My sister e-mailed me this photo. As of yesterday afternoon they were still in their home and had taken in friends who had to evacuate their neighborhood only four miles away. This was the view from Carrie’s backyard. I haven’t heard from her today but I imagine they had another sleepless night.
I took my camera and went looking for October today while Mr. bookbabie was golfing. I found it. In the bright sunlight that set the maple trees on fire, in the cool breeze that kissed my cheeks, in a sky as blue as any ocean. I found it.
Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all. ~Stanley Horowitz
Clipped this story from the paper today and thought my friends and readers would like to see it. Yes, things are looking up around here for the bookbabie. And it’s about time too isn’t it? I mean, don’t we all think we deserve good things to start happening when we’ve been through a rough spell? Doesn’t The Secret say if we believe it we can manifest it? Whatever, click here if you want to manifest your own fake newspaper article.
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.
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.
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.
I saw this video on YouTube recently and then saw it being used on a commercial on TV. So I’m thinking you might want to get out those camcorders and start recording your silly babies, share the joy, and maybe you’ll even earn a few bucks along the way to pay for their college educations!
A while back I stumbled across the website, Illustration Friday. Each week a new subject is suggested by participants and then you create something that illustrates the topic. You don’t have to be an artist to participate, there are all kinds of submissions and levels of artistic ability and everyone is welcome. I started doing simple collages about a certain someone. I used the weekly challenge as a way to jump start my creative juices which had dried up and withered away under the daily stressors of that thing called life. Check it out sometime, it’s fun to look at the art and just maybe you’ll be inspired to start making your own!
bookbabie 