Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Tag Archives: fun stuff


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Are you sure it’s the end of summer?

Scott asked us to define the end of summer in photos.  What defines the end of summer for each of us?  You can join the fun because this assignment isn’t due until Wednesday at midnight.  Tell us what means the end of summer to you!  Meanwhile, come along and see my own transition to fall.   (Remember to click on the photos to see more detail.)

When I see that first leaf changing  on an otherwise green tree I usually rationalize that the tree is sick.  Or the leaf change is early because of the drought.  It’s not possible that summer is beginning the slippery slide into fall.  Certainly not yet.

The first bits of red.

As the light changes, becoming lower in the late afternoon sky, I appreciate the intense color and try not to think about what it all might mean.

The last of summer’s sun.

When the first bit of goldenrod begins to nod along the road and the asters bloom in brilliant purple I can still convince myself that there are weeks of warm weather ahead.

Purple compliments the season.

And when, on my morning commute, I come across the first of these….

The big yellow.

….I still rationalize.  Some school districts start early.   Don’t they?

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But when I stopped at my local grocery store this week and the bins of watermelons had been replaced by a giant pile of these…

Getting ready for Halloween!

…well.  Even I have to admit that these indicate summer has fled.  Fall is here, it’s time to quit fooling myself.  Until next year.  Because I’ll just know the reason those trees  turned so soon is because of the drought.

I’m sure of it.

Say goodbye to summer.


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97 years young

We attended a surprise birthday party for husband’s aunt Saturday.  Many people from her building and her family showed up at a local restaurant to help her celebrate.

Yes, she was surprised.

The birthday girl.

There was Chinese food, good conversation, family updates, smiles and hugs.

And cake.  Decorated in pink of course.  It’s her favorite color.

No room for 97 candles.

It was a good day.


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Randomness

It’s been a crazy busy few weeks at work with no end in sight.  There’s been even more stress lately as we’re short staffed.  People are are sick, on vacation and loaned to another department.  Yet the volume continues.  I need to find a way to get through the day without being overwhelmed.  Without getting angry.  Without getting kink in  my neck.

Message to the young lady in the blue Ford tailgating me on my commute to band practice tonight:  There are four lanes of traffic.  We’re all going the same speed.  There’s a car in front of me, one on either side of me.  Where did you want me to go?  When I could I moved one lane to the right, just to get out from in front of you.  You zoomed up behind the next car.  We were all going 75.  Why do you need to go faster?  I had a really bad day at work but just because you’ve got some sort of death wish doesn’t mean I want to go with you.

Rehearsal tonight was grueling.  We’re still sight reading pieces while we figure out what we’ll play for the Halloween concert.  Some pretty strange stuff.  Some really difficult stuff.  Some strange and difficult stuff.  Two hours nonstop.  At 8:50 p.m. the conductor stopped and started talking about the season concert dates.  We figured we were done and began to relax.  Then with only a few minutes left she asked us to read one more piece.  And as we were sighing and pulling the piece out of our folders she said “You may  have noticed that this arrangement is written a half step lower than the original composition.”  My stand mate and I both said sarcastically and at the exact same time – “Yea, we noticed that.” and then we both looked at each other and burst out laughing.  We laughed so hard that we were crying.  We laughed so hard that we missed the first 16 bars of the piece of music.  We giggled through the whole thing.  It wasn’t even that funny.  Guess you had to be there.

After a long day and a bad commute, a exhausting rehearsal, it was good to end the day with laughter.

Yes it was.


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Music filled Saturday with some football too.

Heading to ‘The Big House.’

We had such a great day!  Saturday afternoon we parked near the University of Michigan’s Hill Auditorium, then walked thirty minutes south, enjoying the sunshine, the students partying in the street, the crowds, the tailgaters, to the stadium where we sat in a VIP box, guests of the School of Education, to watch Michigan beat Massachusetts.

I’ve never been in a VIP box before.  Let me tell you, that’s the way to watch football!  Of course I don’t really get football, though I do enjoy a good long run down the field.  Don’t tell anyone, but I don’t really care which team passes long or runs, it’s just fun to watch.

For me, a college football game is all about the band.  Yes, the band; that group of kids who puts everything they’ve got into providing entertainment and pumping up the crowd.

The band over on the other side kept us in the game.

While other people were chatting before the game I was watching the pregame show.  While others went to the restroom at halftime I was watching the band.  While others were cheering and booing ref calls I was watching the band across the way in the stand as they chanted, shouted, danced and blew their lips out creating excitement.  Yep.  Love football…because of the band.

The “M” marches toward the sideline.

In the middle of the fourth quarter we had to leave the game to walk the 30 minutes back up to the main campus.  We had symphony tickets.   It was the opening night of this year’s season and the Ann Arbor symphony was playing Beethoven.

Hill Auditorium.

As I settled into my seat I jokingly told my Aunt that it would probably be inappropriate to stand up, pump my fist in the air and shout “GO BLUE!” in the middle of Symphony No. 9…right? She thought probably it would not be good.  Apparently I was not the only one feeling the dichotomy of experiences that day, as during the introduction remarks the speaker actually commented on how cool it was to watch a football game then walk across town to hear a symphony.  Then he yelled  “GO BLUE!”  And the audience applauded in response.

The program opened with the National Anthem, the second time I’d heard it that day.  It was played by the full orchestra and sung loud and clear by the audience.  Then most of the orchestra stood up and left, stage left.

The symphony played Twelve Contradances next.  Twelve short pieces,played by a smaller, mostly string subset of the full orchestra.   Each movement is a slightly different version of music to keep your toes tapping..composed in 1802.  As I was listening I noticed a man sitting a couple of rows back from the conductor.  He was sitting quietly, not moving, no instrument that I could see, hands folded in his lap.  I thought maybe he had played with the full orchestra and just forgot to leave with the rest of them.    Then in movement #8 he picked up a tambourine and played it expertly till the end of the movement.  When movement #9 began he again sat, stoically, hands folded in his lap for the rest of the piece.

Ah! Perfido, Op. 65 was sung by  soprano Laura Aikin who has a beautiful and powerful voice.   The music was written to the verse of a poem written by Pietro Metastasio and was all about cruel love.

Symphony and choirs

The last half of the program was Beethoven’s Symphony #9,  Choral, or most of us think of it, Ode to Joy.  It was played by the full orchestra, and sung (in the 4th movement) by 4 soloists and a huge choir.

The first movement was full and lush, my favorite way to listen to a symphony.  The second movement was fun and fast with some amazing oboe, french horn, bassoon and tympani work.  The third movement was a sweet chorale and I was beginning to struggle to keep my eyes open.

All that was overshadowed by the drama of the fourth movement.   It began with notes you’ve all heard in commercials.  Then moved to the cellos and basses, wonderful seamless building of the familiar Ode to Joy melody, followed with the tune repeated in the violas and then the gentle violins.  By now we were all humming along as the sound built and built, bigger, more and more lush until the choir stood up and the sound became wonderfully overwhelming.

The crowd was on their feet before the last note hit the ceiling, cheering and applauding.  Sort of like at football.  We clapped till our hands ached.  The artists on stage grinned like kids.

Yes our day was full.  Full of joy.


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The Crimness of it all

I finished this post on my old blog moments before my server crashed a couple of weeks ago.  The old blog was up for a couple of hours Friday and I copied this from the drafts because I know at least one of you has been waiting to hear about the race.  So here goes!

The last Saturday of August was the 36th running of the Crim Festival of Races in Flint Michigan.  It’s a big race, with thousands of runners, walkers and wheelers.  It brings in big name runners from all over, and it’s a spectacle to watch and even more fun if you get to participate.

This year I walked the 8K (5 miles)…though I was nostalgic as I watched friends head off for the 10 mile start, a race I have done many times.

Heading off for 10 miles of hills and heat.

My race didn’t start for an hour and forty-five minutes after the 10 milers left, and rather than stand around I went back to the car and read a book.  That saved my feet which was a good thing.  Because by the time we set off on our race the sun was high in the sky and it was HOT HOT HOT!

We start out on our own 5 miles.

As usual, this race was well organized and had lots of entertainment.  From the drum group that set the cadence at the beginning of the walk…

Drumming up the excitment.

..to the young band in the parking lot singing “GO BABY GO!”….

GO! GO! GO!

….the woman at the top of three Bradley Hills singing “I never promised you a rose garden…”

No roses were found on the Bradley Hills.

…and the preacher along the way that told us….

Run faster!

“You all are gonna have to step it up if you’re gonna catch up to those Kenyans!”  in reference to the lead runners who had finished long before we left the start line.

All along the way we had entertainment and support from both sides of the road.  Volunteers were offering water, in cups…

Grab some water!

…and from cooling hoses.

Enjoy the shower!

My feet were killing me…but there was a lot of fun distractions…

Girls cheering for us.

…and inspiration.

Inspirational…but a lie.

I’m really glad I did it.  Now I have to figure out what is going on with my feet so that I can start training for next year.  I really want to do the ten miles on the last Saturday in August next summer.

Because I’m lucky enough to be able to.

Finally on the bricks..almost at the finish line!


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Embracing fall

It was hard to let August go, to feel it slip away.  I tried to make it stay longer but it was like hugging jello.  The more I held on the faster it slid away from me.  It seems August fled from most of us; everywhere I hear people exclaiming how quickly the first days of September have arrived.

I don’t know why I struggled so much with the loss of summer this year.  It’s not as though I have children heading to school so I can’t say that I’m pensive about them growing up.  And I’m not a school employee heading back either.  My work at the bank is the same regardless of the month at the top of the wall calendar.

It’s not that I truly love hot weather, or pulling weeds, or watering, or watching trees we planted two years ago struggle.  My garden produced a handful of green beans and two or three tomatoes.  That’s it.  We bought most of our produce from the farmers’ market.  Our grass was brown for weeks on end and so prickly that even the dog didn’t want to walk on it.

Maybe it’s just that I love the long days and the evenings spent on the deck reading or watching the birds.  But I can still do that for awhile as we head into autumn.  Maybe it’s just the dread of the dark mornings heading to work followed by the dark commute home.  Maybe it’s just the thought of slippery roads, downed power lines, or quick trips out with the dog that require layers of clothes and big boots to be dragged from the closet and worn so that she can prance through the snow to find a perfect spot.

Regardless of why it was so hard for me to let August go this year today I decided to embrace the fall.  I went for my lunch walk through the neighborhood and saw maple leaves turning red and yellow and orange.  Not all over mind you, just here and there.  Hickory nuts had fallen to the sidewalk and asters were in bloom.  People with gardens more successful than mine had ripe tomatoes waiting to be picked, and miles and miles of vine covering zucchinis as big as footballs.  Children were out on the playground, swinging high or chasing a big rubber ball.  The sun shone down and warmed us all.

I admit I was sad to see August go but September has been beautiful so far.  I think I’m looking forward to the change.

Change doesn’t always have to be hard.