I was walking through the bookstore and there it was again, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I’d been seeing it for months, floating from table to table at my local bookstore, and that afternoon I had seen an Oprah promo announcing that she was going to interview the author because it was her current book club selection. So I bought the book (yes, that is the power of Oprah whether authors and bibliophiles like it or not) and I took the book home knowing only that it was a nonfiction book about a woman who travels around the world for a year. I often have a nonfiction book going along with a novel, although I must admit lately that with my mom’s continued illness I have been having a difficult time concentrating and reading one book, let alone two. Still, I began to read Eat, Pray, Love that day, and although I’m not quite done, I’m loving every page. Ms. Gilbert writes like a best friend, penning letters from her adventures that are filled with humor, intelligence, history, and spiritual insight. So far I’ve eaten pizza and sipped rich red wine with her at a cafe in Italy, sat beside her in cave at a sacred ashram in India as she battled to quiet her rambling mind and heal her broken heart, and now we’re off to Bali to hang with a medicine man. I hope she doesn’t mind the company because I really do need to get out of the house.
Category Archives: my life
dogs allowed
So we did it and it was awful and that’s all I’ll say about it. We felt like we needed to stay busy today and get out of the house. But where do you go when you need to cheer up, to forget you had a dog yesterday and today you don’t? Why, Canada of course! The people in Canada are so nice and polite and they always seem so damn happy. So we packed up our cameras and a lunch and took off for Point Pelee National Park in Ontario. The plan was to take pictures of the park’s famous butterfly, bird, and dragonfly populations, to get lost in the beauty of nature and try to not think about Nikki. What we didn’t know was that every bird in Canada has already migrated south (they didn’t hear there was a warm front coming) and they apparently took the butterflies and dragonflies with them leaving behind a park full of happy Canadians and their furry four-legged friends. Yes, it turns out that our friendly neighbors to the north do love their dogs, and not only are they allowed at the park, but at this time of the year dogs are the main attraction as they are the only living things for miles around beside the humans (and the blood thirsty Canadian mosquitoes which are tinted an odd shade of maple leaf red). Still, it was good to get out of the house…but sad when we got home and there was no yappy little dog to greet us at the door.
The point at Point Pelee, that’s it waaaaaaay out in the distance…where the sand comes to, what else? a point.
Me, looking at the point, or maybe I’m looking at a seagull. See it, that tiny spot that looks like a speck of dust in the sky? Wait, maybe that is dust. I’m thinking I need to rethink those pants I’m wearing, that is not a bum George Clooney would covet, is it?
Mister bookbabie scanning the trees for signs of life.
The marsh walk at the park. Quite lovely if you like to look at miles of tall grass-like plants.
nikki
We are going to have our dog put to sleep this afternoon. She’s almost sixteen and has the typical list of older dog health problems: blindness, deafness, trouble walking because of painful arthritic hips, badly infected gums, potty issues, and now she’s afraid to be left alone for any length of time. My husband and I keep reciting that list to each other, hoping I suppose that it will make it okay, make it easier. But it’s not working. We feel like shit.
the marine
Earlier today we had a family dinner for my nephew Charlie. He just completed boot camp and he is now a Marine. That’s Charlie and my dad, Lee, wearing his old Air Force hat. When Charlie left tonight my dad hugged him and tried to tell him how he felt, but he couldn’t find the words. What do you say when you see your grandson standing in front of you, so tall and brave and strong ready to serve his country? We love him, he knows that. We are all very proud of him, he knows that too. What he doesn’t know is that when his grandfather looks at him he sees eighteen years, forty years, seventy years, a lifetime that is quickly passing by, and a lifetime that is new and still unfolding. He sees the little boy and he sees the man he has become. There simply are not enough words or enough hours in a day to say what a grandfather has in his heart on an afternoon like this. But that’s okay dad, the tears in your eyes said it all, don’t worry, Charlie knows, he knows.
picture this
Me and Mr. bookbabie went for a drive on Sunday afternoon. We went to the University of Michigan Botanical Gardens, a pumpkin filled landscape center, and to a lovely city park in Ann Arbor along the Huron River. The sun was warm, the sky watery-blue, and the air had that cool, crisp scent of autumn clinging to it that makes you want to dig out your favorite old sweatshirt and buy a jug of apple cider. We’ve been making an effort to, as they say, stop and smell the roses lately. To not only live in the moment, but to slow down, breathe deeply, and understand that the present moment is all we ever really have, we can’t change the past or control the unfolding future. It’s such a relief if you can do it, let it all go and stop living in your head, but of course it’s easier said than done. I think we all have something that can nudge us in the right direction though. For me and my husband it’s photography. When we’re out taking pictures our attention is on the world inside the viewfinder; the subject that has caught our eye, the way the light paints and colors the image in front of us. Maybe photography is really just our way of feeling like we actually do have a smidgen of control over life. We focus on one small square at a time, choosing the moments that we want to capture and hold on to.
mom & dad
I haven’t been posting much because it’s been a little hectic around here. My parent’s (and their two dogs) moved in with us on Wednesday. There’s a possibility that the plumbing and furnace problems they had at their house this past winter are making them sick so we siblings decided they should hang out here while we investigate that angle on my mom’s serious lung problems. It’s been a bit of an adjustment for everyone (including the dogs) but we seem to be getting into a pretty good rhythm now, changing old habits and making new ones. The jumble of emotions we are all going through right now are so overwhelming that we try to just get through the next hour, that much we know we can handle. The photo is of my parent’s on their wedding day fifty-one years ago, for better of for worse, they’ve had both as all married couples do, with the betters far outweighing the worse. We’ll figure this out, do what needs to be done, for better or for worse…we’re in this together.
honey don’t
This was the Saturday afternoon that Mr. bookbabie somehow accidentally (on purpose) misplaced his Honey-Do list. He said the dog ate it but I found it floating in the pool the next morning. You really can’t blame the guy though, can you?
Book Excerpt
The sun was bright but there was a chilled nip to the air that surprised Maxine, even though the calendar was about to turn over to December. She somehow always pictured the south of France to be a place that was perpetually glowing and warm, inhabited by partying royals, carousing celebrities, and half-naked sunbathers. She could see why Susie and Julia had decided to open their retreat center here. On the half-hour drive over from the train station she stared out the car window and watched as the country terrain began to roll gently under a lovely postcard blue sky, the fields and meadows changing color like the patterns on a quilt, moving from pale greens to muted golds to faded browns, dotted here and there with grazing creamy white sheep and striped with sleeping grape vines strung out like martyrs between five foot posts.
bookbabie 