Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.


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Out of control rally fun match

I worked all day today, rushed home, grabbed the dog and drove 45 miles south to a fun match this evening. The result? Katie was out of control. We had little to no time to warm up, though the facilities were very nice. She was scared; she loves to go to school, but when we arrived she knew right away this wasn’t any school she’d ever been to before. She immediately peed all over the asphalt behind the car. Poor girl, she’s never done that before!

Inside we were one of the first few people there, so we started right out with Rally. They were really good with me. There was a “off set figure 8” that I had never seen before that some lady explained and explained to me. Then the judge explained it again better! Also a right step that wasn’t set up very well and that we never did do quite right.

Katie was a wild thing, paying attention to the other dogs, other rings, loud noises, people going by. She didn’t focus on me until the judge asked me if I had treats, which I did. Once Katie figured out I had treats she focused a lot better! LOL! But still.

They let me go through the course twice with a judge and we learned a lot. But half way through the second time Katie just sat down. Then jumped on me. She was WAY DONE MOM! We finished strong though once I got her moving again.

In obedience they were really patient with me too. Most of the issue is me, obviously. The obedience judge gave me some good pointers for stand for exam, and for getting her to heel closer to my leg. So that was well worth it, though I was somewhat embarrassed by how out of it she was.

Then I FORGOT to stick around for sits and downs, which we really could have used practice on. On the other hand, Katie was not in the mood to sit still for very long.

So all in all, it was an OK $10.00 spent. It did show me that we have a TON of work to do, mostly on heeling correctly. The rest will come from that. And from me studying my rally move cards more!

Don’t know about Katie, but I’m exhausted! I have to work all day tomorrow and all day Sunday, so I’m headed for sleep now. Unfortunately, Katie, now at home, wants to PLAY!

Silly dog.

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Went for a walk

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Yesterday it was finally warm enough not to freeze off vital body parts, so I took myself off for a walk. I used to have a favorite four mile run, and since I haven’t been able to run for a very long time, I walked the route, just to see what had changed during this last long winter.  I thought about taking the dog, but decided I wanted to walk further than she was able to go.

It was a beautiful day, blue sky, bright sunshine.  I walked along a packed dirt road, realizing that it was a perfect day for a run.  But I’m in no shape to begin running yet, still nursing the stress fracture in my foot.  So I settled for a walk.  Turns out it wasn’t such a bad thing.

At the two mile mark there is a small park with nature trails that I have never explored.  Usually I am running as I go by this spot, and have never taken the time to stop and find out what was there.  I saw this past winter a map that said there was a heron rookery at the end of these trails.  So yesterday, armed with my trusty camera I headed down the trail to see what I could see.

My first decision was which way to go at the fork in the trail

trees-877 Hmm…should I go into the woodlands or the meadow?  I decided maybe a heron rookery would be in the woods, but I wasn’t at all sure.  The woodland path headed downhill, and I reminded myself that I’d have to come back up anything downhills I traversed.  Funny.  In the old days when I was in better shape I never would have thought about that.  Sad.

I stopped to take a few pictures of the path ..

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and some fungus on a tree.

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Right about then I heard such a shrieking, grating, loud noise coming from up ahead.  It was the sound of blue herons!  Disturbed blue herons!  I couldn’t see anything, so I hurried down the trail toward the noise.  Not too far ahead this is what I saw, up in the sky:

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Can you see them?  There were thirty or forty (hard to count them all!) blue herons flying in big circles above the rookery.  I counted eighteen nests, but it was hard to see, there are probably many more.  The herons kept flying in higher and higher circles, their squawking decreased, and it became more quiet in the woods.  The path continued downhill, but was becoming waterlogged and muddy, so I eventually turned around and climbed the hill back to the road.   It was an amazing experience.  Once the leaves are on the trees I won’t be able to watch the nests, so I hope to go back and watch again soon.  I don’t think I was the one that disturbed them, as I was quite far away, taking quiet pictures.  But we’ll see if they all go up in flight next time I’m there.

On the way back home I walked through the wetlands down below the rookery, enjoying the sun and blue skies.

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It took me forever to do this four miles, especially with the side trip into the woods.  I doubt you could call it a workout, but at least I was out on a walk!

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Later in the evening Katie and I went to the park so that she could walk and sniff around as well.  I think we both need to do this more often, especially since the weather seems to have broken.

Shoes are broken in too.  Fun times.

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Follow your heart's path

Life just keeps moving on, regardless of  our own plans.  And sometimes life surprises us and jogs in a new direction when we aren’t quite ready for or expecting such a life altering switch. What can you do but embrace that change and try to see the best in it?

When life jogs, remember how Dad always used to want to see around the next corner in the path. Like him, look ahead with excitement, because you just never know what’s next.   The exciting part is in the imagining of what you can do with the next chapter in your life.

Follow your heart.  Dad would be proud.

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It's a long story

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For years I’ve looked longingly at the Easter egg coloring kits each spring.  We had such happy times as kids making colored eggs.   Some years I think I’ll just color Easter eggs by myself.  But then I think; “How ridiculous!  You live with one other person!  How many hard boiled eggs can you two eat?”  And so I don’t.  But this year my sister is visiting, and as we shopped for Easter dinner she convinced me to buy the egg coloring kit, and today we braved the cold outside and did some really creative work.  If I do say so myself.

easter-2009-013 Why, you would be right to ask, are we coloring eggs outside?  Well I was worried about spilling food colored water on my tile floor or granite counters and so I banned us to the outdoors.  My sister was freezing but I thought it was perfect weather to be dying eggs! 🙂  And I wonder why everyone doesn’t do this outside, as we made quite a mess on the tailgate of her truck!  We had fun, even if she did freeze her fingers off!

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I personally think our results are quite striking.  Though the husband did ask why we didn’t have any plain solid colored eggs.  Heck.  We could have just done simple single colored eggs, but where’s the excitement in that?  So here are our beautiful, fun filled, adults goofing off, eggs.  They make me smile!

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Happy Easter everyone!  We hope you and your families have wonderful, safe, peaceful and entertaining holidays!

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Happy to see you!

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Two things I can always count on  are the reactions of my dog and my family when they see me coming.  They’re always happy to see me whether I’ve been gone for weeks or just a few minutes.  That kind of unconditional love is hard to find in this world and I know I’m lucky.  I’m lucky that I have one of the sweetest most loving dogs, and the best family too; they’re all happy when we’re together.

It’s easy to take for granted the excited gyrations of your dog each time you come home from work, or the smile from your spouse when you walk into the room.  Sometimes it takes a loss to recognize what you had.  But far better, isn’t it, to recognize it right now?  In the moment?  To accept that hug, that smile, that quiet conversation or that tail wriggle and revel in the joy of having it, right now, right here?

Katie knows how to do that.  She doesn’t worry about the future (except if and when her supper will arrive) or agonize over the past.  She just loves you to death right now.   And as much as my siblings, husband and I have been through I think we’re beginning to enjoy the right now when we’re together.  Even when the real  stuff of our lives threatens to encroach.  When some of us are together we can, for the moment, right now, enjoy doing silly things.  Like coloring Easter eggs, or decorating Christmas cookies. Doing a little trick skiing or cooking some lavish squash soup.   We’ll climb a mountain, take a boat ride or maybe do all those things in a single weekend.  We fit in some of the fun little things we did as kids and forget we’re grownup with grownup problems.  Just hang out.  It’s not total avoidance, we know our problems will still be there when we go home.  And that’s all right.  Right now, we’re just HAPPY TO SEE YOU!

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Snow white

When I woke up this morning we had perhaps 5  inches of snow on the ground. This is what it looked like first thing before the sun came up.

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This was out the back door, with an outdoor spotlight lighting up the poor bent birch tree, sinking low beneath the heavy wet snow.  The front didn’t look much better:

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This was my poor pot of pansies:

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The snow has melted off the pansies now, and they are just fine.  Sigh.

I don’t know how long this snow is going to stick around.  The weather report doesn’t sound like it’s going to warm up for awhile.  So we’ll have to wait and see if the sun will ever come out again and melt all this white stuff.  I am trying to appreciate it for its beauty…but I’m pretty much over the prettiness of snow by this time of the year.  We’ve had so much of it all winter it seems like it’s time for us to catch a break.

I’m hoping this is really the end of winter.  Really.

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But you never know.

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One last time?

So my grass is getting sort of green. My daffodils are up about 4 or 5 inches, some even have tiny little blossom buds on them. The birds are running around making nests, I’m starting to think about getting out the gardening stuff, planning the garden, looking for weeds.  You know, getting into the spring thing.

But they are predicting a big storm starting tonight. We’re supposed to get 4-6 inches of…dare I say it? SNOW!!! So it goes, springtime in Michigan. Doesn’t let a person get to complacent. Ever.

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This picture was taken April 13, 2008.  Hope what we have coming isn’t more than this, but I’m afraid it might be.


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Saturday at the library

It’s Saturday and the bad news was that I was stuck inside all day. The good news was that I was stuck inside all day at a library! Today seemed to be family day. Not every Saturday feels like that; a day filled with families that led me to my own memories of family and the libraries of my youth.

Lots of parents with their kids, and seemingly a lot of them were getting books to work on papers, or to read aloud. One set of sisters had two huge stacks of books. Their dad asked me, “Can they check out that many books?” The wonderful answer is “YES!” They were going on a road trip for spring break and wanted to make sure they had enough stuff to read. How great is that!  Sounded like me at their age.

Another mother had four or five books about sharks. I knew we had just received a brand new book with wonderful pictures of sharks, and even though the new book was over the reading level of the 8 year old that had to do the paper, she was thrilled to take it home.  I know her son will have a great time looking at the photos.  And there might be a bit of new information in there that he can tuck into that paper.  I don’t remember having to do papers when I was 8.  But that was so long ago I may have forgotten!

Another family came in, two kids, two parents, and sat down at our computers. Mom and Dad did email work while the kids played games. When they left they checked out a few family movies and some books to read aloud as well. Their experience just shows how multi-purpose today’s public libraries are.  In my day we took home books to read to each other, but there weren’t any movies to check out.  I am beginning to realize that it probably doesn’t matter if people check out movies, as long as they use our things to spend time together.  So this family will be watching movies together, where my family read together…it’s the together that matters.

An  older man was browsing in the DVD’s.  From behind he looked a lot like my Uncle R. who has been gone for over 15 years.  Even when he turned around he reminded me of my Uncle, one of the favorite people in my life when I was growing up.  Uncle R. was a big kidder, always had a joke, a laugh, a twinkle in his eye.  I smiled at my patron, the one who brought back all those memories, but he didn’t have a twinkle in his eye, in fact he seemed rather unhappy and abrupt.  Too bad.  But I still appreciated the moments remembering summer visits on the farm.  I wished my patron a good weekend, and he perked up a bit.  Maybe he just doesn’t have any adoring nieces at home!  That would certainly account for the grumpiness!

So it was a good day; and I brought some books home for me as well!  An added benefit of the work I do.

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Park! Got to go to the Park!!

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The weather gave us a break today, sunny, not so windy, highs in the 60’s. And I didn’t have to work! Can’t let an opportunity like this get by us, so Katie and I went to our small local park. It’s really just a couple of softball fields, a soccer field and some paths mowed in a big field with a couple of ponds sprinkled about, but it’s one of Katie’s favorite spots in the whole world. I like it because it’s close to home and still scenic.

In this picture Katie isn’t on her leash, but that was the only time I tried this.  She’s really good at sit and stay, and we were far far away from any cars.  But still…our trainers say the only time a dog should be off leash is when you’re 100% sure they are safe, and for Katie and me, that’s a good rule.  But I wanted a good portrait of her without the leash in the picture.  The rest of the time she was on one of two leashes I had with me.

There were lots of great things to sniff!

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We tried to do a self portrait of the two of us, but Katie wasn’t that into me and didn’t want to sit still.  After all we hadn’t been to the park all winter and there was SO MUCH to explore!  Silly Mom wanting to sit and take pictures!

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Eventually we made it down to the big pond where we explored around the edges.  We startled three gartner snakes.  Well, let’s tell the truth.  They startled us! Can you see the snake in the photo below?

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We also startled a frog into jumping into the pond with a big PLOP!  Katie is a big wimp, all bark, no action.  She jumped just about as high as the frog all the while backing up!

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We settled in for a bit  just watching the water.  The wind was blowing toward us, making little waves wash up on the shore.  It was very relaxing!

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What a wonderful time at the park!  Hope you all had a great day too!

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