Easter Weekend

at the Harmony Bar and Grill

Ice-Fishing, Reflection, Melting Snow and Ice…

Sorting Clothes from Sue & Bill

The Easter Dog, delivering Easter Bags of Candy

Hair Styling

Human Head Rest (taken by Jo Ann)

Who’s Driving the Van?

So behind….

I’m so incredibly behind… on life, on blogging… on posting new photos. Not complaining, just commenting about this reality. This week will also be quite busy. A bit crazy. But I’ve had an incredibly good week/weekend to keep me going. Love it when that happens.

Here are a few photos from early last week. Kris, a friend from church, invited me to go to her family’s lake house in Michigan. Gorgeous… incredibly peaceful, relaxing, fun… hanging out with Kris and MorMor (her mom), maple sugaring… watching “Dancing with the Stars” (thanks, MorMor–now I want to see what happens!), talking into the night, sitting in the hot tub under the stars and the fog… walking along the beach. Life is good, on days like that.

For more Michigan pictures, check out my Flickr site.

Grace, Take 2

I miss my favorite mug… no doubt. The mug I took a photo of and titled the photo “Grace”, because I thought it had been spared in an unfortunate fall off a coffee table. Then I blogged about how it wasn’t grace after all, because the mug ended up being broken Sigh.

Well, yesterday my friend Steve surprised me by having other district clergy bring a mug to district meeting… so now I have three new mugs! And a box of kleenex for the next time–may it never happen–I break a mug. Not only that, but the box of kleenex actually matches one of the mugs. Another mug has Zion Church’s phone number (which is great, because now I can call Steve and Andy anytime I want!). And the other mug has a nice photo of a church in the UP.

Thank you, Steve.. thank you, District Clergy. You gave me a glimpse of grace, humor, laughter, and some joy.

So now I’ll end with the nice platitudes that Jeremy wrote, accompanying the condolence/sympathy card (including an adaptation of Psalm 70) he made:

“Sending you love and support in this difficult time.

We pray in earnest that you have overcome the grief caused by the loss of your favorite coffee mug.

Please try to remember that it was for the best.”

Thanks, District!

Joy

Afternoon walk. or run. with the humans. in the field. off-leash. take-off running. sunshine. wind. sticks. chew. not-bitter-cold. Joy.   

I went to the zoo today

I went to visit the animals, to hang out, to take photos. Which I did. Incredible. A very kind zoo-keeper answered my questions for about 10 minutes, while we watched the polar bears. Then I stood there for another 10 or so minutes, just observing… they’re so gorgeous. I knew that polar bears have hollow hair-but I never realized that the ones with yellower tints swim more often! In this case, that would be Nanuq, the male. He’s also quite the bully. Poor Mishka. I only took a few dozen photos of the polar bears. (ok, maybe a few more than that, even.)

I walked around to see a few other animals, before going to the lion exhibit. As I approached the exhibit, the female lion jumped off the rock that she and the male were resting on. (A heated rock, I learned!) She walked over to me, and to the part of the huge glass wall I was standing behind. She paced for awhile, I put my hand against the glass, and she then began to “paw” the glass. At first it was a teeny bit freaky, but then she looked as though she wanted to be pet, or to have someone scratch behind her ears. Other people came by. One guy was concerned about this-understandable. But I was loving it. She was so beautiful. The glass was so dirty and foggy and difficult to see through clearly, but I was mesmerized by the lion’s actions. When I put my head against the wall and looked into her eyes, she did a similar thing: putting her head against the wall. It was incredible. I took tons of photos there, too… as well as this video. Check it out. (It’s not the best quality, but you get the idea.) And in case the link does not work for you, the video is called “lioness at the zoo”, and is on You Tube.

I need to visit the animals more often. They are so fun and therapeutic. If I had extra time, I think I’d volunteer there. Maybe someday.