It’s time all of you Americans know something and understand it — Punxsutawney Phil is a pathological liar. That little rodent has been lying to us for years and yet people still think they can believe him when he says we’re getting an early spring.

Maybe someone, somewhere is getting an early spring but in his home state of Pennsylvania, we are not getting an early spring.

I visited Punxsutawney one time and I can confirm that it is not like the cute little town you see in the movie Groundhog Day either. They didn’t even shoot the film in Punxsutawney because the place is not picturesque and because there are actual shrines to that nasty little lying varmint all over the place.

The thing is even pictured on the outside of the newspaper building, on the newspaper masthead, and there is a wood carving of him by the McDonalds. Or there was when we visited 22 years ago.

 Living in Pennsylvania means hearing about that dumb groundhog way too often. (Hopefully, you will take all these comments about Phil in the humorous way they are meant.)

It is raining today and is supposed to rain the rest of the day but mixed into the rain is ice and snow. It was like that off and on all week this past week. So no. We are not getting an early spring, even though last week I thought we might.

That was the week my daughter was riding her bike in front of the house and my son was taking long walks around town without a coat.

Pennsylvania’s weather is like this every year but it never makes it easier.

On Wednesday we had every single type of weather imaginable it seemed. One hour it was snowing, the next raining, the next sunny, and then windy and back around again. By Wednesday night, luckily, things started to settle down some so I could take Little Miss to the last night of Kid’s Club (a children’s program at a local church) and not worry about getting stuck in it all.

After Kid’s Club, I had to rush back home to lead my online Bible study, which made me a little nervous, but I survived. Thankfully the regular leader will be back this Wednesday.

On Thursday I took a relaxation day because the week had just been so rough with that one time I had to leave the house. Ha. Ha.

 On Friday the kids and I traveled 20 minutes to pick up our groceries at the local Aldi. We also stopped at a local convenience store that used to be a mansion owned by a family tied into the area’s local history and I think maybe the underground railroad. I need to look that last part up.

Because there are some historical photographs, letters, and other information at the site, I told the kids we could count the trip as a field trip if they would go look at those items with me.

I plan to write a blog post about the site at a later date. I think it will interest history buffs, even if they aren’t local themselves.

I also plan to write a post soon about watching the Little House on the Prairie 50^th anniversary events in California this weekend and what the show has meant to me. I was literally sitting here crying earlier through an interview with Melissa Gilbert this afternoon. If any of you have sentimental connections to the show and would like to see the interview too, here it is:

I have been following Dean Butler (Almanzo Wilder) and Allison Arngrim (Nellie Olson)’s podcast to get ready for the festival off and on for a few months now. It’s brought back a lot of memories of watching the reruns when I was a kid and also reading the books, of course.

I’ll ramble more about my connection to the show in a separate post but will ask today if any of my readers have heard about the reunion and if you have been watching any of it?

I plan to have a cup of tea here soon and continue reading a book I signed up for through a blog tour, though now I’m second guessing it because the book is creepy.

I’ll hopefully be able to push through it and provide a fairly good review for the tour, but as for today, I’ll probably switch to a cozy mystery I am reading later on in the day.

My cat, Pixel, is curled up next to me on the couch on this rainy day. She’s dozing away. Both she and our younger cat Scout went outside for about 20 minutes later and then darted back in when I let Zooma the Wonder Dog out to use the bathroom. They’ve been doing that a lot all week. They’re missing being able to just hang out outside.

Scout is probably curled up somewhere else in the house. She’s been making the most of the short time she’s had outside. Yesterday The Boy found what was left of a dead bird out in the yard. We call Scout our bird killer so we are certain it is her.

Zooma the Wonder Dog is slowly recovering from not feeling well (she has a lot of stomach problems), but she is lying on her side and chilling out, instead of laying on her belly and looking like she is in pain like she did on other days during the week.

She will probably perk up even more when we visit my parents tomorrow for Sunday lunch.

So that was a bit of an update about my week.

How was your week this past week? Do anything exciting or relaxing? Let me know in the comments.