Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.


by 1 Comment

Sisters

braun-and-badger-0661

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!

beth-trip-2007-038


by 8 Comments

What does 80 look like?

braun-and-badger-0532

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.

braun-and-badger-011


by 3 Comments

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.


by 5 Comments

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.

wood-floor-and-katie-resized-9-5-08


by 3 Comments

Contemplative Friday

tucson-2008-075

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


by 7 Comments

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:

katie-1257

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?

katie-1246


by 6 Comments

Libraries Rule

Lately  as I am working at the library I think about a quote I heard last week on NPR, about public libraries having to do more with less resources.   How true; where else can a person go to get information as wide ranging as a DVD to learn Belly Dancing  and a children’s picture book about recycling? Yet there I am, in a small Midwestern town late at night, finding material needed by my patrons on just those topics. It takes only moments to find what they need, they get to use it and then return it so others can use it too. Libraries are just amazing places.  And as the economy continues its downturn more and more people are figuring that out.

Over the past week or so I’ve  been helping young people look for information on different inherited diseases.  Apparently there’s an assignment out there in the local school system which requires at least two print references in addition to whatever information they find on the web.   I appreciate the teacher requiring them to look at print materials, and I am steering most of the students to the medical encyclopedias we have in our reference area, though sometimes we find good stuff in the stacks as well.  Tonight I worked with a young man looking for information on cystic fibrosis.  We found some generic material, but we stumbled upon some other stuff that would put a different slant on his paper, and he got all excited.  That is so fun to watch!

Last night I had a group of first graders in for a tour of the library.  I think I converted about 5 of the 7 into maybe growing up to be readers.  OK.  I know that one visit and tour of the library won’t a reader make, but 5 of them got library cards and checked books out.  I conveniently forgot to give them a tour of the DVD’s; we practiced finding stuff in the nonfiction and biography sections, and they had fun, so maybe they’ll be back!  That was fun to watch too.

So all in all, I’m enjoying my new career, seeing its impact on a community, feeling part of some sort of solution to growing problems.  Can’t think of a place I’d rather work.  And that’s the best part of all.


by 8 Comments

Sleeping?

The challenge from Josh and Jess is to find a picture of our Sheltie sleeping. After reviewing over 1000 pictures of Katie I have to say there are very few with her eyes actually closed! She hears the sound of the camera turning on and she’s AWAKE! But here is one that shows her true self, as Sara says, she’s a “pillow dog.”
katie-910


by 4 Comments

It's a new day

trees-7461

I woke up early this morning, around 5:00 and instantly felt like I had to get to work.  On something, though I wasn’t sure what.   Somehow the  inaugural had seeped into the inner layers of my brain and  I felt like this morning was the beginning of a new chapter.  It’s a new chapter in everyone’s life, and I for one was raring to go.  Of course it’s just as efficient to think about things I could/should do while still reclined under warm covers…so I did.  What can I do to make a difference?  What can I come up with that combines things I love with things that are needed?

I’m still contemplating that as the sun rises in the eastern sky, the air warms and the snow glistens.  It’s going to take some thought, but I need to do something.  If every person found something to do that added to the good of us all…well…that’s almost too exciting to think about!  Sort of like Christmas Eve, when all the presents are under the tree, still wrapped, still untapped potential, and you’re about 8 years old.  Just too much to comprehend as a whole.

So I’m going to work on what I can do.  I’ll leave the contemplation about what all of you can do to you.

The cutest comment I heard last night at the library regarding the Washington events:  “Bush was the only president I’ve know my whole life! I don’t know if I’ll like the new guy.” –  by a little girl about 6 or 7 years old.