Nicole Dennis' Musings: Birthday Guest: Laura Baumbach

Please welcome my birthday guest - Laura Baumbach!

Hi everyone! My name is Laura Baumbach. I write m/m erotic romance. Currently I'm writing a romantic suspense novel, the start of new series for me. I've been writing for fifteen years or so, and have hit a few milestones in both my writing and my life.

I'd like to start out by wishing Nicole a fabulous fortieth birthday!

I remember my own fortieth vividly. It was the year I decided I'd wasted too much time on 'everyday' things and hadn't accomplished as much as I had hoped to by that time in my life. At the time I was (and still am) a happily married woman with a good, hardworking engineer husband and a six-year-old darling son. We lived in a great big old brick farmhouse in the country. Still do. I was working as an Emergency Trauma nurse in a local hospital and a vibrant circle of friends and family. I wasn't writing at this point in time. That came about a few years later with the arrival of our second son.

There I was busy, happy, and comfortable, but vaguely discontent. There were a few things I'd wanted to learn to do since I was a little girl and it seemed as if my time to accomplish them was disappearing fast. So I set up a plan to try to do them all. I wanted to learn to ride a motorcycle, scuba dive, downhill ski, sky dive and play the piano.

Skiing came first. My birthday is in February so it seemed the natural first choice. My husband's employer arranges a ski night as a local resort each year and this year we attended to get the feel for it. Afterward. my husband agreed to join me and we began taking lessons. By the end of the season we were fairly good skiers, even getting our son into to it. I felt like I had accomplished something of note. I was surprised that what started out as a selfish desire turned into a family event that gave us many hours of enjoyment and time together. Score one for turning forty!

The motorcycle license was a bit more daunting. I should explain that my husband has ridden since he was none. My brother, who lives close by, and both his sons ride. It's kind of a family thing, but just among the men. I wanted to do more than sit on the back of the bike. I went and purchase a bike, a small Honda 250 Rebel and asked my husband to teach me. That lasted one lesson. He's been riding so long, doing things so automatically, he would leave steps out, expecting me to know them. I went and enrolled in a motorcycle course the next day for the sake of my marriage. Lol. By the end of the summer, I was a licensed motorcycle rider.

Between learning to ride, I took scuba diving lessons from an ex-navy diver from a dive shop in the city. It was along, challenging process. I had always been a Jacques Cousteau fan as a child. I managed to completed the class, work my open dives and – found out I was claustrophobic in the course of the whole thing. In the beginning, I would have to go to the top of the water before everyone else because I would hyperventilate so much I'd use up my tank before the class was over. Plus I had to use additional weights to keep me down because of all the air I used. LOL. I was the instructor's nightmare. But over time, I used less weights, less air and managed to control my responses to the point I learned how to do something that totally freaked me out. Accomplishment number three!

That's as far as I got. Every time I tried to schedule a sky diving class my son would have a melt down. He was sure I was going to die. My husband has never been the kind of man to tell me I couldn't do something but he was unusually quiet when I talked about skydiving. So in the end, I let concern for them outweigh my desire to try jumping from a plane.

The piano went the way of skydiving, mainly because pianos cost a small fortune and I couldn't find a private teacher whose schedule meshed with mine.

And that was my fortieth birthday wishes. It took all year to accomplish. I felt empowered, with a renewed sense that I was experiencing life not just living it. I think it made me a more interesting person. I use everything I learned in my writing.

That was twenty years ago. My goals were less dramatic for my sixtieth birthday but they too had a sense of time running out about them. I want to keep my business, MLR Press, a safe, healthy place for authors to publish their work, I want see my youngest graduate from college and get a good start in life, I want to plan a quiet retirement some place warmer with my husband where I can write and enjoy my grandchildren. Now that I've experienced life, I'd like to enjoy the memories of all of those experiences and put them into more stories.

I hope your birthday is as adventurous as mine was, in whatever manner pleases you, Nicole!