carol jean

Posted on by

That’s my favorite photo of my mom. My godfather Walter took it on Belle Isle when she was about six years old. Walter was the unofficial family photographer and his photos are a cherished history of my mother’s family. Yesterday, my dad called and told me my mom had a serious bloody nose that they couldn’t stop. She didn’t want him to call me because she said I would take her to the hospital. She was right. I did. She had lost a lot of blood and should have gone in sooner, stubborn little Frenchwoman that she is! The ER was more crowded than I’d ever seen it (the triage nurses needed a triage nurse) and I felt like we were on the set of a disaster movie. Normally, they would have taken her right back, she was a mess with a clothespin device and gauze on her nose smashed under an oxygen mask because of the COPD. But it was a crazy Monday in the ER and the ambulances kept rolling in allowing us the opportunity to practice the art of patience for a few hours until my poor mother could no longer stay upright in the wheelchair and they finally took us back. Our seven hour ordeal ended with my dad and I wheeling mom out to the car, wondering if she really should be going home, she looked pretty bad. But we got her home and into bed with a little help from Mr. bookbabie and I got the call this morning from dad that she had an uneventful and good night’s sleep. As trying as it was in the ER, those docs and nurses work very hard to help their patients and it’s good to know they’re there if you need them. So my little red stocking cap is off to all the doctors and nurses this morning (including my own brother and sister) who have dedicated their lives to the art of medicine. Merci.

winter white

Posted on by

4whitedoves.gif

One of my favorite blogs to visit is the odd neighbor. It’s an illustration/poetry blog by a mysterious writer-illustrator who calls her self Catnapping (her friends call her “Cat” for short). Cat’s illustrations are always darling, often hilarious, and the haiku she sometimes writes to go along with her illos is perpetually clever. One of my favorite pieces of hers is the dove animation above. I used it once eons ago (with her permission of course) on my old blog and I wanted to share it again here at the new and improved bookbabie, enjoy!

bookbabie has cooties

Posted on by

I’ve been tagged by my blogging friend Melynn at Breathing Easy. For those of you who aren’t fluent in bloglish, being “tagged” is a virtual game not unlike the childhood version, except that instead of getting cooties we have to reveal a number of things about ourselves. I probably would choose not to play (party pooper that I am) except that my mom recently told me that she’d been reading through my old blog entries and she was learning things about me that she didn’t know. Hmm. I’ve always considered myself a very private person. I used to hoard the bits and pieces of the inner me because I thought if I put them out there I could lose them. It’s like I imagined that they were these colorful helium balloons full of me instead of gas and if I gave them to people they might let them go and I’d never get them back. Does that sound weird? (Don’t answer that!) Writing the blog (and my 2 1/2 novels) has helped me understand that it’s okay to reveal yourself (a little) to the world. Perhaps I should say share yourself, fear not, there will be no revealing bookbabie sex tapes popping up on YouTube! So anyway, I’m going to play tag today in honor of my mom, however, I won’t follow all the rules (like Melynn, who by the way I think would be a best friend if she lived nearby). So here goes, seven random facts about the bookbabie, but you must promise me that you won’t let go of those strings…

1. I have a killer serve in volleyball and wallyball.

2. My first favorite “grown-up” book was My Antonia by Willa Cather

3. I watch Dancing with the Stars (so does Mr. bookbabie, but don’t tell him I told you!)

4. I wanted to have three children but got sick and struggled just to raise the two babies I was blessed with.

5. I felt most like “me” when I was standing in front of an easel painting.

6. I haven’t painted in about ten years:(

7. Hey Mom, I can still sit like this sitting-004.jpg (but not for long and the getting up part isn’t pretty!)

play doctor for me

Posted on by

I’m enjoying taking holiday photos for my iStock account like the one above. Tomorrow Mr. bookbabie has agreed to play doctor with me. That is…he’s agreed to dress up like a doctor so I can take some stock doctor pics. (Then again if he’s a good doctor model maybe I’ll be his patient afterward and let him examine me!)

“Live out of your imagination, not your history.”
Stephen Covey

read it

Posted on by

manhunt.jpg I finished Manhunt, by James Swanson the other night and I really liked it a lot. Whenever we choose a historical novel for book club I’m always afraid it will be dry and a chore to read. But the good ones pull you in and take you back in time and this is a really good one, right up there with one of my other favorite historical novels, Devil in the White City by Erik Larsen. Heavily researched narratives like this really do make history come alive. I felt like I was there in the audience at Ford’s Theatre in Washington D.C. in 1865 watching the dramatic assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth, at Lincoln’s bedside as he lay dying, and I rode along on the engrossing twelve day manhunt for Booth that followed. A vivid can’t put it down good read!

a nice visit

Posted on by

My sister and her family are back in Carlsbad, the holiday dishes are washed and put away, the colorful Thanksgiving centerpieces are tired and wilting. It was a nice visit. I am grateful to be able to write that one simple sentence. My family has been through a lot over the past five years. Like many families, we have watched a family member struggle with substance abuse issues and we have also watched helplessly as that struggle spilled over and touched all of us in different ways. The trail of hurt that is left behind by abusers cuts wide and deep with lessons that are sometimes difficult to accept, the main one perhaps being that love does not conquer all. But love can hold a family together if you let it. Through the pain, the disappointments, and the uncertainty of our crazy lives that tenuous thread of family love is worth tending and preserving, it’s a precious gift that merits our respect.

The photo above is of my wonderful young nephew Robert and his dog, Lola. Robert turned fourteen while he was here last week. He went to a Lion’s football game and a Red Wing hockey game and he spent Thanksgiving happily surrounded by his noisy, sometimes nutty family. If your extended family is struggling to stay connected, try harder to hang in there for the sake of the children. The next time you all get together let go of that Norman Rockwell family you think you should have, it exists only in your imagination. Let go of the past and all those bumps and bruises you’ve been so diligently cataloging. It was a nice visit…and that’s all it really needs to be.