Julie North

Not really, but sometimes-maybe? I don’t have to discipline my dog daily, I don’t have to do homework with my dog and I don’t have to teach my dog life lessons. Parenting is exhausting. Not really news to anyone but at the end of a day with a ten year old girl I am beat. But with my dog-Maximus (Max) I’m nowhere near worn out.

Sometimes Autumn is a difficult time of year for me not because anything major happened but I have surmised it’s because things end. Summer is over, the warmth is gone out of the air and the trees become bare and almost haunting. In some parts of Michigan winter can be hard especially if you live downwind from one of the Great Lakes. Winter brings bleak skies and a time of retreat. But in Michigan when spring comes and friendly faces appear whole and not hid behind scarves people have a sense of survival an almost “Yeah we did it, we made it out of the bleak and into the light and warmth.” Here is a story you can tell your clients about survival, faithfulness and trying their best. The story is about three bears. I have mixed the versions from the Chippewa Indians and the Anishinaabek Indians. The accounts were so similar in the literature.

On a sunny summer afternoon my daughter who is nine said “I want to see Star Wars.” Now the Star Wars I remember as a child included Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher. I consider that to be thee Star Wars but I knew there had been a few more produced since my day.

In the Spring my family and I took a beautiful trip to a beach in South Carolina. We drove down and took our bikes with us. This was the first time we had traveled to South Carolina and from the pictures of the beach and resort it looked like we would be able to ride our bikes everywhere. Once we were unpacked and set up we got our bikes out and began exploring our vacation surroundings. There was this moment when my seven year old daughter on her pink slumber party bike and a ponytail in her hair and my husband looking tan and relaxed it hit me-WOW we are one good looking bunch of people.

This blog is meant to be funny so I hope it is received that way. After my pregnancy I suffered from post partum depression and I have since realized it is a conversation that makes many women uncomfortable because they don’t want to admit they had it or BECAUSE I had it there must be something wrong with me. Since my pregnancy I have tried to find the humor in the things that went wrong both during and after my pregnancy. This event happened prior to the birth of my daughter.