Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.


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I help mom out any way I can.

Hey, Penny here again. 

Mom says you guys don’t need to hear from me so often. She says it’s her blog and shouldn’t be all about me. I like to point out regularly that her life is all about me. 

Ahem.

Mom took me to a new park last week before the snow.

Anyway, she’s had a couple important thoughts on her mind and has been meaning to blog about random stuff for awhile now. As you may or may not know, she’s meaning to do a whole lot of stuff that doesn’t get done. So I decided to help her out by putting together a random blog with some of her thoughts and some of my thoughts. 

You can judge which thoughts are most important.

Don’t worry mom, I’ll write your blog for you!

No pressure to vote for mine or anything. 

So,anyway, she watches a lot of HGTV. Mostly because there isn’t any violence or scary stuff and no one looses anything most of the time. Mom doesn’t like conflict. But she knows that most of it is staged, ’cause there’s no way all those couples can like totally opposite stuff and still be together. One wants to live in a city high-rise and one wants to live on acres in the woods? How’s that supposed to work out?

Me, I think we should all live in the woods!

Don’t you wonder if some of them are still together?

And how come so many of the women come off as so controlling and well…b****y? Sometimes mom has to turn it off because the (mostly) women annoy her so much. And how come the closets are always hers? Where’s he supposed to put his cloths? In the kids’ rooms? Maybe the garage? 

Of course mom has her own closet drama. We won’t go there.

Maybe you could store your shoes in here, mom!

I on the other hand wonder why people’s dogs don’t get to decide where they’re going to live. I think any dog would opt for lots of fenced in land to run on. I don’t know a dog around that likes to go on a walk by first getting on an elevator. And those high-rise balconies? You call that an outside space? What if a little doggie falls off? Huh??

Now THIS is a good outdoor space!

Mom also wonders about this open concept thing. It seems to be what almost everyone wants and she wonders if these people, particularly the young people, have ever lived with other people in that kind of space. 

Is this open concept?

Mom and Dad’s house is open concept. They remodeled it long before that was a thing, and in general I like it cause I can run really fast with no walls to slow me down, but mom says if you live in an open concept house you have to listen and watch whatever the other people want to listen to and watch. 

I’m a big help, right mom?

Sometimes mom would just like it to be quiet. She says she’d advise all those people looking for open concept houses to make sure they each have somewhere of their own to retreat to when they need a little quiet. 

Just image if there were a bunch of kids too! Kids and dogs racing around a big open concept house. Yep….I think that would be perfect, but mom says it makes her head hurt. What do you think?

I think having some kids to play with would be just fine.

And mom’s been thinking about the cable/internet bill. She hears so many people talking about streaming stuff, and she’s not sure she’d even know how to do that. We don’t have any of those subscription things, and sometimes something she’d like to watch is shown only on Peacock or Hulu or Netflix or any number of other services that she hasn’t even heard of. 

Is that a peacock over there?

The cable bill is big enough, why would you want to pay for more when we don’t even watch all the channels we have? Yet….maybe it would be nice to have some other options. Still, shouldn’t we be satisfied with the stuff we already have? Cause mom says we have a lot. 

Personally I don’t care one way or the other. It’s all noise to me. Just don’t have any doorbells or dogs barking on there. And nobody up on that screen better move too fast either. Cause I’ll be on guard, yes I will. I’m watching you all the time, even when I’m sleeping. Constantly on guard to protect my people, that’s me.

Always alert!

In fact, mom and I just came in from a neighborhood walk and about the time we got back to our driveway four trumpeter swans flew over. They sure make a lot of loud, weird noise when they fly! Mom thought it was cool. I just stood very still and watched. 

I’m not always brave.

After they were gone I pulled on my leash and stood up on by back feet and barked very loudly in the direction they had gone. I told them! They won’t be back any time soon! Don’t come near my mom you guys! Yes I can make myself very big, like a grizzly bear, when I want to scare something off.

Mom says I’m nothing like a grizzly bear, and I’m only brave after whatever riled me up is gone. Big brave girl, she calls me. She says this habit of mine doesn’t bode well for future camping.

Gotta keep an eye out all the time around here.

I say she needs a grizzly bear camping with her to keep her safe. What do you think?

Signing off from all this randomness,

Your clerical girl, Penny.


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Saturday randomness

I was making cornbread for dinner. The kind that has creamed corn and sour cream and butter and eggs and cornbread mix. Talking to my sister who was busy making Brunswick stew, I pour the mixture into the prepared 8×8 pan and pop it into the preheated oven. My work is done. But as we chat and I casually clean up bowls and measuring cups I pick up the cornbread box to toss it into the garbage and realize it’s heavy. Heavy with the cornmeal mix still inside. Which means it’s not in the cornbread that’s in the oven. I quickly haul the pan out of the oven, scrape the creamed corn, sour cream and egg mixture out of the pan, stir in the Jiffy Mix, pour it back into the pan and shove it into the oven.

I’m not telling anyone and I hope you can keep a secret.

I’m vacuuming the house in preparation of visitors coming tomorrow. Working my way across the living room I stop to roll the big long red and blue tunnel to the other side of a carpet runner so I can vacuum up the rolling dog fur hiding underneath. It occurs to me that maybe most people don’t have an agility tunnel permanently affixed in their living room.

I kind of feel sorry for those that don’t.

Penny the sheltie-girl is whining to go out. We figure she has to poo so I hook her up to her leash and my sister and I head out to take her for a walk up the street. She puts her foot down at the end of the driveway and refuses to go further. Apparently she only walks up the road if we’re practicing her heeling, including appropriate treats. I have two dusty pieces of kibble in my pocket and that gets us almost to the next driveway but she’s not going further without rewards. My sister picks her up and we carry her past another driveway to the lawn where she likes to do her business. We begin to laugh, because who carries their dog to a neighbor’s lawn in order to get her to poo? We laugh so hard our stomachs hurt, then my sister puts Penny down and she proceeds to do her stuff, which we promptly bag.

Are you guys laughing at me?

And then we all walk happily home.


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Randomness

I was looking for something specific in my old blog posts and came across this one, when husband and I visited the Detroit Institute of Art (DIA) on a cold January day back in 2014. It doesn’t seem like it’s been 8 years since we were there. We need to go again.

It was a fun winter adventure.

Time is flying by, and standing still at the same time as we shiver through another January. Today is the last day of the month, finally, and I’ve always said February is short, and then it’s kinda almost sorta spring.

We’ll see.

From another winter, but they’re predicting we’ll get snow this week.

This day last year I had just arrived in Alabama for a few weeks respite from the cold. I wish I could be there now, but I promised Katie I’d stick around. And I can’t take her so far away from her vet these days. I know she’s missing adventure just like I am.

I miss this place.

I went to the post office this morning to complain about shoddy mail delivery. All I got was rolled eyes and a statement that they couldn’t do anything about my lost mail. I didn’t expect they could, but I did expect an apology. What happened to customer service?

How I felt at the post office

Katie is feeling better today than the other night when I thought maybe it was time to let her go. I’m sure she’ll post more about how she’s doing soon. She’s getting her nails done this afternoon, but I doubt she’ll feel that’s much of an adventure at all.

I got to go on a walk with my friend Deuce, but it was so cold we only stayed for one picture!

We’re still being safe here, I’m ordering my groceries online and picking them up with no contact from anyone. I miss browsing at the grocery store, but I don’t miss the frustration of empty shelves, the lack of checkout lanes open, or pushing a cart through a slushy parking lot in a blizzard. I may stick with this online thing even after covid.

We’re all puffed up against the cold.

Do you think there will be an ‘after covid?”

I was going to write a post about the word game Wordle. But randomness flowed instead. If I think about it there’s a connection there. But that’s for another post.

Hoping for a warmer day.