Turtles & tortoises have personalities?

I didn’t grow up with animals. We had one dog, Tippy, growing up, but that was all. We were pretty much suburban small-ish city kids. After my husband and I got married I bugged him until we got a dog. She was a rescue. A naughty rescue. But we liked her and learned about Cairn terriers. A bit.
After we had to put her down when she had liver failure, we bought a black lab puppy. Remember my bio? Slightly idealistic? Well, I’m a little more than slightly. I imagined a gentle, calm, sweet black lab milling around with my children as we happily homeschooled among the daisies and butterflies. The reality was that I was too busy and too tired to read up on how to train a puppy so she was a bit unruly. For four years.
We loved her for seven years and tried to take care of her Addison’s disease for two of her last years. We had to make the hard decision to put her down when the meds just weren’t working. I’d like to say I was the perfect mother for my youngest child who adored Olivia, but I broke down and couldn’t take her in to be put to sleep. My dear husband did it for me with our daughter in tow.
After several years we took in a stubborn, yappy pug. We loved Max, but he needed and wanted his people to be home more often doting on his every whim. A good friend connected us with a lovely woman who treats him like the prince he thinks he is. And I’m so happy for him.
So what about the reptiles? I’ve been involved in Place-based Ecology Education for several years and teach elementary school kids. I heard of some box turtles who needed a foster home. Of course I volunteered. Carol introduced me to three teaching turtles who I called Gulf, Three-toe, and Ornate named after their particular sub-species. (Carol let me know since they are teaching turtles they were not named. She is a wise science teacher as you will see later.)
I learned that turtles do indeed have personalities. Gulf is shy and doesn’t want to be bothered. Three-toe is between 90-110 years old so she just wants to be left alone to eat her favorite food, worms. Ornate was sweet and friendly. She used to follow me around the classroom after the kids were gone for the day. I remember one time she actually walked towards me and looked up at me.

One year I decided to hatch chicks in the classroom. It was my first experience with chicks, never mind incubating eggs. It was a lot of work. It was too much heartache. Not all of them chicks made it.
One morning I walked into the classroom and I saw Ornate next to the sliding glass door of the aquarium. She looked horrible. Her head, eyes, and legs were twice the size they normally were. I looked at her and went to get the custodian who is an animal person down to his bones. When I got back with him, she had her eyes closed. She died. I know it sounds crazy, but I think she was waiting for me that morning before she died. I was so overcome thinking about the chicks and how I could have done a better job taking care of them and now here was Ornate who was obviously sick. Did I do something wrong? I was sobbing when my teaching homie walked into the room. It was difficult to explain why I was so upset over a turtle.
This year another daughter gave me her Russian tortoise, Sherbie. Her personality is similar to Ornate’s except Sherbie is sassier than Ornate. One day she was sitting on top of the half log in her terrarium looking up at me. It doesn’t sound like much, but to me, I get to love a tortoise who reminds me of Ornate.
Yesterday my husband found a frog on the cover of our swimming pool. Now we have an amphibian! Who’s as blessed as we are?

The Year 2017

The school year was filled with the marvelous, the horribly challenging, but never the mundane. After much reflection, there was so much need and turmoil there wasn’t time for much of anything else. Most of the year I seemed to be in “survival mode” plus “what more can I do for student a, b, c, d, e, and f? What else haven’t I tried? Do you remember the amusement park game Whack-A-Mole? That was what the school year was like. One student or family need or challenge would pop up and as soon as it would be taken care of, another one or two, or three would leap up. I’m not kidding.

Then there were three significant family crises. One for each season: fall, winter, and spring.

There were many sweet moments with family, students, colleagues, church family, and friends. There were soft, kind encouraging moments with Jesus. I just didn’t record them like I usually do.

The question I ask myself now is, could I have done a better job than I did? Did I show God’s love to others as much I as could have? My type A- personality says, “Really, you didn’t do enough.” My super supportive husband says, “You did your best and it was enough.” What does God think? Fortunately, Robin Mark wrote a song for just these sort of occasions, called, “When it’s all been said and done.” (I’ve tried multiple times to link the song here. I’ve even googled how to do it a few times. It’s not working, but, like the subject of this post, we press on. Please listen to the song on YouTube. The lyrics and the music are hauntingly beautiful.)

I had a sweet, refreshing time all alone today. I looked through my journal today and saw there were no entries from October through April. I noticed the last blog post on this site was in 2016. I organized all my crafting supplies and projects and noticed there were many I want to finish. And start.

I spent too much time on social media this year. But some of it was good. I connected with acquaintances and now know them a bit better than before. Many people shared prayer requests on Facebook. There are many Twitter accounts and Facebook pages that share God’s word. That’s always good. So very good.

You know what got me through? The prayers of God’s people. My husband’s prayers. My mother’s prayers. My daughter’s prayers. My church family’s prayers. My friend’s prayers. God’s church, God’s people are one of his greatest blessings. I am thankful and humbled by the love they continually show.

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Friends

The thing about friends is that you want to be with them. At the least, they are fun to be around. At the most, they are family. The best people we know on our planet.
My friends are gracious, kind, supportive, understanding, funny, smart, kind, warm, generous, and loving.

Realistically, they are probably just like the rest of humanity; weak, short-tempered, annoying, petty, selfish, and the like. But I don't see it. I just don't see it.
I do see glimpses of people with complex stories and wounds. I see God-given strengths that sometimes are taken to the extreme and become a little unbalanced. But these small things are overshadowed by all the other gifts they have.

What does all of this mean? It means I am blessed. I have a good extended family. Really good. I have a small family- husband, four daughters, two (almost three) sons-in-laws, and two grandsons who are the apples of my eye. I have friends who love me and I love them. I have dear, close friends who are as precious as my family. What a rich, rich life.

What's for breakfast?

Some days all you need is coffee with honey and milk and a piece of lightly browned toast. But, the toast should have a good amount of real butter spread fairly evenly to all four corners. Maybe the honey in the coffee is enough sweetness for that particular day so the saltiness of the butter and the crunchy tenderness of the toast is fine.

Some mornings butter and honey is needed, depending on how many sweets you had the day before. There's just something about how the melted butter and the honey make just the right moistness-to-toast-crunchiness ratio.

Once in a while the day calls for a hearty jam. Not jelly, which is pretty much just sugary fruit juice that is thick enough to set up. No, it should to be jam with real chunks of apricot, whole blueberries, or bits of strawberries. It's the tangy flavor that makes the difference. Not sour. Not sweet. Tangy.

There are days when you need the protein of an egg plus the salt and pepper that go with it. There are waffle and pancake days too. But the best kind of mornings are the just-coffee-and-toast days.

Dancing

Have you ever seen a toddler dance? They bend their knees almost in time with the music. The cuteness factor is pretty much off the charts. But when you think about it, it's astonishing how the urge to dance is engrained into the youngest of our kind. Why is that?

There's something about a catchy bass line or a strong beat. Is it akin to a strong steady heartbeat? Is it a reminder of the strength of a loving father's heart or the sound of our mother's heart when we spent months in the womb?

Is it like a call to attention such as war drums or the march of the drum and fife? Is it a reminder of our instinctive desire for a passionate life and intense joy? Whatever it is, if most of us have a chance and the freedom to be uninhibited for a few minutes, we'll begin to tap our feet. Then we might clap our hands. That might, just might, lead to a burst of actually bending some limbs, swaying to the rhythm, or bobbing our heads.

What would it be like to have the joy and the mental freedom to dance like a toddler dances when the music hits us just right? What if we threw back our heads, threw out our arms, and twirled like preschool children? Would we be more joyful in general if we let ourselves experience joy in that way?

What if we began at home, alone? What if found the lyrics to our favorite songs and belted them out as loud as we wanted to and didn't worry about how it sounds? I guess we could start there. When did we decide that we need to dance and sing like professionals to do those things? Wouldn't it be fun to begin again?