Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.


by 6 Comments

Sometimes snow is pretty. Even in March

Really.  Though I suppose those of you out there getting snow in the South aren’t convinced of the fact that snow is pretty.

We’ve had a busy few days here in Michigan, starting Thursday when Aunt G. died through yesterday, the day of her funeral.  In between the family things we needed to attend to I also took Katie to a couple hours of advanced dog obedience, where we worked on stuff needed to compete in obedience.  She was off the wall and not very focused, the result of days inside with none of us around to practice with.  But we did get to do a typical obedience run off leash which was very fun.  And we got to do some jumps because they are included in higher level Rally, and Katie LOVES to jump.  She came home and went to sleep.  Two hours of being on your toes apparently exhausts a typical sheltie girl.

We had some snow too…though nothing in comparison to what some of you are enduring now.  Our snow on Saturday was very pretty, soft white flakes floating slowly down while the sun was coming up.  It was beautiful and for once we didn’t mind seeing it because we know that the snow season is almost over.  Well we think so anyway.  Katie was like a puppy, trying to catch all the snowflakes in her mouth.  I told her she couldn’t catch them all, but she sure wanted to.

katie-1292

I also had to work quite a bit during these past few days, the result of not being scheduled for four days in a row!  So I didn’t get to go to everything Aunt G’s family planned, but I did spend most of Sunday at the funeral home with my husband, Aunt V. and Uncle W., the two surviving siblings of my husband’s mother’s large family.  It was nice to see distant relatives but I wish we were meeting under happier circumstances.  Isn’t that always the way,  we just don’t take time for family things until there’s a crisis.  We should try harder, don’t you think, to get together for famility events that don’t involve funerals?

Katie and I hope those of you with lots of snow (we hate to tell you, we have none on the ground except where we have been piling it up all winter) are digging out and getting back to normal.  But don’t you agree that snow really is pretty? 🙂

croped-early-spring-tree-and-snow-feb-2009


by 6 Comments

Saying goodbye to Aunt G.

Husband’s Aunt G. died this morning. It wasn’t unexpected. But still. I can’t say that I knew her well, though she had been my “Aunt-in-law” for almost 19 years. But I knew she loved me the last time I hugged her goodbye, a week or so ago at the hospice facility. She was one of seven children, born to an immigrant couple in Northern Minnesota. Life was hard in the beginning, probably hard for much of her life, but she loved to laugh.

aunt-gloria1

We’ll miss her laugh.


by 5 Comments

Nothing whatsoever to talk about

It’s been a quiet week in Lake Woebegone…wait…that’s another story. But it HAS been quiet here. No real storms, nothing exciting at work, no dog school. Not a darn thing to amuse you with. Or me for that matter.

Do you remember as a kid when you got bored and you told your Mom there was “nothing to doooooo!”? Well, that’s what I’m feeling like. Not that I don’t have a ton of stuff I could be doing. Like writing a letter for the Truck Safety Coalition, finishing the sweater for my sister, cleaning out closets, cleaning the BASEMENT for heavens sake! But I don’t WANT to do any of those things. So I am wandering listlessly about, munching on things I don’t need to be munching on, and apparently waiting for something exciting to happen. Like spring.

trees-255


by 5 Comments

Blizardless Librarian

For a couple of days we’ve been warned that another big snowfall was headed our way this weekend. Four to eight inches they said. Supposedly it would start snowing Saturday morning at 10 a.m. and would continue, intensifying throughout the day, ending around 6 p.m. Great. I was working all day at the library, 9-5, and figured I’d have a doozy of a drive home.

As I was getting ready in the morning I glanced toward my front door and saw this:
trees-784

Hmmm, I thought.  “Red sky in morning, sailor take warning.”  So Katie and I went out to investigate, and to put a letter to my sister in the mailbox:

trees-787

When we got back in the house the glass storm door had steamed over.  Look how pretty!

trees-790

I headed off to work with extra gloves, a hat, and boots, prepared for the terrible ride home I anticipated.  But though it did snow, all day in fact, starting at 10:00 just like they predicted, we got 2 or 3 inches at most.  And the ride home, while slow, wasn’t nearly as awful as I expected.

The other librarian and I thought maybe we’d have a slow day, maybe with the weather people would stay home.  We were so wrong!  My favorite story of the day involved a grandmother who had a granddaughter doing an internship in Poland.  She came in to find out how to get into her email.  Since we were still slow, first thing in the morning, I taught her how to use her email.  She got to read a note from her granddaughter, view the photos that had been sent, and write the granddaughter a long note back.  She was thrilled, and even better, was proud of her new skill.

Another interesting experience I had at the library during the day included the shy young girl and her dad who came into the library “looking for poetry.”  After I showed them where most of the poetry was, at the far back of the library, she pulled out a piece of paper folded up into a small square.  After unfolding it all she informed me she needed “these five books of poems,” which turned out to be in the kids area, near the front door.  Which taught me (once again) to ask more questions at the start rather than taking the first sentence at face value.

We were busy all day; I helped a middle-aged woman figure out that the horror author she wanted was Dean Kootz, a high school student find information about steroid use, a recent graduate of law school fax her information out for numerous employment opportunities, found another student a biography about Harriet Tubman, commiserated with a woman about how we both get “click happy” when we’re reserving books from our home computers late at night.  All the books we’ve ordered tend to show up at the same time and it’s nearly impossible to get them all read.  Another family wanted help finding a book about polygamous cults as well as something to help them diet by reducing carbs.  Someone else wanted a book to help diagnose an unspecified medical condition.  And a teenage girl needed help learning Latin “so I can write vampire stories.”  And those are just the ones I remember!

The day flew by, I had lots of fun, the snow wasn’t too bad, and this morning, after another dusting of snow, we have sun!  What a wonderful weekend!

And it’s only Sunday morning! 🙂

katie-1281

I don’t have to work again until Thursday.  Katie and I are going out to play in the new (not so deep) snow!

katie-1280


by 3 Comments

Working at the library

Tonight I was back at work at the library. There have been several days in a row where I wasn’t scheduled to work. Odds are that will never happen again, so I enjoyed the time away and had some trepidation about heading back.  But the most wonderful thing happened. As soon as I stepped inside the library again I was glad to be back. That’s never happened with any of my previous employment…the feeling of being home after being away.

And tonight the librarian I was working with showed me how he orders books; in fact I got to spend some of the evening ordering children’s picture books and junior fiction. How fun is that!  Though I have to say I need to learn more about junior fiction.  I read descriptions and tried not to only pick the stuff that I would have been interested in back when I was a tween.  Heck, back when I was a tween they didn’t even HAVE the word tween!

The other fun thing that happened is that I got to give a 5 year old his very own library card!  It was his birthday, and his mom  had promised him that when he turned 5 he got his own card.  So we got him his card and he grinned from ear to ear.  Can’t beat an evening shared with a 5 year old and his new library card.

A man came in who had been be let go from his construction job today.  You could see the tension around his eyes.  He wanted to get on the computers to look for work.  He said he had a library card once a long time ago but didn’t know where it was.  I told him the repacement fee for a card was $2.00 and he paused before he said OK.  I did the paperwork, got him the card and used my “professional judgement” to waive the fee.  $2.00 is a lot to a guy down on his luck, panicked about where to find work.  He got his wallet out and was pulling what looked like the last two paper bills out of it when I told him no charge.  He was beyond grateful.  I hope he finds work soon.  And I hope he comes back to the library often.

Library work.  Does a body good.


by 5 Comments

Honest Weblog

katie-1182

We were tagged by Ludo to design a list of ten honest things about Katie the devil dog..er Sheltie. Katie has flatly declined to help with this list. She is patently ignoring me; now that she has finished barking at the garbage truck out front and the trio of squirrels out back she has collapsed in glorious exhaustion in the foyer. So I will take this time to squeal on her:

  • * Katie likes to sleep on top of pillows. Preferably on pillows on top of furniture. Most especially pillows on top of king size beds. And in the middle of the bed so that no one else but her gets space. She likes to lay kitty-corner so that she takes up the most amount of space possible. Which is quite a lot considering she is a small dog.
  • * She will make the rounds daily, maybe hourly or even every few minutes of all closets to guarantee the doors are closed. If they are not closed she will pick the choicest piece of clothing or footwear and prance about the house with it. If it is underwear she will place it adoringly in the middle of the living room as a prize. She knows instantly if a closet door has been opened in any part of the house and will within minutes arrive to show off the gifts of her plundering.
  • *Katie hates Hates HATES squirrels and cats and people walking on her road and trucks and anything that moves outside unless she has given prior permission to be within her eyesight. She will bark until she scares them all away. And then she will nap; the better to gain strength for the next potential attack on her property.
  • *Katie is a pig.  She will scarf down her dinner, lick the bowl clean to hide any evidence and then go find human #2 to ask for her supper.  “Please please please feed me,” she whines, “Human #1 NEVER feeds me and I’m just starved!  I haven’t eaten in MONTHS!”  If she pulls it off and human #2 feeds her (again) she will scarf down dinner #2 without any problem.  She would probably eat herself to death.
  • *At school Katie prances around and does her obedience exercises perfectly while looking adoringly at her Mama.  At home she pretty much ignores any direction from Mama, being that Mama is too far down the family power hierarchy to pay attention to.  Certainly Mama is well beneath Katie’s powerful position in the family!
  • *When called by her humans because she is barking, Katie will bark back until it’s an lose-lose proposition and the humans give up.  Katie always has the last word.  If she’s picked up in an attempt to quiet the barking, she will lick the human’s face all over until we are laughing.  It’s her secret weapon.
  • * Katie barks hysterically, in a very menacing way and flings herself onto the bodies of anyone who accidentally sneezes while in Katie’s house.  This comes as a startling surprise to visitors, and is a constant embarrassment to her parents.
  • * Katie also barks hysterically whenever the tinfoil drawer is opened, and increases her frenzy if the tinfoil box is actually removed from the drawer.  Heaven help us if tinfoil is pulled from the box.  We are working on this, with a bag of treats in the drawer.  If she’s good she gets a treat, but that generally only happens if  her Dad is in the room.  If it’s Mom trying to use tinfoil, well…Mom’s on her own.
  • *Don’t even get us started about the vacuum.  It has bite marks on it and Mama is afraid Katie will break a tooth trying to kill it.  However, progress has been made.  After an initial bit of barking and lunging, if Mama ignores her, she will slink away to another room and give up and Mama can continue to clean the floors.  It’s all so exhausting for both of us.
  • *Sometimes (OK, a lot of the time) when Katie wants attention she will bring her ball or toy and drop it at our feet.  If that doesn’t work she’ll go to the front door and cry, which generally means she has to go out.  So out we go, where she will spend innumerable minutes sniffing around at all the excciting things out there.  But not go to the bathroom.  Hmm….inside we go where the cycle will repeat itself until we get down on the floor and PLAY!  Playing only has to take a few minutes until she’s satisfied.  You’d think we humans could figure it out.

Looks innocent, doesn’t she?  Don’t be fooled.  She’s plotting.

katie-12761

katie-1274


by 1 Comment

What goes through your mind

Aunt V. and I went to visit Aunt G. who is newly ensconced in her hospice room. The hospice is a very nice place, clean, quiet, large colorful rooms. But it’s still a place to come to die.    Aunt G. appeared tiny under the soft blue blanket made by her granddaughter, but she smiled when she saw us, and participated in our conversations. Still, when I was back at home in my own bed, I had to wonder what was really going through her mind.

What does she think about, after all her guests go home, after her family has left, or is sleeping on the other bed. When it gets quiet outside, does it get quiet inside her mind? When she has time to think, now, while she’s still lucid, does she think back over her life, or think ahead to the future? She says she has no regrets, and I’m glad. But I still wonder.

Both my parents died unexpectedly away from home. They each left home fully expecting to return to it. But Aunt G. left her home knowing she will never return. What is that like? Do you clean before you leave if you can? Do you gaze around and mentally say goodbye to favorite things? Or are you so caught up in the events that you leave with no goodbyes? When you’re finally alone and things are momentarily quiet, do you think back to that leave-taking?

Being away from home in a hospice setting was her choice, but it feels odd to me. To be taken away from everything you know, taken somewhere to die feels alien. Yet is it? Weren’t there Indian civilizations where the elderly went away to die? Does going away take away the clutter of everyday life, give a person time and space to focus on how they want to spend their last days?

So I lay awake last night and wondered. What is she thinking. What is she feeling? What is it like? I have no conclusions, only more questions. The hospice facility is a wonderful place, but in the end Aunt G. is really on her own. No matter how many of us are around her.

king-christmas-07-gloria


by 5 Comments

Comfort food

Today I am taking husband’s Aunt V. to her eye doctor appointment. She’s 92 and is slowly losing her vision. She can no longer paint or read very much, so TV and her bird are her primary sources of entertainment now. She is under additional stress lately as her sister, Aunt G. has recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer and was moved to hospice Saturday. They say two weeks, which is hard to believe; as recently as last month we had no idea.

I remember when my grandma was over 90, still living in her home on the farm, using a walker to get around. During my last visit with her she told me not to get to be such an age because you outlive everyone. I think of her now as I watch Aunt V. struggle with the impending loss of yet another of her sisters. She has lost many friends and relatives in the past few years. It must be overwhelming.

So this weekend I made potato soup and banana bread for her. Such little comfort, but it’s at least something.  I’ll spend the day with her too which I know is much more valuable.   I wish I could make it better, but I can’t change the inevitable. Many of our elders are in similar positions, so if  you know someone who is elderly and alone, facing more loss, stop by or give them a call, maybe drop a note in the mail. It’s not much, but it’s something.

king-christmas-07-051


by 6 Comments

Dog rally…and it's snowing agin.

Katie and I went back out to where we used to go to obedience and met with our agility instructor who also teaches rally. That’s where dogs (and us humans) go through a series of dog obedience drills on a course. Each station has a sign with instructions like: Sit, Down, right turn, 360 degree turn, and lots of other stuff. I almost didn’t go because it’s been so long since we’ve done any obedience, and crazy Katie is pretty much out of control lately. I figured we’d just embarrass ourselves. But here’s a lesson: “Do what you fear most.” Katie did GREAT! We got all sorts of compliments from both instructors and some of the other students. Isn’t it funny how you always think someone else’s dog is beautiful and well behaved but you don’t notice your own is the same?

Katie loved being back at school. In the parking lot, once I had attached her lead, she leaped out of the back of the SUV and trotted toward the door. Once inside she was a different sort of girl than the one I’ve been dealing with these last few snow filled weeks. She was attentive and alert and obedient (mostly). She only barked once and that was when we were in the back and one of the instructors was explaining something and Katie wanted to stop sitting and listening and go Go GO! It was a little “yip” that reminded us that it was time to MOVE!

So we had fun, and I’m hoping to be able to drop into rally class whenever I’m not working. Maybe even do a “fun” trial with her in March. They had one yesterday but I didn’t know about it. I think we can do this, it’s stuff we can practice here at home, and she’s loving the showing off part of it. I can tell.

Meanwhile…it’s snowing again here. Yesterday the total back yard was grass, turning green even. Today? Well, it’s snow covered and slippery, just like the back roads we took on our way to and from school! Guess all that spring stuff was just a teaser.   Darn.

Time for a nap now.

katie-1114


by 6 Comments

Remnants of thought from a librarian

I was just sitting here thinking about how interesting it is to work at a library. How you never know what the next person is going to ask about. How fun it is once you get over the fear that someone is going to ask you something beyond your abilities. Which hardly ever happens, and when it does, people are pretty good about accepting your failings.

So in the past few evenings I’ve had people ask about trains, the real ones, and trains, the toy ones. A small child, probably in the fourth grade, wanted books on the Viet-Nam war because, as his mother says, he’s “into” reading about war right now. A young mother needed help with fractions so that she can prepare for an entry test into the military. Middle school kids are still coming in looking for information about genetic disease. That’s been going on for a couple of weeks, and I think the paper must be due this week based on the increased urgency in their voices and faces. And, as always, there are those odd requests that make you wonder why someone wants the information. Like the nutritional value in walnuts. But, being professional we don’t ask, we just find the information and use our imaginations to figure out the why of it all.