I’m going to try a new feature this week, which I’ll probably share a couple of times a month: random thoughts. I stole this idea from my husband who sometimes does this for his weekly column in the newspaper. His random thoughts are shorter than mine because, well, I just ramble too much (hence the blog title: Boondock Ramblings.).
— I found this gem from the journal app on my phone. It was from last year so Little Miss swould have been almost 5. To set the scene, I was making my grocery list for that week.
Me: “Oh. I forgot to add veggies to my list.”
Little Miss: “Oh no, I know I get those when I wear too tight pants.”
Me: “What? Oh. No, honey. I said I forgot the veggies.”
Her: “Oh… well, now I gave away one of my secrets.”
— Most of the people who wait on me at our local dollar store are less than friendly. They were less than friendly before masks but now I can’t tell if they are smiling (doubt it) or scowling at me (pretty sure).
I try to joke with them, be friendly, but they just keep sliding my purchases into bags and acting like I’m not even talking. Most of the people at the stores in our town are pretty friendly so their behavior is unusual for me. it was the norm where we used to live.
I have often heard of people in more urban areas always being miserable (not the lovely folks who read my blog of course) and I can now see why.
I mean, who would be cheerful if everywhere you go people are grumpy? Except, we can choose to be cheerful even if people are grumpy to us and I did. I told the woman ‘thank you! Have a good day!” and I sang a familiar worship song on the way to my van. No use letting her dampen my spirits.
—- The other day I was watching a movie and Little Miss was in the room. A character uttered a bad word. I hadn’t been expecting it and told Little Miss: “Never repeat that word.”
“That word?” she asked. “Oh. That’s the word you said the other day.”
Ouch.
Must have been a stressful moment because I don’t remember saying it, incidentally. It’s not in my usual repertoire.
— I love having kids who are so unspoiled that they are excited when I bring socks home from the store. “Socks!” Little Miss declared Friday reaching into a Dollar General bag. “Oh, thank you!”
She then proceeded to try each one on, deciding if the peach colored ones were softer than the blue or purple ones.
“Oh my. These feel so soft on the hard floor. Not so much on the carpet, but on the hard floor they make my feet feel soooo soft.”
Eventually she put all five on at once and said they were even more amazing when worn all together. Who knew buying socks would be so exciting for her?
— Our town is so small that just about everyone I bump into has lived in our house at one time or another. Okay, so only two people I have run into so far. One is the secretary at the borough (town for people outside of PA) office and the other is our neighbor.
I have a feeling I will bump into quite a few more, though, because eight children grew up in this house at one time. Looking at the three bedrooms upstairs I couldn’t figure out how so I asked the lady at the borough office. Apparently there were four bunk beds for four boys in my daughter’s room and her room is the smallest in the house. I really can’t picture four bunk beds in there.
The girls were in my son’s room and the parents were my husband and my room. And back then they only had one bathroom. I contemplated this whole idea of a family of 10 in this house when we first moved in and mentioned it to an older neighbor who bluntly informed me “Well they didn’t have all the s*** we have now.” So, there you go then. That was blunt.
— Kittens are super warm.
— Dogs are also warm.
— Warm pets aren’t the best thing in hot weather, especially curled up on your chest.
— Josh Turner has a new album of covers. That’s exciting for country music fans
— Going off social media does wonders for your brain and your energy. Eliminating news adds even more happiness to one’s life
So there are some random thoughts for this week. What are your random thoughts? Let me know in the comments section.
I found this piece in a journal app on my phone that I haven’t really been using lately. It was written a year ago today. I’m not sure why I never shared it anywhere before.
I’m seeing ghosts today
Today I looked around the corner of my parents house and out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw her sitting there. She was in the glider, rocking it by pushing one foot against the concrete floor, hand against her chin like it always was when she was thinking. She was looking out at a blur of green and brown – the barn and the freshly mowed field. Everything was a blur since her eyesight had started failing years before.
“Whatchya doing, Grandma?” I might would say.
“Oh, just enjoying the cooler weather,” she’d say.
“Not contemplating world domination then?”
She’d laugh fully, head back, and squint at me from the shaded place she was sitting.
“No, no. I wouldn’t want that,” she might say.
And she would rock and then Leonardo, the fat cat someone dropped off at my parents’ no-longer used barn, would climb up and sit next to her. She was the only person he’d let pet him, pressing his little form against her thigh as she stroked him and rocked and enjoyed the cool weather.
Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw another ghost, brushing a cat, then turning to water a plant.
“Whew. Sure glad for this cooler weather,” she’d say. “Lordy Lordy. It’s been hot, girl.”
She’d take a swig from her bottle of Diet Pepsi, the one she shouldn’t be drinking, and sit back on that same glider Grandma and used to sit on and look out over the green hills, the dirt road weaving between them.
“Sho is purty today, ain’t it?” She would ask, exaggerating her southern accent for fun.
“Sho is,” I’d say.
Together we’d look out over the fields, my dad’s garden, the children chasing each other, the dog chasing them, the cat lounging on the deck railing and we would sigh a contented sigh.
I’m seeing ghosts today because they’re all gone – Grandma, Dianne, even the cats. But somehow it’s like they’re still there – the shape of them – the feel of them – the sight of them out of the corner of my eye.
Sometimes it’s like they’re still there – on the fringe of it all, the chaos of life, the struggles, the joys, just sitting on the glider, rocking it back and forth, enjoying the cooler weather, never fully gone; wisps of a reality I’ll touch again one day.
Sunday Bookends is my week in review, so to speak. It’s where I share what I’ve been up to, what I’ve been reading, what I’ve been watching, what I’ve been listening to and what I’ve been writing. Feel free to share a link or comment about your week in the comments.
Our adult cat Pixel has a nightly routine where she jumps up on the edge of the bathroom counter and waits for one of us (me) to turn the faucet on for her so she can drink water out of it. She has been doing this for a couple of years now. Her routine has been thrown off, however, since we adopted the new kitten (Scout) about a month ago.
We close Scout in the bathroom at night to keep her from hurting herself and to protect her from Pixel, who likes to slap Scout around if she gets too close. I still tried to keep Pixel’s routine by letting her into the bathroom for a drink before we put Scout to bed, but instead of drinking Pixel would sit on the counter watching Scout play on the floor below and growl. I’d finally toss Pixel out and she’d swish her tail at me and then proceed to glare at me from the hallway while I slept.
This past week Pixel started walking in the bathroom before we closed the door for Scout, yowling at Scout but then jumping up on the counter to actually drink from the faucet, reclaiming some of the routine she had before Scout. Incidentally, the water has to be turned on to just the right flow for her to drink from it. If it is too fast or too slow she sits back and looks at me through narrowed green slits until I tap the handle and get the flow right.
Unfortunately Pixel doesn’t want to leave her spot when she’s done drinking now. She’d rather sit and watch Scout and growl warnings at her. But I need her to leave because otherwise she might eat Scout when we are asleep. So, I try to carry her out of the bathroom, which is hard lately because she’s gotten so fat that we are wondering if some of the other neighbors are feeding her when she’s outside pouting about the new addition to the family. Or maybe she ate one of the neighborhood cats. We don’t know but she’s gotten large.
For the first week we had Scout, Pixel wouldn’t even let me pet her and spent the majority of her days outside, scowling at us from the backporch like a teenager.
Now she at least comes into the house for part of the day and allows me to pet her again. She has even returned to sleeping at the bottom of the bed (an aside: she snores). Hopefully she will eventually accept Scout or at least stop slapping her in the head when Scout tries to sniff her.
What I’m Reading
I guess the theme for this week is cats because in addition to our “cat drama” I also noticed a paperback on my shelf that I had never read: The Cat Who Had 14 Tales by Lillian Jackson Braun. It is a collection of short stories about, well, cats, obviously.
Braun is the author of The Cat Who . . . mystery series so of course she would write a collection of short stories about cats. They are really entertaining and cute stories. I’m sure it is available at local libraries or on Kindle as well.
On the other side of the spectrum I am still reading the first book in the Longmire series by Craig Johnson and enjoying it so far. It’s a series about a slightly unconventional sheriff in a rural area of Wyoming. It’s also been made into a show on Netflix.
We are also still reading The Bottle Cap Lady by John Spier from My Life With Gracie each night before bed. Little Miss has been playing hard this week with the temperatures being so nice and mild so we haven’t gotten too far in the book. She’s been passing out in exhaustion about five minutes into the reading. We’re going to try to start earlier the rest of this week.
Up on the reading list next is some lighter fare with The Secret Life of Sarah Hollenbeck by Bethany Turner. I started this one a couple of months ago but got distracted with a couple of other books, not because I didn’t like the book, but because I have the attention span of a gnat sometimes when it comes to books.
What I’m Watching
I asked my husband if we were going to go to a fish fry near our house Friday night and he said “Nah. I’d rather stay home and watch TV with you.” That’s when it hit me. I’d made him watch a couple episodes of Virigin River with me on Netflix and now, even though he’d made fun of it for using evey trope known to girly/CW shows, I had gotten him hooked on it.
Me: “I got you hooked on my girly show didn’t I?”
Him: “Sadly, yes.”
Ha! Love it. In all all honesty, though, we’ve spent most of the episodes making fun of some serious plot holes and the over use of romance novel-like tropes. I also had to confess to him that I fast forwarded a lot of the later episodes because they were a bit cringe-inducing and the main character was driving me crazy by telling another main character he needed counseling for his PTSD when it was clear she also needed counseling.
It was also hard for us to watch scenes with a character named Connie because she reminded us so much of a family member who has caused us all a lot of trauma over the years. We would both visibly shudder when she came on screen and my husband said he was certain he “smelled sulfur and ozone” at the sight of her. I took that to mean she had come from the depths of hell like the family member of ours clearly has.
I unfortunately watched Nights in Rodanthe one day this week. Yikes. When will I ever learn? I very rarely like Richard Gere movies but here I was, trying it again. Honestly, I don’t think playing an arrogant surgeon was a stretch for Mr. Gere. If anyone is reading this and is a fan of this movie, I’m sorry. It actually wasn’t a horrible movie but [SPOILER ALERT] I prefer happier endings for movies. That’s all I’ll say about that. I will say, however, that the acting, of course, was very good. Richard Gere is a very good actor, as is Diane Lane. And I do have to admit that the story was a good one as well. (I should probably insert here that I’m not a fan of Nicholas Sparks so that may be why I didn’t enjoy this movie .. even though I didn’t realize until later it was based on one of his books.
I’ve been listening to a few worship songs this week, but I really need to listen to more. Here is one my favorites:
For the past year or so I’ve fallen asleep listening to a podcast on Apple that features episodes of an old late 40s early 50s American radio/TV show called Our Miss Brooks. The show started on CBS radio in 1948. It was about a high school English teacher, Miss Connie Brooks, who somehow always seems to end up in a misadventure She’s in love with the biology teacher, Mr. Phillip Boyton, who is completely clueless. She rents a room from Mrs. Davis who is also clueless and absent-minded.
Her boss is Principal Osgood Conklin, who is obnoxious and gruff. Other characters are Walter Denton, a high school student who gives her a lift to school because her car is always broke down; Harriet Conklin, Mr. Conklin’s daughter and Walter’s girlfriend; Stretch Snodgrass, a space-cadet jock; and Daisy Enright, the other English teacher in the school who is Connie’s rival for Mr. Boyton.
I did see a clip of the show on YouTube one time and from what I could tell it was super, super low budget. The writing, however, is pretty good and while some of it doesn’t hold up all these years later, the majority of the humor remains on point. Listening to it takes my mind off the stresses of the day and keeps my brain from wandering to various topics about various issues that are usually completely out of my control.
What’s been happening besides cat drama
Our weather finally broke last week, or at least briefly. The cooler temperatures were such a welcome blessing. Not feeling sweaty and light headed from the humidity was certainly welcome. It’s odd but I’m actually looking forward to Fall and being able to curl up under the covers with a good book. I say it’s odd because I once dreaded Fall since I knew it meant winter was coming and I’m not a huge fan of the cold and clouds of winter.
As I’ve gotten older, though, I’ve started to hate the heat. I can barely tolerate it, so I eagerly welcome Fall to get a little break from the hot weather.
We had two days in the mid-80s and during one of them I pulled the sprinkler out for my daughter while my son went on a camping trip at my parents’ with my dad and a friend. My daughter and I also pulled some carrots and tomatoes out of my slowly dying garden. This summer has been hot and dry for the most part and our gardens and backyards are showing the damage.
Our summer hasn’t been super exciting but we’ve had some fun family moments and fun growing our garden, etc. I thought I’d share our summer so far in photos. I actually meant to post this in July and here we are — almost at summer’s end.
I’ve probably shared most of these photos in other posts, such as my Sunday Bookends posts where I share my photos of the week, but I thought it might be nice for some of you to simply see photos and escape all the drama of the world for a change.
You can see my daughter with the progression of her hair in these photos and I have to say I like it a lot better shorter. It’s easier to maintain too.
I ended up in a TobyMac YouTube spiral Sunday and it was amazing. It was the most relaxed and at home I had felt in awhile. It fit in perfectly with my social media detox (full disclosure – I have popped on Facebook once or twice to ask a couple questions in groups I am in and I went on Instagram to apologize to two authors for not yet reviewing their books after they had agreed to review mine. I have not, however “scrolled” any timelines and that’s been so refreshing! Oh wait – I briefly scrolled my dad’s timeline while I was eating some lunch at their house but was so horrified with the nastiness there I quickly remembered my detox and closed the iPad cover.)
Back to the real reason for this blog post: For those of you who don’t know who TobyMac is, he is a Christian rapper/singer/musician who originally started out with the Christian rockish/rap/pop band D.C. Talk.
As I listened to all those TobyMac songs Sunday a thought hit me – Toby’s music has been the soundtrack of my life since junior high school. His music has been there through the highs and the lows. It’s lifted me when I’ve been down or kept me up when I was already joyful.
I first discovered Toby around 1990 DC Talk and the album Nu Thang. I picked it up (a cassette! Gasp!) at the Christian bookstore at the local mall (two things we don’t have many of anymore) and popped it into my walkman (yes, I am that old). I listened to it the entire hour and a half drive back to our house (yes, we lived that far away from a mall). I ended up being able to catch DC Talk in concert with Michael W. Smith in Hershey, Pa. a year or so later. We were behind the stage and everything was pretty loud, but it was still a cool experience.
I was able to see DC Talk again at Creation, a Christian music festival in Pennsylvania, somewhere around 1995 when their album Jesus Freak came out.
Eventually the band took an extended hiatus and during that time TobyMac started a successful solo career. I have picked up everyone of his albums and I have liked almost every song on every single one of those albums. You know how you sometimes by an album and you think “I like all these songs except … that one.” Well, with Toby I don’t have a “that one.”
Last year his fans mourned with him when his oldest son, Truett, passed away due to a drug overdose. His son had been appearing on his albums in short vignettes or even songs since TruDog (his nickname) was about three years old. We fans were very familiar with him and in some odd way we felt like he was part of our family too.
He was 21 when he died, another victim of drug abuse in this country, which I know broke Toby’s heart. He tried so hard to bring his son back into the fold of his earthly family and the fold of Christ’s family. His broken heart was even more evident in a song he released after Truet’s funeral and in a song called The Real You that he released in an album called The Lost Demos this summer. He wrote The Real You for Truett before he died.
Most of Toby’s music is uplifting and upbeat and definitely energetic, even when he’s dealing with tough subjects.
Because I think you need to hear some positive music right now, I’m sharing some of my favorite TobyMac songs for you to listen to. Just click on one song and Youtube will do the rest and send you down a fun, spiraling path of his music. Maybe you need an encouraging word this week or maybe you simply need a song with a good beat. Either way, Toby has it for you.
*Disclaimer: I have not been compensated by TobyMac or anyone from his management. This post was written of my own free will. *wink* However, if anyone from Toby’s team ever sees this post and wants to send me some merch, I’ll take a couple T-shirt’s, one of Toby’s cool hats for my son and a pair of his cool sunglasses for me. Ha!
Sunday Bookends is my week in review, so to speak. It’s where I share what I’ve been up to, what I’ve been reading, what I’ve been watching, what I’ve been listening to and what I’ve been writing. Feel free to share a link or comment about your week in review in the comments.
What I’m Reading
I’m savoring A Long Time Comin’ By Robin W. Pearson. The story takes place in North Carolina, which I am familiar with since my mom is originally from there. I’ve been reading from it all week but I have had to pause and have a good cry during part of it, not because it is depressing, but because much of it is touching.
I have mentioned this book before but I thought I’d share the description again:
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To hear Beatrice Agnew tell it, she entered the world with her mouth tightly shut. Just because she finds out she’s dying doesn’t mean she can’t keep it that way. If any of her children have questions about their daddy and the choices she made after he abandoned them, they’d best take it up with Jesus. There’s no room in Granny B’s house for regrets or hand-holding. Or so she thinks.
Her granddaughter, Evelyn Lester, shows up on Beatrice’s doorstep anyway, burdened with her own secret baggage. Determined to help her Granny B mend fences with her far-flung brood, Evelyn turns her grandmother’s heart and home inside out. Evelyn’s meddling uncovers a tucked-away box of old letters, forcing the two women to wrestle with their past and present pain as they confront the truth Beatrice has worked a lifetime to hide.
So far I can absolutely relate to Evelyn and somewhat to Granny B. Granny B can be a difficult character to like, in some ways, but I do like her and I am enjoying slowly learning about her, savoring a chapter or two a day. I’m also learning about her seven children, the husband who left the family, and the frayed ties that hold them all together.
Robin’s next book is due in February 2021 and it’s already on the hot new releases for Amazon. I guess that tells you a little about how much people like her first book.
Up next on my list to read:
Above the Fold by Rachel Scott McDaniel and for a complete opposite of Rachel’s book, I’m going to try a Longmire book, The Dark Horse by Craig Johnson, since I’ve watched a few episodes of the show.
What I’m Watching
I’m still watching Father Brown and I’ve also been watching reruns of Benson (the old show with Robert Guillaume), which actually holds up pretty well (other than the keep call black people “the blacks.”). Benson is available on the Roku app on the . . . well, Roku.
What’s Been Happening:
The new kitten is fitting in fairly well, though our resident adult cat still hates her. Pixel, our adult cat, is spending a lot of time outside still, but did let me start petting her again. For the first few days she wanted nothing to do with me, glaring at me from under the table most days. She still glares some, but it’s better and her tail flares less now when she sees the kitten, but she still hisses and growls at her if the kitten dares to get within a few feet of her. We did finally choose Scout for the kittens name and I guess Little Miss has accepted that the kitten will not be called Mittens.
Scout climbs on my chest anytime she wants comfort or sleep which can be very inconvenient at times, like when I need to make dinner or type or well, do anything at all. It was cute at first and it’s sweet she sees me as her comfort but the other night I had to switch her to my husband so I could finish dinner.
This past week was also stock up on stock photography week. I took a bunch of new stock photos to submit to my stock agencies, including Lightstock, a Christian-based stock agency. During that upload I had to ask a question on their chat and Scout ran across the keyboard which led to a humorous exchange with the gentleman I was chatting with, mainly me apologizing for all the extra letters on the keyboard.
You will see some of the photos for stock in my photos of the week. The photos of my son doing school work were set up that way; we haven’t started school yet. We probably won’t start until after Labor Day.
I visited my Dad’s garden this week to grab some kale (he has tons and now I have tons waiting to be cooked) and not only took some photos of the garden, but the sun pouring through the clouds overlooking the property and some of the purple cone flowers at the front of the house.
I don’t know if I will be taking too many photos this upcoming week, at least the first half of it, because it is supposed to be very hot and I hate the heat, or my body does at least. Temps are supposed to decrease later in the week so maybe I will venture out then.
What I’m Listening To
Zach Williams and Toby Mac have been on my playlist lately. For Zach I have been listening to his Chain Breaker album and for Toby I’m listening to his Lost Demos album, which is what it sounds like – demos that he wrote but then never actually made the albums. The songs are very good and of course hold some memories for Toby since a couple were written about his son, who died last year.
Book reviews won’t necessarily be a regular feature here but I’ve read a couple I’ve liked lately and wanted to share in case others are looking for a good distraction. Plus I “met” this author online and thought it would be cool to help her promote her first book. I mean she’s from Pennsylvania and the book takes place in Pennsylvania so she must be cool, right?
First, the Goodreads description of the book:
As 1756 dawns, Isaac Lukens leaves the Pennsylvania wilderness after two years with the Lenape people. He’s failed to find the families of his birth parents, a French trader and a Lenape woman. Worse, the tribe he’s lived with, having rejected his peacemaking efforts, now ravages frontier settlements in retaliation. When he arrives in the Quaker community where he was reared, questions taunt him: Who is he—white man or Lenape? And where does he belong?
Elisabeth Alden, Isaac’s dearest childhood friend, is left to tend her young siblings alone upon her father’s death. Despite Isaac’s promise to care for her and the children, she battles resentment toward him for having left, while an unspeakable tragedy and her discordant courtship with a prominent Philadelphian weigh on her as well.
Elisabeth must marry or lose guardianship of her siblings, and her options threaten the life with her and the children that Isaac has come to love. Faced with Elisabeth’s hesitancy to marry, the prospect of finding his family at last, and the opportunity to assist in the peace process between Pennsylvania and its Indian tribes, Isaac must determine where—and to whom—the Almighty has called him
My review:
To be honest, the prologue to this book made me think I might not enjoy it because the language seemed a little old fashioned. The important words in the previous sentence? Seemed and at first. Because by chapter 1 I realized the use of older language was a way to bring me closer to understanding the characters and their way of life. It wasn’t long before beginning it that I was hooked on the book and having a hard time putting it down. I was on the edge of my seat throughout, wondering what trial or triumph might face the main characters, Isaac and Elisabeth, next.
This book is a romance in some ways, yes, but it is such a sweet, gradual romance that the reader isn’t overwhelmed with sappiness and drama. Much of the romantic nature of the story is over shadowed by the compelling story of the Lenape people through the eyes of Isaac and the story of the Quakers through both Isaac and Elisabeth’s eyes. This isn’t one of those romantic stories where romance is the main focus. Yes, love is the main thread that holds the characters and the story together but it is a love that is deeper than a physical and romantic attraction. It is a spiritual love and an emotional one.
From the beginning of this book I fell in love with the characters, my heart broke for their trials, and my eyes were opened to the struggles faced by this nation’s early settlers and the natives who lived on the land before the settlers ever arrived. I literally wanted to crawl inside the book at times and hug Elisabeth close and then take her away from a world that could be so cruel in the early years of our nation’s founding.
I was never sure what adventure was coming next for Isaac and Elisabeth and I loved that. It kept me turning pages (and kept me up too late at some nights). As a Christian I don’t believe in fate so in this case I believe it was divine guidance that led me to discover Christy’s book. In the first few pages, Christy mentioned a town near where I grew up and now live, which hooked me on the book even more.
I later discovered the author lives in the same state and holds the same love for this state’s local and Native American history in the same way I do. This is Christy’s first book, but I expect to see many more from her in the future and I’m really looking forward to them.
If you’re not already a fan of historical fiction, this book will make you one. She could use some reviews for the book to get it some more attention so if you read it and like it, please leave her a review on Amazon.
Christy is also an editor (copy editing, content editing, line editing, proofreading, manuscript review) and you can find more information about that part of her life HERE.
I hit 500 subscribers to this blog at the end of last week.
On one hand that is pretty cool. On another hand I have a feeling some of those bloggers subscribe because they are looking for me to reciprocate. The issue is that many of those who subscribe never comment here so I have no idea who they are which means I’d probably never subscribe to their blog. I’m old school and think of blogging as a social activity of sorts. We exchange ideas or share a little bit of ourselves and others do the same in the comments.
I’d like to know who you all are, in other words so, please, feel free to introduce yourself in the comments. I love to get to know the bloggers who follow me. It was really nice to have some of you tell me about yourselves last week on the post where I shared about myself and the blog.
For those who are new to the blog, you may have noticed I blog a little bit a lot of things here. I share some posts about my faith (usually entitled Faithfully Thinking), I share fiction (usually on Fridays and sometimes on Thursdays), I share photographs, and I share what I’m reading/watching/doing on Sundays. In other words, I sort of share whatever comes to my mind at any given moment (scary, I know.).
If you are interested in reading some of my fiction you can find link to excerpts from my book A Story to TellHERE and A New Beginning HERE. You can also follow my novels in progress, The Farmer’s Daughter (I’ve been publishing new chapters on Fridays) at the link of the top of the page (or HERE) and Fully AliveHERE.
Welcome to the new subscribers and hello to the old. Glad to have you visiting my corner of the world.
I’m not sure when the last time I introduced myself on here was so I thought I’d do that today.
Obviously, I am a writer, since I have a blog, but I am also a wife and a mom, a photographer and a follower of Christ. I attended college for journalism, earned a Bachelor of Science in it, and worked in small town newspapers for about 14 years, covering a wide variety of events and topics — from visits by former presidents and First Ladies to murder trials to stories about veterans of World War II to the reactions of 9/11. By the end of my time in newspapers I was on a desk job, typing up obituaries of all ages and by my fourth or fifth infant or child obit in less than a month, I knew it was time to move on.
I never got to the jaded status some newspaper reporters get to. Sometimes I wish I had. Going home, hugging your child to your chest, and getting fat on ice cream and fattening foods to try to drown out what you had heard that day or wrote about is no way to live.
I couldn’t compartmentalize wives crying over their sheriff deputy husbands’ murders, a mom losing her 6-year old to the brain tumor he’d fought his whole life (and her losing her life to that same type of rare tumor a few years later), five children dying in a house fire, car accidents, drug over doses, and children being abused.
After years of all that with family drama piled on I think my brain broke a little bit. I feel bad now for the people who got caught in the friendly fire, mowed down by depression that had gripped my heart with ice fingers. Eventually, I ended up staying home with our son while my husband continued to work as a newspaper editor. Somehow, we were able to juggle life on one salary, but it was not and has not been easy. It has been, however, worth it.
I’m still home with the kid, but now it is kids. Just two and I’m fine with that. In the same way I never wanted to be famous, I never wanted a ton of children. Not that I don’t like children. I just liked the idea of one or two, though when I was younger I never thought I’d have children at all. Now one of my main jobs is raising these two awesome children and homeschooling them (for now anyhow).
Because I don’t have a “real job”, I spend my days cooking (and rarely cleaning..I’m so bad at that) for the family, taking photographs of the family (I once tried it professionally but grew to hate it), writing on my blog, and most recently writing fiction in the form of novels.
I don’t have money for an editor, patience to try to query, so I simply write and publish on Kindle Unlimited, knowing there are probably some errors, typos, plot holes, but knowing I enjoy the storytelling side of things and I’m not too worried about having a huge following or readership.
I share stories on my blog as well and enjoy the interaction I receive here.
My fiction is what some might call “hokey” or what others might refer to as “cheesy” but I think sometimes life needs that. I experienced and wrote a lot about the cruddy stuff of life – the murders and death, rapes and fatal crashes or fires when I worked at newspapers. Even though my husband is still in the news business and that’s where I lived for so long, you won’t find me pouring over the news for hours on end or scrolling news sites for the latest tidbit of information.
These days I can barely stomach three minutes before I’m clamoring for the hokey, for the cheesy, for the light story that won’t remind me of all I learned in those years of journalism. I pull away from gritty crime shows, or at least from binge watching them. I crave what highlights the good moments of life, the lovely moments, the romantic moments.
I know all moments in life aren’t like that; I know too well, but I think it’s okay to focus on them as much as we are able.
You might wonder if I am full of myself, since my domain name is my own name, but the truth is that my blog is Boondock Ramblings. I started it 13 years ago but took a break and abandoned the domain name and couldn’t get it back later when I wanted it. Back then I blogged about my son and life in general and was somewhat of a “mommy blogger.”
I made my name the domain name a few years ago when I thought I’d make money at either being a photographer or a writer. Lately, I haven’t cared much about either of those things but it would be a real pain to change my domain address again, so I have kept it as my name. Who knows, maybe it will come in handy if I really do become a famous author one day, even though that is not something I want at all. I like meeting new people on my blog and sharing my writing, but if I had too many followers I’d probably shrink back into my shell where I am much more comfortable.
So, how about you? What’s your story? I’d love to hear it. Let me know in the comments.
