Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Tag Archives: fun stuff


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Michigan Renaissance Festival plus a Katie-girl

Sunday Katie and I got word that a friend of ours was playing her fiddle at the Michigan Renaissance Festival which coincidentally is right up the road from our house.  And since we weren’t doing anything in particular we decided to head on over there and see what was happening.

It was just Katie and I and a few thousand of our closest friends.

Many of which were dressed in some pretty strange attire.

There was lots of music,

…and puppet and magic acts.

People watching was the name of the game.

You never knew what you’d see next.

Katie got admired by sheltie lovers and children.  She mostly let everyone pet her.  Often I’d see a longing in a pair of eyes and smile encouragement.  Katie seemed to know when someone really needed a Sheltie fix.

She was interested in everything.   The weirder the better.

Mostly though she had her nose to the ground, looking for scraps of the turkey legs they sold, or potato chips, hamburgers and such.  She was quite annoyed when I’d drag her away from the best stuff.

She didn’t much like the kids rides, too much noise, too much movement.

And she wasn’t too interested in meeting other dogs, though on our way out she did meet a friendly basset hound.

It was a long way back to the car and when we finally got there she was glad to rest a bit before our short drive home.  Is that our car Mom?  Finally?

Tonight she’s dreaming of turkey legs, men in tights and women with pushup bras.  I swear.

Katie says: “When I said I needed an adventure I sort of thought we’d just go to the park Mom, not some weird place with noise and strange people and crazy smells…but I’m a brave girl and handled it all!  Didn’t I!”

Yes baby girl, you did.


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Family weekend

A spur of the moment decision found me flying south for the weekend.  South to where my family is.  South to where the lonely little house on the lake waited.  It was anxious to be filled again with the sound of laughter and talk, the lights glowing again late into the night, smells of dinner and especially dessert filling the air.  The little house on the lake where memories of yesterday mingle with today’s events.  South.

It was a short visit but long enough to connect again with family and friends.

To get a little swimming and skiing in between the raindrops.

A little hiking up the mountain.

And lots of good eating.

Sweet weekend.  Short weekend.

Missing the little house, friends and family already.

 


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Katie says

Katie here.  Mom says I can talk today on her blog, cause she’s too tired.  I’ve been keeping her busy today and I think she needs a nap.  It’s her own darn fault anyway.

I’ve been waiting and waiting for Mom and Daddy to pay attention to me.  First they’re all busy with work, then we get company, then Daddy goes off to work on some project and Mom works late every night at work and I have to spend all day every day alone.  This is not what I signed up for when I adopted them.

So when they do come home I’m all about me.  Me me me me me.  And I want to play with  my rabbit and my froggy and my lambie and my squirrel and my ball and…well you know.  But they don’t want to play so much.  They say things like ‘Go lie down’ and ‘Katie! Stop biting my feet!’ and ‘NO BARK!’ and other nonsense.  I just want to play.  Gee.  What’s a doggie to do.

Well I guess this weekend I made my Mom feel bad, so Friday night she set up the tent and we got to go camping!  I love to camp in our back yard.  Last night I was such a good girl and didn’t bark at anything.  Not even the funny noises and smells.  I was just so good and let Mom sleep all the way until 5:30 this morning!

Then she had to go to work.  I was sad.  But she came home in the middle of the afternoon and  guess what?  WE GOT TO GO TO MY PARK!  I would have been happy just to stay there, but nooooo.  Mom wanted to go to HER favorite park which is almost a half hour away!  Since when is it all about HER?

But I humored her and we sat by the lake and watched the geese and she read a book.  I was a good girl and sat by her feet while I watched kids fish and that goose swim around out there.  I didn’t bark at anything!  I was just glad to be out near a lake with my Mom.

So that’s the story so far this weekend.  I think we’re going to camp out again tonight!  I can’t wait.  As soon as it gets dark I’m going to go over to the back door and whine like I did last night.  It works.  She’ll go to bed early just to make me happy.  You wait and see.

I’ve got my Mom figured out.


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The color of summer – photo challenge

Karma has issued her August photo challenge.  This time it is all about color.  In fact our assignment was to find all the colors of the rainbow represented in summer fun.

We have lots of summer color around here, so I’m taking you on three different photo tours. It’s difficult to choose just one photo for each color, so I’m splurging on three categories!

First is the county fair.  I went to the fair specifically to find the colors of the rainbow.  Some of you have seen many of my fair photos; I posted them shortly after I was there.  But I saved the photos here just for this challenge.

Second is our own garden.  After I read the challenge I realized that all the colors of the rainbow were right here at home.

Third is an annual event that occurs here every August called the Woodward Dream Cruise.  People from all over the country converge on our county and drive their antique and muscle cars up and down miles and miles of Woodward Ave, just like teenagers used to cruise Woodward in the 50’s.  It’s a huge event and there are beautiful cars on display for miles.  I’ll show you just a few.  I found that I was more interested in the art of pieces of vehicles than the whole car or truck.  So mostly you’ll see pieces of them here.

 

Red

Orange

Yellow

Green

 

Blue

 

Purple

And as a special bonus, a picture of ME doing something summery.


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Woodward Dream Cruise

 

Every year lovers of antique cars and trucks show up here and cruise Woodward Avenue, reminiscent of the teenagers who used to cruise up and down that road back in the 50’s.  It’s a huge event; people bring their cars from all over the country.

I wish you all could have been there.

I’m not a car crazed person, even though I live in Michigan.  And though this event has been going on and growing bigger and bigger for years, I’ve never attended.

I went this year and wandered around on one mile of a several mile extravaganza.

The cars were beautiful.

The noise of hotrods on the street was overwhelming.

 

It was a blast.


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Our tiny little farmer's market

I live in a tiny little town, and this summer the township decided to start a local farmer’s market.  It’s every Sunday morning out at Katie’s favorite park.  So far I haven’t taken her there but this morning I saw several dogs, so maybe next Sunday we’ll both go.

It’s a tiny little market with a half dozen vendors.  I don’t think they’re really local to our township, other than my neighbor who was there selling his crafts.

But the corn and tomatoes were from a farming community not far away.

And when the heritage tomato lady’s bigger tomatoes come in I won’t care where she’s from because they will be delicious!  I bought green beans from her this morning.

I think as more vegetables come into season we’ll see more people stopping by.

I hope so, because there’s nothing better than fresh Michigan corn and tomatoes.  And I wouldn’t want our local market to have to end for lack of participation.

Cause August in Michigan is corn eatin’ time!

 

 


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Adventure dreams

Katie and I need a real adventure.  We need to travel further, maybe stay overnight somewhere, explore new places, sniff new smells.  But all my creative juices seem to have dried up with the heat.

Katie says she’s willing to go anywhere.  She’s always ready to go Go GO! It’s Mama that can’t figure out where we should head.  And when.

We have company coming in a week or so…and he’s staying for three weeks, so really all adventures will have to be after that.  Katie won’t mind, she’ll have more company to play with her, to heap adoration on her pretty head, to jump at her every whim.  But after that?  Well, she’s going to want to go Go GO!

A princess has to be catered to don’t you know.  So Mama here is open to suggestions.  It needs to be somewhere we can get to and home from in a weekend so Mama doesn’t have to spend any precious vacation days that she is oh so slowly accumulating.

Suggestions?

 


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Talking about scale

I’d been thinking  how to complete the latest assignment over at Scott Thomas’ blog Views Infinitum. Scale is a funny thing, and sometimes I’ve been surprised while looking at photos how little you can really tell about the size of something.  For example, we take so many close up photos of our dogs that it’s hard for everyone else to see how big or small they really are.  But for this assignment I wanted to do something totally different.  So Katie is off the posing hook.

Most of you know I went to the county fair this week. I expected to find some things to photograph at the fair that would show scale.  You know, typical over the top fair stuff.  But out there is one of Michigan’s biggest barns.  I hadn’t thought about the barn when I was considering what to photograph for this assignment, but as I drove by it that evening I knew it was something I should try to capture.

The 14,000 square foot Ellis barn was built in 1848 and used to sit out on our main road next to it’s farm house.  We all drove by it every day and mostly didn’t think about it until the property was sold to a developer for a subdivision.  Then everyone wanted to know what would happen to the structures.  The house was moved toward the back of the property and became part of the new subdivision.  The barn was too huge to move in one piece so it was dismantled in 2004 and rebuilt, board by board, on the Oakland County  fairgrounds.  I hadn’t been to see it in it’s new home before, and I have to say it’s even bigger when you’re up close!

Friday night there were lots of people around to give you some sort of context.  Here’s a shot of the front of the barn.  Can you see the person standing in the doorway?  Or the people sitting under a canopy on the right?  It was difficult to photograph as the sun was going down, shadows were creeping toward the barn, and it was just so darn big!

Here’s a different angle…from the end of the barn, looking up another ramp.

I grew up visiting my grandmother’s farm, hanging out inside barns and I can attest…this is one huge barn!  Perhaps my favorite way of showing the scale of this immense building is to show you the inside.

Even more fascinating than the exhibits inside is the structure itself.  You couldn’t help but stand in awe and gaze up at the giant beams, the height of the roof and the cavernous room that once housed dairy cattle on a working farm.  Thank goodness it was saved, because we won’t see the likes of this again.

And for a more intimate look at scale, do you see the newborn calf curled up underneath his mama?  She’d just given birth to him the day I was at the fair.  I’m sure he didn’t feel all that small to her, but he’s tiny compared to a full grown cow.

I had lots of fun looking for ways to show scale at the county fair.  I hope you enjoyed coming along for the ride!