Past Blogs

I am looking forward to  summer in the libraries with kids and dogs. Yes, dogs! When I visit libraries to present programs for children, a dog is frequently visiting on the same day. “The Reading Dog” is a huge success in children’s rooms across the country.

The dogs don’t read. Kids cuddle up to the dog and read to them. I have no doubt that many children truly believe that the dogs understand every word read to them.

Being a library, book and dog lover, I think The Reading Dog idea is inspired. A shy or poor reader gains confidence, skill and practice in reading. The dog gets the undivided attention of a child….and sometimes a small snooze.

Reading Education Assistance Dogs started in 1999. Studies show that these registered therapy dogs can improve the literacy skills of children. The qualities of a good R.E.A.D. therapy animal are listed in the R.E.A.D. Manual. Among them are “calm, quiet, obedient, tolerant of chaotic environments and exuberant handling and neutral to the presence of toys, crayons, books AND LUNCH REMNANTS IN TRASH CANS.” Obviously, these dogs are special.

I know of no library that has a reading cat. Perhaps because our little felines have been domesticated a mere 5,000 years as opposed to the dogs’ 10,000 years, cats are more wary of  human ideas. This fact did not deter me from having my own reading cat moment.

I recently picked up a lovely coffee table book on the Taj Mahal at a library used book sale. “The perfect book to read to my cat, Taj,” I mused. I believe that he enjoyed each page.

I am not feeling blue. I’m not a blueblood, either, nor am I seeing red or green with envy.

On the other hand, I am in the pink and even have been tickled pink. A purple haze is not my style, but I wouldn’t mind being a golden girl. And if a difficult situation arises, I won’t be yellow.

Metaphorically, we human beings emote in a rainbow of colors…..with one exception. Perhaps orange has hung out with pumpkins, oranges and fall leaves for so long that it can’t relate to human feelings or we can’t relate to it. I can’t think of an instance when someone has said to me, “Are you feeling a bit orange today?”

But the world is a huge place with myriad nations, regions and languages.  Somebody out there probably uses orange to express an emotion. If you know about this, kindly let me know.

The sun was stingy this month; the snow was not. February in the North country is not for the faint-hearted.

Everything that can fall out of the skies has…rain, freezing rain, snow and fog. When the sky wasn’t falling, the temperatures were plunging.

Our down-slanting driveway has turned into a gigantic ice skating rink. We now take the car to our mailbox at the top of the drive.

On the other side of the house, huge ice shelves have built up along the lake shore. On warm days (warm defined as 35 degrees) big chunks of ice break off and float like islands. It resembles a scene from the Arctic minus a polar bear on one of the ice floes.

This challenging weather has given everyone on the Tooley estate ravenous appetites. We are feeding hundreds of hungry mouths each day in the outdoor cafe. Fifty birds feeding simultaneously is a common sight now. Our most comical daytime visitors are thirteen turkeys who strut in from the woods. One prefers to dine on top of the corn table. Groups of deer slip silently under the feeders at night to second harvest all the fallen seeds and corn.

Inside the house, we are indulging in comfort foods. I am drawn like a magnet to the kitchen where I am cooking up large quantities of hearty soups, au gratin potatoes, pasta dishes, cornbread and cookies.

The cats have turned into chow hounds as well. They sit and wait beside their food dishes for kibble to arrive. The smarter felines open the lower cupboard doors where they know their food is stored. We’ve cat proofed the lids of the bins.

This week the first sign of spring appeared….at our grocery store. The new crop of Florida strawberries has come in, a true cause for celebration. These luscious berries signal that spring has arrived somewhere in the United States, if not in our backyard. I bought three quarts.

Liz was a smashing redhead.

“I’ve got great hair,” she would say. She did. It was thick, stylish and a flaming match to her original color.

Liz was eighty years old, widowed after a happy marriage. She was also a friend and neighbor of my mother-in-law. These two women couldn’t have been more opposite. My mother-in-law was not into glamour, nights out or romance. Liz, on the other hand, lived to get all dolled up, go out dancing and meet gentlemen. She meet quite a few and took many home to her doublewide.

One day my mother-in-law informed us that Liz was getting married; she had found the perfect golden-ager to move into her trailer on a permanent basis. The wedding was to be on the east coast where Liz’s daughter lived. Elaborate nuptial plans were made. Liz and her fiance left Arizona in a flurry of well wishes.

The next time we visited Arizona, we saw Liz, her new husband and all their beautiful wedding photographs. The “cutting the cake” picture was particularly lovely.

Years passed. The 80 plus year old bride died and my mother-in-law’s health started to fail.Then my husband’s mother said she needed to tell us something extremely serious. We panicked.

“Do you remember Liz?” she asked us.

“Of course, she was terrific,” we replied.

“Well, she revealed,” Liz never really got married. She thought everything would be better if she faked a wedding.”

What brilliant creativity. This exuberant eighty year old got to have her cake and eat it, too.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all.

“We are going to see snow for the very first time!” the little boy said. “We are from India.”

He and his brother were standing behind us in the jetway. We were all in Los Angeles waiting to board a plane to Detroit. The temperature in L.A. was 73 degrees; Detroit was reporting 14 degrees.

“I think you will see snow today,”  I assured them. “Snow is in Detroit’s weather forecast.”

The man ahead of us chimed in. “You’ll get sick of it in an hour.”

Curmudgeons should be ignored, so I asked the boys if they were planning on building a snowman.

“We don’t know how!” they said in unison.

“It’s easy,” I told them as I pantomimed scooping up the snow, packing the snowball and rolling it around.

I also told them about our son’s best snowman who was over five feet tall and built on our deck two inches away from the huge ceiling to floor dining room windows. Snowman’s jolly face looked in at us and he practically became a member of the family until the spring thaw.

Despite the fact that I’m a freezy cat, all around winter wimp and frequent driver on snow packed roads, I hope never to lose my appreciation of a snowfall’s beauty. How fortunate we all are that children remind us of the world’s wonders.