Piece by Piece

She used to be an energetic 10-month-old, racing around the house and playing chase in the backyard. She loved walks and chew toys and could catch almost anything thrown her way, from a ball to a kernel of food.

When she was a few years old, she had her top front teeth surgically removed due to infection. That ended the days of fetch in the yard because she could no longer effectively pick up and hold toys in her mouth. My fetch buddy was gone.

I used to take her with her brother on walks around the neighborhood at night. By the time she was eight or so, I was carrying two leashes and a flashlight, which I shined out ahead of her.

Some more years passed. She couldn't walk at night at all anymore, even with the aid of a flashlight. Her canine brother and I walked alone on our usual route. The third member of our walking trio was gone.

She used to run around the dog park, playing happily with the other dogs. As the years wore on, she lost interest in the dog park and eventually the dog park became downright scary because of her failing vision. My dog park pal was gone.

She used to sleep in my room every night, either on my bed or nearby on the floor. Just before her twelfth birthday, she was diagnosed with Cushing's, a condition that, among other symptoms, made her always hot and panting. She was more comfortable sleeping on the cool tile near the kitchen at night. My roommate was gone.

In the weeks and days before her death, Mali was not the dog I had originally fallen in love with. Pieces of her were taken from us each year. In her last weeks and days, she was alive, but she couldn't play fetch, go to the dog park, join us on long walks, or catch things in the air. She didn't sleep in my room anymore and couldn't jump onto the couch or bed. She preferred sleeping most of the day over playing or looking out the window for strangers and cats like she used to. What died that day in March 2013 was not all of Mali, because much of her was already long gone.

Scout, now about 8 years old, had a bad foot when we adopted him at just under a year old. After a surgical procedure a few months after his adoption, his foot became much less painful and he has lived a relatively normal life. Lately though, he can no longer go for walks on the pavement. He can only walk on the dirt in the open space, and I can't safely walk in the open space at night. After seven years of nighttime walks around the neighborhood, my nighttime walking buddy is gone.

Except in the case of sudden death such as a heart attack or car accident, we all go through this process. We're still alive, but we can do fewer and fewer of the things we once loved. We resemble our younger selves less and less. Pieces of our lives are taken from us and our friends and family one by one, until someday the very last piece is gone and we die. It's important that we appreciate every moment we are given, whether walking with our dogs or even just the ability to stand unsupported, because someday these seemingly mundane activities might be taken away forever.

Funny and Cute Kid Quotes 2

Here are the next ten kid quotes from my collection. Check back soon for more!


trying to get the vacuum cleaner to turn on:

me: Is this thing battery powered?

kids (ages 6 & 8): Ya, you just have to plug it in!

Hebrew workbook question: Can you think of a song that includes the word Shalom?

1st grade student response: No.

my dad: That's Sarah's car.

6-year-old: Oh, does your brother have one, too?

me: No.

6-year-old: He doesn't want one?

after getting "shot":

me: Help me!

3-year-old: I don't need help!

me: So your mom signed you up?

8-year-old: Ya, it's official! 

playing kickball:

Child: Who is batting for Bob?

Bob (age 6): I'm batting for Bob!

after finding out that I was alive for the new millennium and for 9/11:

8-year-old: Were you alive for the Titanic, too?

Me: Did you start the pushing?

10-year-old: No.

Me: Then who did?

10-year-old: …me.

At the zoo by a special exhibit displaying real animal fur:

Woman nearby: You can touch animal fur!

7-year-old: Did you hear that? You can touch animal turd!

After walking around the zoo for about an hour:

7-year-old: Whew! That was quite a long journey!

Click here to see part 1 of the kid quotes series.

One Week Ago

One week ago, one of my best friends graduated from college with her degree in nursing. I had told her I would be there. I didn't make it.

A week and a day ago, I finished my last commitment in my college city and had mostly finished packing for my trip home for winter break. I set an alarm for 9:30 am and went to bed.

The following day, I woke up still sleepy but got out of bed and started getting ready, determined to be on time for my friend's 3 pm graduation in my home city about three hours away. After three trips from my third floor apartment to my car parked at the curb downstairs, I had loaded a suitcase full of nice clothes with their hangers, a trunk full of workout and other casual clothes as well as socks and underwear, my school backpack with my computer, some books, and the usual water bottle, wallet, phone, and keys I keep in there, a bag of laundry, a few pairs of shoes, and a box of food that would expire before I returned in January. After a quick stop at a gas station, I was ready to get on the freeway.

With 3 1/2 years of college behind me, this was easily the fifteenth or maybe twentieth time I had made this same trip back home. To a tourist, it would be an interesting and scenic drive through the desert landscape, but to me, it had become pretty boring. There are two small towns between my college city and home and I often stop in both when driving alone to break up the monotony with a snack. I couldn't that day though because I had finally gotten on the freeway just after 11:00 am and my friend was picking me up at 2:15 from my parents' house to go to our friend's graduation. I had to keep moving.

There is a section of the drive from about forty-five minutes away from school until about an hour and a half from my parents' house where there are basically no radio stations, and as I entered that dreaded zone, I switched from radio to CD. For over a year, I hadn't bought any new music on iTunes because I had been using Spotify. However, my aunt had given me an iTunes gift card for Hanukkah, so before I headed back to school after Thanksgiving break two weeks prior, I had bought some new music and burned it onto a CD for my car. I don't know if my car CD player was having issues or the CD didn't burn correctly, but only the first few songs of that CD played cleanly in my car.

After passing the first small town and hearing the same few songs several times, I reached down where the passenger's feet would go to grab my CD case. Hurtling along on cruise control, I set the CD case on the passenger seat next to me and looked back and forth from the case to the road, flipping through until I found something that looked good. I switched the CD's and refocused on the road.

About the time I passed the first town without stopping, I started to get annoyed with having to stay in the car continuously for two hours until I reached the second town, where I planned to stop briefly for lunch. Thoughts of sitting for hours at my friend's graduation crossed my mind. Of course I wanted to be there for her but I had convinced myself that it would be extremely long. Additionally, I hadn't showered the night before and felt gross, knowing that because I left later than planned, I wouldn't have time to shower at my parents' house before getting picked up to go to the graduation. Grumpily, I tilted my seat back so far that I felt a little scared at my perceived diminished control of the car. I loosely held the wheel on the bottom, blatantly neglecting the "10 and 2" hand grip from driver's ed. I just wanted to get home.

I noticed the sign announcing that I was entering the county of which the second town is the county seat and noted that I was making progress. I was still listening to that second CD I had put in earlier in the drive. It was a mix that some of my teammates had made when I played water polo my senior year of high school. I am a fan of old photos and nostalgia-inducing music, so I had enjoyed having the N Sync CD from when I was a kid in my car. One of their songs came on the mix and I remembered that I had the N Sync CD in my car and hadn't played it in awhile.

I once again reached down to grab my CD case and repeated the same routine of glancing back and forth from the case to the road, looking for the N Sync CD. I got to the last page in the case and hadn't found it, so I figured it must be in my other CD case. It was a little further forward in the passenger feet area and I reached down but couldn't quite grab it. Still flying down the road on cruise control, I grabbed the first CD case and tried to use it to move the second case forward on the floor so I could grab it. I tried a second time and then looked up. I saw where I was, panicked, and turned the wheel hard the other way.

"Oh shit," I remember thinking, realizing that I, Sarah with the lifelong accident-free driving record, was about to be in a major car crash. I braced myself and suddenly felt like I was on an extremely violent roller coaster. For the brief moment I was fully alert, I remember looking at the steering wheel.

The next thing I knew, I was still sitting in my car with my seatbelt off. The car was making the obnoxious dinging noise that indicated the key was in the car and one of the doors was not closed. People were talking to me through what I eventually realized was my completely missing back left window.

'Should we call 911?' I remember thinking. 'It wasn't that bad. Maybe we shouldn't bother them.'

I hesitantly asked the people outside my window to call 911. I did not know how bad the accident had been and was afraid of sounding like an idiot by asking them to call 911 if it had been really minor. Understanding the severity in a way I couldn't at that moment, they did call 911. Everyone kept asking me if I was OK. "Yes," I told them again and again as I cradled my head in my hands. I heard someone speaking to the 911 operator. I looked down where I always kept my phone while driving but it wasn't there. I requested a phone from the people outside my window and was soon handed one.

I intended to call my dad, but in my state of panic and shock, I dialed my own phone number. I thought about it for a moment and then was able to dial my dad's number. "Hi Dad, don't freak out, I'm OK, but I was in a car accident," I told my dad. I remember what his voice sounded like as he responded but not exactly what he said. I asked if he wanted to talk to the lady standing by the car, and they spoke. The girl outside my window, who I later learned was the granddaughter of the woman talking to my dad, told me she had EMT training "in case you need CPR". I smiled at her joke, still holding my aching head.

The lady asked my dad for his name and then for my name. I don't remember what she thought he said but she said my name wrong the first time. He must have repeated it because she then said it correctly.

Another traveler came to the passenger door and tried to open it, but it was locked, as my doors always are when I'm driving. I unlocked the door with the button and he opened it up and peered in. He looked curiously as if he wasn't sure what he would find in there. Probably ten minutes passed in which I stayed in the driver's seat. Eventually I was encouraged to try to get out of the car, or maybe I had asked if I could. The driver side door was broken so I got up and crawled out the passenger side door.

Immediately I was shivering. It wasn't even all that cold. I ended up with a zip up hoodie and my heavy winter coat on over my t-shirt. Both were covered in debris, from dirt to toothpaste.

The initial shock began to subside and I was able to see the damage. The trunk was totally smashed in and my belongings were scattered all over the side of the road, starting at my car and going back probably fifty yards. I noticed a pair of my own underwear sprawled out on the ground. Normally I would have rushed to pick them up, but in the moment, that seemed entirely unimportant.

my pink toothbrush holder, laundry basket, a library book, and many other items displaced along the side of the freeway

A police officer arrived some time later. He looked at the car, asked for my license and registration, and generally acted like he had seen much worse and couldn't wait to leave. I looked and found my phone on the floor of the back seat and talked to my dad some more. I broke down sobbing as the realization that I could have just died set in. The police officer told me to stop walking around and to sit down, either in my car or in his police car. By then there were several police cars lined up behind the first guy. I was headed over to his car when the ambulance arrived.

I sat on the back bumper of the ambulance as the EMT's took my blood pressure and measured my oxygen levels with the device they put on the index finger. I seemed just fine. They took a look at my head, especially where there was a cut. Because I had yet to see my own face and had only been told about the cut and felt the bump forming, I imagined a huge gash. My parents told me to go ahead and go to the hospital in the small town nearby. My mom told me to make sure I grabbed my backpack, which had basically everything of major value that was in the car, including my computer and wallet. I crawled into the ambulance, sat down on the bench, buckled myself in, and, on Friday, December 13, experienced my first ever ambulance ride in ambulance number 13.

The EMT got a brief health history and asked where I was hurting. Then I called my friend who was supposed to pick me up for the graduation and told her what had happened. I chatted with the EMT during the approximately 20-minute drive into town. I kept my eye on the stretcher in front of me, quite aware that I could have been lying in it in much worse shape than I was in.

My mom and brother met me at the hospital. I had bruises on my calf and on my hips and shoulder where the seatbelt was, some bumps and a small cut on my head, and a generally banged up body, but I had no broken bones, no internal injuries, and a clear head CT scan. Just a few hours after arriving at the hospital, I was discharged.

We went to the junkyard where my beloved 1999 Camry had been towed. I sat in my mom's car and cried as I looked at the shriveled mess that I had been driving just hours before. We removed everything I wanted to keep from the car, including all the luggage I was bringing home for break as well as miscellaneous items like my old high school parking passes. I took a lot of pictures. I wanted to remember that moment and that great car that been my primary mode of transportation for nearly six years and that had kept me alive in the accident. While I missed my friend's graduation, I was able to make it to her graduation party that evening.

That was one week ago. I spent today with my friend's first grade class, helping and observing. Last night I went to the gym. A few days before that I went for an hour walk. And a few days before that, I survived a potentially fatal rollover car crash. I made some stupid choices while driving that day, including reaching for the CD case while the car was still moving, and I know I am incredibly fortunate that the consequence for my major lapse in judgement was not my life.

Funny and Cute Kid Quotes 1

For the past several years I have kept a list of the funny things I have heard kids say. Here are the first ten. Check back soon for more!

Camper was unhappy with burnt grilled cheese sandwich his dad packed him for lunch. I told him that his dad made the sandwich with love.
Camper: No, he made it with burnt.

At the Natural History Museum:
Me: Dinosaurs laid eggs, but we don't lay eggs, do we?
Camper: No, we lay people.

playing Wii while babysitting:
6-year-old: I don't mean to brag, but… I'm really good at this!

Child walked in the door and immediately spilled glitter all of the floor.
8-year-old: I have only been here a minute and we have already had an incident!

2nd grader who just finished his workbook: OK Sarah, you can recycle this now!

2nd grader: Instead of saying Sarah, you can say fara, and then you can change fara into ferret!

2nd grader after several minutes of debate among the group: 
This is getting in control! (He meant "out of control".)

I was confused on how to get out of the massive parking lot.
1st grader: Sarah, you don't know anything!

I was talking to a girl about how the boys in my religious school class are more antsy than the girls.
6-year-old: Ya 'cause boys have to pee all the time!

Written by Little Me: "The Unusuel Kite"

In elementary school, we had an activity called Squiggle. The teacher would draw a simple shape in each child's notebook and then the child would turn it into a picture. Depending on the children's age and grade, a word, sentence, or whole story was written to go along with the picture.

This Squiggle and story are from September 2, 1999. I was in 2nd grade.

One day a girl named Rachel was trying to make a kite. She was only five so it was very hard. She worked hard and in an hour she hadn't made a real kite but she liked what her unusuel (sic) kite looked like. She made it very colorful and prety (sic). She thought it was good enough to fly. She went outside and started to fly it. She named it The Unusuel (sic) Kite. She flew it for hours and then the kite got blown out of her hands. It blew farther and farther away from Rachel. She started crying. It blew a mile away and then it landed. Two days later a boy a mile away found the kite. His name was Billy. He was one so his mom was watching him when he picked it up. He tried to chew on it but his mom got him just in time. She started flying it and when it was in the air she let go of it. It blew far away. It blew all the way to Rachel's house. She found it and showed it to her mom and told her how she made it and it flew away and an hour later came back. The End

The Only Thing Constant is Change

"The only thing constant in life is change."

I graduated from high school in 2010 thinking I had my life all figured out. I was going to be a pediatric physical therapist. I would start by attending college three hours away from home and studying kinesiology, graduating with my bachelor's degree in May 2014. I would then go on to attend physical therapy school starting in the summer or fall of 2014, completing my doctor of physical therapy (DPT) degree within a few years.

I loved the kinesiology program the first year or so. Never had I taken academic classes that taught about sports, fitness, and health like these ones. The material was engaging and I was meeting new people who shared my love for sports, health, and fitness. My skepticism didn't begin until the fall of my sophomore year when I was taking anatomy and physiology, a required course for my major. The class was alright but the accompanying lab was extremely frustrating. I ended up dropping the lab and taking it again the following spring. I began to realize that while I was, and still am, fascinated by the human body, I didn't care to learn the name of each and every nook and cranny on the bones and muscles in the body. What I really wanted to do with my life, which I had known from the beginning when I planned to go into pediatric PT, was work with kids.

I had been thinking about being a teacher for awhile but had some reservations, such as the prospect of working in an educational system that is, in many ways, broken, and the thought of not making very much money. The more I learned about PT school, however, the more I realized what a huge investment it would be. Programs usually cost $50,000-$100,000 and the salary for a PT is about $60,000. My dad calculated earnings of teachers versus physical therapists and realized that if I started teaching at 22 or 23, while a PT didn't start working until they were 25 and $100,000 in debt, it would take about 15 years for the PT to have netted more money. Basically, he proved that money shouldn't be the reason I avoid going into education.

I changed my major to elementary education at the end of the spring 2012 semester, two years into my college education. I was projected to graduate in May 2015 with a bachelor's and licensure. However, due to some mistakes I made as well as circumstances beyond my control, I missed being able to apply to the Teacher Education Program this fall as originally planned. This set my graduation date back to December 2015, a 5 1/2 year college career.

I was frustrated and decided to revisit an option I had briefly evaluated this past summer, the bachelor of individualized studies. This program requires completion of the university's general education requirements as well as the minimum number of lower division (100- and 200-level) and upper division (300- and 400-level) credits. That's it. Credits can come from any department as long as these simple requirements are met.

When I checked out this program during the summer, I found out that I only needed about 24 more credits to graduate, 22 of which needed to be upper division. I decided to stay in the education program at that time and therefore am not enrolled in any upper division classes this fall. Since I can't take all 22 upper division credits this coming spring, I will need to take some this spring and some over the summer. I will officially graduate at the end of the summer but will be able to participate in the May 2014 graduation ceremony.

I then plan to pursue a master's degree in education. Both in-state universities offer master's with licensure programs and I have been told they typically take about two years. So now instead of graduating in December 2015 with a bachelor's in education, I am on track to graduate around May 2016, just one semester later, with a master's instead.

When I was about 17, I decided I was going to be a physical therapist. I'm not. When I was 20, I decided I was going to graduate with a bachelor's in elementary education. I'm not. Now, nearing 22 years old, I have decided I will graduate with a bachelor's in individualized studies followed by a master's in elementary education with licensure. It isn't what I originally wanted and planned to do, but change is inevitable in life and I'm excited to get started on my new plan.

Must be teaching, huh?

I live in an apartment on campus which is really convenient because it's right next to everything. It can also be quite inconvenient because… it's right next to everything. Tonight I was driving home after Yom Kippur services and the break-the-fast at temple. About a quarter mile from my apartment, my university's football team had just lost to one of our biggest rivals. I encountered road blocks and heavy traffic but eventually was able to park where I usually do across the street from my apartment building.

I got out of my car and prepared to cross the street, noting how odd I must look dressed for temple when everyone else was headed home from a football game. As I walked on the sidewalk beside barely moving traffic, a guy in the backseat of a car, potentially very intoxicated, starting yelling at me.

"Hi!" he called. "Hi!" I responded, waving politely. He yelled out our university's mascot and I again waved. He then started shouting random questions which I decided to ignore. A few moments into this interrogation, he called out, "What's your major?!" As I started climbing the stairs to the front gate of my apartment building, still ignoring the guy, I heard him say, "Must be teaching, huh?!"

I didn't look back but smiled to myself. Random guess or do I really look like a teacher? Maybe it was the outfit...