Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Wordless Wednesday, Nov 13, 2013 {with LINKY}

We all know, at least here on the East Coast of Canada, that the days are getting shorter and shorter. So we usually end up retreating to our homes, and yes, to our computers, as the light wanes. But it's nice to actually open a curtain and look outside once in a while during the evenings.
Look what I almost missed!

Sunset on 11.12.13

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Wordless Wednesday - November 5, 2013 - {with LINKY}


From the song, "Wildfire', by Michael Martin Murphy

..."Oh, they say she died one winter
When there came a killing frost
And the pony she named Wildfire
Busted down his stall
In a blizzard she was lost"...



We won't let that happen to Zazu

A killing November frost.

Zazu ,completing her usual  peripheral  rounds, of the fenced in area of the property.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Wordless Wednesday October 23, 2013 {with LINKY}



Getting That Better Shot!!
On our recent annual drive up the Fundy Trail, my two sisters, their husbands and  my husband & I came across a particularly interesting vista that we just "had to photograph". We each took turns climbing up on the guardrail to get a better shot.Those extra few feet up made the difference, don't you know! Our husbands watched and chuckled at our determination or foolheartedness.

" I'll stop you from falling."

"I'll hold your jacket so you don't fall."

This is the amazing rugged vista we were climbing to shoot.

No sisters, spectators or cameras were damaged in the shooting of this blog.

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Surprise New Reads!

How surprised I was to go to  my mailbox on Friday and find these two signed copies of Pamela Foster's books waiting for me.  She even included a couple of post cards. And, all I did was make a comment on her blog, that she found favorable.
I haven't had the opportunity to read Pamela's books, but they sure look interesting. I have a brother that actually spend some time in  Costa Rica and was considered a Gringo by the locals and my father-in-law was a WW2 Vet. So, I expect to really enjoy these two books.
Have you had the opportunity to read any of her work?


Clueless Gringos in Paradise_rev3-front

The comments following the books are from either Amazon or from Pamela's blog:

 My husband, Jack, and I sit in our recliners – you know, the ones you see on TV with old people in them – and watch CNN while we pet the fur-covered, 150-pound trunkless elephants we call dogs, and contemplate another winter in the high desert of Arizona.
“You know what?” I ask rhetorically.
Jack doesn’t answer. We’ve been married long enough that, first of all, he knows one of my lead-ins to a discussion about our lives when he hears it and, secondly, he’s trained his brain to simply filter out nine-tenths of what comes floating out of my mouth.
Knowing this, with no encouragement whatsoever, I continue, “It feels like we’re just sitting here waiting to die.”
He turns his head and looks at me.
A minute later, he says, “Yeah. It does, doesn’t it?”
After breakfast, I say, “Let’s move to someplace green and warm with a beautiful blue ocean.”
This, right here, turns out to be the equivalent of saying, “I’ll bet we could strap these two giant dogs to our backs and just leap right across that rocky abyss over yonder. Don’t worry about those loose boulders. We’ll be fine.”
Why would I even consider such a thing? Because Jack’s my hero, and he came into my life when I really needed a hero.
From the dry Arizona desert to tropical Panama, Foster shares the adventures she experienced traveling with her Vietnam veteran husband with PTSD and their two gigantic service dogs. By weaving charm, wit, and humor throughout the story, Foster masterfully brings to light the daily challenges faced by veterans with PTSD and their spouses. Insightful, endearing, funny yet sad, Clueless Gringos in Paradise brings understanding and hope to all those who deal with the unseen wounds and scars of war.”
~ R.H. Burkett, author of Soldiers in the Mist


When night falls on another Veterans Day, when the leftover chicken waits in plastic tubs for a quick breakfast the next morning, and the confetti is swept from the streets, and the flags are folded in tight triangles; when the holiday ends, most of us get on with our lives. But for those warriors who carried an M14 along a jungle trail, who patrolled the streets of Fullujah or Bagdad, who developed the skills to survive and return to us, for those combat-seasoned men and women, life does not exactly just go on. My Life with a Wounded Warrior is the true story of the joys, challenges, and lessons of living with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. This collection of deeply honest personal essays shares Pamela Foster's twenty-five years of living with and loving a combat Marine, a veteran of Vietnam. With humor and love and respect, as well as with frustration and anger and sadness, Foster lifts the curtain on the true cost, the individual cost of war, and gives hope and joy and laughter to those who love their own wounded warrior. The author will donate $3 from the sale of each book to Freedom Dogs, an organization which provides PTSD service dogs to combat veterans.

To view more of Pamela's books , please select the link here.

First Frost! October 13, 2013


The early morning frost is making lovely and delicate white tips, on the garden ground cover, this morning.



Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Wordless Wednesday July 24, 2013 {with LINKY}

I was delighted to see these three little ones having so much fun in the water fountain. They didn't care if they had sneakers and long pants on or not.  



This is how the whole bandstand appears without little ones playing in it.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Wordless Wednesday, July 17, 2013 {with LINKY}

We came across this weary fellow, during a day hike, on our recent 'girls getaway. He seemed plain tuckered out, but seems to have found a soft and cool spot to rest his weary head.



Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Wordless Wednesday, June 12, 1013 - Garden Bouquet {w LINKY}




The lilacs were at their best and would go to seed, soon, so I added some pink, yellow & purple lupins from our gardens along with a few yellow and mauve irises. The bouquet sits on a table cloth that had belonged to our Mother who died in 2005.

Friday, May 10, 2013

Smile BRILLANT! LED Teeth Whitening System









It’s so nice to be seeing the much longer days and the flowers and trees beginning to show their Spring blooms.  

We even did our very first lawn mowing of the season and our gardens are beginning to show some color.

Inside, we are putting away our heavy Winter clothes and bringing out our lighter Spring and Summer clothing. It’s seems everywhere we look there is a smile on people’s faces. What is ‘your' Spring smile going to look like, to others?  Your smile is your most noticeable fashion accessory. It needs to be with you 24/7 so it should be as bright as possible!


I was confident I had the best smile I could, but it was not until I completed the easy to use, safe and very effective, 
Smile Brilliant LED Teeth Whitening System   did I realize how much whiter  my smile could really become. For the same results, it would have cost hundreds more from a dentist's chair.

When you don't have time to mess with all the over the counter systems that take days to complete a and only minimal results attained, get immediate results on the go.Smile Brilliant's LED Teeth Whitening System does it all. Smile Brilliant, Professional Teeth Whitening, is pleased to offer a tooth bleaching package that generates results in an easy to carry package. With as little time, as 20 minutes per day, this kit gets results and is compact enough to go with you. The whitening system includes an ultra high strength professional whitening pen with an LED lighting system. The gel paints on quickly and the LED whitening light accelerates the process.

I did notice a very small amount of minor tooth sensitivity on the first two mornings, but it quickly disappeared and my smile was better than ever.

This Spring,I will be feeling fully confident and
 fully accessorized at all times!


"Like" Smile Brilliant on facebook
"Follow" Smile Brilliant on Twitter


 {Disclaimer:  The product or products mentioned above were provided free of charge from the company or PR firm in exchange for being featured on Oak Lawn Images-Page. The  opinions expressed are my own.  No monetary compensation was received.}

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Wordless Wednesday, May 8, 2013 (w/LINKY)

   Happy "Nurses Week" to all the devoted, caring and hard working nurses.

Future ultrasound scanning
The Future of Nursing? (photo credit funtastic.web.com)

Once a nurse, always a nurse. Now, we're retired and on our 'girls' vacation.

      Check out Older Mommy, Still Yummy's post for today's Wordless Wednesday. This is the follow up.

Wishing a special Happy Nurses Week to both my sisters, Pat and Monica and to my nurse cousins, niece and aunts.





Monday, April 29, 2013

A to Z Blogging Challenge - Z





For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to highlight authors and their books, that we, in our book club, have read, as a group, separately  or have been recommended by someone in our facebook, Book Club, ‘What to Read Next?’

Well, here we are at our final letter. It's been an interesting Challenge and I've connected with some really nice bloggers. So, without further ado...

Z is for Zusak, Markus - The Book Thief


From Amazon:
It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. . . .

Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak’s groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau.

This is an unforgettable story about the ability of books to feed the soul.

It somehow seems appropriate that my last author tells a story about a young book thief who spreads the joy of reading to others, and in so doing, helps them during troubled times. We all read, to learn, to dream or to just get away from our own place in time, if only for a little while. 
If you'd like to check out or join our facebook, book club, please, select the link, What to Read Next?
Also considered:
Zenter, Alexit - Touch

A to Z Blogging Challenge 2013 - Y



For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to
highlight authors and their books, that we, in our book club, have read, as a group, separately  or have been recommended by someone in our facebook, Book Club, ‘What to Read Next?’
Only two letter so go so, for today,

Y is for Young, Wm. Paul - The Shack


From Amazon:
Mackenzie Allen Phillips's youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation, and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later, in this midst of his great sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change his life forever.

Those of us in our reading group were split on this one. Those who liked this novel, liked it a lot. Those who didn't, really, didn't like it at all. I guess it's one of those novels that speaks to each of us individually, so you'll have to read it, to see what it says to you.

If you'd like to check out or join our facebook, book club, please, select the link,  What to Read Next?

Friday, April 26, 2013

A to Z Blogging Challenge 2013 - X


For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to highlight authors and their books, that we, in our book club, have read, as a group, separately  or have been recommended by someone in our facebook, Book Club, ‘What to Read Next?’


OMG, I'm grabbing at straws, here!!!! The only book who's author's last name  begins with  the letter 'X', is a Chinese author who writes all kind of Chinese books, which fine, if you're Chinese.

So in desperation I  have looked to other sources. Being a retired nurse, and a mother, the existence of X chromosome was near and dear to me, having given birth to four daughters. So, with a slight departure from the theme, I've not highlighted  a novel or book, but a medical fact and an author.

So, X is for  the 'X' chromosome, discovered by Mary F. Lyons.


The Author - Mary F. Lyon 
Mary Lyon was born in Norwich, England in 1925, and received her higher education at Cambridge University (B.A. 1946; Ph.D. 1950; ScD 1968). She then joined a group in Edinburgh set up to study the genetic hazards of radiation, using mutagenesis experiments in mice. In 1955 she moved with this group to the MRC Radiobiology Unit, Harwell, where she headed the Genetics Section from 1962-86. It was while working on radiation hazards in 1961 that she discovered X-chromosome inactivation, for which she is best known. She has also done extensive work on the mouse t-complex, and made many other contributions to mammalian genetics. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences, and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among her awards is the Wolf Prize for Medicine in 1997. 

The sex chromosomes differ from all others in that they are the only ones that vary in number between different individuals within a species. The severe developmental defects that accompany rare extra copies of autosomes raised the question of how XX females and XY males can accommodate different numbers of X-chromosomes.  In mammals the almost complete inactivation of one X-chromosome in each cell of a female provided an answer. The discovery of X-chromosome inactivation arose from a synthesis of three or four separate observations in different areas of genetics. Although discovered in the mouse, it proved to be a general mechanism among mammals. 

 I'm happy for her discovery because I have given birth to four beautiful daughters (xx chromosones), who have, collectively given birth to seven awesome grandchildren, so far, :-). Five with xy and two with xx chromosomes.


If you'd like to check out or join our facebook, book club, please, select the link, What to Read Next?

Thursday, April 25, 2013

A to Z Blogging Challenge 2013 - W




For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to
highlight authors and their books, that we, in our book club, have read, as a group, separately  or have been recommended by someone in our facebook, Book Club, ‘What to Read Next?’
There were several good reads by 'W' authors, but I had to make a choice.
So, 'W' is for White, Sue - Ten Thousand Truths

 

From Amazon:
A moving story of losing family but finding a new one. Thirteen-year-old Rachel is bad news, or so her foster care worker tells her. She's been shuttled from one rotten foster family to another ever since her mother and brother died in a car accident five years ago, and she's running out of options. So when she gets caught shoplifting and is kicked out of her latest home, the only place left to send her is the last resort for kids like her: a farm in the middle of nowhere run by a disfigured recluse named Amelia Walton, whom Rachel nicknames "Warty" because of the strange lumps covering her face and neck. Rachel settles into life at the farm, losing herself in her daily chores and Amelia's endless trivia, and trying to forget her past and the secret she's holding inside. But when a letter arrives for her out of the blue, Rachel soon realizes that you can't hide from your past-or your future.
We, at our real Monday Night Reading Group, were quite partial to this novel. For one thing the author Sue White, was the facilitator at our  meeting. We picked her brains for over 30 minutes about writing in general and she patiently answered all our questions before  we even got to discussing the great book.
We really liked the local setting to this novel and the way Rachel wound her way from being the 'rebellious kid' to getting inside your heart and mind and becoming someone to admire. It's a story about seeing past what is obvious on the surface to seeing what real love looks like.
If you'd like to check out or join our facebook, book club, please, select the link, What to Read Next?
Also considered and enjoyed:
Walls, Jeannette - Half Broke Horses, The Glass Castle
White, Sue - The Year Mrs. Montague Cried
Winnman, Sarah - When God Was a Rabbitt

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

A to Z Blogging Challenge 2013 - V



For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to highlight authors and their books, that we, in our book club, have read, as a group, separately  or have been recommended by someone in our facebook, Book Club, ‘What to Read Next?’

So, 'V' is for Verghese, Abraham - Cutting for Stone


From Amazon:
A sweeping, emotionally riveting first novel — an enthralling family saga of Africa and America, doctors and patients, exile and home.

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics — their passion for the same woman — that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him — nearly destroying him — Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.

An unforgettable journey into one man’s remarkable life, and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others.


There was a lot of lively discussion surrounding this sweeping novel as it wound it's way from one period of time and continent to another, then, into our hearts as we journeyed with the twins until they found each other and their birth father once again.

If you'd like to check out or join our facebook, book club, please, select the link, What to Read Next?



A to Z Blogging Challenge - U




For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to
highlight authors and their books, that we, in our book club, have read, as a group, separately  or have been recommended by someone in our facebook, Book Club, ‘What to Read Next?’

The kind and every so diligent readers in our  facebook , book club, "What to read Next?", came through for me again, with their reading suggestions.
So without further ado.

U is for Urquart, Jane - Sanctuary Line


 

From Amazon:
Set in the present day on a farm at the shores of Lake Erie, Jane Urquhart's stunning new novel weaves elements from the nineteenth-century past, in Ireland and Ontario, into a gradually unfolding contemporary story of events in the lives of the members of one family that come to alter their futures irrevocably. There are ancestral lighthouse-keepers, seasonal Mexican workers; the migratory patterns and survival techniques of the Monarch butterfly; the tragedy of a young woman's death during a tour of duty in Afghanistan; three very different but equally powerful love stories. Jane Urquhart brings to vivid life the things of the past that make us who we are, and reveals the sometimes difficult path to understanding and forgiveness.


If you'd like to check out or join our facebook, book club, please, select the link,  What to Read Next?

Also considered: 
Uris, Leon - The Haj

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Wordless Wednesday - April 24, 2013 Spring Blossoms {with Linky}


First Spring Blossoms






A to Z Blogging Challenge 2013 - T



For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to highlight authors and their books, that we, in our book club have read, as a group, separately or have been recommended by someone in our facebook, Book Club, ‘What to Read Next?’

This was another tough letter. Surprisingly from all the books read as a group, none of them had authors whose last names began with the letter 'T'. We did however, have a few mentioned in our online group. (Thank you, thank you, kind members!!) So it was from those that I selected this book.

So,  T is for Tyson, Sylvia (Yeh, the same one from Ian & Sylvia and Quartet) - Joyner's Dream


From Amazon:
Joyner’s Dream is the sweeping story of a family and its dubious legacy: an abiding love of music coupled with a persistent knack for thieving. Beginning in England in the 1780s, continuing in Halifax at the time of the Great Explosion, and ending in Toronto in the present, eight larcenous generations from all walks of life—craftsmen and highwaymen, aristocrats and servants, lawyers and B-movie actors—are connected by music, a secret family journal and one long-lived violin. When the branches of the family are reunited and lingering secrets are revealed, we have come full circle in a hugely satisfying and surprising tale.
This multi-generational story—told in a spellbinding series of historical voices—abounds in such rich social detail and sharply rendered characters, it affords the deep reading pleasures to be found in the novels of Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy.

I think this too might be a consideration of our small Monday night reading group, given the local color and the rich historical history.

If you'd like to check out or join our facebook, book club, please, select the link, What to Read Next?
Also considered:
Torday, Paul - Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
Thuy, Kim - Ru


Sunday, April 21, 2013

A to Z Blogging Challenge 2013 - S




For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to
highlight authors and their books.I have chosen ones that we, in our book club have read as a group,
separately  or have been recommended by someone
in our facebook, Book Club, ‘What to Read Next?’

I found this letter to be a very difficult one. Not because there were no authors beginning with 'S', but because there were so many. We have read several and they were all good. But, a choice had to be made.

So, the letter 'S' is for Skloot, Rebecca - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

From Amazon:
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia—a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo—to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.

Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family—past and present—is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?
        
Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.

Three of us in our 'actual' Book Club, are retired registered nurses. We are all mothers to either humans, fur babies, or both. The  fact that this could actually happen and the unsettling facts exposed during the author's search for the truth and how that impacted Henrietta's family in both the past and present was almost unbelievable. 
An absolute, must read from our perspective!

If you'd like to check out or join our facebook, Book Club, please  select the link,  What to Read Next

Also considered and greatly enjoyed were:
Stein, Garth - The Art of Racing in the Rain
Sparks, Nicholas - Safe Haven, The Wedding
Sebold, Alive - The Lovely Bones 
See, Lisa - Snow Flower  and the Secret Fan
Shaffer, Mary Ann and Barrows, Annie - The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society
Schlink, Bernhard -The Reader
Stockett, Kathryn - The Help



Saturday, April 20, 2013

A to Z Blogging Challenge 2013 - R


For this year’s A-Z Challenge, I have chosen to
highlight some authors and their books, that
we, in our book club, have read, as a group,

separately  or have been recommended by someone
in our facebook, Book Club, called, ‘What to Read Next?’
So, R is for de Rosnay, Tatiana - Sarah's Key

From Amazon:
Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.
Paris, May 2002: On Vel’ d’Hiv’s 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life. 
Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and silence that surround this painful episode.

We did read this heart wrenching novel in our book club. The struggles of the family in 1942 and Julia's own struggle, in 2002, to come to terms with her own situation made for a very compelling read and discussion in our group.

If you'd like to check out or join our facebook, book club, please, select the link,  What to Read Next?

Also considered:
Rich, Robert - The Midwife of Venice