May 9, 2020 A MOTHER'S LOVE

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there. Being a mother is a tough job--if you want to do it well. There's ALL this SACRIFICING, nurturing, understanding -- did I mention SACRIFICING. Good bye--LIFE--FIGURE--SLEEP--MONEY--TIME. My advice to ALL THE WOULD-BE MOTHERS OUT THERE---Get a puppy first. Seriously--they are an awful lot like babies. They are adorable little creatures who-- poop-peep-cry--just like a baby--but better.  Seriously--Your legs won't swell and your belly won't get bigger than a balloon. Right? They won't take over YOUR WHOLE LIFE EITHER--get a crate and you've got yourself a babysitter. While I admit--puppies whimper at night--at least you don't have to get up and feed them. Get yourself a white noise machine to block it out. And a puppy is a hell of a lot cheaper than a baby. The diapers-formula-clothes--baby systems--ENOUGH SAID.  All you have to do is train that puppy to do his BUSINESS outside. Best of all--the time commitment is not as OVERWHELMING.  A new mother is literally CHAINED to that ADORABLE baby 24/7. HEED MY ADVICE ladies--a puppy is that tiny step you take BEFORE YOU LEAP in to THE REAL WORLD. Being a mother--ISN'T FOR THE FAINT OF HEART--but I wouldn't change it for the world. 
Vera Ray and Claire Aldridge, the main characters in Blackberry Winter by Sarah Joi, are both mothers who face very different struggles that ultimately change their lives. Set in Seattle during the Depression, Vera Ray returns home after her shift at the Olympic Hotel to find her three year old son Daniel missing. It's May 2, 1933, and heavy snow is falling as Vera searches frantically for her son. After a desperate hunt, she finds his teddy bear in the snow and realizes her son has been abducted.  Decades later, It's May 2 in Seattle as a blizzard strikes--an anomaly that is referred by meteorologists as Blackberry Winter. Claire Aldridge, a reporter for the Seattle Herald, is called upon to write a story about the Blackberry Winter of 1933. While researching, she learns about Daniel Ray's unsolved kidnapping and takes it upon herself to solve the mystery. Find out what happened to Daniel all those years ago and Claire's strange connection to Vera when you read this book for yourself. It's about 290 pages --or a 3 mile run--that I really enjoyed.