best of youtube

I started a YouTube account recently and learned how to take and upload videos, look out Mr. Spielberg, bookbabie is now in the movie business! My first “film” is about our pet squirrel. Well, maybe he’s not exactly a pet, we don’t walk him on a leash or let him sleep at the foot of our bed. But for the moment he does satisfy our need to have a cute, fuzzy little creature around. When our dog died last year we decided to go pet-free for a while so we’d have the freedom to do some traveling. Unfortunately, the economy immediately tanked and we’ve since tightened our belts resulting in vanishing travel itineraries which gives us plenty of time to play with our video camera and risk disease by hand feeding peanuts to overgrown bushy tailed rodents 🙂

Animals are such agreeable friends – they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms. ~George Eliot

best of youtube

Man has always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much…the wheel, New York, wars and so on…while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man…for precisely the same reason. ~Douglas Adams

skywatch friday

Shot this a few minutes ago out my bathroom window, my Bradford Pear tree is budding, getting ready to officially announce spring. It’s sunny and fairly mild today, when it warms up a bit I think I’ll go walk around the yard and look for more signs of spring, maybe cut back some of the plants I didn’t get to last fall. I feel like I’m a little out of balance lately. I think I’m watching too many cable news shows and worrying too much; about the economy, about Meagan and baby Brooklyn, about how my dad is dealing with being alone, about my ginormous Visa bill…etc.  Things that are basically out of my hands (except my darn Visa bill, if only I’d actually kept that card out of my hands in the first place!). Worrying really is just a bad habit, isn’t it? It accomplishes nothing, changes nothing. I remember my mom doing her spring cleaning every year when we were kids, washing walls, wiping away dangling cobwebs, cleaning out closets and moving furniture so she could vacuum up the hidden dust and crumbs that accumulate after a long, dark winter. I feel like I need to that with myself this spring, cut away some of that cluttered old growth and give my spirit a good sprucing up:)

I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which never happened. ~Winston Churchill

grandbaby bump

I did some new baby bump photos of the kids last week. I’m having fun planning the shower, we’re using the photo on the right for the invite. We had a slight scare yesterday when Meagan developed pelvic pain. Her doctor determined that it’s not preterm labor (a huge relief) and we’re hoping that the pain goes away soon, she still has 100 days left to incubate our little granddaughter! I love how women today wear tight tops and bare their beautiful tummies at the beach when they’re pregnant instead of trying to cover them up under tent-sized tunics. Perhaps Demi Moore’s controversial Vanity Fair cover taken by Annie Leibovitz helped spark the belly-proud movement. Now, unfortunately, we have that photo of Octo-mom’s giant baby mound, which definitely falls under the category of too much information and is enough to make any woman give up the idea of motherhood altogether and get a puppy!

Making a decision to have a child–it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ~Elizabeth Stone

skywatch friday

My son took this photo on a trip to Mexico. He and my daughter-in-law went for long walks every day venturing far outside the property lines of our resort. My son has a good eye for photography, he’s less traditional than mom and likes to find the unexpected, which in Mexico isn’t hard to do. Every day, not far from this abandoned gate, they saw a lone man with a submachine gun standing guard. What he was in charge of protecting they never could figure out and they had the good sense not to ask (or take his picture!). When I think of Mexico, I can’t help but think of contrasts; the lush tropical landscapes, treasured ancient ruins, and the rich, colorful culture of its people contrasted against a history of poverty and the horrific drug war that has recently escalated.  My daughter and I were just talking the other day about light and dark, good and evil and whether one can exist without the other. It’s always an interesting debate, isnt’ it?

Where there is much light, the shadow is deep. ~Johann Wolfgang Goethe

skywatch friday

…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 gold’s 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. ~Chapter 15, Love is a Many Splintered Thing