Jeffrey's spring fever

You just have to love any story that starts with the phrase, "The dog knocked himself out."

I got home from work Friday night and was standing the kitchen talking to my son Matt and my husband Eric. Our dog Jeffrey was snoozing on the living room floor. And Eric had a tale to tell.

"He literally knocked himself out," Eric said. "At first I thought he was dead."

Apparently, feeling all frisky in the spring weather, Jeffrey was in the yard running and playing while Eric puttered in the garage.

For those who haven't met Jeffrey or read about him before, let me describe him a bit. The first thing people notice about our dog is his size. He is huge. The neighbor girl used to ride him until he started lying down everytime he saw her. He weighs about 120 to 130 pounds, maybe a bit more after a lazy winter. His head comes up to my hip. He is part German shorthair and part St. Bernard. We weren't aware of the St. Bernard part when we brought him home as a tiny puppy. We were already in love with him by the time he started growing at an alarming rate.

So, the big, frisky mutt was outside running around, slipping and sliding in the mud, bounding over the snow banks and just having a good time in general. He zoomed around the side of the garage (he's lanky, long-legged and can run like a deer), then spotted a bird and froze into a point. He points all sorts of things - birds, cats, toads, someone coming out the back door.

So he froze into a point, then started his creep-walking. He can move slow and quiet when he wants. He was stalking a little tweety bird that had landed in the driveway near the pickup truck.

Suddenly he exploded into a run and almost flew across the driveway after that bird.

Now, I don't know if he's just out of practice after a long winter, or if he just didn't see it, but, according to Eric, Jeffrey was at an all-balls out run, dialed in on catching that bird. And ran head-first into the pickup receiver hitch.

The THUNK as he hit was quite loud, reportedly.

"He stood there for a second, then just fell over," Eric said. "All I could think was, 'Oh, great. The dog just killed himself.'"

Eric walked over and bent over Jeffrey. He checked to see if the big guy was still breathing, and was relieved to find Jeff's chest moving. He was breathing normally, but out cold.

Eric crouched down and checked for blood. Not finding any, he scratched Jeff's head and neck until Jeff blinked, then slowly sat up. And groaned.

He got up, staggered into the garage and laid back down on the floor. He curled up like a fawn (he does that when he isn't feeling well) and napped, every now and then waking up to stare at Eric with big brown eyes and a grimace of pain.

"Gee," I said after Eric told me what had happened. "Do we check his pupils or what?"

Granted, I'm a first responder, but during training we have never really touched on what you do with a possible concussed dog. So we just kept an eye on him and woke him up a few times over the course of the evening.

Right now, he's sprawled out on the floor by my feet, which tells me he's feeling better. He's not curled up anymore. Well, he's twitching, which means he is either chasing a bunny in his sleep or having some kind of a seizure.

Nope, just chasing things in his sleep. Probably safer than chasing them in real life for a few days.

Pictures: Jeff as a pup (check out the size of those paws), and Jeff in a hat. I was going to take a new picture to show how big he is, but he went in the dining room and is glaring at me because he knows I'm making fun of him.

Posted by: jwettschreck on 3/13/2010 at 7:40 AM | Comments (2) | Permalink

Tags: concussion, dog, jeffrey, knocked out, spring

Kitchen floors, muddy dogs and fog

I know that the passing from winter to spring is a messy business. I understand, intellectually, that when snow melts on the lawn and the yard and in front of the garage, it is going to turn frozen dirt into mud.

But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Yes, it is nice to feel warmer temperatures, nice to see snow piles shrinking. I could, however, do without the giant muddy dog prints on my kitchen floor.

I tried to teach Jeffrey how to wipe his feet, but he won’t. Our old black lab, Dale, used to come in and stand there until someone wiped off her fuzzy toes. But Jeff won’t do it.

I bought a mat and put it on the back step. It states, “Wipe your paws.” Then I told Matt to teach his dog how to read, but apparently that didn’t work either.

So my kitchen floor is decorated with dog prints the size of my palms. This too shall pass, I know. I just wish it would pass quickly.

I ran into a gentleman this morning at the gas station in Fulda who said we would have sunshine by Sunday and temperatures in the 50s by the end of next week. He guaranteed it. I’m not sure if the man has some kind of “in” with Mother Nature, or if he has some other way of knowing what the weather will bring other than watching the predictions, but since I like the idea, I’m willing to go along with it.

Tell everyone you know that by next weekend it will by sunny and in the 50s. Maybe Mother Nature will give in to the pressure and do just that.

On a side note, the constant fog has been interesting. I have felt like I’m driving in a long, gray tunnel as I travel from Avoca to Worthington and back each day. Since hurtling through the thick fog at 60 miles an hour seems like a bad idea, I’ve slowed it down, but several times I have ended up with someone behind me riding my bumper.

Please, back off.

It seems easy to be the lead car, but that is not always the case. In life, following is always easier than leading, but throughout history there are many examples of followers who want the leader’s job.

Next time you feel the need to tailgate someone you think isn’t going fast enough, tamp down the urge. Or go ahead and pass them, then take up the lead so everyone can follow your tail lights. Either way, get off my bumper.

Me, I’ll hang back and play it a bit safer. I want to get home to my family, and if it takes a few minutes longer to do it when visibility is horrible, then so be it.
 

Posted by: jwettschreck on 3/12/2010 at 9:37 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Tags: fog, mud, spring, tailgating

Elementary school photos...who do you see?

Writing a blog about elementary school and Junior Great Books yesterday got me thinking about the school district I attended, along with my three brothers.

Way back then (in the stone ages, hardee-har) Forest Lake was considered a rural area. Now it is a suburb of the Twin Cities, the traffic is horrific and I get crazy if I’m there for very long.

I grew up on a small hobby farm a few miles from town, off the frontage road where 35E and 35W come together. I started kindergarten at Forest View. Right next to Forest View was another elementary school, Forest Lake Elementary. The city mice kids went to Forest Lake, the country mice went to Forest View. Don’t ask me why.

The Forest Lake School District is absolutely huge; I think there are 10 or 11 elementary schools that feed into two junior highs that feed into one high school. By the time I graduated, there were over 400 kids in my class, but when I tell people that, they assume I’m from the cities, not one of the country mice.

It is just that the school district stretches for miles.

So, after a few years of going to Forest View, some genius got the idea to redistrict some of the elementary school lines, and a bunch of fresh-from-the-farm hicks, myself included, were suddenly going to school in Lino Lakes, a ritzy little town where the kids all wore little alligators on their shirts and designer jeans instead of flannel shirts and their brothers’ hand-me-down Wranglers. Talk about culture shock!

I know once they shifted us to Lino Lakes I spent the next four years standing or sitting in alphabetical order between Brian Ostlie and Bill Parker.

I was a shy enough kid, but the shift to a new school in third grade didn’t help. Luckily for me, some of the same kids I had riding the bus with all of my life were still part of my daily routine, and I always had my two big brothers and one little brother nearby.

I pulled out my class photos this morning (first grade is missing for some unknown reason), and took a close look at the group from second grade at Forest View compared to the group in third grade at Lino Lakes. There are a few faces in common, but not too many. Of course, there were two second grade classes at Forest View and three classes at Lino Lakes, so I’m sure some of my friends ended up in the same school, but with a different teacher.

In my second grade photo, standing directly in front of me is a little girl that would one day grow up to be my sister-in-law. That is pretty cute.

When I look over the photos, some names just pop out at me and others are a bit of a mystery. In ways I feel like that TV host from the show Romper Room (See? I am old).

“I see Randy and Holly and Robert (who married Holly) and Ron and Theresa and Mike and Bonnie and Darlene and Kenny and Butch and Rick.”

It goes on and on.

Romper stomper bomper boo.

Now that I have connected with so many of my former classmates via Facebook, it is especially fun to talk about those old days. I chatted a few months ago with one of the guys that grew up a few miles from me and made the shift from Forest View to Lino Lakes. It was funny, because I remember myself back then as kind of a spaz, but he remembers me as a funny, cute little girl. I think I like his version better.

Some of the kids I left behind at Forest View, I actually hooked up with again in junior high and high school. The meetings were always a bit tentative – after all, we hadn’t seen each other since we were 7 years old.

“Hey, don’t I know you?”

Some people remembered me just because of my unusual name. Being the only Justine in a 100 mile radius has its moments, but with a nickname of Justy…yikes.
 

Posted by: jwettschreck on 3/10/2010 at 10:25 AM | Comments (3) | Permalink

Tags: class photos, elementary school, forest lake, forest view, lino lakes, school district

Junior Great Books and parent-eating lions

When I was in fourth grade I was invited to join a new program at school called Junior Great Books. The top readers from each grade were put in the program, which was designed to get young readers looking deeper into short stories.

According to an article about the program, it was actually developed and put into use in 1962, and is a program “designed to help teachers develop inquiry-based instructional strategies in reading, literary analysis and critical thinking. The shared-inquiry method of discussion about the stories was supposed to develop a student’s reading, communication and thinking skills.”

I didn’t know any of that at age 10, but I knew I loved the books full of short stories. I developed a love of reading at a very young age, and it is still a passion of mine.

Anyway, in fourth grade I was handed a shiny tan book and told to read the first story so we could discuss it the following week. It was like being ordered to eat chocolate and sleep in.

I was finally able to sit with a few classmates and talk about what we had read, what we thought of it, the kind of pictures that popped into our heads as we read descriptions of rooms and people and scenes. It was heaven! As much as my folks encouraged my reading, they certainly didn’t have time to read all the same books and discuss them. And talking to my three brothers about a book was likely to get me a “Shut up, Sis” response.

One story especially just stuck in my head. It was “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury, about a house that held the latest technology. That house did everything for the family. It clothed them, fed them, rocked them to sleep at night. There were descriptions of futuristic robotic stuff that challenged my imagination. As a child, I know it was all made-up stuff and would never really exist, but it was so intriguing!

In the house was a nursery for the two children. It was a virtual reality room, and produced any setting the children asked for, using the walls and floor and ceiling. The parents, who are portrayed as selfish blobs who are glad the children are so preoccupied with the nursery, eventually realize the room seems to be stuck on an African setting and decide half-heartedly they should do something about it.

SPOILER ALERT: The room eventually becomes more real than anyone ever expected. Long story short, the lions on the African veldt eat the parents. The story ends with their psychologist being given a cup of tea by the children as they sit under a hot African sun. The man notes several lions sprawled in the distance gnawing on something and looking his way as the children tell him they will be back in a few moments and exit the room.

Oh, great story.

Our school district carried the program through sixth grade, and I missed it terribly when I started junior high, but by then I was being placed in classes where book discussion was part of the curriculum. I was introduced to my favorite book ever – “To Kill a Mockingbird” – and that same year read a book that also remains to this day on my top 10 list – “A Day No Pigs Would Die.”

So, fast forward a few years. OK, a lot of years. I ended up with a small child who swallowed books whole. I couldn’t keep Nick in books. He had a high school reading average by the time he was in first grade. He had out-grown our beloved Berenstein Bears by the time he was about five, had ripped through Goosebumps books like they were nothing. By the time he was in 7 years old I had purchased abridged copies of Mockingbird, Flowers for Algernon and any other classic I could think of.

Then one day I got a call from Murray County Central West Elementary. They were starting the Junior Great Books program and wondered if I was interested in leading one of the grades.

Boy, howdy! Was I ever!

I attended a training session led by principal Sally Berg, then I was on my own, facing nine inquisitive second graders, one of whom was my son. Looking back on the next couple of years of leading a group, I can only hope the children enjoyed it as much as I did.

I was thrilled when my group (I moved up a grade each year with the group) came across the story “The Veldt.”

A few of the discussion questions were still the same, but what grabbed my attention from the first was that the inventions that had seemed a total impossibility when I was a child were now either being used or right around the corner. The kids, although they loved the mysterious room and were intrigued by the naughty children who fed their parents to lions, were not at all fazed by the technology. Big screen TVs, computer games and Internet access have gone a long ways toward dulling down that part of “The Veldt.”

It is still a great story, though. And a great program. Check it out!
 

Posted by: jwettschreck on 3/09/2010 at 4:10 PM | Comments (1) | Permalink

Tags: junior great books, ray bradbury, reading, technology, veldt

A special day

After a quick bit of Internet research I learned there is no traditional gift to celebrate a 24th wedding anniversary, but one Web site said the contemporary gift is a musical instrument or song.

My husband Eric used to play the saxophone, but it has been a while. Maybe I can find him a kazoo. A really special anniversary kazoo? I could get him one, but then I’d have to listen to him play it. Bad idea.

The song thing? I can do that.

Happy anniversary baby, got you on my mind.

Actually there are a few song titles and lyrics I can think of that describe parts of the past 24 years. For instance, at our wedding, my cousin sang “Sunrise, Sunset” from Fiddler on the Roof. As we watch our kids grow and fly away from the nest, it seems appropriate. I don’t remember getting older … when did they? Probably right around the time Eric’s hair and my tiny waist disappeared.

I suppose I could list all the sappy songs … Faithfully, And I Love You So, Through the Years. But, while those songs are nice, we’re more of a Crazy Little Thing Called Love and Everybody’s in the Twilight Zone kind of couple. Somehow, we make it work.

A friend of mine, working on her degree, has to write a sociology paper on successful marriages in the U.S. I summed it up for her in a couple of sentences.

I told her a successful marriage takes work, compromise, a sense of humor and a reasonably high pain tolerance. Most importantly, it takes the ability to stick when things are tough. No one ever said this was going to be a walk in the park, all sunbeams, pretty pink balloons and unicorns. There is a reason fairy tales end with the phrase “and they all lived happily ever after.” They didn’t want to scare us as children.

Honestly, I’m always pleased when the span of time between moments I want to smack him with a frying pan can be measured in months instead of days. Translating that into guy language is tough, but I’m sure Eric has had similar thoughts about me. Maybe not visualizing a frying pan, but still...

Now, my original plan was to try to write a whole blog using song lyrics, but I had to stop. It was just too schmaltzy. I’ve had requests for another poem ever since my “Christmas Blizzard of ‘09” epic poetry venture, so I thought I’d try that, but I couldn’t find anything to rhyme with “Holy Crap! It’s been 24 years?”

So I guess I’ll just quote some lyrics that work for us.

“I know that I’ve got issues, but you’re pretty messed up too. Either way I’ve found out I’m nothing without you.”

And that is from a quirky song that makes me smile.

The title?

My Life Would Suck Without You. Again, it works for us.

We’ve lived through 10 years as a military family, no easy task. A kid with a chronic disease, moving a dozen times, the deaths of family and friends, raising a few smart-alecky kids, family chaos, car crashes, arguments, evil stares, rolled eyes and the occasional silent treatment.

We’ve balanced it out with buying a family home, raising a few smart-alecky kids (yes, that goes in both categories), the ability to read each others’ minds, moments of hilarity, shared laughter, love and the comfort of knowing there is one person in the world besides ourselves we can always count on.

All things considered, I’m ready to sign on for the next 24 years.

Schmaltzy? Maybe.

“But we’ll travel along, singing a song, side by side.”

Maybe I do need to get him that kazoo.

Posted by: Justine on 3/08/2010 at 4:30 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Tags: anniversary, gift, marriage, worthington