Saturday Chat Link Up: Fake summer, recovering cat, hero sister-in-law

On May 23, 2026May 23, 2026 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings7 Comments

Welcome to the new Saturday Chat Link Up where you can share a post about your week or a post you want to get more eyes on. The post went live late today, on its debut, but normally, the post will go live Saturday morning

Last week we thought summer was here, so The Husband bought a small, inflatable pool for Little Miss.

It didn’t fill well because we didn’t do all we needed to do to make the bottom of it flat, but Little Miss and her friend had a ton of fun playing in it last Sunday anyhow. They slid down the Slip N’ Slide The Husband bought, jumped up at the end and flung themselves into the pool over and over again.

Sadly, we hadn’t gotten the air conditioners in yet, so we sweated a couple of days and then managed to get one in Tuesday night in Little Miss’s room, which is the hottest room in the house. We have those weird rollout windows so we have to use portable air conditioners with a window cover and a hose pushed out through it.

Before we put them in, they have to be washed out and this year the covers we previously used were wearing out so we had to order new ones.

Little Miss and I do not do well in the heat so we were very cranky the night without AC.

Once we had the AC in, we were much more pleasant to be around.

We only needed it a couple of nights, though, because our temperatures plummeted the next night and as I am starting this post (on Friday night) it is 53 degrees outside. I like being able to cuddle up under my blanket so I am enjoying the chillier temps for now.

I spent a lot of my week not knowing if there would be a good outcome with our oldest cat, who came home last week after being missing for three days but then continued to be very sick. We took her to the vet on Wednesday but are still waiting to see if she will improve. She ate some food and drank after she came back from the vet (where she was treated for a high fever and dehydration) but Thursday and yesterday she refused to drink and eat again.

Then this morning, she found a burst of energy and jumped up on the bed with me and laid on my side. I fell asleep with her there, afraid to move and disturb her, and she stayed with me for an hour and a half before I had to get up to use the bathroom and stretch out my tightened sciatica.

When our second-oldest cat, Scout, was treated for this same virus a couple of weeks ago, she was also very tired and lethargic for about another week, so I am trying to remind myself of that.

Pixel is even more stubborn than Scout. There is a reason I consider her my spirit animal after all.

Our youngest cat, Cass, wants to go outside today but it is 44 degrees and raining and we’ve decided we’ve had enough sick cats for a while so he’s not being allowed out.

All of this drama with our cats had my mom and I reminiscing about the time one of the cats my family had when I was a child got hit by a car.

I should start this story by explaining that my mom is allergic to cats so all of our cats had to live outdoors. (Unlike our cats, who are indoor/outdoor cats). Because of her allergies she thought she really didn’t like cats, but I knew she did because she would talk to them in a sweet Southern accent, and encourage us to pet them and keep an eye on them.

She also realized how much she cared about cats when one of our cats came to her for help.

His name was Marvin, and he was one of two brothers. They used to sit on either side of our front door like two little, cute gargoyles.

The one brother, Morris, had been hit by a car years before, I believe, and now Marvin had been hit and he’d dragged himself home.

My mom saw him suffering in the backyard, and since my brother and I were at school and dad was at work so she found a rug to wrap him in, somehow got him up and to the car and drove him to the veterinarian in the town I now live in. It was just one man (his son is now our neighbor) and when he saw Marvin he told Mom she should try the vet hospital in a town 45-minutes away (the same place we take our pets now and in the town where we used to live). Mom thinks he didn’t want to tell her Marvin wasn’t going to make it. So Mom drove 45-minutes, crying the whole way over this cat she supposedly didn’t like, her face probably itching like crazy.

Marvin ended up having surgery on a broken leg and it cost my parents $300, which is an amount they never could have afforded so I don’t know how they did it.

I would like to say that Marvin survived, but, sadly, he lingered at our house, in the sunroom, for a week or so before contracting tetanus and passing away. My dad cared for that cat and faithfully put medicine on the leg and gave him antibiotics but still felt like he failed him.

Even though Marvin didn’t make it, I’ll always remember how hard Mom fought for him, and how it showed me, and herself, that she truly did love our cats, she just couldn’t pet them because of the terrible itching they caused. When I say itching, it is more like torture for my mom. She’s always had an itching issue, possibly caused by some autoimmune issues, and she just doesn’t itch in one spot, she itches everywhere, including in between her fingers and toes, in her mouth, nose and ears, and even inside her chest. She has to permanently take allergy medicine to make it stop.

One other part of this story involves how Mom always forbad me from telling my grandmother, her mother-in-law, how much we spent on Marvin. My grandmother grew up during the Depression and they used to drown cats so they didn’t have to feed them. (I’m not going to speak on how horrible this is…it was a difficult time and it was apparently kittens they put in a pillowcase and threw in a pond one time. I don’t think it was Grandma that did it…she just knew it happened.)

Still, I have a feeling that if Grandma had been faced with the same situation, with Marvin asking her to help him, she would have done the same thing.

During the uncertainty over our cat, the kids found some joy one night by going outside to look at the tiny sliver of the moon. For some reason it was very bright that night and it caught The Boy’s attention. He called out his sister and they oohed and aahed over it for a bit. It was nice to see them enjoying it together and having a bit of a break from the stress of the week.

Some good news has happened in the midst of all our cat drama — my sister-in-law saved a couple of lives in the last couple of weeks as a 911 dispatcher in a small county near ours.

Over a decade ago she saved the life of a newborn when the baby was born in a bathtub. The baby wasn’t breathing and she walked the father through helping the baby breathe while the ambulance was on its way.

She won a state award for this call and while she didn’t want the attention, her boss asked her to speak about it after she won the award so it would remind people to not simply call 911 and hang up but instead stay on the line because the dispatchers can help them while the ambulance is on its way.

My sister-in-law is a former EMT so there is a lot she can help someone with when they are in an emergency.

Anyhow, recently, another mother delivered a baby at home and my sister-in-law helped the woman until the ambulance could get there. This time the baby was already breathing on his/her own.

In another situation, my sister-in-law helped a young woman in a mental health crisis.

Our family is quite proud of her and what she does.

I hope you are all having a nice Memorial Day weekend (even if it is raining like it is here), if you are in the U.S. and just having a nice weekend if you are not.

How was your week last week?

If you write book reviews or book-related blog posts, don’t forget that Erin and I host the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea Monthly Bookish Blog Party. You can learn more about it here.

On Thursdays, I am part of the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot blog link party. You can find the latest one in the sidebar to the right under recent posts.

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.

A totally baffling update on my missing cat –

On May 14, 2026 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings18 Comments

On Tuesday, I wrote this post, which detailed my oldest cat being missing since Sunday morning and me deciding she was dead….for various reasons.

Because Pixel rarely wanders from our property (she is an indoor/outdoor cat), and had been sick before this happened (catching it from the other two cats), I truly felt she had gone off somewhere to die.

To get to the point, she did not die but instead showed up on our porch this morning, sitting there like nothing had happened at all.

I promise I am not becoming a cat blog -not that those are bad because I like them, but I probably won’t write much about my cats again after this. Still, I felt I owed an update to readers who had been following the saga of my cats that started with the youngest getting sprayed, developing an eye infection (which turned out to be a virus, I guess), the middle cat getting sick and having a 104 degree fever, and then the third coming down with it last week.

When you live in a rural area, it’s not unusual for cats to wander off for a couple of days and show back up but in this case, Pixel has never wandered off for a long period of time. She might be gone part of a day, but even then she’s usually lounging somewhere near our house. She’s a bit afraid of loud noises — lawn mowers, hammering going as the neighbors renovate, that type of thing, so she will run back toward the house when anything like that is going on.

Our other cat, Scout, has wandered off overnight, one time in below freezing temps. Each time she’d show back up and we figured she found someone to take her in, like our elderly neighbor who has a cat door and is hard of hearing so it’s hard to get an answer from him if the cats are in there or not.

My Dad’s cat has wandered off into the woods for over a week and then returned as well, but he’s a semi-feral cat.

On Sunday, when my husband discovered the cat, he thought was getting better but too weak to go far was not under the bush she’d been under before, he asked our neighbor if she’d wandered in to his enclosed porch to get out of the rain, but our neighbor said he hadn’t seen her.

None of the neighbors had and we couldn’t find her hiding anywhere. I thoroughly convinced myself she’d wandered off to die because that’s what two of my childhood cats did (though I was older when they did.). This was heartbreaking to me and I cried every day for three days, imagining how cold and scared she’d been to crawl off somewhere to die alone. I kept trying to figure out where else to look for her and saying to myself how I didn’t understand why she’d wandered off. I was going to be taking her to the vet and felt she’d recover. My OCD kicked and I started checking the ring cameras every couple of hours, night and day.

In the back of my mind, I thought how stupid I would feel if she showed up in a few days or a week, but there was no way that was going to happen. Not with this cat.

So, imagine my surprise when I looked on the ring camera this morning to check another notification and saw her sitting in loaf position on our back porch.

I honestly didn’t believe it and just kept thinking how weird it was that our youngest cat (also black) looked so fat today.

I was half asleep, upstairs in bed still, and kept zooming in on the image. Then I turned on the mic and made this whispering sound I make to get her to come to me and she turned her head to look for me.

I still wasn’t convinced it was her. See, I’d just woke up from a weird dream where I was petting a cat in our house but wasn’t paying attention to what cat it was because I was talking to my daughter and suddenly realized the cat was Pixel.

I said to Little Miss (in the dream), “Oh my gosh..do you see who this is? She’s been here the whole time.”

I didn’t even remember that dream until I let Pixel in the house…she took her good ole time walking in too.

She’s still sick from what we can tell, but better than she was.

It took Scout a full two weeks to feel and act better. Last night she returned to jumping up on my chest to be held while I sit with Little Miss while she takes a shower (she doesn’t actually need me in there but likes to chat during her shower). Today she cuddled me again. Saturday night she came in from a brief trip outside and ran straight to me and climbed on my lap, which she doesn’t usually do right away when she comes in from outside.

So, there we are, the story of my missing cat who came home. What a crazy story.

What is also crazy is that this is the third story of a missing cat who came home that I’ve heard in two days.

It may sound very weird for me to say this, but I feel like our house is complete again with her home.

I’m so happy but still in total shock about it all, like I’ll wake up and the dream was actually her coming home and instead she’s still lost.

Oh, and she’s going to be an inside cat for at least the next month. I’m not going through that again.

The cat update I didn’t want to give

On May 12, 2026May 12, 2026 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings11 Comments

Sunday morning my husband thought Pixel was better and let her lay out under our front bushes.

When it started to rain a short time later, we went to bring her in, but she was gone. She wasn’t a cat prone to wander very far so we figured she was on the property somewhere. She wasn’t that we could tell.

She never came home and we can only assume she went away to die somewhere.

We’d had her about 10 years. I don’t really want to write more about it right now but thank you for everyone who sent us well wishes as our cats went through this virus. It was very much appreciated.

I am in a very deep depression and just keep thinking of our kitty alone, cold, and scared when she died.

When technology determines if your creativity is worthy or not, we have a problem

On May 4, 2026May 4, 2026 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings19 Comments

I shared this on my business Facebook account today because I am absolutely disgusted with AI and the push to integrate into everything we do.

I have another page on here where I share old movie and TV show content. About two weeks ago, Facebook told me they would not recommend that page or its content because its “technology” had determined my content was unoriginal.

I curate clips, write captions, create posts, etc. All by myself.

I don’t care that much if they recommend the age or not, but what upsets me is that the only thing I see on my feed for this page and my personal page now is AI slop. These are accounts that are 100 percent AI. They are making up information, creating fake images, and they are being recommended to me. They are being recommended. That is what Facebook wants. Fake information, photos, and garbage.

Facebook doesn’t care what kind of engagement it gets…as long as it gets it and what’s really disgusting is they are pushing out actual human beings from interacting with other human beings about topics they enjoy.

If you don’t see a bigger issue at hand here, an attempt to separate and isolate humans as a way to have more control over them, then I really feel you should look a little closer at it all.

It is so scary and dystopian to be told “technology has determined that you..” anything.

Calling me unoriginal is fine, but telling me a piece of technology determined what I was or was not, is not okay.

Saturday Evening Chat: Two sick cats. This is getting weird.

On May 2, 2026 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings15 Comments

Ya’ll, it’s been a week….as my Southern relatives might say.

I would say it’s been a month but we are in May now so April was a month…of good and bad, but when it comes to cats it was bad!

Not only did our youngest cat get sprayed with a skunk and then get an eye infection, he was also acting like he was in pain and sick this past week. Shortly after I noticed his issues, our second-oldest cat came down with something too, got worse and acted way worse than the youngest cat, and ended up at the vet with 104 degree fever.

This was all happening while Little Miss had a sore throat for two days and on one of those days refused to eat and almost passed out on me.

Scout, the older cat, is slowly recovering but I am still very concerned. She was given an antibiotic shot and a fever reducer and spends most of her time sleeping and eats only if we take food and water to her in Little Miss’s room where she has taken up residence.

The Husband drove the cat to the vet, which I felt awful about, because I had planned to take her later in the day. He’s been working full-time and rehearsing for a play and has barely been home because the bridge to get to the town where he works has been out, adding another half an hour to his 25-minute drive. That means he’s been staying in town after work to wait for the rehearsal to start. Rehearsals have been lasting until 9 or 10 and then he’s home at 11, falls asleep, gets up and starts over again.

He called the vet in the morning, though, and he had an opening so he took it and drove 45 minutes up and back to have her seen.

The vet really didn’t have an answer to why she had a fever, other than it must be an infection somewhere. That didn’t seem very thorough to me but at least they did something, I guess.

Scout was still very weak yesterday, so The Husband called and they said if there was no change to call again on Monday.

She did eat some food and drink some water, but then she lays back down again and passed out. It’s awful. This is the kitty who comes up to me when I am sitting in places where I can’t really hold her — like the toilet — and stretches both paws up at me as if asking for me to pick her up.

Sometimes I do even when it is inconvenient.

Then she likes to come up at 4 a.m. and curl up against my shoulder and insists, with little taps on my arm, that I pet her. She also pats my arm when she wants me to give her some of my food. Always very polite. I’ve never had a cat who did anything like that or a cat as cuddly as she is…or can be when she’s in the mood.

I am trying to be optimistic, but I have to be honest that I’m very worried we could lose her.

I’ve had Scout since she was a kitten. I saw her photo on the site of a rescue shelter near us and said I had to have her. I can’t believe I did that as I am the one who always says we don’t need more pets. We got her, during COVID, and she used to lay on my chest to keep like I was her mom. She kept doing it until she was just too big. She’s a very long, polydactyl, Tuxedo cat. When she stretches her body full length, she can reach our doorknobs and rattle them to let us know she wants to go out.

She’s our cat that got stuck in a tall tree our front and our neighbor, who is on the borough council, called the fire company to use their truck ladder to bring her down.

What’s odd is that right before Scout got sick, my dad had to take his outdoor cat to the vet because she seemed sick and had a cold like illness (not distemper) and had been cuddling with Little Miss. So now we are trying to figure if we brought Dad’s cat’s illness home to our cats.

Regardless, they are being treated and hopefully will be on the mend soon.

This week was our possible last week of a weekly art class that Little Miss has been taking. I say possible because I signed Little Miss up for horse riding lessons on the same day as the art classes, but the opposite direction. I only did that because the art class was starting a medium she’s already done and it was a new four-week session and because I hate the road we have to drive on to get there. Also, Little Miss has been asking for horse-riding lessons for years.

But now Little Miss says she’s disappointed to miss out on the next pottery class. So I may have to somehow try to get her to both classes or just one. We will see how it goes. I’m grateful for the opportunities but I do wish they weren’t so far away from where we live. Oh well! Such is the life of a homeschooling family in a rural area.

So what have you been up to lately?

I hope having a good week last week and having a good week this week!

Classic Movie Impressions. Spring of Bette: Dark Victory or the movie I couldn’t finish because it hit too close to home

On May 1, 2026 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings10 Comments

Full disclaimer this week: the subject matter of this movie made it too difficult for me to watch all the way through, so I’m telling you what the movie is about, but I skimmed a lot of this movie.

I’ve been watching Bette Davis movies for spring and this week the one I chose was Dark Victory, released in 1939.

Sadly, for personal reasons, I could not make it all the way through this one. I did read what it was about before watching it, and I thought I could handle it, but I could not.

Bette acted well in this one — though I do think she is a tad bit overacting at times in many of her films. That is her style, so it’s okay, but her delivery is often more abrasive than I think it needs to be.

In this film, she had reason to be abrasive.

It is not a spoiler to say that in this movie, Bette’s character is diagnosed with a brain tumor.

It’s in the description of the movie online, such as Google:

“Socialite Judith Traherne (Bette Davis) lives a lavish but emotionally empty life. Riding horses is one of her few joys, and her stable master (Humphrey Bogart) is secretly in love with her. Told she has a brain tumor by her doctor, Frederick Steele (George Brent), Judith becomes distraught. After she decides to have surgery to remove the tumor, Judith realizes she is in love with Dr. Steele, but more troubling medical news may sabotage her new relationship, and her second chance at life.”

This is not a totally accurate description, however. Let me preface all this by saying the next bit will be a spoiler of sorts so if you haven’t seen the movie and want to, you will want to skip this.

Are you ready?

I’m going to tell you something about the movie that the description didn’t. Ready?

You sure?

Okay….

Here goes….

Judith is told by her doctor that she is fine when in reality she has a cancerous brain tumor that will take her life in about 10 months. Dr. Steele wants her to live her life fully, believing she is fine because, I guess, he is in love with her love of life (even though a lot of it was drinking and sleeping around) and with her and doesn’t want to see the light go out of her when she finds out she is dying. He tells her sister she is dying because he feels guilty for lying and then he makes her also lie about it so Judith will have a good life until the end.

I think it is horrible and cruel, honestly, but at the same time, I understand Dr. Steele’s reasoning.

This movie is very melodramatic with a lot of tearjerker moments that I struggled with because when I worked for a newspaper, I had to write several stories about fundraisers for a little boy who was born with a brain tumor.

He was an amazing little boy, wise beyond his years. He died when he was seven years old, and not long after that his mother was diagnosed with the same type of brain tumor and died a few years later. She’d had another son, married another man (the first son’s father was a total dirt bag who just recently was charged with some inappropriate behavior as a judge and I am so happy about that), and was just starting to have her happy ending when she was diagnosed. I wrote a lot of stories about fundraisers for her, after I interviewed her about the death of her son. He had become somewhat of a community celebrity because of all his issues and the fundraisers held for him.

His name was Jordan. Her name was Jodi. They had the same brain tumor that this character has.

This sounds very selfish after all they went through, but I think I still have some PTSD after getting to know them, writing stories about them, and then having them both die. They deserved so much more.

Even writing all this out makes me sick to my stomach and has me crying so that’s the reason I couldn’t stomach this movie beyond skimming through it.

Back to the movie before I make my keyboard a safety hazard from all the wetness.

According to TCM, Bette and her co-star, George Brent, who plays Dr. Steele, were in 11 films together between 1932 and 1942.

They were never romantically linked off screen until after this film. Brent was divorcing his wife and Bette’s first husband was divorcing her and her affairs with Howard Hughes and director William Wyler were ending. The pair remained together for about a year and later in life Bette said of him, “Of the men I didn’t marry, the dearest was George Brent.”

The role was already intensely emotional and with Davis at her emotional breaking point, her performance ended up being one praised by critics when the film was released and for years to come.

Bette was the one who pushed for the rights for the play to be purchased but when they were, she said she didn’t feel she could pull off the role.

Margarita Landazuri writes for TCM that after only a few days of shooting, “Bette begged to be released from the film, claiming she was sick. Producer Hal Wallis replied, ‘Bette, I’ve seen the rushes – stay sick!’”

This movie is called a “three-hanky hit” because of how emotional it was. Viewers knew they were being emotionally manipulated by it but it was so well made, they didn’t mind.

It is a well-made film, Bette carries herself through the role beautifully, and it was fun seeing Humphrey Bogart in a side-role as her a man who has unrequited love for Judith.

Maybe it is because the movie was made so well that it made it impossible for me to watch it all the way through.

If you do decide to watch it, bring your tissues and muster through better than I did.

I should also mention that our former president Ronald Reagan was in this one and he was a roaring drunk, loser. Ha! He didn’t play it very convicingly so I don’t think that was his normal state, even as a young guy, but maybe I’m wrong?

Next up I’ll be watching Jezebel from 1938.

Here is a description of that movie in case you are interested: “In one of her most renowned roles, Bette Davis portrays Julie Marsden, a spoiled Southern belle who risks losing her suitor with her impetuous behavior. Engaged to successful banker Preston Dillard (Henry Fonda), Julie pushes him away with her arrogant and contrary ways, leading to a scandalous scene at a major social event and his subsequent departure. When Preston eventually returns and Julie attempts to win him back, she discovers that it may be too late.”

My watch list for this feature:

It’s Love I’m After (April 15)

The Working Man (April 21)

Another Man’s Poison (April 27)

Dark Victory (April 30)

Jezebel (May 1)

Dangerous (May 7)

The Letter (May 12)

Of Human Bondage (May 21)

Now, Voyager (May 28)

Additional sources/resources:

https://www.tcm.com/articles/29905/dark-victory

https://theblondeatthefilm.com/2015/02/02/dark-victory-1939/

If you want to find clips and thoughts about vintage movies and TV, you can visit me on Instagram on my Nostalgically Thinking Account (https://www.instagram.com/nostalgically_thinking/) or on my YouTube account Nostalgically and Bookishly Thinking here: https://www.youtube.com/@nostaglicandbookish

Book recommendation: A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie

On April 29, 2026April 28, 2026 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings6 Comments

A possible murderer loose on the island resort where Miss Jane Marple has gone to stay for a vacation? Then a sudden death and an inn owner who suddenly starts having memory lapses?

Why that sounds like a recipe for a very good mystery and, indeed, it was.

A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie isn’t short on humor despite the tough subject matter of murder.

Miss Marple provides a good serving of witty comebacks and thoughts and is joined in her sleuthing by an elderly gentleman who is mostly paralyzed from the waist down.

Here is a description from Goodreads for you:
Nephew Raymond West has given his favourite aunt, Jane Marple, a vacation at a beautiful resort in the Caribbean. While there she encounters an old wind-bag. One of his stories is about meeting a murderer. He has a snapshot. Suddenly he hesitates, and gets flustered. By the next morning, he is dead, seemingly of natural causes. Miss Marple has doubts.

And well she should.

In some Miss Marple books, a superintendent or detective from Scotland Yard of a small police force is the main investigator and we see a lot of the book from their perspective with Miss Marple popping in once in a while to show them up. In this book, Jane is our main character throughout the entire book and I loved having a better look inside her mind.

Jane runs this investigation on her own by studying the other guests at the resort and it is uncanny how many of them have some sort of connection to each other.

There are two couples who seem to know each other very well and, it later turns out, came to the resort together. There are the owners of the resort, Tim and Molly Kendall, who haven’t owned the inn long. Then there is a vicar and his wife, Mr. Rafiel, the man in the wheelchair, and Mr. Rafiel’s secretary and Mr. Jackson, his masseuse who have come with him.

I really enjoyed this one and started to get attached to Mr. Rafiel. I think he would have been a wonderful sidekick to Jane in other books.

What is so funny about the Miss Marple books is how Agatha head hops between characters. This is said to be a writing no-no these days but I don’t care. Head hopping is where the author tells the reader what each character is thinking in a scene instead of only sticking to our main character’s thoughts. A lot of writers of classic books did this – especially Jane Austen and the Brontes and L.M. Montgomery. If you do it these days, people shame you for it. It’s odd.

But anyhow, what is so funny in the Miss Marple books is that Jane will ask someone something and Agatha tells us that the person who is being questioned is thinking how either they didn’t expect that question to come from an old woman, the woman is batty, or the woman is “sex and scandal obsessed.”

Miss Marple isn’t really interested in scandal, though. She wants to hear about and solve murders.

“But it wasn’t really scandals Miss Marple wanted. Nothing to get your teeth into in scandals nowadays. Just men and women changing partners, and calling attention to it, instead of trying decently to hush it up and be properly ashamed of themselves.”

Back in St. Mary Mead, where Jane lives, she usually has someone to bounce her ideas off of when she is solving a mystery, her nephew who works at Scotland yard being one. This time, though, she is on her own, until she confides in Mr. Rafiel about her theories. She urges him to help her solve the crime.

He scoffs at that idea. “We, you say? What do you think I can do about it? I can’t even walk without help. How can you and I set about preventing a murder? You’re about a hundred and I’m a broken-up old crock.”

One thing I really like about Agatha Christie books is that she doesn’t just leave you thinking about the mystery but about life itself.

At one point Jane says, “Life is more worth living, more full of interest when you are likely to lose it. It shouldn’t be, perhaps, but it is. When you’re young and strong and healthy, and life stretches ahead of you, living isn’t really important at all. It’s young people who commit suicide easily, out of despair from love, sometimes from sheer anxiety and worry. But old people know how valuable life is and how interesting.”

If you haven’t read any of the Miss Marple books, this would be a good one to start with. As I mentioned above, it lets you inside the mind of Miss Marple more than the books where a police detective is leading the case.

Book recommendation: Heidi By Johanna Spyri

On April 16, 2026April 16, 2026 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings10 Comments

Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I read Heidi by Johanna Spyri this month and today we are answering some discussion questions about the book. This was the first time reading the book for both of us.

For those who have never read this classic book, this is a book about a young, orphaned girl who is sent to live with her grandfather on a Swiss mountain in his tiny hut. He’s been living in the hut, all alone, for years due to various reasons. Everyone in the little town at the bottom of the mountain thinks he is a horrible, cranky person and are horrified when Heidi’s aunt takes her to live with him.

It turns out that Uncle Alp, as her grandfather is called, is not what he seems, and in a good way.

As the story unfolds, Heidi will get to know him and their neighbors, which includes the goat herder Peter and his mother and grandmother, better.

Heidi lived with her aunt and her other grandmother previously and was rarely allowed to go out and play. Now she can go and play and roam the mountains and she loves it.

Just when she gets comfortable, though, her aunt returns and a new, scarier, adventure unfolds.

This is a sweet, touching book written much earlier than I thought it had been written. It was written in 1880 and was translated into English from its original German. In addition to calling it sweet and touching I would also call it heartwarming. Is it a bit unrealistic at times? Absolutely and to me that is totally fine. This is a children’s book after all. They are allowed to be that way and often needed by both children and adults.

Erin and I read The Puffin in Bloom Collection version, with a translation from Eileen Hall, which was first published in 1956 and published for this edition in 2014.

One thing Erin and I were surprised about Heidi was that she is not the blond, blue-eyed child illustrated on many of the covers of the books or in some movie versions. She actually had short, dark hair.

This 2016 movie version probably shows the characters the most accurately from the book. I think I might watch this at the end of the month:

At the end of this post, I’ll share some quotes I enjoyed from the book.

Quick, first five words that pop into your head about Heidi.

Delightful. Fun. Sweet. Emotional. Inspiring.

2. Would you slam two big mugs of goat milk back-to-back, and why is the answer no? What about one mug?

That would be a no because I tried goat milk before and I did not like it. Maybe it needed to be colder or something because it tasted like a barn smells. I don’t know how else to describe that.

3. Was Uncle Alp making goat cheese, like chevre?

I imagine he was making goat cheese as they ate a lot of it, but I don’t know what kind.

4. Write a beautiful description of a natural place you’ve been to, a sunset, a plant or animal you’ve seen.

A large rock jutted out from the tree and brush-covered hillside to overlook sprawling, green farmland, a twisting river with sunlight sparkling off of it, and trees clustered together in bright oranges, reds, and yellows. A bald eagle flew by at eye-level and clouds looked as if they could be reached out and touched. It was no surprise that locals said this place once served as a prayer rock for the Native American tribes that first settled the land here.

5. Heidi, like Anne of Green Gables, loves her home and has favorite aspects, like the fir trees, the wind, the fire sunset on the mountain. Is there anything in nature you cherish about your home, the way that she does?

I used to love the large tree outside our house but it was cut down last year. Now I admire the other trees in my backyard and in our area I love to look at the hillsides covered with pine trees and maple trees.

6. In the same vein, what are some small things you are grateful for?

I am grateful for cozy evenings where I can watch an old movie while cuddled under a blanket.

7. Which character, besides Heidi, is your favorite and why?

I love Grandmama. She knows how to get things done, while also being kind and caring for others.

8. What character did you like the least and why?

Mrs. Rottenmeir. Her name says it all. She was just rotten! She was mean to Heidi and Clara and just a very bitter woman. I couldn’t understand why the Mr. Seseman kept her in his employment.

9. There is a part in the book where Heidi longs for home? Has there ever been a time in your life where you have longed for home?

Absolutely. When I had my children and wanted to get out of the hospital but especially in 2021 when I was in the hospital with Covid for 5 days and could not wait to get home with my family.

10. Do you think you would like to live in a small hut in the Swiss mountains, miles away from a town?

I might like doing this during warmer weather but not so much during the winter and only if I had WiFi.

Here are a few quotes from the book that I enjoyed:

“Listen to me,” she said. “If we’re in trouble and can’t tell any ordinary person, why, there is always God, whom we can tell, and if we ask Him to help us, He always will.”

“God certainly knows of some happiness for us which He is going to bring out of the trouble, only we must have patience and not run away. And then all at once something happens and we see clearly ourselves that God has had some good thought in His mind all along; but because we cannot see things beforehand, and only know how dreadfully miserable we are, we think it is always going to be so.”

“It was so lovely, Heidi stood with tears pouring down her cheeks, and thanked God for letting her come home to it again. She could find no words to express her feelings, but lingered until the light began to fade and then ran on.”

“No,” he replied. “You see, today I am happy, as I had never thought to be again. Much happier than I deserve. It’s good to feel at peace with God and man. It was a good day when God sent you to me.”

Outside the moon was struggling with the dark, fast-driving clouds, which at one moment left it clear and shining, and the next swept over it, and all again was dark. Just now the moonlight was falling through the round window straight on to Heidi’s bed. She lay under the heavy coverlid, her cheeks rosy with sleep, her head peacefully resting on her little round arm, and with a happy expression on her baby face as if dreaming of something pleasant. The old man stood looking down on the sleeping child until the moon again disappeared behind the clouds and he could see no more, then he went back to bed.

“The happiest of all things is when an old friend comes and greets us as in former times; the heart is comforted with the assurance that some day everything that we have loved will be given back to us.—”

Have you read Heidi? What did you think of it?

You can see Erin’s post about the book here

Classic Movie Impressions: It’s Love I’m After (Spring of Bette)

On April 15, 2026April 21, 2026 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings14 Comments

An arrogant, self-absorbed, womanizing stage actor and the actress who keeps putting up with him are the main characters in It’s Love I’m After, a 1937 romantic comedy starring Bette Davis, Leslie Howard, and Olivia De Havilland.

I stumbled on this one by accident while looking for Bette Davis movies to add to my Spring of Bette Davis feature and ended up absolutely loving it.

I didn’t even know it was a comedy when I started it, but when the pair started insulting each other in loud whispers during a scene from Romeo and Juliet, I knew this movie was going to be very entertaining.

And it was very entertaining, very funny, and a very nice surprise.

Leslie Howard plays the part of Basil Underwood, a famous stage actor who women fall all over.

Bette plays his co-star and on-again-off-again girlfriend, Joyce Arden, who joins Leslie’s drama with her own drama. In the beginning, we see the two sniping at each other right after their performance, going back to the hotel and continuing their arguing through the door separating their rooms.

It is at the hotel where we meet Basil’s valet Digges played by Eric Blore. Their interaction reminded me so much of Jeeves and Bertie Wooster in the Jeeves books by P.G. Wodehouse. I absolutely loved their bantering, bickering, and joking.

They have this whole routine where Digges either gives or takes away points from Basil based on his behavior, and Basil’s behavior is often not good because he is frequently running off with married women or breaking hearts, all while in a relationship with Joyce.

Joyce and Basil have decided they are going to get married early on in the movie, but there is one problem. After their performance at the beginning of the movie, a young woman named Marcia West (De Havilland) comes to visit Basil and tells him she is in love with him. This is very exciting for him because, you know, he loves women and the attention of women. Marcia leaves without telling him her name, and Basil is left with a well-stroked ego.

Once he and Joyce have decided to marry, and Joyce has closed herself in her room to get ready to leave for the wedding at a justice of the peace, Marcia’s fiancé, Henry Grant Jr. (Patrick Knowles) shows up and tells Basil he’s angry at him because Marica is in love with him.

There is this whole hilarious scene where Basil says the situation reminds him of a play he was once in and he and Digges act it out for Henry, who is bewildered and annoyed.

The play they act out is about a woman who is in love with a man, but the man wants to shake the woman, so he acts like a cad to get rid of her.

Henry is delighted and says that is what he wants Basil to do — come to Marcia’s family’s house that weekend and be an absolute jerk so she will be fall out of love with him.

What follows is an absolutely hilarious second act that had me in stitches. Olivia was absolutely perfect as a celebrity-obsessed woman, and Leslie was perfect as the arrogant, self-absorbed star.

The cast was just so perfect together.

There is one line that isn’t really a spoiler, so I just have to share it — at one point Olivia says that she was obsessed with Clark Gable for a month and Leslie says, “Who’s Clark Gable?”

I felt like such a nerd when I said, to myself because my daughter was not listening, “Do you know why that’s so funny? It’s so funny because Leslie, Olivia, and Clark were all in Gone with the Wind together and in that movie Olivia’s character was in love with Leslie’s character and Clark was in a relationship with Vivien Leigh.” Then I snorted a laugh.

Gone With the Wind was released two years after this movie. I thought it would have been funny if It’s Love I’m After had been made after Gone with The Wind.

Leslie Howard wanted the movie made to give himself a break after appearing in mostly heavy dramatic roles like The Petrified Forest (1936) and Romeo and Juliet (1936), according to TCM. The screenplay was based on the story Gentlemen After Midnight by Maurice Hanlin.

Producer Hal Willis wasn’t sure about Leslie’s ability to pull of comedy, but did accept the suggestion for the film. Casey Robinson wrote the screenplay, and Archie Mayo directed.

Leslie originally wanted a comedic actress from the stage, like Gertrude Lawrence or Ina Claire to play opposite him but after a few failed attempts, the picture began production without a leading lady.

Finally, Wallis decided that Bette Davis could use a change of pace after intensely dramatic roles in Marked Woman, Kid Galahad and That Certain Woman (all 1937).

Bette wasn’t so sure, though. She’d turned out a lot of films in a short time and actually wanted a break. This would be her third film with Leslie, and she liked working with him but didn’t like that he was going to receive top billing above her. The two had had a strained relationship during the filming of Of Human Bondage when Leslie was cold and dismissive and said to resent the fact an American had been cast in a very British story. He’d also run hot and cold during the filming of The Petrified Forest, sometimes ignoring her, and also, she said, coming on to her “rather crudely.”

In It’s Love I’m After he turned his attention to Olivia, reportedly driving her nuts with his persistence in trying to woo her.

If it sounds like his character wasn’t too far off from the real Leslie, then you’d be right. He was known to be a womanizer, despite being married, and had many affairs.

Bette finally agreed to accept the role, but did ask for a cinematographer she liked to be hired to help her look good on screen.

Audiences proved that the producer had no reason to be worried about Leslie not doing well in a comedy, with over $1 million being brought in during its initial release.

Leslie followed this movie up by directing himself in George Bernard Shaw’s classic movie, Pygmalion (1938)

Up next for Spring of Bette, I will be writing about another one of her less-familiar movies, A Working Man, where she was in full blonde mode.

Here is the complete list of movies I will be watching during this feature:

It’s Love I’m After (April 15^th)

The Working Man (April 17^th)

Another Man’s Poison (April 23^th)

Dark Victory (April 30^rd)

Jezebel (May 1)

Dangerous (May 7)

The Letter (May 12)

Of Human Bondage (May 21)

Now, Voyager (May 28)