Category: everyday musings

Sunday Bookends: library visits, blooming flowers, books that make me cringe, and music to write to

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Sunday Bookends8 Comments

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, and some weeks I share what I am listening to.


What I/we’ve been Reading

I will be finishing The Regal Pink by Jenny Knipfer today and I have really enjoyed it. I am not just saying this because I consider Jenny an author friend. I went into this book concerned I wouldn’t like it because I am not a fan of “fantasy” type books but, yet again, I was wrong to be concerned. This is the third Christian fantasy book I have read that has captured my heart. Much like two books by author Max Sternberg, I fell in love with the characters of this book and also Jenny’s writing style. I honestly think that fantasy is the genre she’s meant to write in.

I’ll ramble about the book a little bit more in a review later this week.

I started a Nora Roberts book yesterday because Little Miss picked it out for me at the library. I have never read Nora Roberts but have been told by a friend that once I read this one, I have read all of her books.

This is actually a pair of Christmas novellas combined and it looked like it would be a quick read, but after reading up to chapter four last night I just know I am not going to be able to get through this without cringing anymore than I already have. It is so ridiculous. Seriously.

The guy is gone for ten years, comes back for town to see the woman who he left behind but asked to wait for him. She married while he was gone though, crushing his spirits. When he comes back, though, he finds out that day that she’s divorced and seconds after he finds that out they are making out. Like — what???

And of course, he meets the woman’s daughter and of course, I already know the daughter is his. Such a cliché trope. No thank you. That book is currently in my DNF (did not finish) pile.

Little Miss had no idea what she was picking out. She said she thought it was a cozy mystery. She also picks out small, 5.5 x 7.5 books because they are cute and if she likes the cover. It is a cute cover. I felt bad telling her it was a bad pick but oh my — it is not my cup of tea.

I’ll be trying my library pick once I finish a couple on my Kindle. That pick was:

I’m still reading All That Really Matters by Nicole Deese and enjoying it, but I wanted to finish Jenny’s book so I set it aside for now.

And as if I didn’t have enough to read, I have a cozy mystery from Libby that came in much earlier than I thought so I may start that this week and still put All That Really Matters aside.

The book is A Novel Disguise by Samantha Larsen. I really enjoyed the sample I read and looked at it after someone on Instagram suggested it.

For anyone who might be interested, here is the description:

1784 London.Miss Tiffany Woodall didn’t murder her half-brother, but she did bury him in the back garden so that she could keep her cottage. Now, the confirmed spinster has to pretend to be Uriah and fulfill his duties as the Duke of Beaufort’s librarian while searching Astwell Palace for Uriah’s missing diamond pin, the only thing of value they own. Her ruse is almost up when she is discovered by Mr. Samir Lathrop, the local bookseller, who tries to save her from drowning while she’s actually just washing up in a lake after burying her brother.

Her plan is going by the book, until the rector proposes marriage and she starts to develop feelings for Mr. Lathrop.  But when her childhood friend, Tess, comes to visit, Tiffany quickly realizes her secret isn’t the only one hidden within these walls.  The body of a servant is found, along with a collection of stolen items, and someone else grows mysteriously ill. Can Tiffany solve these mysteries without her own disguise  being discovered? If not, she’ll lose her cottage and possibly her life.

The Boy is not reading right now but this week I have to get him to finish Fellowship of the Ring so he can say he read it.

The Husband is reading —

Little Miss and I are reading Little House on Plum Creek and then I picked up a Boxcar Children book yesterday at the library so I hope we can start that this week.



What’s Been Occurring

I wrote a bit about last week in my Saturday Afternoon post yesterday. Mainly I wrote that our flowers are blooming and we visited my parents. Not a very exciting week overall.

I did take a few more photographs of the roses and peonies yesterday to share on here:

This week the local library’s Summer Reading program starts.

They are offering an open sidewalk chalk art event on Tuesday and on Wednesday they are doing a Lego-themed storytime.

On Saturday of next week, I am supposed to have a sleepover with Little Miss’s friends because they have been asking for one for forever. I am not really looking forward to it because there is no sleep had during a sleepover and the one who won’t sleep will most likely be me and I already don’t sleep so great.

Plus I snore and I am worried I will keep the kids awake, but we will see how it goes.

What I’m/We’re Watching

Last week I watched a lot of Forgotten Way Farms on YouTube.

The Husband and I didn’t have a lot of time to watch things together but did watch a Barnaby Jones episode, which I made a lot of fun of. We also watched some Newhart.

What I’m Writing

I have been working on book two of the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries.

On the blog this past week I shared:

What I’m Listening To

This week I listened to James Herriot’s Treasury for Children on Audible. We don’t have a membership to Audible but we did for a while, so we purchased several books on sale. This was one of them.

I loved the sweet stories with happy endings in this book. Each story is about a cat or dog that Alfred Wight took care of or met during his time as a vet.

When I write I also listen to a mix of music from the 1930s and 1940s, including this playlist on YouTube:

This week I also listened to Samantha Fish and Matthew West (yes. Two completely different artists.)

Blog Posts I Enjoyed This Past Week Or Recently

Mama’s Empty Nest: Birthday Joy

Scott Tirrell: Well, I’m Stumped (about his writing journey)

Katja: Notorious

Over the Teacups: Names of Jesus



Now it’s your turn

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.

Faithfully Thinking: Pockets of Peace

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Faithfully Thinking5 Comments

Last week I was really struggling mentally over some situations in my life that I truly have no control over. I kept grasping at quick moments of relaxation to try to steady myself mentally. The mental worry really affected me physically by the end of the week.                 

Throughout the week, I forced myself to put my phone down or stop scrolling Facebook. I scroll through social media when my mind races. I seem to think that doing those things will distract me. They certainly distract me, but they do not calm me down. In fact, my mind races even more when I go onto social media during a time of anxiety.

As you all know, I am an overthinker and I was in full force overthink mode half the week and then much of the weekend.

By Sunday I was at my breaking point – crying over everything, even simple inconveniences. It was like a hormone shift but that hasn’t been happening a lot lately, so I had a feeling it was from me trying to shove all my worries from the week deep down inside, so those worries didn’t spell out onto others. At least one issue is something my husband really doesn’t want to talk about because he knows how helpless we are in the situation so I couldn’t vent on him.

I found a friend to vent to and then tried to pray through my feelings of hopelessness and guilt. I didn’t pray as much as I stewed inside about it all, though, unfortunately. I tried to be a bit better and intentional about praying instead of worrying this week.

Last week, when I felt my most anxious, I had to consciously tell myself to put the phone down or shut off the computer. I would then either go out and take photographs of the flowers starting to bloom in the yard, pick up a book or put on a worship song, even if it was just for 15 minutes or just one song. I started to call these moments Pockets of Peace.

They were little pockets of time in my day where I could regulate my thoughts and my soul, even if only slightly. It helped give my nerves and mind time to calm down, instead of continuing to race and raise my cortisol to dangerous levels. I even made a point to pull a blanket over my lap and make a cup of tea during those times, mentally envisioning myself in a type of comfort zone.

I even imagined stepping inside a type of bubble – or shall we say a pocket made of soft fabric – zipping it closed and making myself cozy down in the corner for that brief moment of time.

Iit’s very important for us all to find those little pockets of time throughout our days to help slow our thoughts and feelings down. Maybe we need to find that time because we are already at the breaking point level or maybe we don’t want to get to that level. Either way, those pockets of time don’t need to be hours of time. They don’t even need to be an hour or half hour. Even 15 minutes of sitting and reading a devotional, listening to music, or reading from a book we enjoy can help calm most of us down inside. There are days where longer stretches of time for peace are needed, of course.

Have you found yourself in need of those little pockets of peace at some point in your life? How would you use those pockets of time if you intentionally made them?

Summer of Marilyn: How to Marry A Millionaire

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn classic movie impressions, everyday musings, Summer of Marilyn11 Comments

Two weeks ago I watched How to Marry A Millionaire and decided that weekend I would watch Marilyn Monroe movies for the summer, similar to how I watched Paul Newman movies last summer.

How to Marry A Millionaire stars Marilyn, Lauren Bacall, and Betty Grable and was considered a screwball comedy.

It was released in 1953.

It follows the story of Schatze Page (Lauren), Loco Dempsey (Betty), and Pola Debevoise (Marilyn) who are all looking for ways to marry a rich man and live the high life.

Or at least that’s the goal when the movie starts.

As we progress into the movie, we see the goals of the women begin to shift based on the men who they end up meeting along the way.

Each woman works on snagging a rich man and to do that they need a home base, so Schatze finds a home to rent from a man who is out of the country. She’ll need money to pay for the rental, though, so she begins to sell off the fancy furniture in the home, even though it isn’t hers.

Eventually, she and the other women will meet men who they decide they can snag and marry. Schatze meets William Powell, one of my favorite “classic Hollywood” actors. He’s 30 years older than her and a widower. More importantly, he’s rich.

She sets out to make him her own, but there’s a man named Tom who is trying to get her attention. She wants nothing to do with Tom, though, since he’s poor and won’t support her high-end needs.

Marilyn’’s character meets a wealthy businessman who is also a crook and she’s about to run off with him when she gets on the wrong plane and meets the man who owns the apartment on the plane. The apartment owner, it turns out, is trying to escape the IRS.

Betty’s character meets a married man and thinks she’s on her way to a Elk’s Club meeting in Maine, but has actually been invited to his personal lodge. She tries to leave when she realizes what is going on, but comes down with the mumps and is quarantined. While there, and after the man she came with becomes ill himself, she meets a poor but charming forest ranger and has to decide if she wants to pursue love or money.

Betty was supposed to be the star of the film, according to some articles, but, of course, Marilyn ended up with top billing.

According to the blog, Classic Movie Hub, Fox created the movie using anamorphic lenses developed by Henri Chretien in France. These lenses “expanded the audience’s peripheral vision by creating a panoramic, curved screen triple the size of a conventional screen,” according to the blog. This was in an effort to combat the rise of televisions in the American home.

Fox had two things to compete with television with this movie – Marilyn and these new lenses. They made a movie called The Robe first with the technology, however, because they felt that movie would appeal more to a wider audience and was more family-friendly.

The Robe was about a Roman centurion who commanded the unit responsible for the crucifixion of Christ.

(I think it is interesting that the woman in this photo by Lauren’s name looks nothing like her.)

Marilyn originally wanted Betty’s role since that role had more “snappy lines.” Playing Pola would mean playing a nearsighted woman who felt insecure wearing her glasses and often slammed into walls when she took her glasses off. Marilyn wasn’t confident in her comedic skills and wanted to back out, but the director convinced her to continue and she managed to pull it off amazingly well.

Lauren Bacall was already a well-known actress at this point and I felt she really held the group together.

In some ways I felt Marilyn did overshadow the others with her performance and not just because of her beauty. She pulled off the quirky-plus-innocent role well.

I felt like Lauren was out of place in a comedy but that’s probably because I am used to watching her in Noir-type films with Humphrey Bogart (who she later married).

Betty impressed me with her comedic skills and matched Marilyn’s quirkiness. I guess Lauren was more of the “straight-man” in the trio.

I loved William Powell in this. None of the other men really stood out to me, but that may be because William was so sweet and doted on Lauren’s character even though he really should have known she was a gold digger. And because I have a soft spot for him after watching him in the Thin Man movies.

I won’t share the ending of the movie, but I will say that the women redeemed themselves from their selfishness as the movie progressed.

As for stories from the set, the Classic Movie Hub blog relayed that Lauren and Betty were annoyed that Marilyn was late on set a lot and there were other minor snits between the three women.

From the blog: “When the three female stars assembled on the soundstage for the first time, the press awaited a mushroom cloud of conflict and cattiness or, at least, Grable’s bitter resentment of Monroe. However, Grable immediately embraced Monroe and ceremoniously told her, “Honey, I’ve had mine. Go get yours. It’s your turn now.” In response to Bacall grumbling about Monroe’s tardiness, Grable said, “Honey, give it to her. Let’s listen to records until she gets here. It’s her time now. Let her have fun.” Before long, Bacall found herself also feeling protective of Monroe.

I think this is my first time watching a movie with Marilyn all the way through. I enjoyed it and am looking forward the other films, though I know at least a couple of them are much darker than this one.

The next movies I plan to watch and when I plan to write about them are:

June 22: Gentlemen Prefer Blonds

June 29: Some Like It Hot

July 6: Niagra

July 13: The Seven Year Itch

July 20: Monkey Business (because it’s Marilyn and Cary together)

July 27: All About Eve

August 3: The Misfits

Spring of Cary: Notorious

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings7 Comments

Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs, Katja from Breath of Hallelujah and I teamed up this spring to watch Cary Grant movies for fun and then write about them.

These were movies that I picked from a list of his movies I had never seen.

This week we are on the last movie for our feature – Notorious.

Now, I want to preface this by saying that it’s going to sound like, at first, I didn’t like this film, but that isn’t true. I didn’t like it at first because I didn’t like Ingrid Bergman’s character but I eventually got swept up in it all and recognized it for being a very brilliantly written and directed film.

The movie stars Cary, Ingrid, and Claude Rains.

This is another Alfred Hitchcock Grant movie (we watched Suspicion last week) and it again showcased Hitchcock’s brilliant cinematography and directing skills.

We start with a man being remanded to the U.S. Marshal for charges of treason and from there we will be thrown into a world of espionage and mystery as we try to find out who the man is, but most importantly, who is daughter is.

We also will be thrown into yet another world where Cary is sexy and suave and the woman is conniving, heartless, and slutty, even though she’s probably slept with the same amount of people Cary has over the years. But Cary is a man and he’s cool when he sleeps around. Women are sluts. You know how it goes.

Oh, how I hate those commentaries on movies that overthink and look way too deep into the theme of the movie. Yet here I am about to do just that.

First, a bit of a summary of the movie. Alicia Huberman is the daughter of a convicted Nazi spy in 1946. T.R. Devlin is the U.S. Marshal assigned to follow her and ask her to help break up a ring of escaped Nazis hiding in Brazil.  This movie was released in August of 1946. It was filmed at the end of 1945 and the beginning of 1946. It was a very timely movie at the time and I was actually sort of surprised they made a movie so quickly about what was still a very raw subject at the time. It was easy, however, to make German Nazis the bad guys in the movie because, well, they were, but they definitely were in 1946.

After watching so many movies of Cary’s in a row, I do have to say that there is a definite theme in them and this one was no different. Cary is handsome, manly, dashing, charming, and irresistible and all the women know it and love him for it. He can get them to do anything for him. Leave their families, isolate from their friends, turn their backs on their ideals, and, in the case of this movie, spy for the United States and risk their life. Not that spying against the Germans after World War II is a bad thing, of course.

If you know the history of Alfred Hitchcock, you know that he had a particular view of women and that was that they were sort of stupid and had to be molded to the wishes of the men. He had obsessive issues with women in real life and though I hate to use the term misogynistic because it’s been abused in recent years, he truly was misogynistic.

 In his movies, women are often indecisive and need to be rescued by a man, yet they are also strong and have their own minds – deceptive minds with cruel intent of course. It’s a complex dichotomy but in Notorious we see Hitchcock stick with Cary being handsome and charming and Ingrid doing what he wants because of it.

As a Guardian writer shared when commenting on Hitchcock’s history with women:
“Norman Bates is Hitchcock himself, kidding himself that women are scheming devils and men are just innocent folk, acting up because they got caught in a tricky situation.”

While I do like Hitchcock’s movies, I have to admit that there is some truth in that quote and part of it was because Hitchcock had very deep issues with his own mother.

That is why so many of his movies, including this one, feature an evil mother who is behind schemes to destroy someone, usually the woman, in the movie.

There were many obvious moments in this film where I felt like the characters were just plain stupid. Like seriously, Cary keeps showing up wherever Ingrid is, even though she only met him on the plane – or so her story goes. Why would the guy she met on the plane keep showing up at parties? And the man she’s pretending to be in love with (Raines, who is the former Nazi) clearly knows the guy is more than what she says he is. Cary and Ingrid act like the bad guy should believe all their lies too. So annoying.

Like many Hitchcock movies, the mother of the former Nazi is evil and helps him figure out how to do something very bad (I won’t give away what it is in case you watch the movie.) She is more terrifying than Claude Raines and he was a former Nazi. Seriously. She’s horribly creepy. Her deceptiveness with a smile reminds me of someone in my extended family but I’ll keep that to myself for now.

All this criticism I’m offering up, though, can’t take away from the amazing cinematography and angles and use of light and shadows that Hitchcock uses to draw the viewers’ attention to the characters and their faults or to an important moment or expression. For example, there is one poignant scene when he zooms in on the guilty parties in such a unique way that I was just like, “Oh! That is brilliant.”

Yes, he was a brilliant filmmaker. A misogynist and a brilliant filmmaker. Yes, it was possible for him to be both.


Even though I sometimes get annoyed at Hitchcock’s idea that women had to be rescued, I really wanted Ingrid to be rescued in this movie – by anyone, but Cary was fine because…again…he’s good looking.

1946: Cary Grant (1904 – 1986) and Ingrid Bergman (1915 – 1982) get very close in Alfred Hitchcock’s spy thriller ‘Notorious’. (Photo by John Kobal Foundation/Getty Images)


A little trivia about the film:

Hitchcock wanted to make this film two years before it was made and he wanted Ingrid from the beginning.

He pitched the idea for the film this way: “the story of a woman sold for political purposes into sexual enslavement.”

Some think that Hitchcock maybe have gotten the idea for the plot from a short story written in 1921 by John Taintor Foote and called The Song of the Dragon.” It had appeared as a two-part serial in the Saturday Evening Post and, according to Wikipedia, “Set during World War I in New York, “The Song of the Dragon” told the tale of a theatrical producer approached by federal agents, who want his assistance in recruiting an actress he once had a relationship with to seduce the leader of a gang of enemy saboteurs.”

Whatever his inspiration, Hitchcock wrote the plot of Notorious with Ben Hecht who he wrote Spellbound with in 1944. One plot device used in the rewrites caused the FBI to begin following Hitchock. It involved uranium ore, which it later turned out was being used to build the atomic bomb. Hitchcock didn’t know this, but the FBI was worried he did when he started asking a scientist at Caltech about uranium. By August of 1945, a year before the movie was released,  everyone knew about what was being used to make the bomb anyhow.

The project was originally a David Selznick production but was later passed over to RKO when Selznick got bored with it. This allowed Hitchcock to produce as well as direct and write. Selznick had 50 percent stack in the movie as part of the deal with RKO, however, and continuously harassed Hitchcock about changes he wanted.

Hitchcock ignored almost all of those suggestions. Suggestions he didn’t ignore were those by Ingrid, who he apparently worked very well with.

In fact,  he made Ingrid his closest collaborator on the project, which was very unusual since, as I mentioned above – he was a misogynist in many ways.

There were some other interesting tidbits on Wikipedia but they weren’t citing sources and that drove me crazy so I’m not going to share them here.

Les Enchaines Notorious de AlfredHitchcock avec Ingrid bergman et Cary Grant 1946

One thing that is mentioned there and other sources is the very sexy two-and-a-half-minute kiss in the movie, which was filmed in a way to get it past the censors of the day, who determined that kisses in a movie could not be over a certain time limit. In the scene, Cary and Ingrid’s lips aren’t locked the entire time but they are extremely close physically and they are stealing kisses between words about what they’ll have for dinner, where they will go later, etc. The actors did find it a bit awkward to walk so close together and bump mouths off and on, but it turned out to be a classic scene.



For the trailer you can click here:

https://youtu.be/EhMyp8ZvjWs

To read what Erin thinks of the movie, check out her blog either today or at a later date (she’s been super busy all week so she may not have time to write her views this week).

Kajta has also been busy and if she writes her thoughts on it she will post it on her blog.

Goodbye May, Hello June!

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings2 Comments

Goodbye, May. Hello, June.

Is it just me or did May just whiz by like a race car at the Indy 500?

I don’t even know how we are already to June but we are.

Our May was busier than I expected it to be. There were homeschool trips, library visits, various outings, family days, and then the everyday homeschool lessons and finishing up the school year.

In the beginning of the month, I decided that we would focus on the arts for the month of May in homeschool. Little Miss and I especially focused on various art styles and artists, music and composers, and learned about various instruments. We spent more time doing art and listening to different styles of music.

Also at the beginning of the month, we traveled to a city near us to visit a comic shop and take in the sights. We stopped at a playground on the way back from the city and spent some time there letting the kids be kids.

Later in the month, we had a homeschool gathering at our local library where Little Miss picked out books and was able to pet a pig, which was thrilling for her.

Also in May we visited an alpaca farm as part of another activity with the homeschool group.

We visited the library quite a bit and I’m sure will be doing the same in June. Little Miss has discovered her love of books and I’m very excited by that.

In May I said I would take a photo a day for the entire month. I did not do very well at that, but I did try to take more photos than I had been taking. I plan to stretch the Photo A Day for May into June (which doesn’t rhyme like A Photo A Day in May) to make up for some of the days I lost in May. Who knows, maybe I will try to do it all summer. I always love looking back at my summer in photographs when Fall rolls around.

We spent a lot of time on the trampoline at the beginning of May, but not as much toward the end. The heat keeps Little Miss and me inside a lot. I am pretty sure I’ve mentioned this before, but the trampoline actually belongs to the neighbors who are nice enough to put it up for Little Miss to jump on. They put it up this year for when their grandsons visit as well.

As for what I watched and read in May, I detail all of that in my Sunday Bookends post, but I will say that I participated in Spring of Cary with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs so I watched a few Cary Grant movies. I also watched a few mystery shows (mainly Poirot and Brokenwood Mysteries) on my own or with my husband.

I did not read as many books as I would have liked to have for the month of May. I did, however, finish Fellowship of the Ring, which was my goal for the month of May. I was determined to finish that book, since The Boy and I started in way back in February. It was a personal accomplishment for me, even if it sounds a bit silly.

I also finished writing my own cozy mystery, Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing and it is now being edited and will be released July 18th.

Now looking ahead to June.

This past week we finished the bulk of our homeschool lessons with just a couple of things to do each day. Next week we will do a few more things just to wrap up what we need to do before we meet with the evaluator and then the school year is done for about two and a half months.

After I receive the summary from the evaluator, I will submit it and the paperwork that states that I plan to homeschool again next year all at the same time, which by law needs to be by June 30th.

We will have a short break with no activities scheduled but on June 20th the local library’s Summer Reading Program will begin for Little Miss. There will be various activities a couple days a week.

There will also be Vacation Bible Schools throughout the summer that I’m sure we will attend at least a couple of. There are two that are going to be held in our little town and I know that we want to try to go to at least one of them.

I’m sure June will also be full of plenty of playdates with Little Miss’s friends or hangouts with The Boy’s friends.

For reading, I have a couple of cozy mysteries on my list to read, a couple of books by author friends, and a book from the Anne of Green Gables series. I often plan what I will read in a month but I don’t usually read the books I say I will because I am a mood reader. My mood may change and that means my list will change. I do, however, want to finish the books by my author friends. I’ve been looking forward to reading the one author’s books (A.M. Heath) for a while now and the other author friend (Jenny Knipfer) has written a book in a genre I don’t usually read and I want to try it out.

These are the books I am currently planning to read in June:

How about you? How was your May and what are you looking forward to in June?

Saturday Afternoon Chat: Still cold in our neck of the woods, digging holes, weird grocery shopping trips and homeschool wrapping up this week

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Saturday Afternoon Tea8 Comments

I am writing this post while – yet again – sitting under a blanket with a dog cuddled against me.

Yes, it is still a bit chilly in Pennsylvania but that is set to change next week when temperatures will finally rise into the mid-80s.

I have mentioned before that I like chilly weather and being able to curl up under a blanket with a good book and have an excuse to not go anywhere and instead just stay at home and read a book. Still, 50 and 60 degree days this close to summer is a bit odd.

I remember one summer when Little Miss was a baby, and The Boy was also young, that it was very cold almost the entire summer. It was either cold and raining and it ruined many summer plans, especially swimming at a public pool near us – which is no longer public, sadly. The Boy was severely depressed he couldn’t do most of his summer activities. Now he no longer swims or does too many summer activities – like digging holes in the backyard. I miss that.

One summer he started digging a hole in the backyard. Why? I don’t know. Even he didn’t know. He just wanted to see how far he could get and what the hole would become. He was around 11 and I think it was around the time his closest friend stopped talking to him because I had chosen to pull him from the private Christian school he was attending at the time. Long story short, my son was having difficulties with a teacher and having panic attacks.

Regardless of all the other details, my son found new fun in his life and digging that hole was part of his fun.

He’d grab his shovel and head out into the backyard and play some music and dig a hole. Sometimes his sister would join in.

Anyhow, I have digressed a lot in this post. Back to my week recap.

This past week was very uneventful, other than an issue with the inside of my mouth and a broken tooth I’m having. Right now, I can’t get the tooth fixed because I don’t have insurance or money for the dentist (like up to $300 just to come in and see what needs to be done. No thanks.) I am thankful I am not in excruciating pain but talking has been interesting since I ripped my cheek muscle trying to get a look at the broken tooth. Fun times and stupid move by me. Hopefully it will all heal soon or I will find the money to get the one tooth pulled.

Thursday Little Miss and I drove the van up to be fixed by an exhaust specialist because the van’s exhaust system has a big hole in it.

The Husband met us there from work and brought us home. While trying to turn around because I drove past the place, some very angry man cursed at me out his truck window. I think it was at me. I’m not sure. All I know is that he sounded very angry, used extremely bad words, and then flipped off someone as I pulled out. No idea if it was at me or not because I was already going the other direction by the time he got his hand out the window.

Before we took the van, we stopped at the library to sign Little Miss up for the summer reading program and for her to pick out a few books.

Yesterday we had to pick the van back up and grab some groceries. That was a whole drama as it often is when I get groceries. Something weird happens almost every time I go. One time I locked myself out of our van and our spare keys don’t work to unlock it and the key fob lock button doesn’t work on it. It was a whole thing. Another time the youngest was just about starving and I had to get her food before we could go. This time the key fob fell off the keychain and disappeared into the void of Aldi or the parking lot or my van or I don’t even know. It was just gone. This meant I was once again stranded at Aldi with no way to get home until The Husband (who’d already had a super, super long day) could come and get me. He’d already headed home to rest because he had to take photos for the paper at a Twitty & Lynn concert. If you don’t know who they are, they are the grandchildren of Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn. Having them perform in our area was a little weird since there is nothing out here but trees and bears, but, alas there they were.

Speaking of bears, The Boy was up very late one night last week and looked out his upstairs window to see the outline of a bear in the dark sniffing our grill on the back porch. He said it was too dark to see it very well but that he could hear the bear breathing.

He left a note letting his dad know about the incident and then The Husband read in the local paper (not the one he works with) that a bear has been seen wandering our street and the streets around us.

I have been trying to see a bear for three years but only from the safety of my house. However, after hearing one is actually roaming our backyard, I’ve decided I don’t want to see one. I was even too afraid to take Little Miss to the neighbor’s trampoline this week in case the bear came out of the small woods behind it. I have no idea what I would do if a bear came out while we were up there.

It’s fairly rare for a bear to come out during the day, but a young bear was in the yard of a friend of ours down the street last summer and it had no interest in leaving, even with her daughter’s dog barked at it. Zooma the Wonder Dog likes to go with us when we go up to the trampoline and I know she’d try to defend us. This week I am going to look up what we should do because it is supposed to be very nice out, and it will be nice weather to jump on the trampoline. Or it will be too hot to jump on the trampoline. Not sure which yet. We never can tell with Pennsylvania weather.

Today we had gymnastics for Little Miss and then we will have a week off from gymnastics.

School is winding down for us and we are mainly tackling last minute tasks such as finishing book reports and a research paper for The Boy, since I am required to have writing samples for him now that he is in high school.

Our last official day of school is June 2 and then we meet with the evaluator the next week. The evaluator will go over what work we did for the year and then write up a report that says we did what we needed to do under the requirements of our state’s homeschool law. We then hand that in to the school district and the year is officially done when the superintendent sends us a letter saying we have done what we needed to do – again – under state law.

I mentioned above that I signed Little Miss up for the local Summer Reading Program. That starts June 20th and is every Tuesday and Wednesday. It runs for about a month and should keep us busy and at the library at least a couple of times a week.

The Boy is still working at a local restaurant, at least for the summer. His schedule will get busier in the fall because he is going to be attending a trade school near us a couple of times a week in addition to homeschool, so he plans to quit his job.

I have not been drinking as much tea lately because I am out of honey. I planned to get some yesterday but after all the drama, I just wanted to head home. In place of honey, I used sugar. Yuck. I don’t know how I ever drank anything in it with sugar. It’s just too sweet and doesn’t taste right.

Since it will be warm this upcoming week I’ll probably stick to cool water or cool water with a bit of grape juice mixed in.

How about you? What have you been drinking and what will you be drinking this upcoming week? Herbal tea? Iced tea? Lemonade? Let me know in the comments and let me know how your week was.

Fiction Friday: Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing Chapter 5

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Fiction Friday1 Comment

I thought I’d share another another chapter of Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing this week. This book is with my husband now for editing so there very well could be typos, etc. here. This is kind of “as is”, but changes will be made before I publish the book July 18.

That reminds me: If you want to preorder a copy of the book, you can do so on Amazon for 99 cents for a limited amount of time. You can only preorder an ebook copy of the book at this time.

If you want to catch up with the other chapters you can do so here:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

The Birchwood municipal building reminded Gladwynn of an old warehouse. The outside walls and roof were metal. A pair of glass doors brought them into the inside of the building, which doubled as a community hall. The ceiling was tall with bright fluorescent lights hanging on large rectangular fixtures.

They had set rows of long tables and chairs up in the middle of the room and Gladwynn guessed the hall would sit at least 200. Right now, there were probably about 50 people sitting in chairs that had been set up in front of a long table at one end of the hall.

“We’ll sit here in the back,” Laurel whispered. “At most meetings, I’d say grab a seat up front, but for this meeting, Glenn always suggested sitting near the exit just in case. I took his advice and was glad I did that night the fists started flying. I hightailed it right out of here and followed up later with a call to the board president.”

A fist fight? Gladwynn’s muscles tightened. What in the world had she gotten herself into?

Glenn was the reporter who’d covered this beat for 25 years. He’d retired last year, which was why Gladwynn was even here.

Laurel placed a notepad and tape recorder on the table. She tapped the speaker of the recorder. “If you don’t have one of these yet, be sure to invest in one. It’s good to be able to play the meeting back later to back up your notes and make sure you get quotes correct. It’s also nice to have in case someone tells you that what you said they said, isn’t what they said. Understand what I’m saying?”

Gladwynn laughed. “Oddly, yes.”

Two men sat across from them, grinning like they’d just told each other a joke.

Gladwynn guessed the men to be in their late 50s, or early 60s. One was slightly balding, carried some extra weight in the belly and wore dark-rimmed glasses. He reminded Gladwynn of a giddy grade school kid the way he was beaming and practically bouncing in his chair.

He leaned across the table toward Laurel. “You’re in for a good one tonight, Laurel. We hear Daryl Stabler is all wound up about something.”

Laurel kept her gaze on her notebook. “Oh yeah? What has him riled up this time?”

The other man shrugged. “Who knows? He was ranting in the diner this morning about some threat he got. We figure it has something to do with the land the fire department wanted to buy last year.”

Laurel cut a glance at Gladwynn. “This is Frank Tyler and Rich Ryder. They’re residents and–“

“We’re more than that,” Frank broke in. “I’m on the local community watch and Rich is with the fire department and used to be a member of the board.”

Laurel managed a strained smile. “Yes, of course. They are more than residents. They’ve helped me when  I’ve covered meetings out here, especially last month when some tension, shall we say, came up.”

Gladwynn tilted her head questioningly. “Tension?”

Rich scoffed and waved his hand. “Ah, it was just crazy old Lester Jenkins. He’s mental, everyone knows that. It was something about the township leaving snow on his property. He’s always mad about something.”

Frank turned his attention to Gladwynn. “Yeah, but it all got crazy after he did his yelling. He walked outside for ten minutes and came back again. Poor Laurel here thought he’d gone out for a gun.”

Laurel looked up at the ceiling. “That’s not really what—”

“Oh yeah, you did.” Rich agreed. “You thought he was going to shoot us all up. I saw you inching toward the exit.”

Rich leaned slightly across the table and reached down to touch his ankle. He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial tone. “You two don’t need to worry, though, okay? If he does it again, I’m ready.”

Gladwynn’s eyebrows dipped. “Ready for what?”

Rich’s voice was at a whisper now, his hand still down near his ankle. “To eliminate the threat. I’m carrying.”

His explanation didn’t clear up anything for Gladwynn. “Carrying what?”

“A gun!” Rich hissed in a loud whisper.

Gladwynn’s eyes widened, and she leaned back slightly.

Rich scoffed and waved his hand dismissively. “Don’t worry. It’s registered and conceal carry is legal here.” He tipped his chin up. “Where you from anyhow?”

“New York.”

Frank made a face. “Oh. Sorry to hear that.”

She suddenly felt defensive. “I’m not from the city. Just upstate.”

Rich scowled. “Ain’t much difference between the city and upstate anymore with those governors you people been electing.”

Gladwynn was grateful that the sound of a pounding gavel interrupted the conversation.

The room had filled up now, with almost every seat available being used. Gladwynn had no idea people actually showed up to municipal meetings anymore, let alone this many.

Voices merged together, creating a loud hum. The gavel pounded again.

“I’m calling the meeting to order,” the man with the gavel called loudly. A hush began to fall over the room.

Seven people were sitting at the front table. Gladwynn guessed that the one with the pen and paper, scribbling furiously, was the board secretary.

Laurel leaned close to her and lowered her voice. “They’re going to open the floor for a public comment section after the secretary reads the minutes. That’s when all the fur tends to fly.”

“Are all municipal meetings like this around here?”

Laurel shook her head with a smile. “Most are more boring than watching sap run.”

The public comment section didn’t show as much crazy as Gladwynn had expected it to. At first anyhow.

Most of the comments involved questions about trash in the township park, complaints about the snowplow hitting a mailbox, and questions about an upcoming winter festival.

But when a wild-eyed character with white hair that stuck up straight from his head stood with a piece of paper in his hand, Gladwynn braced herself.

The man took a step forward, pointing at the man who had identified himself as board president John Giordano earlier in the evening. “John, did you leave this letter in my mailbox?”

John made a face. “What are you talking about? What letter?”

The man persisted. “I got a threatening letter in my mailbox, and I know without a doubt it’s from you. I had every right to sell that land. You know that. It’s nobody’s business, especially not the townships.”

Laurel leaned toward Gladwynn. “That’s Daryl Stabler. He owns a huge plot of land over on 84. There are rumors some big development has bought it, but we haven’t been able to track down who yet[lh1] .”

Gladwynn nodded and turned her attention back to the front of the room.

John folded his arms across his chest, a deep frown curving his mouth downward. “I don’t care what you do with your land, you old fool. You stop taking your meds or something? Or maybe you need to start. Now, if you’re done, the public comment session is concluded. I motion we –

“I’m not done until you admit that you left this letter!”

John rolled his eyes and let out an exasperated huff. “What’s even in this letter?”

“You should know!”

“I don’t know because I didn’t leave it!”

“You threatened me, and I won’t stand for it!”

John suddenly stood and pointed a finger at Daryl. “I did not threaten you. You take that back right now! I didn’t write that letter and I did not threaten you.”

A man with salt and pepper hair raised a hand at the end of the long table where the board members were sitting. “Daryl, you’ll need to be careful here. You’re stepping into slanderous territory.”

Laurel whispered, “Township Solicitor Trent Styles.”

Daryl’s voice rose. “It is not slander when it’s true!”

Gladwynn glanced at the exit and started calculating how many steps it would take her to get there. She also wondered how many other people in the room had weapons strapped to their ankles.

Someone at the back of the room cleared his throat. Gladwynn turned to see a dark-haired man wearing a uniform, his arms folded across his broad chest.

It was a throat clearing apparently only she heard because everyone else was still shouting accusations back and forth. She kept her eyes on the man, wondering if he was a security guard. He sported a well-kept dark beard, but she could still see a muscle jumping in his jaw. From where she was sitting his eyes appeared to be green with a hint of gold.   

His uniform didn’t look like a state police uniform, but she’d be very surprised if this small township had a police force.

The volume level rose. Curse words were uttered. Two men stood nose to nose.

“That land is mine to sell, not the townships! I don’t care if you wanted it for your fire company!”

“You promised it to our fire company!”

“That’s the way they work, Daryl. Watch them. Threatening. Manipulation. It’s how this township has always worked!”

The loud pounding of the gavel on the table didn’t even silence the room. In fact, it seemed like the people, many of them now standing and pointing fingers at the board members and each other, were trying to shout over it.

“That’s enough!”

The booming voice behind Gladwynn made her jump. She and Laurel both turned to look at the uniformed man. The voices continued at the same volume.

It took another firm declaration from the man before the group began to settle down. His voice settled into a calmer tone as the conversation faded. “Let’s have some sort of semblance of decorum here, people.”

He never moved as he spoke, his arms still folded across his chest, his legs apart in a wide stance.

Even as the voices quieted, many continued to glower at each other, with a few casting annoyed glances back toward the source of their admonishment, as they sat.

John took a deep breath. “Vince is right. We all need to calm down and let cooler heads prevail.” He folded one hand over the other on the table in front of him. “One way to do that is close this public session for now and get to the other business of the evening.”

The other business was routine and mundane with far too much time spent, in Gladwynn’s opinion, on the cost of gravel for the township roads.

She looked at her notes and circled Daryl’s name, then scrawled the words property, fire company, and threatening letter. Next to each she added a question mark.

When the meeting concluded, Laurel stood. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to the board members.”

John held out a hand toward her after Laurel’s introductions. “Nice to meet you. Gwen was it?”

“Gladwynn actually.”

“Oh.” John, a pleasant looking man with a round face and gray hair, huffed out a soft chuckle. “I guess that’s one of those more modern names, huh?” He winked. “Sorry you had to experience that unpleasantness during the public comment session during your first visit with us.”

A woman to his right was busy packing up papers and folders. Without looking up she smirked. “If you’re going to be here every month, you might as well get used to it.”

John laughed nervously. “Don’t let Margaret here scare you off. It’s not always this bad.”

The board member who Laurel had introduced to her as Betty Wilson snorted as she stood and pulled a blue jacket on. “Yeah, but it will be if these nutcases have their way.”

John cleared his throat and stood. “Well, anyhow, it’s nice to meet you, Gladwynn. It’s especially nice to have a new face to look at. Seeing Glen’s grumpy mug every month was grating on my nerves.”

Gladwynn told everyone it was nice to meet them, noticing that everyone except John avoided eye contact as they pulled on their jackets and gathered papers before leaving quickly out the back door.

Back in the car, Laurel tipped her head back and laughed. “Those people are crazy! Seriously! First the guy with the gun, then the whole thing with the threats, and then John Cena telling everyone to shut their mouths. There has got to be something in the water out here, I swear. They’re all nuts. Glad I got out when I did.”

Gladwynn drank the last of her coffee. “That guy was better looking than John Cena.”

Laurel looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? You think so?”

Gladwynn cleared her throat, warmth spreading from her chest into her face. “Not that I was really looking. I mean, it’s just that I don’t think John Cena is that attractive so . . .”

She let her words trail away as she tried to think of a way to change the subject. “Do you know who he is?”

Laurel was clearly amused by this turn in the conversation. “So, this guy was not John Cena. He was way hotter. Is that what you’re saying?”

Gladwynn sighed. “That is not what I said, but, well, just about any man is hotter to me than John Cena. Anyhow, let’s just change the subject, shall we? What’s the deal with this property that Daryl guy was talking about?”

Laurel shrugged. “No idea. He’s always on about something at these meetings. I only filled in for Glen a couple of times and every time he was there to complain about something or other. These people always have some kind of crisis going on. It’s like they can’t survive in life without having something to be offended or up in arms about.”

Fog floated across the road and Laurel flicked on her high beams. “Tell me about this name of yours anyhow. Is it a family name? I’m guessing Scottish.”

Here we go again, she thought. Explaining my name.

“Yes, Scottish. Gladwynn was my great-great grandmother’s middle name. She and my great-grandfather came to the United States in 1835 from Scotland.” She managed a half smile, even though she hated telling the story again. “My parents really got into the Scottish names. My sisters are Iona and Sheena. My brother is Caelen and everyone calls him Salen because they have no idea it’s a hard c, not a soft one.”

Laurel glanced at her and laughed. “Seriously?”

“I wish I wasn’t.”

“Are you the youngest?”

“Of the girls, yes. Sheena is two years older than me. Iona is four years older, and Caelen is five years younger. He was a bit of a surprise.”

“Do your siblings live back where you are from?”

She shook her head. “Not anymore. Iona is in Florida raising three kids, Sheena moved to London last year to tour with the London Philharmonic, and Caelen is playing football for the University of Michigan.” She slumped in her seat and looked out the passenger window. “I’m the family oddball. I don’t have any kids, any talent – musical, athletics or otherwise – and I prefer being alone to being with people.” Chewing on her already short thumbnail she decided not to share about the many talents her parents also had – one of them consistently reminding her she wasn’t as talented as her siblings.

Laurel turned on the windshield wipers as rain began to fall. “Sounds like your siblings are just over achievers. Those type of people are usually super boring anyhow.”

Laurel wouldn’t call any of her siblings boring. Not in the least.

Back at the office she and Laurel worked on the story together, comparing notes, and choosing to focus less on the property and letter drama and more on the fact that the cost of cinders had doubled this year, which would put an already struggling township in even more debt.

She was barely able to keep her eyes open when she finally left the office around 10, which was probably why she almost tripped over a cat in the parking lot.

“Sheesh, little guy—or gal—I didn’t even see you down there.” She stopped and rubbed her hand across the top of the cat’s head. The cat raised its’ chin to move itself more firmly under her strokes then rubbed against her legs, weaving in and out.

She petted the cat for several minutes, then yawned. “Okay, buddy. I’ve got to get going. Head on home. I’m sure someone is missing you.”

Looking up as she closed the driver’s side door, she noticed the cat had perched itself on the concrete curb stop in front of her parking space and was watching her with half-opened eyes. It lifted a large white paw and licked it, then began to clean itself. All four of the five-toed paws were white and matched a white streak of fur across its belly, up its front, across one side of its nose.

The cat reminded her of one she’d had back in New York when she was about seven. She hoped this cat had a longer life than that one had. Worrying about the well lbeing of a cat was something she’d have to address later, though. For now, she needed a warm cup of tea and a pile of comfortable quilts to fall asleep under.

The Story Behind the Photo: Mud

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Just the Photos Ma'm, the story behind the photo5 Comments

Growing up my children really liked making messes outside.

In this photo, my son had added water from the hose to the already starting mud in our side yard.

He and my daughter made a type of mudslide, even though the yard was flat. They slid all over in that mud, made holes and filled it with water, splashed mud and water, piled the mud up, and rubbed it all over themselves.

Bottom line?

They had a blast.

We lived on a fairly busy street at the time, right across from the high school. People who drove by probably thought one of two things: 1) I was a horrible parent who let my kids make all kinds of messes and took photos of them doing it or 2) I was the best mother in the world because I let my kids make all kinds of messes and took photos of them doing it.

Either way, I don’t care.

My kids had fun.

They had real childhoods.

They lived in the moment.

They don’t do that as often anymore. Not with the messes. They still live in the moment and I still let them be kids. They still have a real childhood.

I can’t lie, though, if they poured some mud and water down the hill in the backyard of the house we live in now and slid down it and covered themselves all over in mud . . .

I’d totally let them.

I’d grab my camera, and would absolutely love photographing it.

#letthembelittle

Saturday Afternoon Chat: Trampolines, craving quiet, lilacs are blooming

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Saturday Afternoon Tea6 Comments

Note: I usually only share this post on my blog (Boondock Ramblings) but thought I’d share it with my subscribers here on Substack too this week.

I am back this week for Saturday Afternoon Chat and I am sipping peppermint tea but later I’m sure I’ll be drinking cool water as our temperatures are supposed to be higher today than they were yesterday and Thursday.

As I am writing this, The Husband and Little Miss are at gymnastics and I am taking a little bit of what I guess I would call self-care time.

This is the first time in – um – a long time that I have had any time alone to write or think or just decompress. I seriously do not even remember the last time I had a break when it was daylight out without people and animals all around me, coming in and out of the house, looking for attention or needing something.

This past week was very busy but not busy with going places. It was busy with being outside or washing dishes or trying to clean things out or, quite frankly, it was busy in my mind. My mind has been racing 1,000 miles a minute, sometimes a second, these days.

It’s racing over my parent’s health issues, my kids growing up, homeschooling, me trying to help the family financially while also trying to have fun with some side activities like writing, photography, and designing, knowing I need to spend time with my husband, my kids, my parents and feeling like there isn’t enough of me to go around.

I’m finding it hard to simply sit and listen to my own thoughts and try to find some balance in the midst of all the chaos. I’m struggling to find moments of peace in the chaos, something I plan to write about later this week.

Right now the house is silent. The dog is asleep on the ottoman and outside my window there is one lone bird not exactly chirping, but sort of calling. There isn’t even a truck grinding its brakes down the hill like it so often is during other quiet times I’ve been able to grab in the past.

Quiet.

My soul has been craving it.

Not long stretches of quiet because then I feel off-centered and lost and melancholy as I long for the presence of my family – even if they are loud at times and need a lot of attention. I want to give that attention. The majority of the time I want them around me because if they aren’t then I feel like life is incomplete.

Sometimes, though, I need even a half hour of quiet so I can think and remember how much I need the everyday noise and hustle and bustle because without it that would mean that those who are most precious to me are no longer part of my life. If they were no longer here then I would no longer be here because they are what give me a purpose to create and live.

I need a quiet moment to close my eyes and breathe in the peace of God and remind myself that I am not alone in all my fears, worries, and apprehensions, I am not alone with my racing thoughts. God is here even in the chaos, even in the fear, even in the anxiety that tries to take me over.

So today I will take a moment of quiet while everyone is gone and just soak in all the goodness that is my life, repelling thoughts of all the bad that I think my life produces or is filled with.

When I forget how great my life is in the overall, grand scheme of things, song lyrics from a song by Wes King from the 1990s comes to mind.

“Life is precious. Life is sweet. Like the earth beneath my feet. And his truth makes it complete. Knowing Jesus died for me, life is precious, life is sweet.”

Earlier this week Little Miss and I spent hours of our afternoons on the neighbor’s trampoline. I can’t lie. I didn’t enjoy it as I should have. I was resentful. I wanted to finish revising the book I’m writing. I wanted to read. I wanted to have “me time.” And I felt selfish about that.

I felt like I should be enjoying every moment with my daughter because before I know it she will be grown up and moved out and I will have all the free time I want but I won’t want it. All I will want is time with my children back again.

So, I felt my resentment for a little bit, pouted some, and even flounced a little.

But then I worked on just enjoying that time with her, watching her jump and do flips, and seeing how much she’s grown physically and skill-wise in the last year.

Yes, I worked on it. I chose joy when I didn’t feel it because sometimes, we have to do that and, you know what? I did soon feel joy and I felt a slow rhythm return to my soul that I needed. I had been rushing and trying to do too much at once and I feel like God knew I needed that slowed-down time to just be in one moment and not ten at once.   

Yesterday the local homeschool group met at an alpaca farm about an eight-minute drive from our house and then stopped for some ice cream at the restaurant where my son is now washing dishes a few times a week.

Little Miss loved the alpacas and kept feeding them the carrots that the owners had cut up for the kid’s visit. She fed them so many I thought they might start spitting them back at her, but they seemed as thrilled with her feeding them as she was to feed them. She stayed with them long after the other kids had gotten bored and wandered off to the little shop the farm has and the woods around it.

After the farm visit and ice cream, there was a Mother’s Day craft at the library. Then it was time to go home and cook dinner and wash some dishes.

Speaking of dinner, lately Little Miss has wanted to make special sauces for dinner, and one might last week she made an amazing cheese sauce to go with our dinner of chicken and rice. Another night she made a similar cheese sauce for our dinner of sausages and egg noodles (though I had rice with mine). The sauce was so good and I saved some to have with my lunch yesterday. I told her it is now her job to make cheese, or another sauce, for family dinners. She’s very excited about this prospect. My only issue will have to be making sure that she doesn’t get so excited she tries to do too much by herself and accidentally burns or cuts herself. She is sometimes impatient waiting for Mom to help so she jumps ahead and does it herself. This can be a good and a bad thing.

I was worried one day when she was making the sauce because I said it was cutting into our homeschool time.

“Is this sort of homeschool? Teaching me about cooking?”

As usual she’s quicker on the uptake than I am.

So, yes, we treated it as a time to learn and it removed the guilt from this homeschool mom.

Today Little Miss has a friend who is going to come to play, which will probably mean more time on the trampoline.

I don’t mind. This hour break has helped me have a little “me time.” Even the short break is so rejuvenating for my spirit. (Doesn’t that just sound so dramatic? “It’s so rejuvenating for my spirit!” *snort* I sound like I’m in one of those YouTube videos with the guitar music and some girl in an old-fashioned dress skipping through a field of tulips.)

In all this rambling, I forgot to mention that our tulips and our lilacs are blooming. The lilacs smell so amazing! Last night I had to go search for our youngest cat who has been staying out past curfew lately and when I opened the back door the amazing sweet smell of the lilacs hit me.

We used to have a very small bush by our garage and a larger bush that is growing in the middle of a tree on the top of the hill behind the house. This year the smaller bush by the garage is much larger than t had been, and an even smaller bush is growing next to the fence next to the house. I don’t remember that bush last year but It is very welcome to stay there and bloom. I should probably cut some of the bushes back but I love to see plants grow naturally. That’s one reason why I have never cut back our wild rose bush. Well, that and the fact our neighbor, who told me the bush is over a hundred years old, said that when her landscapers trimmed her wild rose bush (which was grown from a section of our bush), it stopped blooming as well.

I look forward to those wild roses blooming every year. When they first start to appear, pure joy settles in my chest and then spills outward through giddy giggles. I’ll see them through the kitchen window and go grab the camera to take a hundred photographs of them. A hundred photographs I used to have no idea what I had the use for other than to look at during the winter months when everything is so drab. This past week, though, I decided I can use some of those photographs for journals I am developing.

Speaking of photographs (yes, “speaking of” are the words for the day, apparently), I failed a bit on my Photo a Day in May challenge. I literally forgot about the challenge for nine days, but when I remembered I picked up my camera and took several photos of the lilac bushes and Little Miss jumping. I am not trying to remember to take my camera with me everywhere I go so I can pause a moment in the craziness and photograph something that catches my eye.

As I’ve said before, photography helps to slow me and my mind down, which is one reason I wanted to do this challenge.

Since I missed several days of the challenge, I am going to try to stretch it into June as well.

To end my post (since I think I hear my husband and daughter coming in now) here are a few photos I’ve taken for the challenge so far in May. I’m sure I’ll share a separate post later in the week with one for each day.

How about you? How was your week last week? Have you found any new teas to drink? Let me know in the comments!