Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.


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Celebrating

I celebrated the 4th down here in Alabama with family and friends.  And a whole lot of boating, swimming and eating.

When we were kids we lived on a small inland lake and always took our boat out to watch the fireworks the city was shooting off from the boat launch.  We’d pull into that bay and watch all the action directly overhead.  Sometimes bits of burned out fireworks would fall sizzling into the water nearby.  It was a wonderful way to spend a late evening, and I was always sad in later years that I  couldn’t watch fireworks with my family bobbing in a little boat, covered in bug spray, sweating slightly in the warm, humid Michigan night.

Well last year and again this year I got to watch fireworks from a boat filled with family and friends!

It’s just the best way to enjoy them.  Saturday night we were in my brother’s big boat on a big lake and along side of us are at least 1,000 other boats, bobbing peacefully in the evening sunset filled light.  As darkness sets in the crowd settled back and we all enjoyed the amazing colors and loud bangs of a first class firework show.  We munched on homemade salsa from my sister and smoked chicken tenders that my brother made.  What a life!

The next morning we took the boat out again, this time to watch the annual jet ski parade on the lake.  This year close to 50 jet skis, most decked out with flags and red, white and blue tinsel, gathered near an island, then took off in single file to run the entire circumference of the lake.

It was sort of heart stopping when they all took off, and in an odd sort of way it made you tear up when the long line of people proudly flying their flags roared past.

My sister was standing in the back of our boat playing patriotic songs on her bagpipe as they flew by and the jet ski drivers waved and grinned back at us.   I was grinning too, at the absurdity and beauty of it all.

After the last buzzing jet ski was long gone up the shoreline, we moseyed over to the “church island.”  It was, after all, Sunday the 4th, and there was going to be a preacher doing a church service there.  Every Sunday boats anchor off shore while a minister or preacher provide a service from the island.  This Sunday I listed while floating with my family in the cool lake water, boats bobbing all around, the sound of music and prayer filling the air.

Sunshine, flags, blue skies, music, good food, family.  Can’t think of anything else I need right now.

Well…maybe my husband and my Katie girl.


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The calm before the storm

Something woke me early this morning and the lake was beautiful.  Flat and calm, touched with the early morning sun – I had to run out and try to capture the peacefulness.

Of course last night I had thrown just about all my clothes in the washer, so everything was wet.  No problem, I’ll just scoot out in my pj’s, who’s to see?  It’s 6:30 in the morning, Alabama time.


The lake had that early morning stillness about it.  Nothing to break the reflections, soft insect and bird noises.  No people sounds.

The water looked so inviting, it made me want to run and jump off the dock.  But yet there was  something of a classical painting about it, and I didn’t want to disturb the quiet serenity.

All too soon the lake will be churning with weekenders and holiday visitors, and we won’t see this peacefulness for several days.  So I turned to tiptoe back to the house.  Then sprinted as I heard my neighbor bellow hello to a friend pulling up in their driveway.

Drats.  Hope my pjs looked like walking shorts!


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An afternoon on another lake

Yesterday I popped over to my other brother’s lake house.  It was a cloudy day, but when one is visiting a lake, one must take a boat ride!

We stopped at a friend of his who also lives on the lake (visiting by boat…how fun!) and got to meet her dog.  Such a cutie!

The clouds were dark and ominous, but it only sprinkled a little bit.

All in all, a refreshing afternoon out on the water!  Maybe the next time I visit I’ll take out his rowing scull.  But the lake would have to be a bit smoother for that!
Just another relaxing day in the south…


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Not in Michigan anymore

My trip south went well.   We loaded up the truck and off I went.

I took two days, stopped often and enjoyed the scenery.  First there were the flat farmlands of Ohio…

…then the hill country of Ohio’s southeastern edge. ..

…which is where I set up camp for the first night, on the banks of Lake Lowell in the Hocking Hills.

It was a peaceful and small private campground, and I was the only one there on the edge of the lake.  I enjoyed the sunset and watching a blue heron fishing in the lake.

I messed around with the camera some, for something to do…because it was way too early to go to bed in my little tent.

In the morning I enjoyed the quiet mist on the lake…

Then I packed up my tent, which looked  sad  before I folded it up.  I was sad too, this had been a lovely little campsite, and I hated to leave.

Then it was on into the mountains with lots of winding freeway in West Virginia and Virginia…

…until I finally arrived, load still in the back of the truck…at my brother’s house in North Carolina.

I knew I was in the South when I saw the crepe myrtle in bloom.

Today we walked into town to the farmer’s market and around Davidson College…if I get time I’ll share those pictures with you later!  Hope you’re all having a wonderful weekend!  It’s HOT here, but we’re sitting down to lunch of sweet corn and fresh tomatoes, purchased locally.  Can’t wait…gotta go!


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Just gotta get on the road again

I’ll be heading south later this week, hauling some stuff down for my siblings.  I’ll probably head for North Carolina first, drop off a dresser to a brother, then on to Georgia where I’ll drop off more things to my sister, then skip over to Alabama, visit another brother and finally get all the way over to the big lake and my parents’ cabin.

I have to find windows of good weather, and Thursday looks like my opportunity.

That will mean Katie misses her agility class..but I promise to take her again when the next class starts up.  She’s still a lucky girl, because her Dad is going to stay home with her so she doesn’t have to go to a kennel.  She’ll miss her mama, but not that much.  Silly girl.


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Another park

The advantage of not having a job (No I haven’t heard anything good or bad yet on the last set of interviews) is that I get to go to the park more often.  Today I told Katie that I was bored with our little local park, so we went out to my favorite park, the one I used to run in each week –  Kensington –  which is about 30 minutes away.  It has an 8 mile bike/walk trail around a big beautiful lake.  Katie and I didn’t walk all 8 miles, but we did do a total of 2.5!

The black raspberries are getting ripe, and in fact I got to taste one or two.  Yummy!

Mostly we just ambled along until we got to the boardwalk that runs above one piece of lake shore.  Katie wasn’t so sure she liked it, there wasn’t anything interesting to sniff on the edges, like there had been on the path.  And there wasn’t any shade either!  But on our outward trip she trotted right along after she checked the edge just to make sure everything was safe.

Since she was doing so well I planned on going about a mile and a half where I knew there was a bench overlooking the water.  But just before that bench is a bridge across a channel.  It has a wooden deck that moves and makes noise as people ride bikes across it.  And of course just as we got there a whole family of bike riders went by.  The noise spooked Katie a bit, that and being “inside” something.  Then a semi went by on the nearby freeway, running over a joint with multiple wheels, sounding like a nailgun.  She jumped and headed back the way we had come.  That’s OK sweetie, I don’t always like semi’s either!

On the way back to the car we moved slower.  She was getting hot, notice the sideways tongue.

Every time we stopped for a drink (often) I’d pour the remainder that she didn’t finish over her head and back and rub it in.  We sat in the shade at the bottom of our last long uphill and watched people go by, families, individuals, runners, people on bikes, people skating.  She didn’t bark at anyone.  Sometimes a tired doggie is a good doggie!

And she slept most of the way home.  No surprise there!


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Happy Father's Day

My Aunt (Dad’s sister) found some old family photos, and gave me this one of Dad.

What a serious little boy; wonder what he’s thinking about?

Maybe he’s considering what he’ll be when he grows up.  What choices he’ll make and how his life will turn out.  Maybe he’s imagining a long and satisfying career as an engineer.  Or thinking about all the exciting and interesting places around the world that he’ll explore, all the wonderful things he’ll learn, all the people he’ll meet, all the friends he’ll make, all the good he will do.  He can’t know yet the mark he’ll make in the world, but I bet he has an inkling of the family man he’ll become; a wife and four kids, two girls, two boys.

It was a wonderful and full life.  And those four kids?  They turned out all right too.

Celebrating you today Dad.