was. She snuggled in my lap for awhile, licked my face and seemed to have a good time. But I know she’s exhausted. How do I know that? Cause she’s SLEEPING! Or trying to. The Mom keeps taking pictures of her and that is so distracting to a girl needing her beauty sleep, don’t ya know.
We’re having a great weekend, sunny, warm…hope you are all well and having good weekends too!
Now we’re off to nap!
I spent today at a small rural library. I was the lone staff person there for most of the day, and in some respects I had been nervous about that. But I remembered the first time I worked the reference desk during grad school alone. I found out then that the world did not come to an end if I couldn’t answer something right then. (Check out my blog entries June 1 and June 2, 2007 where I talk about my first solo reference desk experience.) So today I figured that I’d be OK, and I was. In fact it was rather nice spending time in a building built in the 1800’s, with sun shining through the big dusty windows. Between patrons I had the opportunity to read a bit of my own book, something pretty much unheard of in the library world. We are always surrounded by books, but we never have time to read!
So, other than having a predominance (it seemed) of patrons whose last name started with “F” on this Friday, there really wasn’t anything too unusual. I got to see a whole day of library traffic. Early in the day were older patrons, with their stacks of books, some large type, some not, eager to get the latest best sellers, the next in their novel series for the weekend. There were few DVD movies checked out during the morning hours. As the day wore on more and more people stopped in to pick up movies; and as school let out the number of kids arriving increased, most wanting to use the computer and access the internet. The typical ebb and flow of a community library. The reality is that last night’s shift at another branch was much more weird then my experiences today. Last night we entertained ;ots of weird questions, computer printing issues, lost ID’s, new accounts, crazy requests. Must have been the moon.
So all in all, this was a rather nice Friday the 13th. Library work certainly is fun. Wish everyone could enjoy their work as much as I do! The world would be a happier place for sure.
Katie doesn’t get mail very often and never one with such a nice title! She was very excited while she helped me open her box:
And this is what we found!
…some really really nice things! Katie is most interested in the BIG doggie treat! Right now she is over in the kitchen staring longingly up at the counter where it reposes…she’ll get some of it tomorrow.
So THANK YOU Reilly! We (Katie and I) really appreciate you going to such work to send us our gift! You really went above and beyond!
Change Is Hard 