FROM THE ORR HOUSE TO YOUR HOUSE
Happy Happy Merry Merry.
Here is my Christmas/Hannukah gift for you. A Free eBook copy of A Villain for Vanessa at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1533185050. “I was gripped before I was off the first page.” That’s what one reviewer says. I hope you will agree.
More important, dear friends, it is the most blessed season of the year, and at the Orr house we’re feeling grateful for the grace and good will that have carried us through the past twelve months to this present good moment.
Jonathan and I continue to enjoy our cozy city apartment and to run Orr and Orr Contracting with Jonathan as Project Manager and me as CFO. I continue to write romantic suspense novels with A Time of Fear & Loving – Book 5 of my Riverton Road Romantic Suspense series, in progress. We are both glad to be productive and doing work we love.
Our family remains our abiding joy. We will all be together here at Christmas and my birthday on the day after. An added blessing is granddaughter Maya nearby as a freshman at NYU. If we could only get grandson Julian to the city as well, this would be entirely paradise. Meanwhile, daughter Kathleen and son-in-law Luis live just blocks from us, and son Ed and daughter-in-law Deborah aren’t far away in Boston.
Our friends are beloved sustenance as always. We feel privileged to have each of you in our lives. And, finally, our faith lives embrace us and remind us to dwell in gratitude, kindness and love.
We look forward to a new year in the light and wish you, your friends and family joy, contentment and heartfuls of the truest satisfaction life can afford.
Love and Blessings. Alice
Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com – Delicious Suspense Spiced with a Love Story.
Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 4 – A Villain for Vanessa and Book 1 – A Wrong Way Home – A FREE eBOOK – are both available at http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B000APC22E.
I am so happy for you that all is going well and you have such loving relatives!!!!!
I am the sole surviving person in my kinfolk and I thus treasure my friends very deeply!
since for 14 months I’ve been battling osteo arthritis and its various ways of showing up !!! now for over a year my life has changed dramatically… I treasure hearing from friends and associates… be well and hug each of your loved ones and make sure they know you love them.
Thelma
Dearest Thelma. Thank you so much for your support. I am sorry to hear of your ordeal with chronic health concerns. I have a chronic condition myself and am pretty much housebound as a result so I understand your struggle. Know that you are loved and cared about. I will include you in my daily prayers and keep you in my heart. You may be the last of your blood kin, but you can certainly think of me as a member of your writer family, as I hold you dear as a part of mine. Be in touch anytime. Love and Blessings. Alice
Dear Thelma. You have commented on my blog posts in the past. I invite you to explore my most recent series. It is titled “Oh No I’m a Caregiver – Dementia – Our Cautionary Story.” These posts are of special significance to me. Dementia appears to be a reality destined to assault all of our lives in one way or another eventually. I believe that the story I have to tell – through my initial post and others yet to come at https://www.aliceorrbooks.com – has valuable insights to offer. For this reason, I hope you will read it and pass it on to others so that they might benefit from what I am learning and from those insights.
For example… My husband Jonathan, who has recently been diagnosed with dementia, is actually quite fine at this early stage. He is engaged in lots of cognitively powerful activities. He writes original memoir pieces that are very good and says this is the result of sitting in on so many of my writing workshops over the past forty-five years. He now finds more joy in writing than the drawing and music that were his usual creative pursuits in the past. This is good because, as you know, portraying characters and composing scenes require a deep level of focus and detail concentration which is very beneficial for him. He also loves jigsaw puzzling – the 1500-piece variety. Again much concentration is required plus he has fond memory associations of doing puzzles with his mom when he was a boy. He also reads a lot – challenging books, as well as his favorite New York Times articles. He does regular physical exercise and has also begun gardening at our church which has a large planted space in sore need of attention. Medically, he is taking a basic drug that has disappeared his brain fog for the timebeing. We also have excellent medical professionals on our team and on our side.
Dementia is not like the tv commercials portray it to be. Their purpose is to ramp up fear and sell very expensive, very dangerous drugs. There is a long, gradual period before extreme changes begin, and the aggressiveness these ads emphasize can often be mitigated with simple mood medications that are harmless and affordable.
Meanwhile, there is a real-life story to be told here of real-life experience. I hope you will read and share it. Dementia is a reality for many of us and, unfortunately, promises to be a reality for many more. Truth is our best armor against being cast into despair by the prospect. I hope to add a little to that sustaining truth. Dementia is one of the many ways all of us will evolve from this life into whatever may lay beyond. Passing on is our universal destiny. Some of those passages involve discomfort and unpleasantness. We can perhaps be a bit better prepared if we understand realistically what to expect.
That is what our story – Jonathan’s and mine – is meant to do. Help others – in an honest and caring fashion – to be prepared. Love and Blessings. Alice
Happy holidays, Alice! I hope the new year will bring peace and prosperity 🙂
Peace to you also dear Jacquie Biggar, and the best of success with your new publication. Blessings. Alice