Good afternoon!

I hope you are having a wonderful Saturday afternoon, or evening, whenever you are reading this.

Here in Pennsylvania it is a cold Saturday afternoon and as I write this I am planning to spend it watching the third Anne of Green Gables movie with my mom, and maybe Dad too since he got caught up in the first one with us.

Before I go there, however, I will take Little Miss to her gymnastics class.

Speaking of gymnastics, she attended her first competition last weekend. It was a home competition and for her age it was mainly to get her some experience in that realm.

She earned a fourth and sixth place trophy and got a special award for her cute pajamas since this competition was called Pajama Rama. The participants were asked to wear their pajamas to it. Of course, they took them off to complete their activities.

The rest of the week was mainly homeschooling and then Kids Club on Wednesday. Kids Club is what they are calling it now instead of Awana. On the way there, I picked up a little boy whose grandmother helps with the club but who was on vacation. The little boy lives in his great-grandfather’s house and it brought up a lot of memories for me since my family knew his great-grandfather, Karl, well. His great-grandfather was good friends with my grandfather and my dad. He worked with my dad for many years.

My parents would go to their house to play cards often when I was a young kid and I would be taken along because there was often no one at home to watch me. I have no idea where my brother would have been at that time, but he was eight years older than me so I guess he was doing teenage stuff. Maybe track practice since he did run track.

My mom does not like playing cards but she would go anyhow for something different to do. I’d sit in their living room with their fake fireplace and 70s-style lava lamp and for a while a real-life fluffy, sleeping, Siamese. Later that cat was replaced with a fake one after it died. That fake one was a little creepy, to say the least. No, I don’t believe they had the Siamese stuffed.

The entire house smelled like Karl’s pipe, which was a sweet and pleasant aroma. I’m glad he didn’t smoke cigars. The house was immaculate, and I was always worried I’d mess something up or spill the soda Karl’s wife, Blanche, would give me. Soda and chips were a treat for me because even though we were a Pepsi family through and through since my mom’s dad worked for them for 30 years or more, we didn’t have soda all the time at my house.

Blanche would set the glass of soda on a clear glass coaster so it didn’t stain their coffee table.

Sometimes I would watch a game show on TV while they played cards – usually wheel of fortune.

When I dropped the little boy off, Karl’s grandson and I chatted about my memories of the house. He laughed and said he understood about the pipe smell because he had those pipes and that tobacco in a canister in the enclosed front porch and in the summer the heat would heat the tobacco and make the whole porch smell like it.

To this day, I can’t smell pipe smoke or tobacco without thinking of Karl. My husband is the same with his grandfather, who also smoked a pipe for many years.

In many ways, Karl was like a grandfather to me since I had lost mine when I was only two and my other one when I was 9.  Karl could be grumpy at times and most people just let him go but one day when I was a teenager, I was over there and he was super grumpy about something. I don’t remember what had set him off but I let him know that whatever it was, it wasn’t that big of a deal. He was simply being a “grumpy old fart,” I told him.

As the words flew out of my mouth, I couldn’t believe I’d said it. It wasn’t that Karl was a mean man, but people simply didn’t talk back to him very often. I stood motionless for a few seconds, afraid that he was going to blow up on me but instead he simply looked shocked for a few seconds and then burst into laughter, that pipe propped in the corner of his mouth.

“Well, you’re a sassy thing today, aren’t you?” he said.

After that, we joked hard with each other and it became the norm.

Losing him, and then years later his wife, was hard and I find myself often unable to look at his house where his grandson now lives without tearing up. The tears are happy tears, though, I tell Little Miss. They are tears filled with a lot of good memories I am glad to have.

This week should be fairly low key until the end of the week. On Friday, Little Miss is scheduled for oral surgery to remove several problematic teeth. She will be having it done under general anesthesia and to say I am nervous would be an understatement. I may have to be medicated that day (I’m only half-joking here) so please, if you wouldn’t mind, pray for that procedure and my already frayed nerves.

Does your tea need a warm up? I know mine does.

I’m going to be looking for some new teas here shortly. I was just telling a friend how I don’t like it when herbal teas have a bunch of other ingredients in them. I don’t want rose hips and lemongrass and some other herb. The only reason for that is that I had a reaction to a tea one time and it took me a while to figure out that might be the cause of my itching. In the end, I wasn’t sure which herb might have caused the issue. We’d also had a laundry detergent change that I was unaware of (since The Husband does a lot of our laundry and had used something new) around the same time, so it may have been that causing the itching all along.

Some teas with all those extra things in it (dandelion leaves, etc.) make my throat feel odd too. Plus, I can’t have caffeinated tea since I seem to be allergic to caffeine. Yes, I know, it’s completely bizarre.

So, for now I stick to the peppermint tea, but I’m really going to try to be brave and try something new soon.

Leave me a list of your favorite teas in the comments and let me know what you are drinking and doing today.

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If you are a regular on this blog, you may have noticed that I haven’t been posting as many blog posts as I sometimes do.

Part of that has been due to a lot of stress in my life, but part of the reason for me writing fewer blog posts is that I am working on a new book series.

This series will be a cozy mystery series called Gladwyn Grant Mysteries.

The first book in the series is called Gladwyn Grant Gets Her Footing.

I’ll tell you more about Gladwyn in the coming weeks. I have not yet decided if I will share this story as a serial on the blog or not. I’ll let you know in the future if that is going to happen.

I hope to release the first three books in the series about 4 months apart starting in either May or June. These books will be shorter than my previous books. They will be clean, but not strictly Christian fiction.

A Biblical fiction story I am also working on will, of course, be Christian Fiction.

And if I didn’t have enough going on, I am also writing a book that will come out in August of 2024 and is entitled Cassie. It will also be in the Christian Fiction genre.

I am very excited for Cassie since it will be part of a multi-author project called The Apron Strings Book Series and it will follow twelve women and a recipe book that connects them all. Each book will focus on a different woman from a different era from 1920 to 2020.

My decade is the 1990s and my character, whose stage name is Cassie Starr, is a popstar who has hit her 30s and isn’t as popular as she once was. With no jobs coming her way and her record label dropping her, she heads up at the behest of her sister to help their mom with the family farm-to-table restaurant. While there Cassie will find out her mom’s health is not as good as she thought it was, that her feelings toward her father aren’t as resolved as she thought, and that the owner of the local vegetable farm that supplies her mom’s business with food isn’t as annoying as she once thought.

I have not forgotten that I still have a fifth book I have promised and want to write to close out The Spencer Valley Chronicles and I will get there at some point. The final book will be the story of Alex Stone and his relationship with his father, as well as his continuing relationship with Molly Tanner. It doesn’t have a title yet.

So that is my writing update for now. I’m sure it will change in regards to timing and titles, etc. as the months go on.

Do any of the projects sound interesting to you?

I’m sitting on my couch under my grandmother’s blanket.

Grandma passed away in 2003 (in the hospital, not under the blanket, incidentally) and the blanket has been at her house where my parents now live.

One day recently I went to visit my parents and my dad had a stack of blankets for me to go through.

“We’re running out of room. Take some of these.”

He then gestured to three empty Walmart boxes and told me to fill them.

One of the first blankets I reached for was the tan-brown knitted blanket that I remember my grandmother laying under for naps and when she fell asleep on the couch watching the 11 o’clock news. My paternal grandmother weighed about 100 pounds and was probably about 5 foot 1 inches tall. She’d pull her tiny form into a ball in the curved corner of the couch and drape the blanket around her. It would entirely cover her and it’s not a big blanket.

The couch was tan as well and it was a three- or four-piece sectional. The piece she sat in was curved and it’s not a shape I often see in couches these days.

If you looked too fast, you might miss her. That’s how well hidden she’d be under that blanket.

I know there were many times I almost didn’t see her when I was checking where she was.

One night, though I can’t remember why, I stayed alone at that house. I believe it was before Grandma died, but my parents were already living there. I curled up in the corner of that couch with all the outside lights on in case someone tried to break in and fell asleep there. Later I wondered how she’d ever been able to fall asleep in that spot, all curled up tight. It was not very comfortable.

The day Grandma died Dad called me from the hospital.

“You said you wanted me to call when she passed,” he said. “So, I am.”

I’d been over in her room earlier in the day.

“I love you Grandma,” I told her as I leaned over her while she slipped in and out of sleep.

“I know,” she said.

She didn’t often say “I love you” back but she may have that day. I truly can’t remember.

I just remember her saying, “I’m so tired, Lisa. So tired.”

She was two weeks shy of turning 94.

“I know, Grandma,” I told her. “Just rest. You can rest now.”

Grandma lived across the hill from us. A drive down a dirt road, a bridge over a small stream, then up another dirt road would bring us to her house – the house Dad and his sisters grew up in.

When I was a teenager I often called Grandma to tell her my mom was sending some food over to her for dinner. She’d often hang up without saying goodbye.

The conversations went like this:

“Grandma, Dad’s bringing over some chicken and potatoes Mom made.”

“Okay. Sounds good.”

“She also made some applesauce.”

“Okay. Yep. Mmhmm.”

I’d open my mouth to say something else but the click had already sounded in my ear. She was done with the conversation and hung up.

Often before she hung up I’d throw in a “I love you” and she’d say, “Yup. Mhmm. Okay then.”

And the click would sound.

One time, though, she said, “Yup. Mhmm. Okay then. Love you too.”

And then the click.

I was flying high for the rest of the night.

I rushed into the kitchen and told my mom, “Grandma said I love you back!”

It was the best feeling in the world – to actually hear those words.

She showed her love in other ways, though.

In small ways.

In the way she asked how I was or wanted to hear the stories I’d been covering at the newspaper.

In the way she gave me a quilt she’d made years ago for my college graduation.

In the way she didn’t talk a lot about her life but answered questions about it when I asked.

In the way we shared black jellybeans together, even though she said licorice was bad for her blood pressure.

In the way she tipped her head back and laughed at me that day I took her photograph while she sat on the ground next to the ditch behind her house.

In the way she let it slip that one time how she really felt and told me she loved me too.

And even in the hurt I held on to for years – a question about what had happened to me. I used to be so skinny, she said. I don’t think she asked it to be mean, though. She was truly worried. She wondered what had happened that was causing me to suddenly gain weight. It wouldn’t be until several years after she died that I learned my thyroid was dying and leaving the weight on me.

Even though I wasn’t still skinny, my mom always told me she knew Grandma still loved me. I have a good feeling she is right.

The blanket isn’t super soft.

I don’t know if I’d cover myself with it if it wasn’t full of memories of a love that was quiet when the world was loud.

I could use some quiet in the loud right now. Couldn’t you?

So, when I pull that blanket across my lap and up around my shoulders I will think of the action as if I am crawling into a stillness my soul needs.

A stillness that only a quiet love can bring.

A stillness that brings quiet when the world is loud.

I mentioned Sunday in my Sunday Bookends post that I had visited a local library that was having a sale, as well as a local flea market-style store that had a large selection of used books.

I thought today I’d share a few of the books I picked up, even though I did mention a few already.

I’m going to toss in there a couple I also picked up last week at a library near us that has a bookshop in the back of their building.

I had to use photos I downloaded online for a couple of these photos because I loaned the books to my mom before I took photographs of them. Mom reads a lot faster than me so I always pass copies of books on to her first.

Her Mother’s Legacy by Francine Rivers

I haven’t read a book by Francine in years, mainly because the topics are usually quite heavy and I often look for books with lighter topics.

Fire By Night and Candle in the Darkness by Lynn Austin

I have yet to read a book by Lynn Austin but people who read Christian Fiction absolutely love her so I figured it was time I tried. She writes historical fiction. These are the first two books in the Refiner’s Fire series.

A Case of Bad Taste and A Case of Crooked Letters by Lori Copeland.

Lori is a new to me author and while I thought her books were cozy mysteries, I needed to take a break from the one book because within the first three pages, two husbands had already been killed off and one of them was fairly young and died from a blood clot, which has been happening to a lot of people lately so that made me uneasy. Of course, this book was written years ago so it has nothing to do with the recent rashes of blood clot deaths, but it still felt a little too close for comfort after someone I know who is in their 30s had a stroke last week. I do plan to pick the book back up again, however, because, despite that dark issue, the book does seem like it will have hope and some humor as well.

Home to Holly Springs, Come Rain Or Come Shine, and To Be Where You Are by Jan Karon

These books looked new and I was excited to add them to my collection.

To Be Where You Are is the last book in the series. Home to Holly Springs is book ten but I believe it was originally part of a planned separate series about Father Tim. It is one of the darker and tougher books of the series, but, in my opinion, one of Jan’s best.

Books from the Walt Longmire Series: A Cold Dish, Death Without Company, Kindness Goes Unpunished, As the Crow Flies, Another Man’s Moccasins, Hell is Empty, A Serpent’s Tooth by Craig Johnson

I’m on book seven of the series, Hell is Empty. We own all of the books on Kindle, but I want to start collecting the books in physical form as well.

Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie (A Miss Marple Mystery)

The Husband picked this one out for me and I’m excited to read it because I’ve never read any of Christie’s books about Miss Marple but she’s one of my favorite Christie characters.

The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell and The Cat Who Blew The Whistle by Lillian Jackson Braun

I picked these two up at the bookshop in the back of the library in the town near us (well, 40 minutes near us). The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell is a later book in the series and the later books aren’t as good, but I’m on chapter 4 and it’s a lot better than some of the other later books I’ve tried to read.

Sean of the South: Whistling Dixie by Sean Dietrich.

He’s a new to me author and this book looks like a collection of short stories or short thoughts. I follow him on Instagram, and he seems like a downhome author that I will like. I have a couple of his books in my Kindle as well.

Treasure Island by Robert Lewis Stevenson

The last book by Robert Lewis Stevenson that The Boy and I tried to read we failed at, but I’m willing to try again. The Husband said this one is better than Kidnapped.

I picked up a stack of books for Little Miss as well, but I’ll write about them in a separate blog post.

Have you read any of the books mentioned above? What did you think of them?

Hello! I was going to share a writing update today here but then realized, I have a new place for those kind of updates and wanted to share that instead. I have set up a Substack/Newsletter where I will be sharing about my writing journey and other tidbits once or twice a month.

If you want to know what’s been happening with my writing, what is coming up with future books, etc., you can check out this month’s newsletter HERE at this address… https://lisarhoweler.substack.com/

If you subscribe, you will get the updates in your inbox when I post.

I will still be posting my regular ramblings about life here on the blog whenever the mood strikes me, though I do have regular features on Saturday ( A Chat and A cup of Tea) and Sunday (Sunday Bookends).

And I’m sure there will be times I’ll update you about my writing here as well.