It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what I and the rest of the family have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing, and some weeks I share what I am listening to.

What’s Been Occurring

Winter came back with a vengeance yesterday and led to The Husband lighting the woodstove to keep the cold at bay. We stayed inside huddled under covers, reading books, correcting errors in a book (for me), and watching a lot of light and fluffy TV and movies. The animals sprawled themselves in front of the woodstove, looking slightly drugged.

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, the last two or three weeks have been pretty awful for us and this past week was one of the worst as I was falsely accused of something that now requires me to provide a lot of documentation. It has my nerves so raw I’ve started internal trembling again but nowhere near as intense as I had after I had Covid or in 2017 after my dog died and after I had a virus. Luckily my mom is doing very well after spending a week in the hospital with pancreatitis and having her gallbladder removed. The side effects from the virus I had during that time have finally started to subside as well.

Before everything sort of fell apart and the temperatures dropped, I went outside and took some photographs for my stock photography accounts and also just had fun goofing off with the pets who thought they needed to be in the photos as well.

I was actually looking forward to life becoming a little bit more normal. Well, that was short lived but hopefully this year will get back on track again soon.

What I/we’ve been Reading

I finished The Reckoning Trees by Alicia Gilliam last night. Wow. What a ride that was. I held on for dear life during most of it, holding my fingers over my eyes because I wasn’t sure what would happen. It was incredibly well written and I’m looking forward to the second book in the series.

I have a couple more chapters of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain to finish up and I’m sure that will happen on Monday.

I lost my paperback copy of Anne of Windy Poplars by L.M. Montgomery somewhere. Either the house or the car, but I would love to find it this week and continue it.

On Kindle, I have a couple of choices of what books to start next. I have Love and The Silver Lining by Tammy L. Gray, The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner, and All That Really Matters by Nicole Deese.

The Husband is reading The Big Bundle by Max Allan Collins.

Little Miss and I finished Children of the Longhouse this past week and are looking for another historical fiction for children to start for school but haven’t picked one yet.

At night we are reading Paddington again. Sigh. I hope to start Sarah, Plain, and Tall with her at some point this week.

What We watched/Are Watching

I found this lady this past week and have a feeling I’ll be watching her a lot when I need to relax.

We watched See How They Run on HBO Max as a family this weekend. It was pretty good but I was irritated that they had an American actor playing a British cop when so often we have British people playing Americans anymore. I mean why couldn’t one of their British actors who comes over here to play a famous  American play the British cop? Doesn’t make sense.

Still, the movie was good – quirky and fun and what we needed.

Little Miss and I had ourselves a Mary Berry marathon of sorts on Friday and Saturday. Watching her is so relaxing. I still can’t believe she’s 87 and still cooking away. Well, the most recent show we watched, she is 85. And still getting around wonderfully – or at least she was two years ago.

We watched her on Saturday (today as I am writing this) while the fire roared in the woodstove. On Friday we watched her show Mary Berry Loves to Cook and on Saturday we watched Mary Berry’s Country House Secrets, Season 1.

I found the first season of Mary Berry’s Country House Secrets on Youtube, by the way.

Little Miss and I agreed that watching her is very relaxing.

The Husband and I also watched an episode of Brokenwood Mysteries and I watched a couple episodes of a show from the 70s called the Manor Born.

What I’m Writing

I haven’t been writing a lot. I am currently making corrections on my manuscript for Shores of Mercy to prepare it to be released on January 31. You can preorder it here.

I did share two posts on the blog this week:

• Saturday Afternoon Tea and Chat: Blah, blah, blah
• Educationally speaking: Children of the Longhouse and The History of Lacrosse

What I’m Listening to

I listened to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn read/performed by Elijah Wood almost all week. Frodo did an amazing job on the book and brought out some of the crazy hypocrisy of the people of Missouri during the years of slave-owning in the way he pronounced and presented the book.

For music I listened to:

Danny Gokey – New Day

Needtobreathe, Multiplied

Needtobreathe, Happiness

Anthony Brown and Group Therapy, Trust in You

Spirit Lead Me – Influence Music and Michael Ketterer

Blog Posts I Enjoyed This Past Week

I am behind on blog reading but this week I did enjoy the following posts:

Sunshine for a January Soul by Mama’s Empty Nest

Lessons from Damar Hamlin by Fuel for the Race

The Helper by Warmly Meg

Also, please say a prayer for blogger Jinjer from The Intrepid Arkansawyer. She lost her mom this week.

Now it’s your turn

What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.