Inglath Cooper's Blog, page 11

Back to School – Holding On While Letting Go

Big day today. Big week, in fact.

Last Thursday, my husband and daughters took our oldest daughter to the college she will be attending for the next four years. It’s what she wants to do, and so it’s what we want for her. But good grief, is it hard to navigate this particular transition.

We’re a close family, spend a lot of time together, and homeschooling has been a big part of our girls’ education experience. I’ve wanted this extra time with my daughters, and I wouldn’t trade a minute of the many things we’ve been able to do together because of it.

Today marked another transition. My three younger daughters are going back to regular school, a choice that I think is a good one for them at this time.

So that leaves our entire family with a lot of adjusting to do.

Navigating the different phases of our lives is a lot like navigating a boat across an ocean. There are days when the sailing is smooth as silk, and things just seem easy and good. And then there are others, especially the days of transition, when the waves are so choppy and unfriendly that we wonder if we’ll ever find our way out of the storm.

Parenting is certainly like this. Having children is one of my greatest blessings in life. But I made a deal with myself early on. That I would never hinge my happiness and fulfillment completely on them. One, that’s a lot to ask of a child. Two, they are going to grow up and make lives of their own. I very much want to stay a part of their lives, but I know that in order to be fulfilled themselves, they will separate from us and make new friends, form new interests and life goals.

As they should. It’s the right thing. I want the right thing for them.

But no one ever said choosing the right thing would be easy. And in this case, it isn’t. Figuring out how to let go while still holding on to what was, what is and what will be.

If you’re a parent experiencing these same feelings, we’ll get there. The ocean will smooth out again. The views will be different because we will have sailed to a new place. But we’ll find beauty and happiness there, too. We’ll wait it out. It will come.

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Never tried one of my books? If you like stories that take you away for a bit, feature characters looking to live fulfilled lives with love and dogs and relationships that matter, I’d love to give you a FREE copy of Good Guys Love Dogs! Please just click here: http://inglathcooper.com/good-guys-lo...

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From My New Release: Rock Her

I want to believe him. Down to the core of my soul, I want to believe him. Rejection does that to you. Makes you savagely thirsty for reassurance that somewhere down the road, someone might again find you appealing once the sheen of rejection has lost its glisten. I know, however, that right now, I must positively glow with it.

Available for Pre-Order at Amazon.com.  Release date September 19, 2014.

Finding a Way to Help – Dog Rescue

These days, fostering dogs is pretty much on hold for me. I feel sure there will come a time when I will return to this phase of helping out in the dog rescue effort. But for now, I have many older dogs to care for, and I feel they need my full attention.

There are other ways to help though, and I think we owe it to ourselves to offer what we have to give in the different phases of our lives. I spent most of today working at our local adoption center’s fundraising store – Purrfect Treasures. I worked on placing product for this coming weekend’s shoppers.

And while I come home tired after one of these days, I always feel good about the effort. The funds raised here go directly to the Franklin County Humane Society Adoption Center, helping to pay for medical treatments for the dogs and cats there as well as all the other things needed to keep the doors open.

Non-profits like our local rescues do incredible work, often offering opportunities to abandoned pets who otherwise would have their lives ended at county or city pounds. Most are in dire need of volunteers who can help in many different capacities.

If you have a few hours a week to spare, check into your local rescue and see what they need help doing. It is an incredibly rewarding effort. You never know what you’ll end up getting to do!

Tomorrow, it’s back to writing!

A Hound and a Senator

His face pulled my gaze to the Facebook post. It was one I’d seen countless times, a post that never fails to make my heart clench in a combination of fear and nausea.

The photo was of an older Walker Hound, his face already white with age. Urgent Plea. Eight year old Tanner”, Male, 8Yrs 0 Months tri colored Hound Dog 1094524.

The hounds always get me, especially the older ones. Maybe because when I first started volunteering in dog rescue, they almost never got of our local county pound. Hunters would dump them there, sometimes multiple dogs at a time, and people didn’t see them as pets.

I’ve adopted several over the years, most of them Heartworm positive when they came out of the pound. Heartworms do not have to be a death sentence, but it is expensive to treat, and rescues sometimes cannot afford to pull dogs who need treatment.

It just so happened that the afternoon I saw Tanner’s pictures was also the afternoon we were taking my oldest daughter to college for the first time. So I was a mess anyway. The thought of Tanner being left at a shelter where he had little chance to be adopted or helped by a rescue made me miserable.

But a wonderful thing happened for him. The Franklin County Humane Society agreed to help Tanner and posted a request for help from donors to sponsor his heartworm treatment.

And here’s the power of social media and the opportunities to reach others through sites like Facebook. Virginia State Senator William M. Stanley saw the post asking for sponsors for Tanner, and he stepped up to offer help.

This afternoon, Senator Stanley went to the Roanoke Regional Center for Animal Control to welcome Tanner back to the outside world and see him on his way to the Franklin County Humane Society Adoption Center.

I’m not going to dwell on the sadness of an old dog being left at a kill-shelter. I’m going to dwell, instead, on the fact that good will always rise to the top if given the chance.

Thank you to the Franklin County Humane Society, Senator William M. Stanley and all the volunteers and donors who reached out to help Tanner. I think you are awesome.

Pumpkin Mushroom Pasta

2 tbsps of olive oil

1 16 oz. can Organic pumpkin

8 oz Gourmet Blend Crimini, Shitake and Oyster mushrroms

1/2 cup Unsweetened Almond Milk

4 cloves fresh garlic, diced

Pink sea salt to taste

16 oz. bag of Penne Rigate Pasta

handful of fresh cilantro

Make the sauce in a large sautee pan. Put olive oil in pan. Turn heat on low. Add diced garlic. Allow to slightly brown. Add mushrooms. Sautee until starting to brown. Add pumpkin and almond milk. Stir until thinned. Add sea salt to taste.

Cook Penne Rigate pasta in large pot al dente. Drain pasta. Put in your favorite dish. Pour sauce over pasta.  Sprinkle fresh cilantro and grated Parmesan cheese over it. Serve!

Don’t Ever Walk Away From a Pressure Cooker

When it’s, ah, under pressure.

This one I learned from my Grandma Holland.

Summertime green beans.  A dozen Ball Mason glass jars jiggling inside a 10 gallon drum of a pressure cooker. Both of my grandmas canned vegetables from the garden every summer.  Tomatoes. Corn. Peas.  And green beans.  Runner beans to be exact.

I’d heard her say it a dozen times.  ”Don’t ever leave the kitchen when the pressure cooker is doing its thing.”  Gaining pressure, that is.  I’m not sure I ever took the advice to heart until the July afternoon Grandma proved the wisdom behind her advice(which had also been her mother’s as well).

The phone rang, a wall mount with that old phone ring that ringtones now try to mimic and don’t get exactly right.  I’m sure it was her intent to only look away for an instant.  But I guess the conversation with her brother’s wife Lucille got interesting because she forgot all about the pressure cooker until the explosion that splattered beans and Ball mason glass shards floor to ceiling and wall to wall.

Luckily, no one else was in the kitchen when the green bean bomb went off.

Nothing like real life proof to make a theory stick.  To the light fixtures.  The door.  The countertops.  The table.  The chairs.  The rug.  Well, you get the picture.

In spite of that memorable incident, my Grandma was better in the kitchen than I will ever be. And so I’ve opted for freezing over canning. A wise decision, I feel sure!

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Never tried one of my books? If you like stories that take you away for a bit, feature characters looking to live fulfilled lives with love and dogs and relationships that matter, I’d love to give you a FREE copy of Good Guys Love Dogs! Please just click here: http://inglathcooper.com/good-guys-lo...

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Island Escape, Anyone?

What is it that’s so appealing about an island story?

Maybe my fascination with this particular escape started with Gilligan’s Island. Oh my goodness, I did love that show!

I was looking for something to watch on Netflix the other night, and I’m not sure how I came across this particular movie, but the island scene on the description caught my attention. I clicked in to see what it was about, surprised to see that the main star was Madonna. Maybe I became a little skeptical at that point. When you’ve been given the talent she has for music, would it even really be fair for her to be a great actress, too?

Here’s the Netflix blurb: A wealthy shrew gets her comeuppance when she ends up stranded on a deserted isle with a deckhand whose brawn and working-class grit turn the tables.

Admit it. That perked up your ears, too, didn’t it? And here’s the trailer.

After watching that, I decided to give it a try. It looked cute. Funny. Entertaining. And it turned out to be all those things. Madonna, is of course, enviably fit and hard-bodied. Her character, however, is infinitely hateable until she gets that comeuppance mentioned above.

Another island story I loved was On the Island by Tracey Garvis Graves. If you haven’t read that, you are in for such a treat! Here’s the blurb for it:

Two people stranded on an island struggle to survive—and slowly fall in love.

Anna Emerson is a thirty-year-old English teacher desperately in need of adventure. Worn down by the cold Chicago winters and a relationship that’s going nowhere, she jumps at the chance to spend the summer on a tropical island tutoring sixteen-year-old T.J.

T.J. Callahan has no desire to go anywhere. His cancer is in remission and he wants to get back to his normal life. But his parents are insisting he spend the summer in the Maldives catching up on all the school he missed last year.

Anna and T.J. board a private plane headed to the Callahan’s summer home, and as they fly over the Maldives’ twelve hundred islands, the unthinkable happens. Their plane crashes in shark-infested waters. They make it to shore, but soon discover that they’re stranded on an uninhabited island.

At first, their only thought is survival. But as the days turn to weeks, and then months, the castaways encounter plenty of other obstacles, including violent tropical storms, the many dangers lurking in the sea, and the possibility that T.J.’s cancer could return. As T.J. celebrates yet another birthday on the island, Anna begins to wonder if the biggest challenge of all might be living with a boy who is gradually becoming a man.

Both of these stories reminded me how much I enjoy this setting and all the possibilities for adventure. My own island story - A Woman With Secrets - is a bit of a departure for me. It’s a lot funnier, I think, than most of what I write, but the characters kind of insisted, so I went along.

There’s a little excerpt below, or you can read a longer one by going here.

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Never tried one of my books? If you like stories that take you away for a bit, feature characters looking to live fulfilled lives with love and dogs and relationships that matter, I’d love to give you a FREE copy of Good Guys Love Dogs! Please just click here: http://inglathcooper.com/good-guys-lo...

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Memorial Day Brownie Recipe

Brownies are just one of those things we need to know how to make.  Let’s face it, certain days can be greatly improved on by the smell of a batch of brownies wafting from the oven.

I have several recipes that are easy to make and great-tasting, but I found one of my favorites in a 1969 South Carolina Cuisine cook book I bought at a used book sale in college.  Those Junior Assembly ladies in Anderson, South Carolina knew how to make a brownie.  Here’s the recipe:

Fudge Brownies

2 ounces bitter chocolate(recommend using a very good quality baking chocolate)

1/2 stick butter

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1/2 cup flour

1 cup nuts(or not)

Melt chocolate and butter.  Add sugar, flour and salt.  Beat well.  Add eggs, vanilla and nuts.  Bake in a Pyrex dish 25 minutes in 350 degree oven until firm, but still moist.  Yields 24.

Recipe from Mrs. W. M. Dillard

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All Creatures. . .Scene 2

It’s been a busy day on the bird rescue front. Early this afternoon, one of the babies decided to pop out of the nest while I had the dogs out in the yard. As soon as I saw it hopping around, I went into overdrive trying to scoop it up while praying my dogs wouldn’t look my way.

I was able to catch it, and we got all the dogs back in the house. I looked in the nest then to see if anyone else had decided it was time to fly. A second one had as well and was sitting under the bush looking petrified. The smallest bird was still in the nest.

So. We observed most of the afternoon while Mama and Daddy flew into the yard to feed the wandering babies and urge them to fly. When the third one decided it was time to leap from the nest, the parents were full-time busy.

Several hours later, the babies still weren’t flying though. Instead, they were huddled up together against the fence, making no effort to learn to fly.

Back to Scene 2. Go to the barn. Get a flake of hay. Put it in a plastic tub. Get babies. Put them in tub. Put tub on table next to original nest. Hope Mama and Daddy will continue feeding them there until they are strong enough to try flying again.

The babies chirp, chirp, chirp. Mama hears them and flies over with food to the new plastic tub/hay nest.

Whew.

We’ll try this flying thing again tomorrow.

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All Creatures. . .

My daughter and I were letting our dogs out in the fenced yard yesterday when she noticed Sammie sniffing a bush next to the door.

When she went over to look, she saw a bird’s nest perched on a limb. One of the babies had fallen out onto the ground.

We lickety-split hustled all of the dogs back inside and then tried to decide what to do.

I’ve always heard that you shouldn’t touch the babies, or the mother won’t come back to care for them. There was nothing else to do but pick the little thing up and tuck it back in the nest.

We hung around and held our breath, waiting to see if the mama would come back. Sure enough, she flitted in – a tiny little thing – with something green in her mouth, gave it to the babies, and then flew off to get more. She continued this until they stopped their hungry chirping.

I think birds are amazing.

Is there any creature on earth who works harder to prepare for their young and then care for them, building a home for them, feeding them, sheltering them and then teaching them how to fly out into the life around them?

They go about it as if that is what they were put here for. With complete dedication and commitment.

I’m so glad we were able to help her out a bit.

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Never tried one of my books? If you like stories that take you away for a bit, feature characters looking to live fulfilled lives with love and dogs and relationships that matter, I’d love to give you a FREE copy of Good Guys Love Dogs! Please just click here: http://inglathcooper.com/good-guys-lo...

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