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

This past week was rainy and muggy but our leaves are changing and at least our nights are cooler.

The feel of autumn is in the air for sure on those cooler nights. The apple fritter scented candle my husband picked up this weekend is helping that mood even more.

Yesterday the kids and I took advantage of the “nicer” weather we had after a week of rain  and headed to a playground about twenty minutes from us. It was a gloomy and muggy day, but the kids still had fun playing on the zipline and in the creek. Little Miss made a new friend she might never meet again but they had fun at least.

I capped off my night with a Cary Grant movie, The Talk of the Town. It was a bit of a quirky film that was supposed to be a comedy but bordered on a drama at times.

This week I am going to work on being less overwhelmed with the world. To do that I am going to try to go on a media fast of sorts. Very limited scrolling and almost no news. My nervous system is overstimulated, overworked, over…something.

I have a lot going on with my parents’ health right now and some other things in life so I can’t take on the hurts and pains of the world too.

And I do take them on. When I see people hurting and then see people who do not care about that hurt because they have become desensitized to the pain of others with the 24/7 news cycle I start to realize that people around me are also probably thinking these horrible things that people are writing online too. It feels like people care less these days unless it is some political cause they are behind and while they are promoting that political cause they are tearing down others and yelling that is actually the other people tearing them down.

It’s exhausting and I’ve heard this over and over and over recently —that our brains were not built for all this news and 24/7 stimulation from social media. As a pastor I listen to once said, “We were not meant to be walking around with the entire world accessible via our butt bone.”

Of course he was talking about people who slide their phones in their back pockets and can slide it out at any time and at any time see the horrors of the world unfolding in real time. We can see good things too but we all know that the worst of the worst that is happening is what sells news and makes people stop scrolling.

More of us need to put our phones down and actually interact with people. As an introvert this is hard for me to say. I don’t like people. Ha. I know there are good people out there, though, and we need to find those people and interact with them more and the grumpy mouthy people on the internet less.

It’s a goal anyhow and I want to work more toward it.

Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are still hosting crafternoons but completely blanked on setting up a date on September. We both started homeschooling and had other events and all of the sudden September was over. It’s crazy  to me how fast it went by!

We will be announcing a date for October later on, probably next week.

If you are wondering what Crafternoons are it is a monthly Zoom meet up where we get together with other bloggers/crafters and do a craft while we chat about life and books and all kinds of other things. We do our best not to focus on religion or politics so we don’t depress ourselves.

If you are interested in the crafternoon, you can find more information here.

Erin and I are also hosting a monthly bookish link party called A Good Book and A Cup of Tea. It is almost over for September but you can still get your bookish links in. They do not have to be recent posts, just related to books in some way. I’ll have a new link party up on Wednesday.

I am finishing up the Nancy Drew book The Clue of the Broken Locket and will probably take a bit of a Nancy break.

These books were written for the youth of the day back in the 1930s and then rewritten a bit in the 1950s, so I get that there is some unrealistic stuff in there, but did they not know about concussions back then? I suppose they didn’t but these characters are always taking headshots waking up, getting a cold cloth on their head and a drink of water and then continuing on their day.  Like in this book, a huge rock was thrown through a front door, supposedly hit the couch, and knocked two people forward where they hit their heads on the hearth and were both knocked unconscious at the same time.

Hmm….oookay….let’s go on and believe that could happen but then let’s also believe that no one thought they should take both of these people to a hospital to have them checked out???

So the Nancy Drew books can be silly at times, but they aren’t written for adults, and the mysteries themselves are actually very interesting and sometimes even give me ideas for my own book. I suppose that is why I keep reading them off and on. All that being said, it is time for a little break and to read something more mature.

That’s why I’m reading The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis. Hahahaha! Really I just have a goal to reread The Chronicles of Narnia so I am reading another children’s book but it’s less annoying than the Nancy Drew books can be.

I am actually reading an adult book by Agatha Christie called Come, Tell Me How You Live but I put it down somewhere in the house and could not find it all week. I found it yesterday finally!

So I shall be reading an adult book this week!

I am also starting one of my fall books, A Fatal Harvest by Rachael O. Phillips, this week since I will finish Nancy Drew today and probably will finish the Narnia book later in the week.

I might start Death of a Gossip by M.C. Beaton this week too, depending on my mood. It’s the first book in the Hamish MacBeth Mystery series. And Emma Lion. I totally forgot I want to start that this week! That might come before Death of a Gossip.

Little Miss and I are going to finish up The Good Master this week. We did not read it last week for some reason.

I’m not sure what The Husband is reading at the moment because I forgot to ask him before he went upstairs for a nap before work and I’m going to publish this before he gets up.

The Boy isn’t reading a book right now but he’s getting ready to read a book based on the Halo games.

This past week I watched less TV than normal but I did watch one of the worst Murder, She Wrote episodes I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen a couple of stinkers and this one was…well, weird and creepy. Jessica essentially had a college guy stalking her. A college guy who looked about 30, I might add. Either way he was obsessed with her and all older women. It was …. Ew.

The Husband and I later watched another one that wasn’t very good either. That’s how it is with series, though, there are good and bad ones. Can’t be helped when a series runs for 12 years!

I stared a movie called The Talk of the Town with Cary Grant last night but didn’t finish it yet. It’s weird. That’s all I can say. It’s also funny. Cary is accused of burning down a building with a person trapped inside but escapes from jail and Jean Arthur decides to let him stay at her rental house even though a law professor is renting out the house at the same time. Cary must prove his innocence to the professor played by Ronald Colman.

It’s a bit crazy, in other words, but I really had an itch to watch an old movie.

I also enjoyed this video about comforting reads from a new-to-me vlogger:

Last week I worked a bit on Gladwynn Grant Goes Back to School.

I also pulled my books out of Kindle Unlimited on Amazon because I feel like Amazon takes advantage and rips of indie authors. My ebooks and paperbacks are still for sale there but they will not be exclusive there anymore. I also introduced new book covers for the Gladwynn books.

On the blog I shared:

• Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot September 26!
• Comfy, Cozy Cinema: Benny & Joon (without major spoilers)
• Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Hopeful Reads for Autumn
• Book review: The Antique Hunters Guide To Murder

|| Embrace Autumn: Tea Breaks and Kitchen Moments by Thrifting Wonderland ||

|| Insomnia: The Nightmarish Gift That Keeps on Giving  by Coffee Addicted Writer ||

|| Things I Know by From This Side of the Pond ||

Please keep praying for Mama’s Empty Nest’s family:

|| Traumatic Thursdays by Mama’s Empty Nest ||

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. Link up below if you want to:

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This post is linked up with The Sunday Post at  Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer, The Sunday Salon with Deb at Readerbuzz, and Book Date: It’s Monday! What are you reading hosted by Kathyrn at The Book Date. Stacking the Shelves is hosted by Reading Reality.

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Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.

You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube.