hodge podge

Hodge Podge: What is adventure?

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 11 Comments

Hodgepodge is hosted by From This Side of the Pond.

1. What does adventure mean to you? 

To me adventure means experiencing something different from the normal everyday. It’s something unique that captures my attention and makes me excited to see what is coming next.

2. What are your thoughts on tipping? What businesses or service providers do you regularly tip? Do you resent being asked if you’d like to add a tip? What about when a suggested amount is presented? 

I support tipping because many waiters and waitresses do not get paid a ton an rely on tips. Our family tips most frequently at restaurants. We don’t get food deliveries where we live now but we used to give a small tip to the pizza delivery man if we had the cash on us. I don’t really like when a suggested amount is presented because then I feel like I absolutely have to give that amount but I can understand why they might offer a suggested amount.

3. I scream you scream we all scream for ice cream…do we? Is ice cream a favorite treat at your house? What’s your favorite flavor? Regular, soft serve, gelato, sherbet, or some sort of non-dairy version of ice cream…what’s your pleasure? 

I am lactose intolerant but still love dairy ice cream. I can take a medicine like Lactaid before I eat dairy, but sometimes don’t do it like I should. Why? I have no idea. I guess I am a rebel! A rebel who suffers later!

Because I have a corn allergy, I can’t eat ice cream out that much since I don’t know what is in it. What I love is chocolate Haagen Dazs ice cream. It doesn’t have anything in it that I can’t have. Sadly, there are not a lot of places near me that carry Haagen Dazs. Yes, I do live in a type of hell in some ways.

If we drive 45-minutes away from our house in either direction we can  usually find a store that has it. Sometimes one 20-minutes away. I only have it a couple times a year at this point. Writing that out really makes me sad because that means I only have ice cream once or twice a year. I really need to look harder for ice cream I can eat.

4. What’s your ‘back in my day, we____________________ ‘ story or saying? 

Back in the day, we used to ride our scooters down the street in my friend’s small town and when we got too hot, we ran down to the creek behind her house and took a swim and rode the rapids on inflatable inner tubes.

 

5. Somehow this is our last Hodgepodge in the month of June. Next week’s Hodgepodge lands in July. Wow. Sum up your June using three adjectives. 

Relaxing.  Overwhelming. Exhausting.

Yes. It was a “hodgepodge” of adjectives. Ha!

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

We’ve had horribly hot temps where I live so I haven’t left my house in four days. Extreme heat makes me very sick. Today the temps are supposed to go down so I can leave the house. But I don’t have a car because a tire went flat and we have to replace it. Ah life – full of irony, isn’t it?

  

Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.

You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find her on Instagram and YouTube.

Hodge Podge: Favorite rooms and what I miss about childhood

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 20 Comments

I am joining this week’s Hodge Podge with From This Side of the Pond.

Here are the questions we were asked to answer this week:

What’s your favorite room in your house and why? 

I guess I would say the living room is my favorite room in the house. It had tons of windows and well-lit and it’s where everyone in the family hangs out together. It has easy access to the kitchen and the bathroom, the TV, and the front and back porches. The woodwork and the well painted white ceiling also add to the atmosphere of the room. If only I was a better housekeeper and kept it cleaner. Ha. That’s something I definitely want to work on.

What’s something that will instantly annoy you? 

How much time do you have? Kidding. One thing that will instantly annoy me is when I sit down, ready to read or write a blog post, after being in the kitchen washing dishes and cooking for two hours and my daughter will ask me if I can cut her up an apple.

I’m so glad to have her and I’m even glad to be available to wait on her but sometimes she gets wrapped up in what she’s doing and doesn’t recognize that any time in those two hours I was already up on my feet doing things is when she could have asked for the snack she wanted.

She’s also 10 now and can start getting these snacks on her own. I like to cut the apple up for her because I don’t want her to accidentally cut herself.

May 28th is National Hamburger Day…will you celebrate? How do you like yours? If you’re not cooking at home is there a favorite place you like to go for a burger? Did you ever work in a fast food  restaurant? 

That’s a lot of questions! I didn’t know it was National Hamburger Day, and I wish I had because I used the hamburger we had to make meatballs yesterday.

I am a huge hamburger fan, as long as it is made well. I don’t like any pink in mine, but I also don’t want it burned.

There is a restaurant near me that makes the best hamburgers but we don’t go there often. There was another restaurant near us that used to make amazing burgers but that changed in recent years so I haven’t tried again.

I have never worked at a fast food restaurant or any restaurant.

  • What are three scents you like? 

Three scents I like are chocolate chip cookies while they are baking, a citrus essential oil I have, and coffee brewing (but I don’t actually drink it).

What do you miss most about being a kid? 

So much. Most of all I miss that someone else was in charge and was protecting me. Now I am in charge and have to protect myself and my children. It honestly stresses me out.

I miss how carefree childhood was too. Riding scooters down the streets of the little town my friends lived in, exploring the creek, swinging on swings until we almost threw up and not caring that we almost threw up.

Having friends is something else I miss about childhood. I don’t have friends now and I did then. They were best friends too. We did a ton together and had sleepovers. Those same friends no longer speak to me. I guess life got too busy and I got too much to deal with because of my chronic illness stuff and anxiety and who knows what else. I tried to keep in contact with them but after awhile it became disappointing to be the only one trying.

Insert your own random thought here. 

I just wrote a blog post about Murder She Wrote, and I spent several days researching it. Just for my blog where I only get about 100 views a day. I’m starting to wonder about my sanity. I’m sure there are better things I could do with my time but I keep doing things that help me avoid focusing on all the stressful things in my life. I suppose it is a little normal but also  . . . I think I might have issues.

How would you answer any of these questions?

Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.

You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.