Category: everyday musings

Sunday Bookends: slow summer days, slow reading, slow everything

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Sunday Bookends13 Comments


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’ve Been Up To

I haven’t been up to a ton this week. We did visit my parents a couple of times so we could go swimming since our area was hit with a short heatwave. I think we will also go swimming later today because it is supposed to be in the low 90s (yes, Arizona people.. I know that is not really hot. 😉)

We visited a local farm earlier in the week and ended up with a flat tire but I’m planning a separate post on that for later in the week.


What I’m Reading:

I’m reading very slow these days but am going back and forth between books. I am still reading By Book or By Crook by Eva Gates. I don’t know why I am reading it so slowly other than I’ve been switching between it and A Long Time Comin’ but Robin Pearson the last few days and I also find myself playing with the little one throughout the day and that takes up quite a bit of time. Plus cooking and taking the dog in and out. I’m not cleaning because I’m a huge cleaning failure. My husband is a cleaning success story, however.

What I’m Watching:

I watched a movie called Heritage Falls with David Keith, Coby Ryan McLaughlin, and Keenan Johnson this past week. I was pleasant suprised because it seemed like one of those faith-based independent films and they aren’t always great. This movie, however, was well, written, well-acted, and not predictable or cliche.

It was about a father and son who aren’t having a great relationship and the son is also having a challenging time with his teenage son. To try to mend things between his son and him the grandfather takes them all on a camping trip and during that time all three end up bonding and at least working through some of their issues. It was much more entertaining than I expected and also had me reaching for tissues a couple of times.

I also watched The Fitzgerald Family Christmas which was much different than Heritage Falls in some ways and very similar in others. What was different was the language (much more colorful) and what was similar was it was a movie full of a family talking things out and working through past family hurts involving a father. It isn’t a movie I would normally click on but I needed something different so I tried it out.

Sometimes I find a gem in the list of cruddy movies stream services offer and this week I found two (both on Amazon prime).

The Fitzgerald Family Christmas starred Edward Burns, who also wrote it.

What I’m Listening To:

I’ve been listening to the music my son has been listening to lately and it is interesting to see him developing his own taste in music. It’s nothing like what I expected. On his listening list lately has been John Denver, Smokey Robinson, Al Green, Queen, Marvin Gaye, Hozier, AC/DC, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, and the Grateful Dead to name a few. I’m not fans of all of these but I try to listen to a few of them with him. Maybe I can push some Needtobreathe, George Straight, Marc Martel, TobyMac, and early Mumford and Sons on him this week but I doubt it. He’s not interested in much of his “mom’s music” these days. And I thought my music was “hip” and “cool.” Hmmm..oh well.

What I’m Writing:

I’m still working on The Farmer’s Daughter and shared another chapter this week.

I’m also still working on Fully Alive.

I wrote about visiting an old stone railroad bridge in Nicholson, PA.

Photos from the week

Book Review: Wooing Cadie McCaffery by Bethany Turner

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, What I'm Reading2 Comments

These days it’s nice to have something light to read and while Wooing Cadie McCaffery by Bethany Turner had some serious topics, it dealt with them in a lighter way than most books might have.

The book is definitely Christian, yes, but it isn’t a preachy Christian fiction book. It’s very real, authentic and points out some of the struggles within the Christian faith, especially when it comes to relationships, sex before marriage, and dating in general.

Lest I make this sound like a serious book, however, let me assure you there is some serious humor in this book. Humor and characters you will fall in love with. Cadie is an employee in the accounting department of a sports channel similar to ESPN. Her best friend, Darby, works with her in the same department.

Cadie’s boyfriend is Will Whitaker, a researcher within the company who will eventually become more of a face of the company when he lands a big story.

The book begins with Cadie and Will meeting each other but continues four years later when Cadie has just about given up on Will ever proposing to her. And since he won’t propose she wonders if their relationship has any real future. An incident within them leads Cadie to break up with Will and Will to strive to become the man she wants him to be and “woo” her back. Humor abounds during this process, involving Cadie and Will, their boss Kevin, who is a retired famous NBA player, Darby, and Cadie’s parents.

Cadie is a hopeless romantic, which is part of her problem throughout the book. She seems to think her life will play out like a romantic comedy, but is thrown off kilter when life instead starts to play like a tragedy.

Cadie’s mother is a well-known personality within the Christian world and the host of a show on a church network. There are times Cadie feels like nothing she does is right in her mother’s critical eyes and when she and Will separate she dreads telling her mother about the incident that led to the breakup, afraid her mother will lecture her about her failings as a Christian.

Cadie’s parents certainly don’t make it any easier on Will either, since he feels they’ve already told him he doesn’t measure up for their daughter. Adding to the complication for Will is the fact that the career he always wanted is taking off just as his personal life is crumbling. He’s almost ready to give up the career to win Cadie back, though, and he decides to recreate scenes from some of her favorite romantic movies to do it, which definitely allows for some hilarity to ensue.

This book switches between first and third person every other chapter and at first I found that distracting, but Turner pulled it off by creating an entertaining plot and lovable characters. All of Cadie’s chapters are told in the first person and all of Will’s in the third. This allowed Turner to let the reader see into the mind of each of the characters throughout the book.

For anyone looking for a fun, light ride, with a little bit of emotion tossed in, and who isn’t these days, then I would definitely recommend this one.



Visiting the Tunkhannock Creek/Nicholson Viaduct; one of the largest stone railroad bridges in the world

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings15 Comments

Because we don’t want to travel a lot these days (since the world has lost its’ ever-loving mind) we have been checking out some of our local sites this summer. One of those was the Tunkhannock Creek Viaduct (railroad bridge) in Wyoming County, Pa. The bridge is also called the Nicholson Viaduct because it is located in Nicholson, Pa.

It isn’t like visiting a playground or a water park, but it’s something still worth traveling to see, especially when you find out that it is one of the largest stone railroad bridge crossings in the world. Built in 1912 and open for business in 1915 it is 2,375 feet long and 24 feet wide. It is 240 feet above stream level and 300 feet above bedrock.

As we were driving toward it I could tell the kids and my husband were wondering when we would arrive at it. It had been years since I had been there but I knew there was no way we could miss it by traveling on that road. You can’t miss a 300 foot stone structure that rises above the highway and the little town of Nicholson.

According to the Nicholson Heritage Association, the project used 185,000 barrels of cement which produced 67,000 cubic yards of concrete. About 1,140 tons of steel were used to reinforce the concrete. The bridge was built to endure 6,000 pounds per square foot, since some engines at that weighed 233 tons. The bridge cost $1,735,000 to build.

There were about 500 men who worked on the bridge and less than half of them were skilled laborers. Many of them were farmers who worked on the bridge during the winter or when it wasn’t a busy harvest season. The men worked 24 hours using dynamite, steam shovels, and a cement mixer that was built on site. The bridge was born by the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad, who wouldn’t allow the dynamite to be transported on their railway so the Lehigh Railroad transported the dynamite to Springville and then it was carried the rest of the way by horse and wagon.

There are 12 arches and 10 of them are 180 feet across.

According to the heritage association: “In Theodore Dreiser’s 1916 travel biography, he called the bridge: “A thing colossal and impressive. Those arches! How really beautiful they were. How symmetrically planned! And the smaller arches above, how delicate and lightsomely graceful! It is odd to stand in the presence of so great a thing in the making and realize that you are looking at one of the true wonders of the world.” Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and former President Theodore Roosevelt were among the many people that came to view the bridge.

If you would like to learn more about the viaduct you can visit the site for the heritage association.

We also saw some beautiful scenery as we drove to the viaduct and on the way back we visited a small playground because my daughter was missing playgrounds.

Our cat has no consideration for my mental health

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings11 Comments

Our cat thinks she rules our house.

Well, she sort of does rule it, like any other cat.

She also thinks she can walk in and out of our house anytime she wants.

And apparently she can because she does. A lot.

All of this behavior isn’t unusual for a cat, but it is annoying for me.

See, our cat has no consideration for my mental health.

When she’s out there, wandering our new property, which is near some woods that are inhabited by bears, foxes, raccoons, and who know what else, I sit inside and waffle between hoping she isn’t killed by a wild creature to hoping she dies so I can stop worrying.

It isn’t just that I worry about her. There are others in the equation.

I’ll miss her if she dies, of course. I’m fond of her.

She’s not the most cuddly cat ever but sometimes she climbs on me and shoves her claws into my flesh while she kneads and draws blood, purring the whole time and sometimes she screams at me to put her up by her food and I do and she lets me pet her, and every night she yowls for someone to turn the water on in the faucet in our bathroom and I’m the only one who does it (sometimes my son does actually, but it sounds better to say I’m the only one. ) so I guess we have some sort of connection.

The real issue isn’t only my worry our cat — who we named Pixel when she came to live with us in 2017 — will die. It’s my worry that our cat will die and I’ll have to tell the kids she has died and how she has died.

To explain, the kids and the cat sort of tolerate each other. They aren’t really in love with each other. Still, we’ve all gotten used to her being there – taking up the foot space in our beds, scratching our couch and our kitchen floor, rolling in catnip like a stoner, screaming at 1 a.m., 2 a.m,., 3 a.m., 4 a.m. whatever time she wants because she either wants the water in the faucet turned on, the stool to get up to her food has been moved (we put it up to keep the dog out of it), she wants to go out, or she’s simply . . . a jerk.

See? She’s sticking her tongue out at me. She’s saying “Pfffffbbt. I’ll do what I want. “

So if she gets eaten by a fox or a bear (my daughter keeps reminding me they are mainly omnivores and yes, my 5 1/2 year old uses that word), or mauled by a raccoon, or hit by a car in front of our house, I’ll have to break it to my kids she’s dead.

I’m pretty sure they’ll be sad, and therefore, my cat is acting irresponsibly and not considering my mental health at all.

She definitely was not considering my mental health last Sunday when my son and I realized at 12:30 at night that she wasn’t in the house. We have three doors in our house – a back, a front and a side door. I went to all three doors but no cat, which is unusual, because usually she runs inside at some point, looking for food or water or to simply be a nuisance. This time, though, she was nowhere near the door.

I figured she was probably out exploring and I didn’t want to keep waiting for her.

“My life is not going to be ruled by a cat,” I grumbled, stomping up the stairs.

But I could barely sleep and I have enough trouble sleeping. I slept fitfully, dreaming of our cat being eaten by a bear or fox, or me opening the door and her finally running in.

“I’m not going to be ruled by a cat,” I told myself each time I woke up from a scary dream of her nocturnal demise.

I did finally sleep and in the morning my husband peeked his head in and said “Have you seen the cat?”

I informed him I had not and told him of my nightmares.

“Whatever,” he said. “If she wants to live outside, then let her.”

But then, as he was in the shower, I remembered an incident with our family cat Leonardo years ago. Yes, I named the cat Leonardo after Leonardo DiCaprio. He was dropped off at my parents’ barn as a stray and my parents said ‘Do not name him because if you name him, we have to keep him.’ So I had just watched Romeo and Juliette with Leonardo and named the cat Leonardo and my parents had to keep him because I named him.

You would think the cat would have liked me the best since I named him and my naming him meant my parents kept him, but no, he did not like me. He would rarely let me pet him. The only one he did like was my grandmother, who we all lived with at the time. They would sit together on the porch and he laid on her lap while she caressed him. She wasn’t a cat person so this was a fairly unusual thing for both of them. Unusual and touching.

Anyhow, my mom insisted: “I will not be out there yelling ‘Leonardo!'” But when Leonardo went missing one week, there she was out on the deck yelling “Leonardo!” Leonardo didn’t come back for three days and they decided he’d been killed by one of the area tomcats or a fox or maybe hit by a car and laying somewhere. That’s when my dad went out to their grainary (which used to store grain, but just stores garden equipment now) and a very skinny, very scared Leonardo ran out.

I didn’t feel like getting out of bed so I texted my husband (I know. So sad.) to check for her in the garage before he left. We aren’t parking our cars in the garage yet because we still have some of our boxes from moving in there. He texted me back that the lost had been found and later that night told me he heard her yowling before he even opened the door.

I will say, Pixel was a lot more affectionate with me that day, rubbing her head against me, laying on me, licking me. And she didn’t rush back outside that day either. She spent most of the day asleep on our bed upstairs.

Despite her affection, I could tell she had no concern for my emotional well-being and that I had been worried about her. I could tell it even more when she ran out of the house again the next day when I was letting the dog out, but I’ve decided that since she has no consideration for my mental health, I’ll stop having concern for her physical health — unless she doesn’t show up again, of course.

The little garden that might actually grow. Maybe. We’ll see.

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings25 Comments

I don’t have a ton of hope for my garden to excel this year, but a few things are popping up at least. I don’t think the soil we bought from a local place in the beginning of the summer to fill the raised bed was very good because the plants in it are growing very slowly or not at all while anything I planted in the actual soil in the backyard (in the space my dad rototilled for us) is growing fast.

People kept giving me tomato plants but I don’t have room for them in the garden so I planted them in pots and they’re starting to take off. I have a feeling we might have a lot of tomatoes this year. What I am really hoping for is a lot of summer squash because we can freeze that throughout the year. I also hope the butternut squash yields a bit so we can use that for butternut squash in the fall.

My green beans are definitely struggling. One row is coming up but the other one isn’t really growing at all. My dad left a pathway between the two beds and either I or Little Miss dropped some lettuce seeds there so lettuce is growing in what was supposed to be my path. I am not really sure when to pick it but I think I am going to pick a few leaves today or tomorrow and toss it in with my salad for lunch.

I plopped four broccoli plants in the one bed and they look healthy but I don’t know if they will grow actually broccoli or not. I have very little hope for the carrots. Only one tuft of the three rows I planted is actually sprouting at this point.

I gave up on the Swiss Chard. It wasn’t growing at all. Instead of growing, it shrunk and turned yellowish. I think I transplanted it too late in the season so I dug it out and replaced it with the basil and cilantro I had in another container.

I also have a zucchini plant that is trying its best to grow from an old seed my dad gave me. We will see if it can make it or not. Right now my goal is to remember to shut the gate to the garden so the little rabbits that have been hoping around don’t hop in and get my lettuce or other plants. My dog chases them when she sees them but she has little legs so she usually can’t catch up to them.

Dogs in this area aren’t allowed to chase deer (if hunters see a dog chasing a deer they will shoot the dog) but I wish she could chase the deer that is eating my hostas plants in front of the house. That deer seems to only come out at night, though because I’ve yet to catch her in the act. I double checked with my neighbor that it could be the deer and she confirmed that the deer do eat the Hostas each year. I plan to Google and see if there are any natural ways to deter the deer from doing that.

I did catch a pretty little young doe at the back of the house earlier today. She looked at me with wide eyes, chewing grass while I calmly told her, from about 30 feet way, that I’d like her not to eat my Hostas in the front of the back of the house. She didn’t look too concerned and finally trotted away. My dog was standing next to me but she was completely distracted and somehow missed the entire exchange.

Some guard dog she is. She can warm off the bunny rabbits, but not the Hostas eating doe who seems to think she’s part of the family now.

Throw Back Thursday: How Children Remind Us We Are Free

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings18 Comments

I wrote this one in 2017, so my daughter was about 3 and teaching me some important lessons in my “old age.” I thought I’d share it today for Throwback Thursday.



She is drawn to mud puddles like a moth to flame.

Like a horse to water.

Like a fly to poop.

Like me to chocolate.

She was drawn to it that day and I let her – even though she was wearing a new cute, light pink dress and I had a feeling it would end up splattered with brown within a matter of seconds.

Still, I love the idea of children being allowed to be children and of me being able to photograph it.

She started by stepping in the water in one part of the gravel parking lot, standing with the murky brown liquid covering both her ruby red slippers with the sparkles – the slippers she had picked out six months ago on a shopping trip for basketball shoes for her brother.

She’d been drawn to those slippers too. She put them on and said “these mine,” and left her old shoes in the floor and walked toward the exit.

When those slippers were covered in water on this day she smiled, or rather smirked, and started to step in each little pool of muddy water with a low chuckle of delight. Soon she was running through the puddles and asking me to do the same.

It was a familiar scene. She’d done the same two days earlier and we had run in the ankle deep water in another parking lot and laughed as we ran.

People smiled at us as they walked by on their way to the local clinic. I think they wanted to run in puddles too.

On this day I ran again with her because that’s why God gives us children – to remind us how be free, that we are free in Him.

Free to splash in puddles.

Free to not care what anyone else thinks.

Free to remember who we really are.

Children remind us that sometimes we need to stop and feel the water squish into our shoes and between our toes and then we need to giggle and see how much mud we can splatter up out of the puddle and all over our clothes.

Children remind us to climb a tree because – why not?

Children remind us that pushing a cart across a parking lot as fast as you can and then jumping on the back of it and riding it to your car is – well – really fun.

Children remind us to be distracted by the way the sun hits the sunflowers in the fields and the butterfly fluttering among the cattails by the pond.

Children remind us how nice it is to hold someone’s hand when you walk across the street.

Children remind us that sometimes we need to let go and simply be alive.

Her brother jumped across the puddle and landed on his feet.

She jumped across the puddle and landed on her rear in the middle of the puddle.

And she laughed and I had a good feeling she flopped in the water on purpose.

Who will show me to stop and laugh in the puddles when my children are older?

Who will remind me it’s ok to not be serious all the time?

Who will hold my hand when I cross the street?

Who will whisper as I walk across a park “I love you, mama?” leaving me with that funny feeling you get in your chest right before you cry?

Why do we forget how to laugh, to splash, to play as we grow?

Why do we forget to live instead of just exist?

The day I met my great-grandfather’s sister’s great-grandson when he came to sell me air conditioning

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings12 Comments

Our town is small, as I’ve mentioned before. Not only is our town small, our whole two county area is small. Let me tell you how small.

A few weeks ago a guy came from a town about an hour from our new house to talk to me about the possibility of installing ductless air conditioning and as he got ready to leave he handed me his business card. His name looked very familiar and I immediately knew why.

A couple months before his visit I had been packing to move to this house and I found a letter sent to me about 20 years ago (I know, I’m old) when I worked at one of the local newspapers (I started when I was 10. Wink.).

The letter was from a man who recognized a name I mentioned in one of my columns. The name belonged to my great-grandfather’s sister Molly Grant Manley. The man who wrote me was one of her grandson’s.

Molly

When the air conditioning man handed me his card, I saw his last name and realized he was related, somehow, to the man who wrote me the letter because his name was included in the letter. Long story short, the man who wrote me the letter was this man’s great-uncle and his great-uncle and grandfather were the grandsons of my great-grandfather’s sister. This man’s was named after his great-grandfather, who was a former bank president and well-known in his community.

I wrote a column mentioning Molly because sometime in the early 1900s Molly used her new engagement ring to carve her name in the window pane in a window at her parent’s, or brother’s home. That home was where I grew up and the window was still there when I was a child. We were often warned not to break the window because it was a family heirloom. It wasn’t uncommon for my mom to call outside to my friends and me: “Go throw that ball somewhere else, please. You might hit Molly’s window!”

Somehow Molly’s window survived all those years with children throwing balls and playing outside it. It even survived my dad almost shoving a rake right through it . Luckily he only hit the storm window that was installed in front of it.

When my parents moved out of the house and in with my grandmother across the creek they gently removed the window, wrapped it up in a thick blanket and took it with them. It’s now stored behind my grandmother’s safe.

While the ac man (hmmm, maybe I should call him my distant cousin from now on?) was here I showed him his great-great grandfather’s discharge papers from the Union Army which all of the grandchildren of my grandmother was given a copy of several years ago after she and I discovered the original under her bed. Grandma knew the document was there but didn’t really realize what it was until we unfurled it and read it closely.

Molly is listed as Mary on the paper but from what we understand she was always referred to as Molly, not Mary.

I can’t help wondering what type of personality Molly had to have to decide to carve her name in a window with her diamond ring. I always imagined she must have been pretty spunky and fun.

My distant cousin had to head back to work, I had to tell him later we can’t afford his system this summer (hopefully next) but he said his family was going to be very interested in my information about Molly.

Now that I think about it, I’d be interested in some information from them about the woman whose name was almost literally engrained into my childhood. Hopefully, we can connect someday soon and exchange what we know about our common ancestors.

For now, most of what I know about Molly and her husband is on the website for the Pennsylvania Apple and Cheese Festival because it is held at the farm they lived on all those years ago.

Looking at her husband’s photo and reading on that he died some thirty years before her in 1935 and that she was 92 when she died, my creative brain is also sparking and I’m thinking a story based (loosely of course) on her life might be fun to write someday. We will have to see.

(P.S. Molly’s husband looks a lot like our AC Man. Of course, that is his great-grandfather but still, isn’t the passing down of family physical traits interesting?)

The Joy is being sucked out of everything

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings11 Comments

Is it just me or is the joy being sucked out of everything anymore? I mean everything.

I used to enjoy photography groups online but then suddenly, if you weren’t photographing this or that you were wrong. Now it’s if you dare to photograph a black person and you are white, you are wrong. I kid you not. That was the directive in a group I was in and left because good grief! Can we stop trying to control everyone else and take the joy out of everything.

I don’t share my photography online anymore and I’ve abandoned Instagram because I’ve watched too many photographers bullied for how or what they create.

Someone is always offended.

Someone is always pointing out what they think someone else is doing wrong.

Someone always wants to prove they are superior to someone else because they think one way or another.

It’s even spilled into the churches.

I’m quite fed up and am tired of being told how to create, how to eat, how to talk, and I am certainly over being told how to think.

People, seriously, stop sucking the joy out of everything. Please.

Stop overthinking.

Stop overthinking for other people at least.

Photograph what you want.

Sketch what you want.

Create what you want.

Write what you want.

Believe you want.

And, please, don’t tell others how to do any of those things.

Focus on your own life and move the bloody heck on.

Throwback Thursday: I didn’t want to let go

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings10 Comments

I really like Mama’s Empty Nest’s idea of sharing old posts each Thursday so I’m doing what any good blogger would do and stealing the idea from her. Haha! Seriously, I probably won’t do this every week. I am thinking once a month instead.

I thought I’d share this post from about two years ago when my Aunt Eleanor passed away.

I think what I will remember most about Aunt Eleanor are her hands.

I remember those hands holding thread and a needle and pillows or quilts she just made. I remember those hands gluing buttons to frames, cutting out patterns, pinning needles in place for her next project. I remember those hands holding stacks of family history she had just typed up.

I remember those hands laying a flower on her mother’s, my grandmother’s casket.

I remember the first time I noticed the tremor in those hands and wished I could hold those hands and make that tremor go away.

I remember one of the last times I held those hands, how warm they were, how firm the grip despite all her body was fighting. We were in the nursing home where she had been living for several years. Parkinson’s was making her body and mind weaker.

I told her something I didn’t say much to her or my grandmother when I was younger, simply because they were a family who didn’t say it as much in words as they did in actions: “I love you, Aunt Eleanor.”

“Oh, sweetie I love you too,” she said and she held my hand even tighter and we sat there for several moments in silence, the TV on the wall blaring the news or the weather channel, I can remember which.

I don’t think she wanted to let go. I didn’t either.

I wasn’t sure she even remembered who I was that day but looking back it didn’t matter if she did or didn’t recognize me or even if she thought I was my mom, since some days she called me by her name. All she knew was love – that she felt loved, that she felt love for me and that at that moment the room was full of peace.

The day Mom called to tell me Aunt Eleanor was gone I thought about how much I hadn’t wanted to let go that day.

A week later when I drove by the nursing home I realized I still didn’t want to let go.

“You know, I really miss her,” My Aunt Doris, Eleanor’s sister, said to me last week when we visited her for her birthday. “”We don’t realize what we have until it’s gone, do we?”

I agreed and we sat there a couple moments in silence but then it was time to leave and head back to our home in Pennsylvania. I left Aunt Doris there, in her chair by the window, thinking about her sister. My kids, dad and I, got into the car. We drove down the road and we thought about Eleanor too.

We missed her and I wished that I could hold those hands one more time.

My aunt Doris and aunt Eleanor when they were children and it looks like they are in the driveway at their grandparents’ home, which is where I grew up.