Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.


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Snow snow go away

katie-12601 Yesterday we had a day of weather almost like spring. 59 degrees and sun! And it’s been several days since we’ve been below zero. Though I know it’s foolish to think this is the beginning of spring, I can’t help myself from hoping. I do this every year. You’d think I’d learn. But we really deserve this to be an early spring. It’s been snowing and cold since mid-November, steadily getting worse and worse. We are so tired of cold, snow, bad roads, shoveling driveways. We so much want to believe all that is over.

katie-12631 We still have snow in the yard, though with today’s rain most of it should be gone by the end of the day. Katie tried to get her last licks of fresh snow.
It was windy but sunny out.  She just wanted to be outside, and I finally put her out in her kennel, the first time she’s been out there this year.  The yard was wet, and I didn’t think she’d like getting her feet wet, but she sat out there quite happily for quite a long time, barking at trucks on the road, and birds at the feeder.

Today almost all the snow is gone, and look, just peaking up through the ground are the tips of tulips, yellow green with youth, pushing hopefully up toward the sun.  I can’t wait for spring, looks like my tulips can’t wait either!

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Bright Side

This past weekend my husband and I took my aunt to Detroit to see “Spamalot” with Richard Chamberlain. It was a lot of fun;  just a crazy musical that makes no sense, and doesn’t have to. We laughed through the whole thing. And in a state where the unemployment is over 10% it was heartening to look around and hear the audience singing along with the cast at the top of their lungs:

Always look at the bright side of life:

“Some things in life are bad

They can really make you mad

Other things just make you swear and curse.

When you’re chewing on life’s gristle

Don’t grumble, give a whistle

And this’ll help things turn out for the best…

And…always look on the bright side of life…

Always look on the light side of life…

If life seems jolly rotten

There’s something you’ve forgotten

And that’s to laugh and smile and dance and sing.

When you’re feeling in the dumps

Don’t be silly chumps

Just purse your lips and whistle – that’s the thing

And…always look on the bright side of life…

Always look on the light side of  life…


–originally from Life of Brian, Monty Python.

(Words and music by Eric Idle)

The audience laughed and sang and whistled along.  And for a few moments we were all looking at the bright side of life.

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Bluebirds…and other things

This week I had multiple sightings of bluebirds as I drove through the countryside near my home. At first I wasn’t sure I had actually glimpsed a male bluebird, but when I saw it and what I thought might be his female partner near the same location the next day I started paying more attention. Turns out I saw bluebirds nearly every day and in several locations. Yesterday I got a really good look at a pair on the road just up from my house. So I think they are here for good! For more information about the Eastern bluebird go to: http://www.nabluebirdsociety.org/ which is the North American Blue Bird Society page.  Yesterday afternoon I went to my library and checked out a book about bird behavior and read more about bluebirds.  I’m hoping the fact that they are around means we are almost to spring!  I’ve known to be wrong about the spring thing before though, so don’t count on me…I’m about as reliable as the Ground Hog.  But more optimistic!

As for the other things:  Katie and I went to agility today.  But turns out there isn’t another class starting!  I was so confused, came home and looked at their webpage and it says there’s agility today.  Will have to find out what the story is.   Anyway, all that worry and decision making about whether or not to go…big waste of time.  Which in general is what I find worrying often is…really.  So Katie and I are going to go out and romp around in the wet snow.  It’s much warmer today and the predicted rain hasn’t started.  She can’t wait.


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Questions for dog moms (and dads)

It’s Friday again, and a new session of dog agility starts tomorrow. I have been wavering on whether or not to sign us up. The biggest issue is paying for a four week session when I know at least one of those weeks I have to work. I’ve been working a set schedule that gave me my weekends off, but that changes the week after next and I’m back on the “don’t know when or where I’ll work” schedule again. The other reason not to register is that my knee still isn’t better from last week when I twisted it while stopping abruptly at the chute. Of course the knee thing is also aggravated by the extra pounds I’m carrying, and I think it’s stressed in general, not just at agility.

The reasons to go back to school tomorrow? Well, Katie LOVES school! And I would miss the other dog moms and the instructor as well. It’s a great time for both of us, we get to work on stuff together and bond (though she’s already attached to me at the hip so I don’t know that we need more bonding!). She just loves the treats, and to RUN RUN RUN!  The park is still covered in snow and closed, so no running there.  She’s a crazy girl with no real outlet except to run around and around the sofa.  Which of course makes this mom and dad crazy too!

So what do you think? Go..or sleep in tomorrow?

My second question revolves around someone’s blog that talked about a product to put in the dog’s food that helps with teeth cleaning. But I can’t remember who talked about it. So if you know, could you give me the name of the product and any positives or negatives about it?

Thanks! That’s all the dog questions for today!

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Sisters

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Not everyone is lucky enough to have a sister, but I know how lucky I am to have mine.  She is as talented and intelligent and sensitive and caring.  She’s a teacher at heart, as evidenced by the fact that she can teach herself to do anything; from learning to play the bagpipes to figuring out how to rewire a light fixture and use power tools to do major repairs on her house.  She’s the family’s cookie baker and seamstress.  Oh..and her pie crust?  Well, enough said.  She’s always there when you need her, and always will be.

Today is my sister’s birthday, a day that marks the beginning of a new year, a better year, the first of many wonderful years ahead.  Today is a day she might begin to believe that difficult times will soon be left behind.   She can see the light at the end of the tunnel and knows that the future is going to be fun once again.  Fun and a lot warmer!

So Happy Birthday sister!  Here’s to the future!

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What does 80 look like?

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Today would have been Dad’s 80th birthday. I can’t quite imagine what he might have been like if he had lived to what feels like a milestone age. What does 80 look like?  I watch people who might be that age, wondering if he would have had trouble getting in and out of cars, would have walked slower, been less active, maybe climbed fewer flights of stairs.  I don’t think so.

braun-and-badger-0131We feel like we were robbed of something important when Dad was killed by that tired trucker; the chance to see him “grow up.”   We’re left to imagine what he might have turned out to be.  We know for sure he wasn’t done evolving, he was always learning new things, reading, going to classes, researching on the internet.  We all wish we had been able to watch him grow, and we wish that when he finally did need us, that we could have been there to lend a hand.  Like he always lent his hands to people that needed him.  It would have only been fair to  pay him back for all the years he supported us.

Turns out the world isn’t always fair.

Happy Birthday Daddy.  Hope you’re fixing things, as only you could do, up there in heaven.  Mostly likely you’re working on a handrail  right now, or unsticking a door, making things safer for someone else.  We’ll see you when we get there.

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Dreaming

I woke up this morning from a very long detailed full color dream that combined places I’ve lived and people I’ve known for the past 30+ yeas. It was set mostly in a small town in the Upper Peninsula where I lived 28 years ago. I was on some sort of city bus tour (not that they actually HAD city buses up there then..nor probably now!) and we were driving around the steep streets of the town looking at all the 150 year old homes falling into disrepair. The other women on my tour seemed to be from my current life, runners I know, or people I knew at my previous banking job. Eventually we were at a stop sign headed up a steep mountain road, and somehow I knew the bus was a stick shift and was going to have to shift into first gear which was a near impossibility. I told the others I used to just fly up this hill and through the stop sign and hope no one was coming the other way. Which actually is not true;  in those days I just avoided that particular corner because I did drive a stick shift!

Then in the dream we were on some sort of boat, looking at the lift bridge, but it looked more like a combination of  Mackinaw Bridge and  Brooklyn Bridge (which I walked over this past spring). Later we wandered down one of the neighborhood streets, walking a runner friend of mine (who happened to email me last night though I didn’t read it till this morning, so maybe she was telepathing to me overnight or something!) past the house she grew up in and where her mother still lived (though in fact she never lived up there!). We shopped our way through town, buying stupid little trinkets, and then we went on a tour of the building I used to work in, first attending a meeting there, where some people were upset that we hadn’t told anyone we were coming to visit. The tour itself was aboard some sort of floating silent circular air machine, which went really fast down hallways, and around corners, as if we were part of a video game. Then we were outside again on this machine, and I was wearing an inflatable life jacket that I couldn’t figure out how to get off, and flip flops which didn’t work well on the stamp sand beaches we were walking on.

After all that Katie woke me up with her cold nose and asked to go out. I bundled up in my heavy coat and mittens and we went out into the fourteen degree cold. I felt distracted, still in the dream, and not sure I wanted to be here, more interested in all the people that had come and gone in the night. It made me realize how many lifetimes I have had already, so many years gone by, so many people I’ve known. This morning, for the first time in a long time, after experiencing time collapse in on itself, I feel old.


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Agility…but we're not that agile! Either of us.

So it’s Saturday again, and this morning Katie and I went to the last agility class of this session. We worked on chute quite a bit, and after about 4 runs through it I thought maybe Katie would run it without someone holding up the end..but when we tried again toward the end of the class she still refused unless her favorite instructor was peeking  in and calling her.  Sigh.  And she hates hates HATES the teeter.  After many attempts I picked her up and put her at the pivot point where she would sort of walk off it if she was forced too.  The hatred of the teeter transferred to the dog walk too.  So once again all through the class I had to pick her up and put her on the dog walk.  She won’t approach it or even attempt to walk it.  Double sigh.  On the good side we had the tire again for the first time in three weeks, and she jumped right through it each time, and she still loves the tunnel.  So, after 7 weeks of agility she still won’t do chute, dogwalk or teeter.  But she has fun with jumps of all sorts, tunnel and table.  We didn’t do weaves today, so I don’t know how that would have gone.  Not good I think.

We are debating whether to spend more money on the next agility session.  I know she has mostly fun.  So do I.  And it’s good to get some exercise in during the winter when we can’t go play in the park.  But I twisted my knee today, stopping suddenly when she refused the chute (again).  And tonight I feel like I ran a marathon, complete with shin splints.  But she had fun.  I think.  Maybe.

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Contemplative Friday

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I have today off. From work, not from thoughts. It’s good to have some quiet time, though Katie girl is making it difficult; she’s all rambunctious wanting to play, or eat or something. It’s snowing again. No surprise there, but I’m so tired of snow. When I get like this I appease myself by looking online at real estate in the southwest. Where it’s warmer and dryer.

But I’m also sitting in my reading chair in the corner of my living room watching the birds at the feeder and the snow coming down as if I lived inside a snow globe, reading a book entitled “Fresh Water; Women Writing on the Great Lakes.” It reminds me how much I love the Great Lakes and I wonder if I could be happy living further away from the water than I already do.

So I put the book down and contemplate. The lakes are alive and make me feel the same way. The desert is alive in another small, hard to see way. In all the little crevices there is life in the desert…but the desert truly comes alive when it rains. Water makes it bloom. Water makes my soul bloom too.

As I sit and wonder what the future will bring Katie calms down, then jumps up in the chair with me. This is unprecedented. As she tucks herself down between me and the arm of the chair I realize this moment won’t last long, she’s an impatient dog, so I stroke her lovely back and study the beautiful colors of her fur and enjoy the heat from her doggie body. She turns and begins to lick my face and neck and I have to laugh out loud. “Sure Mom,” she says “Sure, think about the warm southwest. You know you can’t leave your lakes! And it’s too hot out there for a Sheltie!”

My contemplation is over; she jumps to the floor and tells me it’s time to go outside to play ‘grab the glove off Mom’s hand.’ Life is so simple when you’re a Sheltie.

katie-1256


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The letter "D"

We were tagged by Reilly to find 5 things that Katie either likes, doesn’t like or can think of that start with the letter “D”. We will list those five words, and then tag one blogger from our list to continue the game. So here goes, Katie’s five “D” words – – in no particular order:

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1. Doggie; the pink dog squeaky toy that Katie loves to play with. It’s soft and bumpy and has TWO squeaky parts. It’s fun to retrieve…and it’s PINK, perfect for a princess.

2. Dinner! Maybe Katie’s most favorite word. According to her, it’s dinner time all the time, and she asks for it all the time too. If she could she’d con my husband AND me into getting her dinner for her.

3. Dunking for ice cubes in her water dish. Such a fun game! She will get soaked getting the ice out of the bowl, carry it over to the carpet and let it melt, waiting innocently for barefoot parents to wander into the danger icy zone.

4. Distractable, which Katie is not. (is that a word?) If she wants her dinner she wants it…and she wants it now. Playing won’t distract her. Going out for a walk won’t distract her. It’s dinner she wants and that…is…absolutely…that.

5. Devouring, as in devouring Mom’s shoes. Never Daddy’s shoes, just Mom’s. Mom has to hide all her shoes, or put them up high. Any shoes of Mom that are within reach are fair game.

6. Driving either to the PARK!! (YEA!!) or to the groomer for a bath (OH NOOO!) Katie loves to go for a ride in the car.  Especially to school.

WAIT that’s SIX “D” words! ah well, there are more…but we will stop!

Now…to find one person to continue the game….that hasn’t already done a letter? Hmmm…hey Diana, have you played yet?  Does Miley want to think up words that start with M?

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