Tag Archives: photos

bake a book

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When I’m not working on my iStock portfolio, I’ve been tinkering with book number three. It’s good to set a novel aside during the writing process, let it set up a bit, and then read through it with fresh eyes. Writing is sort of like baking bread, you work hard at it in the beginning and about the time you ask yourself why am I doing this when I could just run up to Kroger and buy a loaf of freakin’ Wonder Bread? you get to set it aside and let it rise on it’s own. I still have a ways to go with new chapters needed to bring it to a proper conclusion, but right now I’m enjoying punching down those chapters I already have and kneading them into shape.

Maxine stared a weathered redwood trellis on the other side of the terrace. It was draped in twining morning glory vines. When she first sat down the green vines were covered with open bell shaped flowers, hundreds of starry blue faces turned toward the cool morning sun: but now the flowers had begun to curl, to fold in on themselves so quickly that she could almost watch it happening.

carol jean

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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.

bookbabie has cooties

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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

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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

a nice visit

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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.

baby cheeks

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Can you tell my sister is head over heals in love with her first grandbaby? They were over for a pre-holiday visit so baby Aryeille could meet the California contingent for the first time. They adored her of course, I mean, who could resist those chubby pink cheeks? (It’s okay Bob, she only cried for a minute, we know you didn’t pinch her cheek that hard!).

“Never have children, only grandchildren.”
Gore Vidal

hangin’ on

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After ten days of the November drearies the sun came out yesterday and the temperature hit sixty! I decided it was a good day to run errands so I spent the afternoon running around gathering the necessities for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, which for us officially starts on Saturday when my sister and her family fly in from California, yay! I grabbed my trusty Canon G9 on my way out the door resolving that one of my errands would be to spend some time driving aimlessly and enjoying the lovely day. The photo below is from Maple Street in my town, I want to live on that street someday and you can see why, it is especially pretty this time of the year. The photo above is from a Japanese Maple in my own backyard. The leaves are slow to fall in Michigan this year, they don’t seem quite ready to give up and face the cold winter months and I am so very grateful for their tenacity!

october days

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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