Got treats?
Mishmash Monday
Twenty-two years ago
Look how young! And thin!
Sisters
The folks.
Just yesterday I swear. Yet when I think of all that has happened since….it was a lifetime ago.
The Crimness of it all
I finished this post on my old blog moments before my server crashed a couple of weeks ago. The old blog was up for a couple of hours Friday and I copied this from the drafts because I know at least one of you has been waiting to hear about the race. So here goes!
The last Saturday of August was the 36th running of the Crim Festival of Races in Flint Michigan. It’s a big race, with thousands of runners, walkers and wheelers. It brings in big name runners from all over, and it’s a spectacle to watch and even more fun if you get to participate.
This year I walked the 8K (5 miles)…though I was nostalgic as I watched friends head off for the 10 mile start, a race I have done many times.
Heading off for 10 miles of hills and heat.
My race didn’t start for an hour and forty-five minutes after the 10 milers left, and rather than stand around I went back to the car and read a book. That saved my feet which was a good thing. Because by the time we set off on our race the sun was high in the sky and it was HOT HOT HOT!
We start out on our own 5 miles.
As usual, this race was well organized and had lots of entertainment. From the drum group that set the cadence at the beginning of the walk…
..to the young band in the parking lot singing “GO BABY GO!”….
GO! GO! GO!
….the woman at the top of three Bradley Hills singing “I never promised you a rose garden…”
No roses were found on the Bradley Hills.
…and the preacher along the way that told us….
Run faster!
“You all are gonna have to step it up if you’re gonna catch up to those Kenyans!” in reference to the lead runners who had finished long before we left the start line.
All along the way we had entertainment and support from both sides of the road. Volunteers were offering water, in cups…
Grab some water!
…and from cooling hoses.
Enjoy the shower!
My feet were killing me…but there was a lot of fun distractions…
Girls cheering for us.
…and inspiration.
Inspirational…but a lie.
I’m really glad I did it. Now I have to figure out what is going on with my feet so that I can start training for next year. I really want to do the ten miles on the last Saturday in August next summer.
Because I’m lucky enough to be able to.
Finally on the bricks..almost at the finish line!
Overwhelming stress…or the story of the jello failure
Have you ever had an hour or a day or a week when you need to do too many things? When you should work with multiple lists to remind you of tasks to be done? But because you’re too stressed to make the lists you muddle along doing the best you can? Sometimes things don’t turn out so well.
You know what jello is, right? That wiggly insanely colored not food thing. I was supposed to make it last night before I went to bed. I promised to make it last night before I went to bed. But I went to bed without thinking about jello. The neon food never entered my mind.
Even this morning as I was getting ready for work I didn’t think about my promise. Until I pulled the cereal box out of the pantry. And there it was. The little box staring accusingly up at me. The box of jello dust. Waiting for the boiling water. Waiting for me to fulfill the promise.
I put breakfast on hold and set the kettle on the stove. Water takes a long time to boil when you’re in a hurry but I didn’t use that time to read the directions. That would have entailed finding my glasses, and after all this was jello. Who needs directions?
So I boiled the water, poured out one cup of the steaming liquid and stirred it into the jello fixings until it was clear. I knew that the little box made four servings, so I poured it into four little custard cups, each cup not even half full. Hmmmm, I thought. That’s odd. I remember the servings being bigger than this when I was a kid. But when was the last time I actually made jello and poured it into little cups? So I put them in the refrigerator and set about making my breakfast.
But something kept nudging my brain. How is it that a small box of jello is supposed to make four 1/2 cup servings and what I had looked like so much less? How come. How come.
WAIT! Where was that box? Where were my glasses?
The directions say one cup of boiling water….and one cup of COLD water! AHHHHHH I could double my output if I followed the directions! Isn’t that just like life.
I grabbed the four pathetic custard cups of jello out of the fridge, poured them back into the bowl, added the cold water, stirred. And I laughed quietly, assuring myself that I’d never tell anyone about my failed jello project. But I’m telling you.
Keep it under your hat, OK?
Don’t let the stress make you crazy!
Embracing fall
It was hard to let August go, to feel it slip away. I tried to make it stay longer but it was like hugging jello. The more I held on the faster it slid away from me. It seems August fled from most of us; everywhere I hear people exclaiming how quickly the first days of September have arrived.
I don’t know why I struggled so much with the loss of summer this year. It’s not as though I have children heading to school so I can’t say that I’m pensive about them growing up. And I’m not a school employee heading back either. My work at the bank is the same regardless of the month at the top of the wall calendar.
It’s not that I truly love hot weather, or pulling weeds, or watering, or watching trees we planted two years ago struggle. My garden produced a handful of green beans and two or three tomatoes. That’s it. We bought most of our produce from the farmers’ market. Our grass was brown for weeks on end and so prickly that even the dog didn’t want to walk on it.
Maybe it’s just that I love the long days and the evenings spent on the deck reading or watching the birds. But I can still do that for awhile as we head into autumn. Maybe it’s just the dread of the dark mornings heading to work followed by the dark commute home. Maybe it’s just the thought of slippery roads, downed power lines, or quick trips out with the dog that require layers of clothes and big boots to be dragged from the closet and worn so that she can prance through the snow to find a perfect spot.
Regardless of why it was so hard for me to let August go this year today I decided to embrace the fall. I went for my lunch walk through the neighborhood and saw maple leaves turning red and yellow and orange. Not all over mind you, just here and there. Hickory nuts had fallen to the sidewalk and asters were in bloom. People with gardens more successful than mine had ripe tomatoes waiting to be picked, and miles and miles of vine covering zucchinis as big as footballs. Children were out on the playground, swinging high or chasing a big rubber ball. The sun shone down and warmed us all.
I admit I was sad to see August go but September has been beautiful so far. I think I’m looking forward to the change.
Change doesn’t always have to be hard.
Wordless Wednesday
Mishmash Monday
Get that sock Katie!
Katie says – I went camping with my Mama
This is my big tent.
Katie here! Mama says she got a new blog! And it took her forever to let me on. Yes it did. A whole week! So anyway…I haven’t been to my school in like THREE WEEKS! Mama has been having adventures of her own and I got left behind at a kennel! NOT FAIR Mama! So I told her, yes I did, I told her she better shape up or I was going to go find a better Mama. One who took my on adventures! And did fun things with me! And played with me all the time! That is not too much to expect, me being a princess and all. No it is not.
And do you know what my Mama did? She put up the BIG TENT! We got to go camping!!!
Nothing but sky and trees.
She didn’t put the rain flap on because she said it would be like sleeping under the stars and it was! It was wonderful! Ok, there weren’t any stars because it was cloudy…but there wasn’t any rain either, so Mama and I slept really good! I slept upside down most of the night on my pile of pillows. Hey! Let me show you around my tent!
Come one in! It’s a little messy right now because Mama hasn’t made the bed yet. You know how Mama is.
Come on in, there’s room for all of us!
Of course my spot would be right here, on the blown up bed with my own personal window. And the good pillow of course.
My favorite spot.
Oh! Mama says I have to get OFF the bed. Geesh. OK, it’s true this tent has a little window just for me. And that Mama put lots of pillows for me next to it. I guess it’s just as good.
Yep this window is pretty sweet.
See? It just perfect for me!
Those tent people sure know how to please a dog!
I didn’t want to go back in the house this morning. I’d rather stay outside and play, take a nap in my tent, then play some more. Oh wait. Did you say that my breakfast was inside? Coming Mama!
Did you say SUPPER?!
Mama says we can camp out again tonight! I can not WAIT! But I gotta get a nap in first. Adventures are so exhausting.
Searching for the ends of the earth
The ends of the earth at Point Pelee in Canada.
Karma continues to challenge us with photo hunts. She gave us extra time to find our own personal ‘ends of the earth’ and it’s a good thing she did because here I am coming in at the last second with my choices. (Make sure you click on the photos to get a better view.)
The inspiration for this hunt came from our trip to Point Pelee in Canada earlier this summer. Point Pelee is a piece of land jutting out into Lake Ontario. From the sky it looks like a sharp edged triangle but when you’re there it feels like a very small version of Cape Horn, South America, with waves come toward it from two directions.
While we were in Canada we also visited a more famous location – Niagara Falls – where I had another ‘ends of the earth’ experience as we stood just at the edge of the falls, looking down at the Maid of the Mist tourist boat.
The ends of the earth at Niagara Falls.
Traveling to another Great Lake two years ago we explored Lake Huron, and at one point walked through tall marsh grass, our feet getting more and more wet as we got closer to the lake.
Looking for the ends of the earth.
It was easier going at Tawas Point State Park where the ends of the earth was more evident.
The very ends of the earth at Tawas.
But since Karma’s challenge I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled for some ends of the earth photo opportunities closer to home. It wasn’t easy without being near a large body of water.
You can see the ends of the earth just past that last stand of trees.
Or maybe the ends of the earth are even closer to home. Maybe right down at the end of our road?
Can you get to the ends of the earth from here?
But in the end I felt like I needed to find the ends of the earth in Northern Michigan, on my favorite lake, Lake Michigan. We gazed out over the lake from a platform built above the dunes at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park.
Extending the ends of the earth just a bit further.
And we traveled up to the very tip of Michigan’s little finger, the Leelanau Peninsula, to see the very ends of the earth, where someone had perfectly expressed my feelings about this part of the country.
I heart Lake Michigan.
I could go on and on talking about very special places where a person can experience beautiful ends of the earth. But it’s getting late and Karma’s deadline looms. Thank you once again Karma, for keeping me observant. And for giving me another excuse to travel, always on the lookout for something special to capture.
Can’t wait for next time!
Man, moon and hummingbird
Last weekend two things made me sad. I heard that Neil Armstrong died and so did one of my hummingbirds. Katie and I were sitting on the deck reading a book. Well. I was reading and she was napping. The hummingbirds were buzzing around, chasing each other away from the feeder. A female hovered right in front of my face and stared at me for a bit. I wasn’t sure how many hummers we had, they moved so fast; zipping through the trees, over the house, back again to the feeder.
When I got up to go back into the house Katie sniffed at what I thought was a leaf on the deck, but wasn’t particularly interested. I glanced over at the leaf and realized with a breaking heart that it was one of my hummingbirds. There was a tiny spot on the window, and the poor bird was lying dead on the deck. I was overwhelmed with grief out of proportion to my actual loss. I love watching my hummers at the feeder. They are there because I put the feeder there. This poor little female was dead because I put the feeder there.
I picked her up and stroked her soft feathers. She weighed nothing at all. But she was beautiful. The sun made her feathers glow, and I took her down the hill and put her on a nest of thistle fluff at the base of an oak tree along with a flower from the garden we passed. I wanted her feathers to glow with the last rays of the sun just a little longer. One last time.
I cried the whole time I mowed the yard.
When the sun slipped behind the trees I buried her, along with some flower petals and a bit of goldenrod, beneath our butterfly bush. That evening I sent her on her way and hoped she and Mr. Armstrong were both flying over the moon. The next day a male and a female hummingbird visited the feeder. I wonder if they miss her. I do.
Tonight as I watched the full moon swing up into the night sky I thought of them both. And I winked, just the way his family asked us to. God speed to you both Neil and my little one. God speed.
Change Is Hard 