Sunday Bookends: Cold weather, saying goodbye to a kitty friend, and a little too much TV

/ Lisa R. Howeler

Welcome to my Sunday Bookends where I look back at the previous week and share what I’ve been reading, watching, writing, and listening to.

What’s Been Occurring

It has been very, very cold here in Pennsylvania so we did not leave our house much at all this past week.

In other words, I have very little to report and nothing exciting to write about as far as what’s been going on.

The cold weather will continue this week with a snowstorm tonight into tomorrow. We’ve heard every amount from four to 18 inches so I don’t know what we will get in the end.

One thing that did happen this week isn’t something I really want to write about. My brother and sister-in-law said goodbye to their 15-year-old cat Seamus because his health had deteriorated to the point he was suffering. It placed a cloud of sadness over the whole family because Seamus really was a part of our family.

We will miss him very much. He was such a character. He snuggled with my sister-in-law every morning and also climbed up for naps with both of them. He could be a little stinker when he wanted his treats, smacking at my brother’s ankles or feet, or knocking things over to get attention, but most of the time he was a sweetheart (plus I found it funny that he harassed my brother).

What I’m Reading

I am setting Anne of Avonlea aside for a bit, but will probably read a couple of chapters a day. It’s a very simple, everyday story and I just like to escape inside its pages as a little bit of a respite.

I’m still reading the fifth book in the Longmire series and finished a novella by Jenn Knipfer called Holly’s Homecoming.

Upcoming are a couple of romance books as I try to figure out if I should write a couple of romances for Kindle Vella to try to earn some extra money.

I wish I had more time to read, honestly. My mom keeps borrowing really good books from Kindle Unlimited (which by the way, you can now borrow 20 books at a time) but she breezes through them before I even finish one.


What We’re Watching

Because of the cold weather, we’ve been watching a lot more TV.

My husband and I have been watching The Café, a sweet, quirky British show on BritBox (Amazon) in the last couple of weeks. It’s about a woman who owns a café, her daughter who is trying to make it as a writer and all the quirky characters that surround them.

It has been a nice escape.

We also started Brokenwood Mysteries, which we really liked.



We tried one episode of The Cleaner, which was super weird but somehow endearing. It’s about a man who cleans up crime scenes. I’m hoping we can watch more but we also have to finish up Lovejoy, which we are on the last (sixth) season of.

I also watched a couple episodes of Know Your Roots on the PBS Living Channel on Amazon. It’s a show where they follow the roots of famous people because, you know, we need to know even more about famous people. I watched an episode with Rosanne Cash and Clint Black and another one with George R.R. Martin and Andy Samberg. They were both very interesting.

I think this was the most TV I’ve watched in a long time. It’s supposed to be cold again all this week, but I hopefully will be reading and writing more than watching TV.

What I’m Writing

I’ve been writing blog posts and working on A New Chapter, which I hope to release in late April/early May.

On the blog I shared:

Faithfully Thinking: The need for us all to show more grace and less judgment

Randomly Thinking: Honest homeschoolers, friendly only in winter, overused book tropes

God Is My Hiding Place. Book review and giveaway with JustRead Book Tours

Fiction Friday: A New Chapter Chapter 16

Educationally Speaking

So that’s my week in review. What have all of you been up to, reading or watching? Let me know in the comments.

6 thoughts on “Sunday Bookends: Cold weather, saying goodbye to a kitty friend, and a little too much TV”

  1. That is so true about homeschooling. Our whole house at one time was turned into a preschool type Montessori education set up. We turned our living room into a huge school during the early years when my son and daughter were 2 and 4 years old. My husband wasn’t home alot because of all the editing he was doing for different projects, some required him to travel back and forth to Los Angeles. Not a place we were willing to move to with our children, no way were we going to raise kids there. It was a short trip by plane as we live here in Arizona.

    When I turned our living room and dining room into a school setting it made things easier for the therapists that would come in once a week for an hour to help my son with OT and speech. My husband loved it and laughed when he came home one day from a trip and saw huge blow up jumping toys in the room with bean bags, bouncy balls, and shelves with our giant fish tank by a huge glass window that I painted with faux stain glass to cut down on the sun glare.

    My son was very sensitive to light and he would visually stem as well as spin stemming. That was so long ago. He isn’t doing that anymore and doesn’t even remember those years, now he speaks and is attending a Christian university here in the city. Anyway, I get it…I know exactly what you are writing about with homeschooling and I loved your post on judging others. I been itching to write about that too, just how ugly everything has gotten with everyone turning on each other about the Jab in the arm.

    Okay, time to get back to home projects. I might just sit down like that cat meme that you shared. I did do a lot of organizing yesterday. Cat’s seem to be smarter then we think. My kids always laugh about that meme where aliens come down and figure that is cats that rule the planet as we are always taking care of them. That is so sad about your family loosing one of the furry family members. They keeps us smiling and sane I believe. Have a great weekend, and I hope it doesn’t get too cold where you’re at.

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  4. Cold here too. We aren’t going out either and not just because of the cold. The you know what stats are outrageous and people also are sick with flu and other assorted yuckiness. We want to stay well because, (prayers, prayers, prayers), our family is hoping to have our Christmas the first weekend of February.

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