I am traveling this weekend. We are in Michigan for our daughter’s college graduation. I have a little extra time this morning and saw a post on another blogger’s page and thought perhaps I could dip my toe in the pool and join the party.
Since, I am on the road, I needed to write subplans. Teachers can’t leave without leaving some sort of plan behind.
my office desk, awaiting Thursday’s sub on Wednesday evening……
I stayed late Wednesday afternoon to make sure my kids were learning, challenged, and focused while I was gone. I was the last one out of the parking lot at 6 :15 PM. I’ll be back in the classroom making the last days of the school year count on Monday. Making the Days COUNT, one day at a time, learning every day and making each day count.
…and the first post of 2025. I started this post in January and didn’t finish. It happened again in February. I am going to finish it today and get on to the other things I need to finish for the weekend.
I’ve been following along on other blogs and I last month I read the sad news that another blogger I’ve followed for years has decided to stop posting. I was sad, because the thought crosses my mind from time to time. I was in late 40s when I started Making the Days Count dot org and now, I am in my early 60s, a fact I find difficult to believe. But I am here as stubborn and resolute as I was the first time I pressed ‘publish.’ I am hopeful too that my stories and posts show that I am still making my days count.
MOM DAY
Today is mom’s day. It was six years ago this morning when I learned my mom had died after a brief illness. I was talking to my brother David when he told me he needed to take a call. He called me back a few minutes later to share the sad news.
Her death wasn’t unexpected, she’d been moved to hospice weeks before she died. But six years later her passing still resonates with me.
I got my curls from her, or the bread crusts she coaxed me to eat. My mom as a child in 1938.
This morning, I was looking for a photo of her I could post, and I searched through the boxes I packed when she moved out of the house, we called home in 2028. I brought them home the summer after she died. They’ve been stacked unopened near my desk since. Continue reading Three things for the first Sunday in March→
W^2 or W squared for Wordless Wednesday, August 14, 2024
It is Day 72 with four remaining before it’s back to school.
Time flies.
It’s six months with three more before my son’s twins arrive, we can bearly (sic) wait. Always making the days count.
an empty plate, West Chicago, IL August 11, 2024. 1:49 PM
This past week has been a flurry of activity, and the next four days will be, too. This past weekend was our daughter-in-law’s baby shower, and we helped our son get his yard and house ready. It was a beautiful day, the yard looked wonderful, and it was a great day to celebrate the coming arrival of our first grandchildren. Exciting.
Time flies.
Today we are back to Michigan and the lake to help our daughter move into the house she and some friends have rented for her senior year.
Time flies.
Today is going to be an amazing day. I know it and I can feel it so, I’d better jump up, jump in, and seize the day. Making the Days Count, one day at a time making time, because time flies.
I could hear the gentle rain tapping on the roof this morning when I got up before Ivy. Yesterday the weather made a turn. It’s cooler today after several days of warm, sometimes hot, muggy stillness of the dog days of August.
Later this morning, we will be going home. It is both exciting and bittersweet.
Ivy was a puppy when I first started blogging, now she’s a senior dog, the senior dog. She doesn’t move like she once did, which is a blessing because I can remember many times trying to find her when she wandered away from the cottage and took off into the woods. We’ve learned a few things since those early days, but Fern is a lot like Ivy, but she will return when you call her. We have an Invisible Fence at home and both dogs know the boundary. At the lake we’ve been using a training collar, but that doesn’t contain either of them, especially Fern who has been known to return home with a deer leg, or two. It is bittersweet watching Ivy age, but it’s heartwarming seeing how Fern interacts with her. (NOTE – edited, last sentence added after publishing)
Fern and her deer leg from our trip here in April ’24
This morning, I woke up before Ivy and decided to go back to sleep, but before I could, I heard her stirring and quickly got up with her and got both she and Fern outside. When we were outside, I scanned the lake, and I noticed the heron was back. The heron was perched on the bow of Ely boat exactly where it was two days before. The heron didn’t seem fazed by the commotion of our morning routine and fortunately, Fern didn’t notice our visitor as she had Tuesday when the heron first appeared.
this morning’s phot, from the yard
Tuesday morning, I snapped a photo and sent it out on the family chat. Moments later W replied with a photo which he took the day before, on Monday.
Tuesday morning, my photo
Monday morning, W’s photo
Our Ohio friends are visiting this week. They arrived Monday afternoon well after our kids returned home after the race this past weekend. The race weekend was busy, and before our kids left, we took a family photo on the front steps. A family photo is something I have wanted to begin for a while, but I hadn’t done anything about it. There was a bit of grumbling, but we came together, and we have a family photo at the lake, the next time we take one it is going to include three generations, not two.
Tuesday afternoon, when we went out on the lake, we discovered evidence of the heron’s Monday visit to the Moomba on the tarp. Fortunately, it was a one-time visit.
This morning, after the dogs had finished their morning routine, I came inside and told my wife about the heron, and she got up to see it.
Normally, my morning routine is solitary – it’s just me and the dogs with my morning coffee. This morning, I had company.
It wasn’t long before H was down. I pointed to the heron, and we started talking about our visitor. While we deliberated, I remembered I had a copy of Sibley’s Guide to Birds. The guidebook was published in early 2020, and it helped us navigate the pandemic and I have a copy here and at home. It’s a great resource to have. Continue reading Day 60 – the great blue heron visits→
W^2 or W squared for Wordless Wednesday, July 24, 2024
It is Wednesday, almost Thursday. Fern and I wrapped up our business in Illinois and we loaded the car and drove back to the lake this afternoon. She was a fabulous driving companion and slept most of the trip curled up in the front seat or laid out in the back seat.
Fern with her paws on the guard rails looks down on the Au Sable River, Grayling, Michigan, July 21, 2024 10:18 AM
Last Sunday, Fern and I met B (my wife) at Stephan Bridge several miles downstream on the Au Sable River to watch the canoe racers pass through on their trip down the river to McMaster’s Bridge. It is a timing station for the BIG canoe race this weekend. It is also a great place to watch the canoes approach from down river, and if you are hungry there is an amazing restaurant on the south bank. Continue reading W^2 – pretty girl→
W^2 or W squared for Wordless Wednesday, July 17, 2024
It is Wednesday morning, and I have returned to the lake after a quick trip to Houston and back. The lilies are still blooming, and Fern and Ivy are enjoying their time here, just as we do.
soybean field along highway US 61 near Holland, Mississippi. Sunday, July 14, 2024 12:29 PM
I flew to Houston last Thursday morning and drove back over the weekend stopping Saturday night at my favorite bed and breakfast in Vicksburg, Mississippi. I had gone home to collect a cedar chest which had belonged to my paternal grandparents and had been sitting in storage since we had cleared my stepmother’s apartment this past January.
I arrived in the wake of Hurricane Beryl to find Houston reeling in power outages, downed trees, and sweltering heat and humidity. Though the latter is normal for summer in southeast Texas, the lack of power and air conditioning made conditions in the city much more unpleasant.
My trip was successful, and I was able to visit with my brothers and nephew, clear out the storage locker, collect the chest, and take in two baseball games at Minute Maid Park as well as collect more material, aka stories, to share through MakingtheDaysCOUNT.org.
I left after breakfast Saturday morning, and I took the long way home stopping in Vicksburg Saturday night. I had planned a side trip to Oxford to take one final look at Juliana’s home which sold in February ‘23 before finishing the drive home on Sunday.
O my, I am dropping the ‘h’! and it is Tuesday and time for a Tuesday’s Tune, Canada style. I am in Toronto for my 29th baseball stadium. It’s been an adventure.
Yesterday morning, I woke up early and drove from northern Michigan to Toronto, Ontario. It was a six-and-a-half-hour drive, and it was smooth driving, even when I got close to Toronto.
When Major League baseball released the 2024 schedule way back in July of ’23, I began looking ahead. At that time, I had my ’23 trips planned – Colorado, Baltimore, Tampa Bay, Miami, and Arizona, which left two teams: the Toronto Blue Jays and the Boston Red Sox. When I planned my baseball trips for this season, I was looking for games when the Houston Astros played the Toronto Blue Jays and the Boston Red Sox to complete my bucket list of all 30 teams. For the Blue Jays, the schedule read four games: Monday July 1 to Thursday July 4. I didn’t realize the significance of the date of the July 1st game, I knew the significance of Thursday’s game – July 4th, but not Monday’s game.
July First in Canada is Canada Day and it’s a BIG DEAL.
It is the day Canada celebrates as it’s ‘birthday.’ But that is an oversimplification. It’s the day when Canada (Quebec and Ontario), New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia became a country under the Dominion of Canada within the United Kingdom. It happened in 1867, two years after the ending of the American Civil War and two years before the founding of the first professional baseball league. Canada would add the remaining provinces to become the nation I know as Canada. But they are still part of the Commonwealth of Nations under the British crown. Continue reading Tuesday’s Tune – O Canada→
It’s Thursday and I am sitting at the gate waiting for push back. After five baseball games and two days driving along the coast, I am headed home.
I am trying something new with this post. I am going to write directly into WordPress using my iPad and the plane’s WiFi as I fly home to Chicago. I have never posted from my iPad or typed directly into WordPress, so I’ll see how this goes.
the view from my seat over Colorado….
I was able to piece together the video below from Monday’s drive north along the Pacific Coast Highway. I uploaded the video to YouTube this morning and added the pictures at the airport before boarding.
It is Day Ten of summer break. This summer’s break is 76 days and like every summer before, I am going to Make the Days Count.
Yesterday, was a day game and a chance to spend an afternoon with my friend, Tonette. She and I worked together in the late 80’s until early 1990 when I lived in the Bay Area working in the restaurant business for Vie de France. All these years, we’ve kept in touch via cards, birthday wishes, Christmas cards, and Facebook ever since. The last time we saw one another was in 1995 when I was in Southern California opening a restaurant for Vie de France.
Won’t you get hip to this timely tip:
When you make that California trip
Get your kicks on Route sixty-six
Three baseball games in San Francisco, the first two were night games before yesterday’s day game.
San Francisco is not a new ‘baseball city for me, it was the third baseball city for me back in 1987. I moved to the Bay Area in June of 1987 when I worked for Vie de France. Monday’s baseball game was my first game in San Francisco since the World Series earthquake game was played on October 27, 1989; ten days after the devastating earthquake. Continue reading that California trip …→
I am in California, along the Pacific coast in Aptos. I’ve been dreaming about this trip for over a month; now, I am here. It’s Day 7 of summer break and I am busy Making the Days Count.
I arrived Friday morning and have been to two baseball games, hiked in the coastal hills in Orange County, driven along the Pacific Coast highway, through a mountain pass, and up the Central Coast Valley before watching the sunset at Seacliff State Beach last night.
