Speaking of things that make me smile.
It’s beautiful here today, we just might have to go for a walk to celebrate.
We hope you are celebrating too.
Happy Easter
Tag Archives: Katie
Gotcha Day
Hi you guys! It’s me, Katie! Guess what, guess what, guess what?!?!?!?!
Today, Wednesday March 31, is my Gotcha Day! For those of you that don’t know, it’s sort of like a birthday but it’s the anniversary of the day that a doggie (or a cat I suppose, though really do cats truly celebrate anything?) moved into his or her forever home.
Fourteen years ago today I picked mama and daddy to be my furever parents. Don’t tell them but I think I got a good deal. I mean seriously, look at the wonderful life full of adventures that I’ve had so far!
OK, so this past year has been pretty passive, no real adventures at all, but on the other hand they’ve been home with me just about every single day. And to be honest, that’s all I really want, to be near mama and daddy all the time.
Lately, even though they’re home more, it’s harder for me to keep track of them. I don’t hear them moving around as well as I used to, and if I rest my eyes for a moment they disappear. I have to go hunt them up all the time — they’re usually just in another room, but sometimes it takes me a long time to find them and I start to panic. I think there should be some kind of rule that they have to wake me up if they leave the room.
I’ve told mama off a few times when I couldn’t find her right away. Also when she left me home with daddy and went on an adventure without me. Not fair, but I guess she deserves some mom-time once in awhile. Even I admit I’m sort of high maintenance.
Today mama took me to a park to celebrate my Gotcha Day. It was pretty perfect, cool with a wind that made mama wish she had worn gloves. We didn’t walk very far. Mama said I could walk wherever I wanted and I did, but turned around sooner than she expected.
I say, no sense over doing, right? Plus mama took me to the park late in the afternoon and it was getting close to supper time. A princess like me doesn’t like to be late to dinner.
Anyway, I enjoyed my quiet Gotcha Day. In 2018 I was adventuring down south on my day. You can read about it while I dream about it. It was pretty cool, but I’m thinking I’ve maybe outgrown those big adventures now. I’m much more mature, if you know what i mean.
I hope you had a great day too and that you spent some time outside enjoying spring (or fall if you’re from the Southern Hemisphere!). Mama says she knows it’s spring now because the skunk cabbage is coming up!
Whatever mama.
Mama thinks she’s in charge
Katie here, of course. It’s Saturday, March 13 and tonight mama and daddy do something called ‘spring forward.’ Huh. I don’t believe I’ve seen either one of them spring before. I’m pretty sure they’re way too old to be springing at all.
Anyway, I heard them talking about how they figured this was a great way to feed me later in the day. I start begging for my dinner about 2:30 in the afternoon and I usually wear them down between 3:30 and 4. Used to be, when mama worked a real job that I didn’t get supper till she got home, maybe 7 at night, and apparently they thought I was fine with that.
I was not fine, and since mama’s home all the time now I figure I should get my supper when I want my supper. Them thinking that they can fool me by an hour tomorrow is a hoot. Obviously they have forgotten my intelligence.
That would be a mistake.
So today mama took me to two parks! It was a beautiful day, 49 degrees (9.44C) with blue skies and no wind! We had so much fun! You aren’t seeing pictures cause mama is frustrated with her LightRoom processing stuff.
She’s filled up her alloted memory, so her cloud is full. She says she doesn’t even need to store stuff in a cloud, she stores it all on her laptop. So she has to figure out how to empty her cloud library without deleting all her stuff on her laptop before she can work on any more pictures.
Mama hates technical stuff like this.
I think this is obvious proof that mama takes too many pictures. She should learn from this and back off, especially pictures of me. Of course i like the treats involved in a photo shoot…so maybe I should reconsider that.
And mama is filling up her WordPress alloted space too. Proof, obviously, that she talks too much. Maybe she should just take a break. I’d vote for that as long as she uses all the extra time she’d have taking me to parks and on adventures.
What do you think, should she focus entirely on me and let the rest of the stuff go? Inquiring doggies want to know…and while you’re at it, who thinks they’ll be able to feed me an hour later than normal tomorrow?
Yea. I don’t think so either.
A picture from last week. I pretty much look the same today.
Smiling
Things are beginning to get back to normal here. At least as far as Katie is concerned.
If this is all the snow around here, it must be spring…right mama?
She and I went for a walk at her favorite park this afternoon. She hadn’t been there in more than a month.
Are you going to carry me across this big, cold puddle?
We had sunshine, but it was still chilly out. Just the way she likes it.
I guess maybe it’s not quite spring after all.
I’m pretty sure, when she wasn’t busy sniffing out the best smells, she was smiling.
I sure love my park!
So was I.
Can’t beat a walk in my park!
Torn
I’m back in Michigan, and it’s lovely here, with sun and blue sky, a bit of white snow left on the ground. It might get to 50F this afternoon.
My last night at the lake the sky finally cooperated and provided a worthy sunset.
Still.
The fact that it was a foggy morning made it somewhat easier to leave.
In Alabama it was beginning to warm up too, daffodils were blooming, and when the sun broke through the rain clouds we enjoyed temperatures in the 70s.
For weeks, this trip, I passed this field and remembered one year when cows where there and how photogenic the spot was. But I never saw any cows there until the day I was leaving town.
My last day in Alabama I sat on the deck and enjoyed listening to the birds singing. The brown thrush were chasing each other around the yard. Blue birds were flitting everywhere. Robins sang in the morning and ducks and geese gathered in the lake.
I took tiny little two lane roads that curled through the mountains as I headed north. The better to find interesting things to photograph.
It would have been wonderful, after almost a full month of rain, to sit there for a few more days.
There were a lot of interesting places along the way.
Still.
You don’t always have to have a structure to make an image interesting. Especially with fog.
My husband and my Katie-girl were in Michigan and I’d been gone a long time. I felt somewhat guilty lounging around in the South while my husband dog-sat the demanding princess.
So many old, abandoned homesteads tucked in the hills.
Still.
I think about all the families whose dreams moved on to somewhere else.
My sister and brother are in the South and I hadn’t seen either of them in more than two years, so it was great to spend weekends with them, painting with my sister, going on a boat ride with my brother. It would have been nice to stick around and spend more time with them.
So many barns hanging on.
Still.
So many decisions to make.
My girl, who lives in the moment, had spent enough moments without her mama. She must have felt like she’d never see me again.
A high point in Alabama. Plus the sun started to break through the fog.
Still.
Lots of barns still in use.
There were more adventures to be had in the south.
I turned around to get this, because of the car.
Still.
A cozy barn nestled in the hills.
There are adventures to be had in the north too.
Solidly facing a new day.
So here I am, enjoying sunshine while wearing a coat, tickling the princess tummy, feeding my birds, watching the squirrels. And it’s good.
Some grey barns are by design, not by age.
Still….
Photos in this post are from my last evening at the lake, and my drive north.
Kinda missing this place now.
Mama’s in the doghouse
Hey people! Katie here, and boy do I have a story to tell you. After I’m finished I’m sure you’ll agree with me – mama should be in a very long timeout.
So as you may know, cause I told you a long time ago, mama’s been missing. I have spent hours of my precious time looking for her. Even though I had daddy with me, and he was feeding me and all, I still felt it was my responsibility to find mama.
You’re going to make my breakfast, right mama?
Shelties are super vigilent, as you know.
So I’ve been looking and looking, in all her favoite spots, which to be honest aren’t that many. There’s her bed. And her sofa. Hmmmm….I think that pretty much covers her favorite places. But just to be sure I even checked in the closets and the bathrooms and in the backyard and the garage and I couldn’t find her. Daddy says she wasn’t at any of my parks either.
So I mostly gave up, though I’e been sleeping with one eye open just in case.
What do you mean I have to wait a minute?
Then yesterday, daddy and I were making the rounds in the yard while I made a decision as to the perfect pee spot when a car drove up and stopped! Daddy picked me up right away and the car drove into my driveway! Then daddy put me back down and told me to go check it out.
It might be a maurader! Someone to steal my supper! I ran up the driveway and saw somebody get out of the car! But the sun was in my eyes and I couldn’t be sure….so I kept running toward that person the better to tell them off about parking in my driveway without my special sheltie permit.
You have apprently forgotten I AM A PRINCESS!
And when I got close enough to see, I was soo excited cause it was MY MAMA!!!!!
I barked and barked and wriggled all over and mama picked me up and held me tight and kissed my head and I wriggled some more and then she put me down and I ran around her feet and barked and barked.
Mama barely got in the door when I started barking at her again. I had a lot to tell her.
So she sat down on a chair in the foyer and told me she would listen to me for as long as I felt necessary to tell her off. I think she was being perfectly fair, so I only barked at her for a few more minutes and then I went over and asked dad if I could please have my supper. Dad told me to go ask mama, but I told him she was pretty useless and unreliable and I was counting on him for sustenance.
Get your priorities straight, woman!
Daddy sighed and went and started my dinner. This morning I had to bark at mama some more in order to get breakfast. The pictures on this post are from my morning performance. I think you will agree it’s Oscar worthy.
I also think you should agree that mama should be put in a very long timeout considering she got herself lost for about a gazillion million years and she hasn’t sufficiently explained herself yet.
She obviously needs remedial training.
What do you think?
Nom, nom, nom, nom.
Is this the end?
Katie here.
I just happened to see a picture on daddy’s phone. It was a picture mama sent him from wherever she is.
This is proof mama is cheating on me. I don’t know what to do. Should I disown her? File separation papers?
Or should I beg her to come back to me?
-Your heartbroken Katie-girl
A fleeting moment
Yesterday started out with fog but ended up warm with sunshine filling my space.
It was 70F with sun by the end of the afternoon!
Like most evenings since I’ve been here, there wasn’t much of a sunset even though there were a few floaty clouds overhead.
Wispy bits float by
The sun quietly slid below the horizon while I was busy talking on the phone.
Evening falls on a fine day.
It was a good way to end a day I’d spent mini adventuring. More on that in another post.
This morning, just like a certain sheltie-girl who will remain nameless, the light woke me at 6 a.m. The strange glow in the room had me leaping out of bed searching frantically for my clothes and then the camera.
Because this was outside:
This hasn’t been edited. This was the color I wasn’t sure I was seeing.
The whole world was orange and I knew it wouldn’t last.
It looks like a sepia photo from my grandmother’s time.
Sure enough, after only a minute or two the grey fog began to creep in, damp on my cheeks and the camera lens.
The fog moves in, obliterating the light.
And the whole world changed to grey.
Turned to black and white.
But wasn’t that orange moment worth getting up early for!
Katie says that would be a lesson well learned.
I have faith the light will return.
Edit: If you want to see an extraordinary sky, check out this post from 3 years ago about now when I was down here with Katie-girl.
Feeling a bit suspicious
Katie here. I had to borrow daddy’s ‘puter cause I can’t find mama’s laptop. To be truthful, I can’t find mama either.
Morning
But I don’t want to admit I’ve lost her. After all, it’s my job to know where she is all the time. And trust me it’s not easy, especially with my propensity to nap and her propensity to wander. Mama’s always moving around on me. I rest my eyes and when I open them again she’s in some other part of the house.
Only this time I looked in all her favorite places and I can’t find her!
Clouds
I think she’s playing hide and seek with me, and I think she seriously needs to cut it out! There must be a secret room somewhere in this house, and I’m going to find it.
Right after I rest my eyes.
Barn
So anyway, it’s a good thing I can find my dad. He’s been really good about taking me on walks and making my supper and stuff. But I still wonder where mama is.
Visitor
Hey! I just had a thought! Do you think she’s off adventuring without me? No, that can’t be it. Mama would never leave me behind.
She’s not off taking pictures of stuff that’s not me is she?
Artsy-fartsy
Making new friends?
Horses
Exploring new places? Or…..no this couldn’t possibly be it….she’s not off exploring some of my favorite places without me.
Road
Is she?
Reflections
Change Is Hard 