Back from Sabbatical!

Happy Wednesday everyone!

After a temporary sabbatical, including a wonderful two-week tour all around Great Britain, it’s great to be back in the blogosphere! Here’s a picture of me and my wife Jody, as we prepare to head out on the first day of our adventure in the beautiful city of Edinburgh, Scotland, along with a couple of other representative pictures. It was fourteen days of “on the bus, off the bus,” but worth every stop! So much to see, and even two weeks felt too short!

As always, first many thanks to all of you who’ve read “The Last Ride in to Readville,” and especially to those of you who have so kindly taken the time to recommend it to others and to provide me with excellent and honest feedback either directly or through your reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, and at the Kirkus Review website.

Always eager for more of your thoughts! So, for those of you who’ve perhaps been considering leaving a review, it’d be most greatly appreciated! Either click on “Leave a Review” here on the page, or you may do so by clicking any of these links:

Amazon:

Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44794558-the-last-ride-in-to-readville?ac=1&from_search=true

Kirkus Reviews:
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/michael-boudreau/the-last-ride-in-to-readville/

Thanks again!

In a bit of further good news, I’m working with the Boston Public Library to have the book placed among their collection at branches throughout the city! Hoping to start with the Hyde Park Branch since its most closely associated with Readville, of course! More to follow, hopefully soon.

Thought I’d pick up with posting photos that bring some imagery to thoughts, events, or people described in the books pages. Next book (no hints yet lol) will include many, hopefully!

In Chapter 3, I describe my mother’s obsessive tracking of her daily medications and glucose levels:

“She was on over ten medications ranging from baby aspirin to a psychotropic that in theory helped her manage her anxiety attacks. Her go to strategy, really her only strategy, throughout her life was to become “anxious” when faced with any situation that displeased her or to explain away what to all of us kids was her inexplicable and mind-numbing helplessness or her apathy when it came to our nurturing, well-being, and chiefly our vulnerability to Georgie’s threats and terror tactics.

Save for the Clozapine which was to be taken four times a day, all of the other medications were to be ingested once daily, say all at once in the morning. Easy. But oh no, not for Trudy, who turned what should have been a simple regimen for most people into a complex scheduling system that featured spacing out each of the medicines in bizarre intervals and tracking, to the minute, the time between each gulp of orange juice that she’d use to wash the medication down in exaggerated fashion. She kept dozens of clocks all over the house, any of which would bong or clang at the top or bottom of every hour signaling her that it was time. If she happened to be on the toilet and heard one of them go off, she’d clamor to her feet, pull up her diaper, and race to her pill cases and bottle of orange juice.

After swallowing the pill with an audible gulp, she’d dutifully write down the date and time in her chicken scratch into one of dozens of small, colorful spiral notebooks that littered the end table and the coffee table, and that were strewn on the floor all around her chair. There must have been at least five years’ worth of her useless scribbling. It was the same with the incessant and needless checking of her blood glucose levels. Each result was catalogued by date and time.

Whenever anyone took her to her monthly doctor’s appointment, she’d be sure to bring along a couple of her latest log books to show the doctor with the pride of a three year old who’d drawn a picture all by herself. He’d always say to her without looking up as he made his notes, “That’s wonderful Gertrude, my, aren’t you organized?”

Here’s a page from one of her notebooks.

Looking back, it was truly tragic in many ways that this, along with so many other chronic and neurotic behaviors had come to dominate the very last years of her life, in spite of so much encouragement against it.

Again, great to be back!

Very best to all, and look for more frequent posts soon!