Wednesday, August 20, 2014

More Adorable Baby Blessing Winners!

Abby's Baby Blessings
Kathy's Baby Blessing
Elisa's Baby Blessing
Woohoo! Here are the last five winners of the Too Blessed to be Stressed Baby Blessings drawing.

If you didn't win, no worries! Another contest with awesome prizes (like a Kindle, free books, and Deb's fave chocolate)  is right around the corner to celebrate Too Loved to be Lost when it releases this fall. 

So if you don't already receive Deb's free quarterly e-newsletter, be sure to sign up at www.DeboraCoty.com so you won't miss a thing!

Kim's Baby Blessing
Kay's Baby Blessing

Saturday, August 16, 2014

Winning Photos

If these Baby Blessings don't light your fire, hey, your wood's wet!

Missie's Baby Blessings
Gloria's Baby Blessing
Jen's Baby Blessing


Heather's Baby Blessings

Congrats once again to the winners of my Baby Blessings contest! Here are the first five drawing winners - I hope they bless your heart as much as they have mine!

Jan's Baby Blessings



Sunday, August 10, 2014

Baby Blessings Contest Winners!

One of your 6 choices
A big THANK YOU to all who entered the Baby Blessings contest - I loved ooohing and aaahing over your baby blessings. Most were sweet little humans but we had our share of adorable 4-legged furry blessings and even a few terrific wheeled blessings.

Congrats to the ten winners in the drawing for your choice of my own Baby Blessings!

If your name's on the list below, just choose your prize - here they are: http://deboracoty.com/deboras-books/too-blessed-to-be-stressed-babies/ (if for some reason this doesn't show up as a clickable link, just go to my website www.DeboraCoty.com and click on books and then "Too Blessed to be Stressed Baby Blessings") and let me know at my private e-dress gracenotes@deboracoty.com where you'd like your prize sent.

Also, if you don't mind me posting your Baby Blessing photo and name, in that same message, please give me your written permission and it will appear on a blog post later this week.

If you didn't win this time, stay tuned for another contest coming up soon with the release of Too Loved to be Lost this fall. And hey, the prizes will blow your mind!

 So without further ado, in order they were drawn, here are the Baby Blessings winners:

Kay Colson Waters                                     Abby Letourneau
Heather Miller                                             Gloria Foster
Kim Lockhart                                              Elisa Westlund      
Jennifer Deg                                                Kathy James
Missie Sadler-Wiggins                                 Jan McRae

Thursday, August 7, 2014

Skip This Spinning Class

Wish I knew what causes my ding dang vertigo. Drives me batty.  Heard of it? The Tilt-a-Whirl from Hades. The hangover that isn't. The devil’s last laugh.

Yep, vertigo is wicked all right. The world spins topsy-turvy out of control with every movement of the head. Or even eyes. It’s like you just rolled off a merry-go-round after being shoved round and round by a 250-pound linebacker. 

Only it doesn't stop after you get off and stagger around the playground.

This bout hit me the day we returned home from our beach week. I'd forgotten but Spouse reminded me that I got vertigo last year during our annual Daytona  week too. Go figure. I wonder if it has something to do with sand. Or glare. Or shrimp. Those are the things I do in Daytona that I don't do at home.

Hmm. I suspect it’s the cosmos’ way of telling me not to wear bathing suits.

Maybe it’s hereditary. My father suffers with it too, more frequently than me. We both take Antivert, which helps but doesn't cure it. At least with the medicine you can pseudo-function without throwing up every time you rise from a chair. But walls still have a way of jumping out and whacking you in the shoulder when you try to traverse hallways and the sidewalk still swerves away from you when you walk the dog and you end up in somebody’s shrubbery pretending that you’re looking for Rover’s lost ball.  

I recently found in my possession 1940-era British medical literature regarding vertigo that warned, among other clever things like “make sure your spectacle prescription is up to date,” that it is a very bad idea to walk along unlit stony paths late at night during a dizzy spell ... you might end up in the ditch. In which case you may well invoke a disgruntled bobby to escort you to the loo or worse, the slammer, under the erroneous impression that you’ve visited one too many pubs.

Dear me. Guess I'll just have to curb my late night unlit stony path hikes.

The brochure also said activities that require rapid side-to-side righting movements of the body and head are good therapy ... example: tennis. The risks, however, include falling flat on your face when you look up to hit your serve. Or impaling yourself on the back fence when you run after a lob.

Harrumph. Mere hiccups to true tennis addicts like me.

I’ve actually played tennis – more than once – in the throes of a vertigo episode (you can probably only understand this if you’re another full fledged tennis junkie). It’s kind of an out-of-body experience. Gives new meaning to the term “dizzy blonde.”

Why, you wonder, would anyone subject themselves to abject humiliation and certain defeat playing a competitive game with her head screwed on sideways? Um, I dunno. I suppose addiction is the operative word here.

It wasn't really that bad. Aside from only winning two games in two sets, the worst part was following the ball. Back and forth. Back and forth. Whack. Whack. Whack. By the time my already spinning eyes (a Vertigo symptom called nystagmus) could hone in on that little yellow sphere suddenly appearing just beyond the tip of my nose, the rest of me was flopping all over itself trying to remember how to be coordinated enough to connect my racquet with the ball.

You feel like a marionette being operated by a giant invisible hand hovering over the court. And the hand’s got a nasty twitch.

So you go home and take another pill.

Unfortunately, a side effect of Antivert is an anvil in your skull. It’s what I call the dead meat syndrome - meaning you can't think clearly and only want to lie on the couch all day trying not to draw flies.  

There's no good way to sleep. I usually end up propping myself upright in bed in a sitting position and sandbagging my head on all sides so it can’t move. This doesn't lend itself to rolling over once you've finally lost consciousness, which tends to pitch you right out of bed with arms flailing as you either blacken Spouse’s eye or send the bedside lamp flying.

Oh, you can be proactive if you choose. The vertigo exercises (mostly weird head/body positioning movements to dislodge stuck inner ear crystals) do help Daddy although they merely make me vomit. Even thinking about them now sends a wave of nausea through my gut. Rather like hanging upside down from the mast of a ship when you already have raging seasickness.

It’s enough to make me never, ever eat shrimp again. Just in case.