Did you ever wonder what I used to look like?

Wondering what I look like now?

The absolute positive truth is that I'm the luckiest woman alive and here's why.

Number one, I live in this house I love, which is very very old and made of stone and on a twisty windy creek which has little croakers in the summer and ice skaters in the winter.

"My good old house"

Number two, I live in this so-cozy house with my husband, Chuck, who makes beautiful sculpture out of bronze and also makes me laugh, although not with his sculpture unless he wears it on his head, which sometimes he does (and I'm not kidding!).

"Chuck"

Did you think that was all? Nope, because number three is that I dreamed and prayed and waited and waited and waited for a dog that was yellow and big and slurpy and my best friend and finally ta-da! A year ago Chuck gave me this thumpy dog, Nugget, like from my book, Nugget and Darling. Here's the Nugget from my book:

"Nugget in the book"

....and here's the real Nugget:

"Real Nugget"

I call Nugget my Mostly Dog because he's good . . . mostly. Nugget is very silly. If he were a human being, he'd wear a lampshade on his head. Of course I love him to pieces. So did you think THAT was all? Nope, because guess who just came scratching on my heart?

"Guess who?"

POPPY! She's fuzzy and small and clumsy and sassy and she thinks Nugget is hysterical too. Poppy likes to snuffle in the snow and when she wants to tease Nugget she skitters under the bed where naturally he has to chase her but then he gets stuck. Poppy trots out the other side and then takes a nice long chew on Nugget's favorite bone till finally wriggles out and barks, "HEY! THAT'S MY BONE!!!"

Well, that's certainly enough to make me the luckiest woman alive but I'm telling you, there's more. Number four, and best of all, is that I have three amazing grown up children.

"Grown up kids"

Miss Maaike is oh-so-fancy. She prefers to wear high heels because then people think she's tall, which she is not. Maaike would wear a crown if she could, but usually grown up women don't get to wear crowns unless they are Queen or wearing ball gowns or it is their birthday.

"Maaike on her birthday"

Maaike is a lawyer in Chicago. She's silly and wonderful and smart and brave, which goes to show she is fancy on the outside and fancy on the inside, too. Max and Emmett, Maaike's kitties, keep her feet warm as she clackety-clacks her computer. Also Petie, her little French bulldog. Like Maaike, Petie thinks he's very big, which he is not.

"Maaike with Max and Emmett"

My daughter, Anneke, was studying to be a bug doctor, called an Entomologist. A bug doctor is NOT someone who puts bugs' tiny legs in casts, or performs surgery on their teeny stomachs. No. A bug doctor means someone who knows a lot about bugs, which Anneke does. Now Anneke's getting her PhD in Ethology, which is animal behavior. Her specialty is dogs. Here is her dog, Canyon, who is a party animal.

"Party animal"

Dogs, of course, isn't the only thing Ani is good at. She's also excellent at spoons, which you can see in this picture.

"I'm a proud mother"

Rob is a Montana Man. He lives in Montana, which is far far from home, because he likes adventure such as jumping from high places to watery places. Or sliding down a very high mountain on a snowboard. Like that. Rob has one rule: An adventure every day. And that is mostly what he does. So I said to Rob, "So, hey, Rob. Howsabout a picture of yourself for the old web page?" And he said "sure-sure", but he didn't send one. Finally, I got this:

"Yikes!"

Is this the kind of picture an author should run on her web page? So when he came home, I swiftly took THIS picture:

"Much better"

See how nice he looks?

Some people wonder how an author gets ideas. "Barbara M. Joosse," kids say, "where do you come up with ideas for your books?" Here's the truth of it. An author's life isn't different or better or more exciting than anybody else. We just look around and SEE. We look at our everyday lives and the people and places and critters in it and sometimes we laugh and sometimes we worry and sometimes we wish and that is what we write about.

Not The End!