Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Category Archives: winter


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Stress relief

Stress seems to be hovering over me like that dark cloud that follows cartoon characters.  Between Katie’s surgery and her cone of shame, my shoulder which is requiring physical therapy three times a week, and our Aunt’s move to a nursing home, it feels like the days are filled with concerns and difficult decisions.

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Sometimes it feels a bit overwhelming.

I don’t remembered even noticing the sky the past few weeks, but as I left the house yesterday  the clouds struck me as kind of pretty.  The weather was changing fast, the wind blowing the clouds around and the sun popping out for brief moments of brilliant light which moved like a spotlight across the yard.

Grabbing my camera I knew I didn’t have time to go far before the sky would be totally cloud covered and we’d be sunk once again into the grey that is often  a Michigan December afternoon.  I headed toward the closest wide open country around here, not sure what I’d find, but hopeful.

And I was right.  Barns, clouds, fields, all pretty in the changing light.

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I haven’t been on a barn hunt in months….maybe even a year.  It seems fitting that I get one more mini adventure in this year and that it revolve around barns.

 

And a church.

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I was only out there an hour, and the weight of the camera made my shoulder ache, but it was wonderful.  Recent problems fell away and it was just me chasing the light through crisp air and skies filled with heavy navy clouds.

I guess it’s worth remembering to do something you love as often as possible.  It helps to deal with all the other stuff if you give yourself a break now and then.

 

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Happy New Year everybody!  May we all work through the problems that will inevitably come along, and may we balance those out with moments of pure joy doing the things that make us happiest.

 

 

 

 


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So easy to forget

You know how we’ve all been complaining about the s*** and how brutal this winter was?  Well I agree, it was brutal…but tonight I was looking through some old pictures for another project and I came across these:

Which were taken April 6, 2009.

So I’m thinking that sometimes we just forget that winter is winter and probably one is like the other and maybe, since we’re not in the middle of a blizzard right now, we should just be happy.

So I am.

 

 


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My day

I was thinking that having a blog that wouldn’t upload pictures might be, in a strange way, a good thing.  That it would force me to concentrate on words rather than relying on photos to tell my story.  And I even had a couple of thoughts I wanted to write about.

But another busy day at work has me whipped.  So I’m falling back on the photos to tell you all about it.

It started with the usual commute into the sun.  But it’s always good to have sunshine so I didn’t mind.  After a crazy  9 hours I left work to find it was snowing!

What’s with that?  Is this not the end of March?  Didn’t that Groundhog Phil guy predict that this year we were NOT going to have 6 more weeks of winter?  Wasn’t that sometime at the beginning of February?  I just don’t get it.

Once home we were sitting around eating some homemade Tuscan soup when Katie alerted us to events outside.

“There are deer out in my yard Mama!  Come see!  Come see!”

We’ve had four or five deer hanging around for a couple of weeks.  Tonight there were at least a dozen.

And most of them were eating bird seed under our bird feeder and drinking out of the birdbath.

These aren’t great photos because they’re taken from inside through the window with all sorts of reflections…but you get the idea.

It’s been an exciting evening here at the old King homestead.  We’re all still on guard, no rest for the Sheltie!

 


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Winter wonderland

Hopefully this is the last big snow of the season.  So with that in mind Katie and I went exploring this afternoon.  The trees and bushes, covered in wet yet fluffy snow, were beautiful.

We wandered around a small park in a nearby town.

Katie found her agility skills very useful today.  She got to “walk it” across dogwalks…

and “jump” across small creeks…

and  “climb it” up big hills.

We spent about an hour exploring…

…and when we got home the sun came out and is melting the snow!  YEA!!!


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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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Katie and the transformer

For several weeks we’ve had issues with electricity here.  Lights flicker, fade, then grow bright again.  It’s almost like we’re trying to read by candlelight.  The problem is intermittent…and of course on the many visits by Detroit Edison nothing was wrong.

Meanwhile Katie has gotten freaky on some of her trips outside to do her business.  Her Dad says she’ll ask to go out and prance to the path he’s dug for her in the snow.  She’ll run down to the end just like normal, then get wide-eyed and pull hard back to the house without getting her job done.  We were getting worried and considering whether or not she should visit the vet.

Then this week an Edison crew came out to check the transformer that sits on our property about 20 yards away from the end of Katie’s path.  Husband says that when they opened it up and began discussing what might be wrong it started to hiss and pop.  Seems we had a bad connection that created intermittent brownouts.

And while it was popping and hissing it was emitting a high pitched sound.  One we couldn’t hear but we think Katie could.  Because since the transformer has been fixed Katie is back on schedule, doing her jobs with no problem.  She is so happy now and so pleased with herself when she accomplishes her objective.  We’re pretty happy too because we’ve solved two problems at once.

Perhaps we should contract her out to Detroit Edison to help them figure out which transformers need work.  She’s our very own electrifying sheltie-girl.


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Did you say "snow?"

So how does 9.5 inches of snow change a person’s normal routine?  Pretty much in all ways you can imagine.

That’s how much snow they say we got around here, less than the predicted 10-15 inches…and we’ve cleaned up faster than they figured we would.  But still I am behind in my normal emails and blogging.

I spent Tuesday night at a hotel located within a mile of the office.  I couldn’t see my car that night, parked out behind the building, and I had no landmarks or other way to measure the accumulating snow.  But I could hear the wind howling all night so I wasn’t too surprised Wednesday morning to find my car encased in it’s own little snowdrift.

Too bad I didn’t have a camera.  But suffice it to say that I wasn’t going to be able to get in the car and drive to work.  And I didn’t have a shovel with me.  Silly me.  So I used my ice scraper and my feet to pull most of the snow away from the front of the car.   The mile drive was pretty slippery and I’m glad I didn’t have to drive further.

It snowed all afternoon Wednesday, and I worried about the drive home.  But the main roads had tracks in them and we all drove slow so it wasn’t too bad.  Thursday morning I left home extra early and found that once I got out to the main road the drive was fine.  So I ended up at work extra early.

All this driving, getting up early, leaving in the dark, coming home after dark takes its tole.  Wednesday I fell asleep on the sofa after my commute and slept all night.  I haven’t actually seen the snow here at home, haven’t been here in daylight yet.

Katie tells me it’s very deep.  Her Dad had to dig out several paths for her to do her jobs.  She wants to know when we get to go on another adventure.  I told her maybe tomorrow.

Or maybe I’ll just take a nap.