Last year Michael and I watched the river slowly freeze. I think I tried to write poetry about it for the poetry class I was taking. I don't recall that any of those poems worked out very well, but so it goes. This year, I was looking forward to watching the river freeze. I remember lines of poetry that never materialized, about the river looking like ice soup - chunks of murky black slush slipping rapidly through the barely-liquid heart of the river, pulled along by the deadly current. (I'm not making up the deadly part. According to our next door neighbors, several people have drowned in the river close to our home over the years.)
Anyway, during the little free time I had last year I liked to stare out at the river and lose myself in contemplation. Then one day it was completely frozen and we started to see animal and then people tracks in the snow that built up on top of the water. This year, I have even less free time, so it is probably a good thing that our side of the river (there is a gigantic sand bar in the river behind our house) froze instantly overnight during our big snow storm last Tuesday. When we woke up to a snow day on Wednesday morning the river was gone. Our back yard had expanded by hundreds of yards overnight. The far side of the river, across the sand bar, was still chugging along, but I noticed yesterday that it, too, has frozen completely. I wonder if it will stay that way until the thaw party in March. Time will tell.
This weekend I made Christmas "cookies" - or, rather, truffles. I had the idea, I found a recipe online, and within a week I was in full truffle-making mode. Pretty exciting. They're actually really easy to make.
In addition to making truffles, I've just started reading a really fun book for a book club I joined that will have its first meeting at a little independent book store in Portage, Books 'n Beans, in January. The book is Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn. I highly recommend it for anyone who loves words, language, and conundrums.
Michael and I are slowly working our way through wedding thank-yous (that's actually what I'm supposed to be doing right now . . . ) and I'm still getting the hang of student teaching, although last week even my unruly seniors finally started to respect me as the authority in the classroom. Part of that is because I've learned how to relate to some of the most obnoxious . . . er . . . challenging students. Part of it is also that I've finally felt comfortable enough to teach lessons my own way instead of trying to teach the way my cooperating teacher teaches. I designed an "epic" writing assignment for one class, and just on Friday decided to rearrange the schedule my cooperating teacher had chosen for his sophomore class - I take over tomorrow and I thought it would be better to have the sophomores write a descriptive paper of a concrete experience and THEN write a paper defining an abstract concept, rather than defining the abstract concept first . . . it makes sense to me but we'll see how it goes.
Also, Michael took Oliver to be groomed on Tuesday. Oliver needed the grooming badly. He looked like a fluffy mop - his fur hadn't been trimmed in 6 months, except some little spot jobs I had tried to do on his feet and tail. It was honestly taking me an hour and a half to groom him, and I only had time to do a good brush-through once a week, so he was getting messy and matted. And he couldn't see so he kept running into things! (Like all of the wedding presents stacked in our living room.) Dale, his groomer, did a fantastic job, especially in light of the oncoming blizzard. I think he gave Oliver a kind of Poodle cut. (When I took Oliver in back in June for his first grooming as a member of the Buechner-David family I had no idea how he should be trimmed - having never taken a dog to the groomers before - but I knew that I didn't want him to have a Westie cut, since he's not a Westie. ((Petsmart gave him a Westie cut before we adopted him. It was confusing.)) Dale talked through the cuts he thought he'd make with me, categorizing Oliver as a "Poodle Mix" and I let him work. Mainly, I was interested in getting the fur out of his eyes, but I wanted his fur to stay long because I wanted to see what it would look like when it grew out all the way.) By now, I am completely satisfied that I know everything I need to know about Oliver's fur when it grows out. My instructions for Michael to pass along to Dale were, "remind him that the vet thinks it is best to trim the hair in his ears, rather than plucking it." Dale did what he wanted with Oliver, which I think is a modified Poodle cut, and he looks like an adorable little fluff again. But now he's an adorable fluff who can see! (As far as I know, Oliver has not run into anything since he got his hair cut.)
We discovered on Wednesday morning that Oliver loves to play in the snow! I will have to get some pictures of our snow-dog (who is afraid to walk on grass.) What a change from one dog to the next. Frodo loved to run in the grass, sit on the grass, walk in the grass, sunbathe in the grass, etc., but hated to have snow touch any part of his paws. We'd go for walks and he'd hobble along on three legs, not because he was injured but because he wanted to save one paw from the misery of snow. Oliver, on the other hand, really hates putting his paws in grass, but now that the snow is here he bounds through it, romping through our yard. I feel a little bit badly that we had all of his long fur cut off right before the first big snow storm - that would have been extra insulation for him when he goes outside!
For now, here are some before and after pictures of Oliver. And then I'm off to thaw out soup for dinner and finish my school work and to write some more thank-yous . . .
BEFORE . . . Look, ma, no eyes!
AFTER - I can actually, factually see! Isn't it grand?
No comments:
Post a Comment