Training Toby

My blog has moved!

You will be automatically redirected to the new address. If that does not occur, visit
http://www.terratoby.blogspot.com
and update your bookmarks.

Friday, January 10, 2014

See Beautiful: Smells Can Be Beautiful Too!

Smell is our most primitive sense. Marcel Proust is probably the most famous example of memory being triggered by an odor. He flashed back to his childhood upon smelling a madeleine (cookie), and ended up writing War and Peace as a result. Maybe it's a plus for most of us that cookie smells merely cause us to smile and head for the pantry.

We humans value smelling pleasant. This week I got a very nice present from Lydia at See Beautiful and Rosalyn at Sugar the Golden Retriever (visit them on the blog hop!). They sent me Mimosa Soap from See Beautiful, and it does smell heavenly.

I said it smells heavenly, Toby, not edible.

Speaking of edible, you probably knew that smell is crucial for our brains to process taste. One of my former colleagues did a great lab in her Anatomy and Physiology class. She provided several strongly flavored items, like minty gum and vanilla. She had her students hold their noses (blindfolded) and try to guess what they were tasting. Most of the time they were baffled, and she made her point. Next time you enjoy a beautiful treat thank your nose.

Consider that a dog's sense of smell is 14,000 times better than ours.
Explains a lot.

It's not just food that seems more beautiful with a nice smell. I get a Yankee Candle jar that smells like a Christmas tree and burn it every day while our artificial tree is up. It was part of the deal I made with my husband to convince him to go with a tree made in China. I'm not alone: from Yankee Candle's own financial report:

Retail sales were $176.0 million for the first six months of

fiscal 2013, an increase of $13.2 million or 8.1% over the prior

year period…

Perfumes are big business too. Reportedly, a bottle of Chanel #5,

based on tuberose and jasmine, is sold every 30 seconds. And who

can help being disappointed by roses and other flowers that have

no smell?

It's not just food and plants that smell nice. Think of babies and

little puppies. Think of your significant other's scent. Actually, a

common phenomenon when loved ones are separated is to hang on

to an unwashed shirt or pillowcase for the comforting smell.

When Kasey died I kept his brush, which hadn't been cleaned and

was full of fur. For months I could pull it from the closet and

soothe my grief with a sniff. To me, Kasey smelled beautiful.

It works both ways too. A common tip for preventing separation

anxiety is to put a nice stinky undershirt into the dog's crate.

I hope your sights and smells will be Beautiful today.

See Beautiful: Smells Can Be Beautiful Too!

Smell is our most primitive sense. Marcel Proust is probably the most famous example of memory being triggered by an odor. He flashed back to his childhood upon smelling a madeleine (cookie), and ended up writing War and Peace as a result. Maybe it's a plus for most of us that cookie smells merely cause us to smile and head for the pantry.

We humans value smelling pleasant. This week I got a very nice present from Lydia at See Beautiful and Rosalyn at Sugar the Golden Retriever (visit them on the blog hop!). They sent me Mimosa Soap from See Beautiful, and it does smell heavenly.

I said it smells heavenly, Toby, not edible.

Speaking of edible, you probably knew that smell is crucial for our brains to process taste. One of my former colleagues did a great lab in her Anatomy and Physiology class. She provided several strongly flavored items, like minty gum and vanilla. She had her students hold their noses (blindfolded) and try to guess what they were tasting. Most of the time they were baffled, and she made her point. Next time you enjoy a beautiful treat thank your nose.

Consider that a dog's sense of smell is 14,000 times better than ours.
Explains a lot.

It's not just food that seems more beautiful with a nice smell. I get a Yankee Candle jar that smells like a Christmas tree and burn it every day while our artificial tree is up. It was part of the deal I made with my husband to convince him to go with a tree made in China. I'm not alone: from Yankee Candle's own financial report:

Retail sales were $176.0 million for the first six months of

fiscal 2013, an increase of $13.2 million or 8.1% over the prior

year period…

Perfumes are big business too. Reportedly, a bottle of Chanel #5,

based on tuberose and jasmine, is sold every 30 seconds. And who

can help being disappointed by roses and other flowers that have

no smell?

It's not just food and plants that smell nice. Think of babies and

little puppies. Think of your significant other's scent. Actually, a

common phenomenon when loved ones are separated is to hang on

to an unwashed shirt or pillowcase for the comforting smell.

When Kasey died I kept his brush, which hadn't been cleaned and

was full of fur. For months I could pull it from the closet and

soothe my grief with a sniff. To me, Kasey smelled beautiful.

It works both ways too. A common tip for preventing separation

anxiety is to put a nice stinky undershirt into the dog's crate.

I hope your sights and smells will be Beautiful today.

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Degrees of Separation

It's been hectic around here since Christmas.

Besides the usual holiday season bustle there were more occasions than usual to spend quality time with the grandkids. Their father found out 3 weeks ago that he'd been chosen for a new position as an associate pastor and would need to relocate several hours away by today. His new job begins tomorrow!

I'm so thankful for all of the quality AND quantity time we have spent with our grandchildren over the past three years while they lived 20 minutes away. I've been spoiled beyond measure in having all of our family in the area until this year. Since I retired a year ago there have been even more random hours and afternoons spent in the company of those little ones. Meanwhile their mother and I got used to our new roles and cemented a friendship as adults, not just mother-daughter.

But…
(you just knew there was a 'but' coming, didn't you?)
…the fact is, today at 7 AM they all pulled out of the driveway in their old Ford Focus and a hole opened up in my heart. They stayed with us this week. The chaos, noise, and extra alertness that is required served as a reminder of why people become parents while they are young, yet some of the sweetness of our own young parent years reverberated. I heard my husband use his goofy baby talk voice and watched him rock a baby girl to sleep again, and I thought of him doing that when he was slender and his hair was still red. I felt warm chubby legs around my waist and felt an active little boy relax into sleep in my lap. For a few days the bedrooms, dinner table, trash cans, bathrooms, and my heart were full.

Where did they go?

Today the house is silent except for the hum of the washing machine and dryer restoring the sheets and towels to clean piles in the linen closet. It doesn't really matter when we eat dinner or even what, or how much, there is to eat. We'll spend the evening reading or watching TV and it will be relaxing - and kind of boring. What really makes me want to cry again is realizing that next week there won't be any chance of saying, hey, I was just out running around, can I stop by for a minute?

This was what Toby did when he heard the grandkids' names.

I don't mean to be selfish about this. Ted and I tried to raise our children to be independent, self-reliant, productive adults. They are, though it's probably more in spite of than because of us . There's joy in watching them hit the milestones of adulthood - graduations, the first jobs, marriages, first homes. When your own children become parents, though, and you see them struggle to come to grips with their own confusion about how to take on the greatest responsibility they will ever have, there's a peculiar mixture of empathy, pride, and love. I'm going to miss knowing about those struggles so intimately, because even in this age of technology, physical distance equates to a loss of the day-to-day knowing that comes from being together often.

When are they coming back?

Supposedly when the last kid leaves home, the parents are 'empty nesters' and are sad for awhile, then adjust and that's that. The truth is paradoxical. It's really nice not to worry about when (or where) dinner will be, to relax into a book or a movie in the evening with a glass of wine, to only wash one set of towels and sheets and be done, to spontaneously decide to drive to the beach or the store and be in the car five minutes later, and to sleep through the night with the prospect of coffee and the newspaper in the morning. It's also a stab of loss, a tearing of a new hole in the heart, every time the family separates and the distance in space and time grows again.

Degrees of Separation

It's been hectic around here since Christmas.

Besides the usual holiday season bustle there were more occasions than usual to spend quality time with the grandkids. Their father found out 3 weeks ago that he'd been chosen for a new position as an associate pastor and would need to relocate several hours away by today. His new job begins tomorrow!

I'm so thankful for all of the quality AND quantity time we have spent with our grandchildren over the past three years while they lived 20 minutes away. I've been spoiled beyond measure in having all of our family in the area until this year. Since I retired a year ago there have been even more random hours and afternoons spent in the company of those little ones. Meanwhile their mother and I got used to our new roles and cemented a friendship as adults, not just mother-daughter.

But…
(you just knew there was a 'but' coming, didn't you?)
…the fact is, today at 7 AM they all pulled out of the driveway in their old Ford Focus and a hole opened up in my heart. They stayed with us this week. The chaos, noise, and extra alertness that is required served as a reminder of why people become parents while they are young, yet some of the sweetness of our own young parent years reverberated. I heard my husband use his goofy baby talk voice and watched him rock a baby girl to sleep again, and I thought of him doing that when he was slender and his hair was still red. I felt warm chubby legs around my waist and felt an active little boy relax into sleep in my lap. For a few days the bedrooms, dinner table, trash cans, bathrooms, and my heart were full.

Where did they go?

Today the house is silent except for the hum of the washing machine and dryer restoring the sheets and towels to clean piles in the linen closet. It doesn't really matter when we eat dinner or even what, or how much, there is to eat. We'll spend the evening reading or watching TV and it will be relaxing - and kind of boring. What really makes me want to cry again is realizing that next week there won't be any chance of saying, hey, I was just out running around, can I stop by for a minute?

This was what Toby did when he heard the grandkids' names.

I don't mean to be selfish about this. Ted and I tried to raise our children to be independent, self-reliant, productive adults. They are, though it's probably more in spite of than because of us . There's joy in watching them hit the milestones of adulthood - graduations, the first jobs, marriages, first homes. When your own children become parents, though, and you see them struggle to come to grips with their own confusion about how to take on the greatest responsibility they will ever have, there's a peculiar mixture of empathy, pride, and love. I'm going to miss knowing about those struggles so intimately, because even in this age of technology, physical distance equates to a loss of the day-to-day knowing that comes from being together often.

When are they coming back?

Supposedly when the last kid leaves home, the parents are 'empty nesters' and are sad for awhile, then adjust and that's that. The truth is paradoxical. It's really nice not to worry about when (or where) dinner will be, to relax into a book or a movie in the evening with a glass of wine, to only wash one set of towels and sheets and be done, to spontaneously decide to drive to the beach or the store and be in the car five minutes later, and to sleep through the night with the prospect of coffee and the newspaper in the morning. It's also a stab of loss, a tearing of a new hole in the heart, every time the family separates and the distance in space and time grows again.

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Wordless Wednesday: HNY

Wordless Wednesday: HNY

Sunday, December 29, 2013

Tricks And Treats At Christmas

I got a new quacker for Christmas!

After it was properly gutted I learned how to balance it upon my head!

Because when I do it I get a little TREAT!

Guess what? My grandkid likes treats too! Here he is on Christmas Day with ICE CREAM (whatever that is) - isn't it funny how he looks like a certain jolly old elf?

Subscribe to: Posts ( Atom )