Inglath Cooper's Blog, page 12
May 14, 2014
Black Lab and Elephant Best Friends
If you love animals as much as I do, here’s more proof of how absolutely wonderful they are. Bella the Black Lab and Bubbles the elephant live at the Myrtle Beach Safari and just enjoy hanging out together and doing what they like to do. I’m completely enamored with them both. Thank you to my daughter Tatti for showing me this video.
Click here to watch them swimming together!
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.
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May 8, 2014
It’s a Bear! No, it’s Four Bears!
The coolest thing happened to me today.
We were driving back from a visit to the Homestead Hotel in Hot Springs, Virginia. My husband likes to take a short cut that we call the Goat Path because it’s so narrow. The road winds through a mountain of forest that is breathtakingly beautiful. Because I didn’t want to get car sick, I was looking out the window when I spotted something in the top of a tree.
When I realized it was a bear, I yelped for my husband to stop and started fumbling for my phone. Just as I turned on the video, the bear began climbing down the tree. I watched in awe as she got to the bottom in record time and disappeared through the brush.
And then, we spotted something else at the top of the tree. One, two, three cubs now climbing down after her! They were little, but since I have no idea how to gauge the age of a bear, I couldn’t begin to guess their age. They were just so adorable. They made puppy-like noises calling after their mama who had moved to the hillside to watch us with a worried look on her face.
I started thinking about the stories I’ve heard about people getting between a mama bear and her cubs, but she simply sat still and watched us watching them.
I actually felt guilty for causing any of them stress, but what an amazing thing it was to witness. It felt like this very special privilege we had for some reason been given.
I can’t express what a beautiful thing it was to watch them there like that. I keep thinking about her sweet face, her patience in waiting out our curiosity.
I pray that they will be allowed to live peacefully in their forest home and that no harm will ever come to them.
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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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Knowing Joy Like Dogs Know Joy
When it comes to joy, we can learn so much from dogs.
They live so much in the moment, happy for the simple things that we so often take for granted. When their basic needs are met, they are content. Any other good stuff is extra and a reason to be joyful.
There is definitely something to be learned from that.
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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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May 7, 2014
How to Know It’s Love
When we love someone, it’s easy to make allowances for shortcomings!
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May 4, 2014
We All Need Love
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May 3, 2014
Like Finding Treasure
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Exercise: For the Butt and the Brain
It’s not as if I didn’t already know it.
On some level, I’ve known it for a long time. Exercise greatly affects the quality of my daily life.
As young adults, most of us probably spend way more time thinking about how to take care of our physical body in a way that makes us look good in a pair of jeans, but not that much time thinking about how to make our brains perform better.
In my twenties, I began having some episodes of feeling low. At first, I kind of blew it off as just a case of the blues, any of the typical reasons we reach for in trying to figure out why we’re not feeling so great.
It was only when I took up running that I began noticing fewer episodes and that even if I did start to feel a little low, it didn’t feel as grey as it had before.
With life’s normal cycles of change, I have gone through periods of time where I’ve exercised less frequently, only to notice that my low points were worse when I wasn’t exercising. Having figured this out about myself, I was intrigued by Dr. John Ratey’s book: Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain.
I’m so glad I read this book. It is full of case studies that back up Dr. Ratey’s assertions about the indisputable value of exercise on our emotional well-being as well as our physical.
One of the most intriguing studies discussed in the book is that of the Naperville Central High School where P.E. is about teaching a fitness lifestyle instead of sports. Read about the Naperville fitness model and the school’s incredible academic success here.
Some quotes from the book:
Among those with the least cognitive decline over a four-year period, three factors turned up: education, self-efficacy, and exercise.
I tell people that going for a run is like taking a little bit of Prozac and a little bit of Ritalin because, like the drugs, exercise elevates these neurotransmitters. It’s a handy metaphor to get the point across, but the deeper explanation is that exercise balances neurotransmitters—along with the rest of the neurochemicals in the brain.
Now you know how exercise improves learning on three levels: first, it optimizes your mind-set to improve alertness, attention, and motivation; second, it prepares and encourages nerve cells to bind to one another, which is the cellular basis for logging in new information; and third, it spurs the development of new nerve cells from stem cells in the hippocampus.
If you’ve been looking for a reason to revitalize your exercise efforts, read Spark. I’m convinced now that the fact that it makes us look better is actually a side benefit to the far more important effects it has on the health of our brains.
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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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May 2, 2014
Thunder Needs the Lightning
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A Gift of Grace
Sometimes good can come from the worst moments…In a moment of grief, Caleb Tucker made the biggest mistake of his life. He gave away his wife’s baby, born under the most tragic circumstances. Three years later he gets a second chance. All because Sophie Owens walks into his feed store with her little girl—a little girl who looks a lot like his late wife.
Prologue
CALEB TUCKER’S WIFE died on one of the prettiest days ever lent to Albemarle County.
Channel eight’s morning weather anchor had declared it the pearl in the oyster of spring – get out and enjoy it, folks! – but to Caleb, the beauty of the day was simply another irony in the nightmare that had taken over his life.
He sat on a chair by the metal-railed hospital bed, his skin chilled by air conditioning lowered to a level more appropriate for preservation than comfort. He wondered how many other people before him had sat here in this same spot, not willing to let go. In the past eight months, he had come to hate this chair, this room, as if they alone were responsible for the misery now etched into every cell of his body.
He clutched his wife’s hand between his own, the backs of his knuckles whitened, his grip too tight, too desperate.
A half hour ago, two somber doctors had walked into the room where he’d sat waiting, both his parents and Laney’s parents hovering behind him. He’d watched their mouths move, the words sitting on the surface of comprehension. “We’re sorry, Mr. Tucker. We were forced to perform an emergency Caesarean. There were complications from the anesthesia. I’m afraid she’s gone.”
No. Not possible. Not after everything she’d been through. She was going to get better. She had to get better.
He’d asked to see her, alone, trying to block out the sounds of Mary Scott’s keening grief. The doctors led him to the room, one on either side of him, as if they thought he might not make it without their help.
He had only wanted them to go away, leave him alone with her.
Once they closed the door behind them, he stood staring at her beautiful face, saw nothing there to hint at the life she had carried inside her these past months. Nothing to hint at the act of violence responsible for that life. She looked peaceful, accepting, unmarked by any memory of what had happened, peace erasing all traces of pain or fear.
For that, he was grateful.
It was all he could find to be grateful for now.
The day had arrived after months of dread, of willing time to slow, praying for God to bring her back to him. But Laney—the woman he had loved since he was sixteen years old—- was no longer here.
The door to the room opened and hit the wall with a bang. Mary Scott stood in the entrance, her face haggard. She looked as if she had aged a dozen years in the past few hours. Behind her, Laney’s father, Emmitt Scott, put a restraining hand on her shoulder.
“Mary, come on,” he said. “Don’t do this.”
She stared at Caleb now, her eyes glazed with blame. “This is your fault,” she said, her voice ragged, high-pitched. “Because of you, my daughter is dead.”
Caleb let the words settle, the knife of accusation stabbing through his chest.
“If you had been the kind of husband she had wanted you to be, none of this would ever have happened. You know how many times she came home crying to me about the two of you never seeing each other? About work coming before everything else, including her?”
The last few words rang out on the edge of hysteria.
“Mary, stop now,” Emmitt Scott said, taking his wife’s arm.
But she jerked away, crossed the floor in a couple of strides and slapped Caleb hard across the face.
He sat, too numb to register more than a momentary flash of pain, and then had a sudden sense of gratitude for the realization that he could feel anything at all.
Mary glanced at her hand, then back at him.
“Mary!” Emmitt swung her up in his arms, his face taut. “I’m sorry, Caleb. We’ll come back when you’re done,” he said and carried her from the room.
Caleb stared at the door long after it had closed. No matter how much Mary blamed him, it could never equal the blame he had leveled at himself. He dropped his head onto the icy bed rail, grief swallowing him, the sounds coming from deep inside nearly inhuman. No tears, though. He’d never shed one. Not since the police had found her broken body behind a dumpster twenty miles from the mall where her car had been left with the driver’s door open, the contents of her purse spilled onto the pavement below.
A thousand times he had asked himself why he hadn’t driven with her that night. One decision made under the carelessly arrogant assumption that they would have other nights, other opportunities. “Come on, Caleb, you can fix the tractor in the morning.” He heard her voice as clear as if it were yesterday. “We’ll just go buy Mama’s birthday present and then eat at that new Italian place I was telling you about. When was the last time we went out to dinner?”
“I can’t, honey,” he’d said. “I need to get it going so I can get hay off the ground tomorrow. We’ll go this weekend, okay?”
One small flicker of disappointment in her blue eyes, and then Laney smiled, as she always did. Forgave him, as she always did.
She had gone on without him, kissing him on the mouth when she left, telling him he worked too hard. She’d be back soon.
And he’d taken that for granted. Because of course she would be back. That was how life worked, wasn’t it? One day blending seamlessly into the next until a man never thought to question his right to it.
He leaned forward, pressed his lips to the back of his wife’s wrist, stung by its increasing coolness. Despite all the words he’d heard countless times from doctors renowned for their expertise in brain damaged patients, he had continued to hope that this moment would never actually happen, that she would wake up, come back to him. “Laney,” he whispered. “Oh, dear God, I’m so sorry.”
Footsteps on the tile floor echoed, penetrating his consciousness far enough to prompt him to raise his head.
Dr. Richards stood at the foot of the bed, his short dark hair disheveled, as if he’d been running his hands through it. He cleared his throat. “Mr. Tucker.” The pause held a note of hopefulness. “Are you sure you don’t want to see the baby? It might make a difference.”
Caleb stared at him, as if the man had spoken a language Caleb didn’t understand. “Call the agency,” he said.
For a brief moment, the doctor’s composure slipped, and under a burdened sigh, he said, “If you’re sure then.”
“I’m sure.”
A Gift of Grace – Amazon.com | BarnesandNoble.com | Kobo.com
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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.
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May 1, 2014
Possibilities
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