Sunday Bookends: Ice, ice baby, finally finished that Longmire book, and earworms

Welcome to Sunday Bookends where I ramble about what I’ve been reading, doing, watching, writing, and listening to.

What’s Been Occurring

Cold. Cold. Cold. That’s what it has been in our neck of the woods for over a month now with this past week still being cold and then having an ice storm thrown into the mix.

Little Miss and I managed to make it 12 miles to get our hair cut before the ice storm set in on Thursday evening into Friday.

We woke up Friday morning with our trees, driveway, and many other things encased in ice. Unlike other ice storms where the ice melted during the day when the sun came out, there was no sun after this ice storm and the temps dropped even more over Friday night into Saturday, leaving us still encased in ice, with no sign of warmer temperatures for a couple of days. Saturday’s high was 16. Yikes.

The ice did make for some fun photographs, most of which I took with my iphone because my regular camera wasn’t happy with trying to capture close up photos. Mainly because I don’t own a micro lens and my nifty fifty was struggling to focus on the frozen drips of water.

The Boy was quite thrilled that he could run across the surface of the snow from our back porch and up the hill toward our garden shed late Friday evening when the temps had dropped around 14. Yesterday morning the temperature started at about 3 degrees and rose slightly while my husband chipped his car out of its parking space since none of us thought about the snow and ice freezing around the tires after he parked. He traveled to pick us up a grocery order about 45 minutes away, because that’s how far away we are from anywhere that offers grocery pick-up.

Before he did that, he started the fire in the woodstove and while he was out in the cold forging for food, I was in the warm house reading books and occasionally breaking up arguments about who would have the privilege of holding the Elsa doll and playing her for the “movie” Little Miss and her friends were creating during an impromptu playdate. They didn’t have a camera, so it wasn’t really a movie. It was more like a play.

Either way, I let them know that none of them should want to be Elsa because she was the real bad guy in the first movie anyhow. I mean, think about it, the woman froze an entire village in, causing a near economic collapse of the region. The village, serving as a commerce port, most likely supplied fish and fresh food to many other villages in a 50-mile radius so when Elsa had her little hissy fit, she threatened not only the livelihoods of the people in the village but also the lives of the people who relied on the village for their food.

“It wasn’t her fault!” little voices cried, horrified that I would suggest Elsa was the bad guy in it all. “She couldn’t control her powers.”

I swiftly mocked them. “It wasn’t her fault. Wawawa! It was. Get over it. She was evil.”

They eventually decided I was picking on them (I was not) and moved on to my suggestion that they all pretend to be in a Barbie girl band so they all could sing together at the same time.

(If you are new to my blog, please realize I use sarcasm a lot. I didn’t actually mock young children. I just joked with them. *wink*

Today promises more freezing temperatures and while I would prefer not to venture out, we will most likely go have lunch with my parents and maybe watch a movie before we come home like we did last week when we watched Song of the Thin Man, the last of the Thin Man movies with Myrna Lloyd and William Powell.

 After that, I have no plans to leave the house, but I am sure that at some point I will have to.

I know many of you who read my blog pray so I would ask that you say an extra prayer for me and The Boy. We lost our sense of taste and smell with Covid and while most of it came back from me, it has been much slower for The Boy. Now he and I both seem to be developing parosmia. This is where smell and taste is distorted and many things begin to smell and taste rotten. Please pray that this does not progress for us as it has for other Covid-19 survivors.

Right now peanut butter and garlic smell like a chemical to me and peanut butter tastes like one. My son is having the same issue with peanut butter, oddly. I’m trying to stay calm about it all and I do have some natural options we can try, so I ask that you pray for them to work. I’m especially worried about my son as he has already had stomach issues off and on over the years. From what I understand, this condition gets worse over time, not better for a while anyhow.

What I/We Are Reading

I did it. I finally finished The Dark Horse, the fifth book in the Longmire Mysteries series.  The series is great, and I love Craig Johnson’s writing, so the quality of the book wasn’t why it took me so long to finish it. I took so long because of being sick with Covid and then not being interested in dark stories while I was recovering for the month of December.

Up this week I hope to finish The Cat Who Saw Stars by Lilian Jackson Braun and continue The Reckoning Trees by Alicia Gilliam. I also started Miss Julia Renews Her Vows by Ann B. Ross to see what it is like and I’m hooked, so The Reckoning Trees might get bumped down. I’m not sure yet. I usually read a hard copy of one book during the day and the Kindle at night after I am in bed so I may read Miss Julia and The Reckoning Trees at the same time, after I finish The Cat Who book. Not that any of you care so I have no idea why I am sharing all that! Ha!

Little Miss and I have already read The Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder but we are set to read it again since it is part of our history/literature curriculum this week. I told her we didn’t need to read it again but she said she wanted to. It also reminded her how much she liked the Little House series so now she has asked me to read the second book in the series to her again. I’d prefer to keep reading The Mouse and the Motorcycle but if she likes Little House on the Prairie, we will read it again.

The Boy will probably finish A Long Walk to Water this week.

What We’ve Been Watching/Watched

I read more than I watched this week but I did watch, for some unknown reason, Runaway Bride, which I think is both sweet and awful at the same time. Richard Gere sort of irritates me. In every movie he just plays Richard Gere. Arrogant and cocky with a pout. But that’s just my opinion.

The Boy and I watched a couple of episodes of Longmire. Yes, I realize it’s like we have a theme going on in our house this week.

The husband and I watched the pilot episode of Fringe. I don’t know if I will watch more of that one. Science Fiction isn’t really my thing as much as it is for my husband

What I’m Writing

I have been working on getting to the end of A New Chapter’s first draft and hope to have it done by the end of this week. Every morning last week I wrote for 2-3 hours with a group of writers from Novel Academy. We participated in writing sprints that last about fifty minutes each.

I have not been writing as much on the blog, but hope to remedy that as soon as this first draft is finished. I will have to work on the second draft and editing, but that won’t be as time consuming as writing the first draft is.

What I’m Listening To

Ah man. This week I got an ear worm stuck in my head and couldn’t get it out.

Here it is for you, so you can also get it stuck in your head:

Then you can also listen to this other earworm by them:

The rest of the week I listened to a lot of Mumford and Sons and The Dead South while I worked on my book.

I sort of liked The Dead South’s version of You Are My Sunshine, a song my aunt used to sing to me and my son. If you actually listen to the song, it’s not a very happy one, so the happy version of the song is a little bit of a juxtapose I suppose you might say. A family member told me the band murdered the song with this version, but I thought the interpretation was creative.

 I also listened to quite a bit of Brandon Lake, especially this song:

Then I introduced my son to Vanilla Ice and he was horrified.

Now it’s your turn

So that is my week in review. How about you? What have you been doing, reading, watching, writing, or listening to? Let me know in the comments.