Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.


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Attention all WordPress users

I’m going to need a little help.  I’ve been trying, admittedly sporadically, to get this blog setup finished.  I’m trying to get my blogroll to appear on the right.  As you can clearly see the list of blogs I follow only indicates a WordPress blog.  Which, by the way, I don’t follow.

I have a lot of your blogs all lined up on my links page, and I’ve moved the little widget thingy over to the right side bar place.  Which is how the “blogs I follow” title showed up.  But obviously that title is not connected to my list of links.

I tried to study the WordPress link that does show up there, to see what was different about it than the rest of the links I have ready and waiting to go…but don’t see anything.

I think this is the limit of my computer tech abilities.  So all of you out there that work with WordPress…if you have any hints I’d appreciate it.   I know someone out there will know how to do this.  And that it’s probably something stupidly simple.

Katie says “Please help my mama, as she spends all her spare time, and she has so little of that, working on this stupid blog.  She should be spending it playing with me!”


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Nothing to say

Today on the 11th anniversary of the attack on America I find I have no cohesive thoughts.  Yet I can not let the day go by without saying something.  Maybe it’s a day for each of us to have our own thoughts and our own memories. Surely this day is not as difficult for those of us who lost no immediate family members, no close friends, no acquaintances as it is for those who did.  But we were all changed that day.

We all lost some of our complacency, some of our tenacity, our feeling of being immune to the sort of hate we’d all seen on TV in news reports from some other part of the world.  We lost that safe feeling.  But only for a moment.  Because even as the second plane hit, before we realized the magnitude of what was happening, we were already gathering ourselves.  I remember telling my staff that “they might be able to kill some of us, but they can’t get us all.”  And reassuring them that we were safe there at work, encouraging them to check on their family and friends, letting them hang together is a quiet group gaining comfort and strength from each other.

We all changed that day, and change is hard.  But not so hard that we can’t all take a moment to remember those whose lives changed the most; the family and friends of the almost 3000 people that died.  And especially those 3000 people themselves.  For them, change was the most profound.

We are strong.  And we will never forget.


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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…

Drumming up the excitment.

..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!


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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!


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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.