Category: Randomly Thinking

Randomly Thinking: A few random thoughts about spoons and other things

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Randomly Thinking7 Comments

I have no idea why it has taken me so long to write a Randomly Thinking post but here I am, finally compiling my random thoughts and happenings into a blog post.

Enjoy the randomness.

A few months ago, my mom called to tell me that one of the women at physical therapy had noticed something black in my dad’s ear and felt he needed to get it checked for cancer.

My dad set up an appointment because he has had skin cancer removed in the past.

As he was getting ready to go, he took a shower and was trying his face and ears off when he noticed black on his towel. That’s when it hit him. He didn’t have some sort of new growth in his ear. It was the charcoal soap he’d been using to wash with but it apparently didn’t come off very well.

Crisis averted.

***

Sometimes I mumble my starting word count over and over when I am using a writing sprint program in Discord so I can remember it when I write it down. Later I put in how many words I have when I finish writing and it tallies how many words I wrote in a certain amount of time.

When The Boy hears me mumbling my word count, my teenage son asks if I am whispering my activation code for the chip in my head.

***

Little Miss and I were watching Mary Berry one night and she was cooking duck. The Husband said he wanted to know where we could get duck locally and decided to Google it. He didn’t find a local provider but he found a bucket of duck fat for an insane amount of money.

In response to our shock, Little Miss said, “Well, yeah…it’s a delicacy.”

I have no idea where she learned that word but probably from Mary Berry. I think we’ve watched too much Mary, honestly. My child is picking up her lingo.

***

One day I mentioned the book/story “I Once Knew A Woman Who Swallowed a Fly” and Little Miss called out, “No! I don’t like that book! I don’t like the perspective of being in her stomach. It’s gross.”

Again – is this a normal 8-year-old thing?

***

I told Little Miss one day that I didn’t know how she was still awake after staying up late the night before and getting up early that day.

She widened her eyes, pressed her fingers together and wiggled them.

“I’ve been stimulating my brain all day to stay awake,” she said in a silly, high-pitched voice.”

***

One day The Boy was explaining something to Little Miss and I, then realized we already knew what he was talking about.

 “Sorry,” he said. “I know I don’t need to explain that to you guys. You’re not dumb.”

Little Miss tipped her head sidewise toward me and said, “Well, I’m not. I don’t know about her.”

I said, “excuse me? I’m not dumb.”

“You do dumb things sometimes,” she said.

“Well, we all do that,” I said. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You swear and that shows you’re not very smart.”

Ouch.

I mean. …. She’s right but … ouch.

***

My kids have very big vocabularies and people have told me that they sound like little adults. I’m never sure if that’s meant as a compliment or not. Here is the thing, though, my husband is well-read – much more so than me (I feel dumb around him) and we never talked baby talk to our kids (which isn’t a bad thing). We just talked to them in regular adult speech (within reason) and they just picked up those words and meanings and went from there.

It can backfire, though. One time around 6 years old my son had a friend over and he was talking about Venom from Spider-Man and said that Venom was a symbiote. The little friend scrunched up his face and said, “What’s that?” My son said, “It means he needs another living creature to live off of. Geesh, you really need to broaden your vocabulary.”  

***

The Boy has a job now and has been thinking a lot about his future and about what he will do after he graduates. One night I had to calm him down because he thought next year was his last year of school. I had to tell him he has two years of school left, not one.

This calmed him some and then he said, “I don’t have to have a life goal. I’m 16. Right?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m 45 and I still don’t have a life goal. My goal is just to survive I guess.”

***

Every once in a while my teenage son will have himself a rant about how my mom, and me, tell him to use the regular, everyday spoons when he sets the table and not the soup spoons.

“There is no difference! They are just spoons!”

I reminded him that every day spoons are smaller than the soup spoon.

His response was, “The larger spoon should be the default spoon for all spoons! If you want a fancy spoon for your fancy dinner then make it the same size but less bent!”

I was like, “Honey, one is a one is a teaspoon and one is a tablespoon.”

“They are just spoons!” he screamed. “When our ancestors were carving the spoons from wood they didn’t say this is a soup spoon and this is a regular spoon. They said this is a spoon! An all-purpose tool for putting food in my mouth! There is a smaller spoon and a big spoon. That’s a giant spoon even better for shoveling more food in your mouth!”

He literally ranted for four straight minutes about the spoon drama.

I decided not to mention that there are also serving spoons.

***

The Boy and his friend were recently watching a video that showcased the top one songs through the decades. They were into it, all the way up to the 2000s when my my son says “Aw man it sucks. Those generations got that cool music and we got Cardi B.”

I can’t help but agree.

Here is a random photo of my cat:

And one of my dog:



So there are a few random thoughts.

Tell me one random fact about yourself today.

Randomly Thinking: Children who think they are funny, annoying pets, and other random thoughts

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Randomly Thinking7 Comments

Here are a few random thoughts from my life from the last month or so.

Things have been randomly weird lately. Some of it has been randomly good and some randomly bad. I think I’ll focus on the randomly good since we all need a bit of an uplift these days. If not all, then some, shall we say. Ha!

Anyhooo….Little Miss and I have been doing different things for school this year in addition to our “book learning” and part of that the last couple of weeks is me reading a child-level biography of George Washington Carver to her.

When the weather was nicer, I allowed her to jump on the trampoline while I read to her. This worked somewhat well, but she kept getting distracted by bugs and falling leaves and our pets wanting to join her. I had a bad feeling she wasn’t learning anything, so I finally decided to quiz her.

“Which college did George Washington Carver go to before he went to Iowa State?”

Jump. Jump.

“The Simpsons!!” she sang, referring to the theme song of the animated show I’ve actually never let her watch.

To anyone else, this might prove she wasn’t listening at all, but in fact, this was her cute way of telling me the answer was “Simpson College.”

And she was right.

***

A couple weeks ago, The Husband noticed his avatar on the Disney Plus app had been changed.

“Why am I Thor?” he asked Little Miss, who had changed it.

I’m sure he was hoping she’d say because he’s big and strong.

Instead, she said, “Because you’re brave and over confident.”

Oops.

***

Am I the only one who climbs over or places myself in the oddest positions in bed at night just so I don’t disturb a pet, specifically a cat? I mean, why do we do that? Why do we risk bladder damage instead of throwing a cat off our lap when cats could care less about our comfort. Our youngest cat walks on my chest in the wee hours of the morning, turns herself around a couple of times like she’s a dog and then proceeds to lay herself so her butt is in my face, her tail draped over my head. Yet I make sure not toa move her or disturb her when she’s sleeping. I protect her sleep while she interrupts mine. It’s absolutely ridiculous.

***

Speaking of the annoying aspects of having pets, our daughter has been asking if we can get another kitten or a puppy.

After the many nights of searching outside for the kitten, stressing out and imagining her dead somewhere, I can’t imagine having another creature to worry about. I reminded Little Miss of this again last week after I drove around the neighborhood looking for a squashed cat in the road because it was 10:30 at night and Scout still wasn’t in the house.

When that little annoying furball did waltz up, looking a bit confused why I had been stressed, I, once again, told Little Miss we are not getting any more pets.

***

The Boy’s birthday is next week. Little Miss asked if we got his gift yet. The Boy said he didn’t want a gift. Little Miss said he really didn’t need one anyhow.

“Mom gave you the best gift ever! She gave you the gift of life!”

***

The Boy was talking about some negative aspects of history one night while we were all downstairs. Little Miss said she didn’t want to hear any more depressing parts about history or about people being mean to each other.

“I’m just going to imagine that everyone lived in peace so shut up and let me have my fantasy that everyone gets along.”

I couldn’t help but agree with her.

***

I saw this on Facebook last night:

This was my title: What Was She Thinking? Ten Tips For What Not To Do In Life.

***

My challenge for you today is to shut down your social media and turn off the news, put this on, and read a book:


 Let’s all do a No News November. Do you think we can do it? Or at least an Almost No News November!

Those are my random thoughts. How about you? what random thoughts have you been having?

Randomly Thinking: My cat is a killing machine, 100-year-old women with beer, and home is home

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Randomly Thinking7 Comments

I have no idea why it has taken me so long to write a Randomly Thinking. I kept jotting down thoughts I wanted to add to it and then forgetting to flush them out.

I can’t promise any of these random thoughts will be very exciting, but here we go.

Our youngest cat is a killing machine. This summer she has killed several mice, moles, and at least two birds. There were several days in a row we would walk outside and find a dead rodent on our back porch and one day we even watched her hunt one down by the garage and carry it off in her mouth, very proud of herself. I might have allowed her to carry off the creature and eat it, except she didn’t do that. She decided to torture the poor thing by letting it get away for a few moments, then putting her paw out to stop it.

The little thing even got up on its hind legs and yelled at Scout who just looked at it first with wide eyes and then heavy eyelids as if it was boring her.

I told The Boy she was laying there with this mouse while the mouse screamed at her and it’s like she’s playing mental games with the mouse. It’s as if she’s saying “Come, sit with me. Let’s have dinner and a conversation. Oh. And just so you know, you’re dinner.”

In the end, I stepped in and we rescued the mouse by carrying Scout inside and leaving her in until the mouse could escape.

The Boy saw a dead mouse in the road  a day later and said it was probably the same mouse we had rescued. Oh well. We tried.

****

Speaking of cats, on a whim I uploaded a video to Instagram of my cat climbing out of my dresser drawer because she likes to hide in there.

Over 7,000 people viewed the video and more than 200 people liked it in less than two hours.

I said that was ridiculous, considering all the effort I put into other videos or posts I put up there and they get maybe four likes.

Little Miss shrugged. “Well, cats are cute.”

Yeah. She has a point.

***

One night before bed I was reading the Mitford Bedside Companion and I read an excerpt with the hairdresser Fancy Skinner to Little Miss.

Sections with Fancy include Fancy simply talking very fast and never letting Father Tim get a word in edgewise. When I was done with the paragraph, Little Miss looked at me and said,  “I’m pretty sure that’s going to be you when you get old.”

***

I looked up after using the portable restroom at a restaurant near us (they have it left over from when they could only offer outside dining) and this was looking at me from the window of the storage shed.

***

I do miss covering feature stories sometimes and get jealous of the funny people my husband meets in his job. A month or so ago he had to attend a birthday party for a woman who turned 100. It was at a nursing home. The niece of the woman said the woman had good days and bad days cognitively speaking.

That’s when the “birthday girl” called across the room to one of her guests, “Hey! Why are you wearing black?! I’m not dead yet!”

“Today,” the niece said to my husband with a smile. “She’s having a good day.”

This was further proven when the woman called out, “Where’s my beer?”

A family member told her they were getting it and would pour it into a cup for her.

“Forget the cup! Just give me the bottle!” the woman called.

May we all have as much fun at 100. Thought I’ll be doing with without alcohol since I am not an alcohol drinker.

***

Incidentally, this was the third person he’d done a story on in our area who had turned 100 in a span of about two weeks.

I once wrote a news story about a woman who turned 101 and subsequently did a follow-up story or photo on her for the next several years. She died in 2006 at the age of 109.

***

Little Miss and I were at Wendy’s one day and I saw a mouse trying to climb up the tire of the truck in front of us.

It made me think of Beverly Cleary’s Ralph the Mouse who liked to ride motorcycles. I wish I could have grabbed a photo in time.

***

Sometimes I wonder if Little Miss is really my child. She’s much too like my husband.

I’m not really into keeping things neat and organized (though I wish I was) like The Husband is.

Little Miss takes after him.

For example, recently The Husband opened up a new Swiffer duster and Little Miss’s whole face lit up. She grabbed it and ran toward the TV. “I can finally dust under the TV!”

I watched half in amusement and half in horror as she swept that dust away.

***

When we were trying to sell our house two years ago, we came home after a showing one day and found a pair of socks in the middle of the otherwise clean floor.

We couldn’t figure it out because the house had been spotless when we’d left.

The only one home had been our cat Pixel. After that more socks started to show up in the hallway and on the steps. After we moved, I again found socks on the stairs.

I knew Pixel was dragging those socks out but couldn’t prove it. That was until July when I looked out the bedroom door and finally caught her. There she was carrying a sock in her mouth.  I sent a text to The Husband: “I caught Pixel in the act of carrying a sock in the hallway — she carried it like it was either a dead mouse or a kitten so I don’t know if she was being maternal or psychotic.”

***

This summer my neighbor’s grandsons came for a visit from Virginia and Little Miss enjoyed going over to visit and jump on the trampoline with them. One day she also went swimming in their small pool.

She finally came back home, and I said, “Oh, I thought you’d stay over there longer with the boys here.”

She said, “Yeah it was fun to play but home is home.”

Those are my random thoughts for this time around. How about you? Anything random you’d like to share?

Randomly Thinking: My flowers are blooming, weird family stories, and my invisible son

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Randomly Thinking10 Comments

First of all, our flowers are starting to bloom or are blooming. It’s so exciting to see our yard come alive each year. Prepare yourselves for way too many photos of wild roses and peonies over the next couple of weeks. Here are a few until then! (Also, my life is very sad. Watching my wild roses bloom is one of the highlights of my year. It’s close to watching grass grow.)

***

Just before we hung up one night last week my mom told me she’d been reading a book where a man didn’t like crowds because he had PTSD from something. His wife wanted him to go with her to a store so he did and while he waited he went to a bar and started drinking so he didn’t have to think about the crowds.

“Then he had more to drink and then he got home he shot his wife.”

I was like, “Mom! Why are you telling me this! What books are you reading?!”

She continues without answering, “So anyhow, I was thinking about my uncle. You remember me talking about him, right?”

At this point I am trying to figure out what this has to do with the awful book.

“Well, anyhow, I think he had PTSD. They always said he was dishonorably discharged from the Army, but I don’t know the story there. Anyhow, he used to go on these drinking binges and then he wouldn’t drink for a while and then he’d go on another binge. I wonder if that was what happened to him. Maybe he drank to forget what he had seen overseas. Maybe he had PTSD like that man in the book. Well, anyhow, everyone always said he married his niece but he didn’t really marry his niece because she actually was Uncle William’s daughter from another marriage so she wasn’t related by blood and —”

“Mom…seriously, how did we get here? How did this conversation even get here?”

“What? I was just saying that that book reminded me of my uncle and —”

“I appreciate the happy story Mom, but I should go now.”

There is only so much information about my extended family I can take in during one conversation.

***

A woman on Instagram commented a few weeks ago that she kills plants very easily. I left this comment for her: “You’re not alone. A flower threw itself off a shelf when I walked by it in a store one time because it figured it better just kill itself before I got a hold of it and slowly murdered it.”

***

My son says that people forget he is there all the time. He said someone will tell him a story and he’ll say, “I know. I was there. Don’t you remember?”

Or one of us will tell him something we heard and he’ll say, “I know, I’m the one who told you!”

Or a friend of his will say, “I was talking to some friends the other night on the phone and —”

“I know! I was there!!!”

He said his grandfather and dad are always telling him stories that he experienced with them, like he wasn’t there.

I’ve tried to assure him that it isn’t that he is forgettable, it’s just that we are all getting old and we forget a lot, like who was with us when we went somewhere, who we told what, and sometimes even where we are at the moment.

***


 Another day The Boy said to me, “Wait. Wait. This will be funny,” and then proceeded to do something dangerous and stupid.

I told him that are a couple of sentences people say right before the ambulance is called.

One is “watch this.”

The other is, “Wait. Wait. This will be funny.”

***

Here is a corny dad joke from my dad:

I told my dad I’m allergic to Tide laundry detergent a few years ago. If I remember right, he is too.

“My dad always washed in Tide, though,” he told me.

“Oh, did he?”

“Yeah, I mean, doesn’t everyone wash intide? It would be embarrassing to wash outtide.”

***

We were watching Shakespeare and Hathaway and the one actor said he was doing an American accent. “Yeah, it’s American. It’s from Nebraska.”

I said to The Husband, “Oh my gosh. Nebraska. Until he said that I completely forgot we had a state called Nebraska. Whatever happens there anyhow?”

My husband says they grow corn. I’ll have to take his word for it.

***

I was reading with Little Miss the other day and came across the word umbrage. I told her it was a very British word because I couldn’t seem to say it without a very British accent.

Try it. It’s true. You have to say it with a British accent.

***

I finally watched a couple episodes of The Office with my family recently and wow — as a resident of Pennsylvania, that show is creepily accurate about the people of Pennsylvania.

When they go out on sales, I swear I do a double-take and think the people they are talking to might be one of my neighbors or the boss at one of our local companies. I’m not very far from Scranton and have lived here my entire life, so trust me, people in PA really are that down to earth. Sometimes we are a little weird too. *wink*

***

So how about you? What random events have been going on in your life? Let me know in the comments.

Randomly Thinking: Pot photos, horses in the street, and other craziness

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Randomly Thinking7 Comments

When your husband works for a newspaper, it is not unusual to receive photographs or texts others might consider unusual. For example, a month or so ago I looked at my phone and there was a photo of pot (marijuana) in jars waiting for me.   Under it was a photo of bills of various amounts and a handgun spread out on a large table. No explanation was offered for either of them.

This was around the same time we were dealing with some financial strains so I shot back a text to my husband telling him the financial situation would work out, he didn’t need to turn to a life of crime.

Of course, I had a feeling there was something more to these photos, and indeed there was. They were from a press conference my husband was attending in his capacity as a reporter/editor where the police were talking about a group of college students who had been busted for running an illegal pot manufacturing business, as well as possibly some other illegal drugs.

After that press conference, he called me to assure me he had not turned to crime (although all that money spread out on the table was a bit tempting, he told me as a joke). We chatted for a bit because he was stuck in traffic. He thought traffic might be moving slowly because of an accident, but instead, he said to me, “What in the world are all these horses doing in the road?”

I can’t see what is going on obviously so I’m asking, “What’s going on? What do you mean?”

He tells me he’s going to hang up and let me know later and while I’m waiting my mind races through all the weird scenarios which could have occurred. There was an accident with a horse trailer and the horses escaped. There were a bunch of rednecks at a bar whose licenses had been taken away so they had to ride the horses home. I didn’t know.

Turns out the reason for horses riding down the road was much nicer. A local horse farrier had recently passed away and the horses were part of a funeral procession to escort his body to the cemetery. That photograph was much nicer than the one of the illicit drugs and weapons.

****

I was pouring honey into my tea the other day and the kids were watching.

“That’s too much honey,” my son informed me.

I looked at him in confusion. “I don’t know what those words mean. ‘Too much honey.’ I’m confused.”

I then poured some more honey in.  

***

My mom called on a Saturday night and asked if we wanted chicken for lunch the next day (we usually go over there on Sunday afternoons). I said chicken would be fine and she asked if we wanted, chicken breast, drumsticks, or thighs.

I told her any was fine but that our family liked chicken breast.

“We’re breast people,” I said with a mischievous snicker.

Mom holds the phone away from her mouth and says to my dad. “She says her family are breast people.”

She comes back on the phone and says, “Your dad says he’s a thigh man himself,” and then sighs.

Poor Mom. She has to put up with our weird humor.

***

One morning two weeks ago all three of our animals were crowded by the back door, waiting to be let out into the sunshine. I decided to take a photo of them all together so I made them wait. Bad idea because that’s when the older cat reached over and smacked the younger cat.

This resulted in me posting the photos to Instagram stories with some funny captions.

***

Our kitten (who isn’t technically a kitten anymore) has been a killing machine lately. She’s been carrying dead mice and moles to us for a while now. Last week she killed three moles but the week before that she came running up the sidewalk with something in her mouth and at first I thought it was a bird. As she got closer I realized it was a baby snake and about passed out.

She dropped the snake on the pavement and my dad scooped it up and laid it under the pine tree by our driveway to let it die in peace since it didn’t seem to be in very good shape.

I guess Scout wasn’t done with it because she wandered over there a few minutes later to try to finish it off. This resulted in my husband grabbing a shovel, scooping up the snake again (which was hard for him since he hates snakes so much), and tossing it over the bank across the road.

I also took a photo of the snake so we could decide if it was poisonous or not, even though we assumed it was a garter snake, which we have a lot of in this area. As far as we could tell it was a garter snake, thankfully.


***

I felt really nerved up the other day and my husband said, “Shut your laptop. Get off social media and I’m putting Dick VanDyke on for you.”

He knows what helps to calm me.

***

My dad was trying to be deep the other day at dinner and asked me who could hear a tear fall.

I said, “Hank Williams can hear a tear fall in his beer. That’s what he said in that song anyhow.”

Dad sighed. “I was going to say that only God can hear a tear fall but thanks for that.”

Oh. Oops.

***

The Boy and I were recently talking about how much we actually like the cooler weather and are not really looking forward to warmer weather. He likes being able to wear sweatshirts and I like being able to huddle under a blanket while reading a book or watching a good show. Of course I wanted some warmer weather and some green trees but I’m not a fan of sweltering temperatures and muggy days.

He decided that spring is his favorite time of the year while I decided that my favorite seasons are both spring and fall because they aren’t too cold or too hot.

***

So about you? Any random thoughts or events happening in your life? Let me know in the comments.

Randomly Thinking: Talking to cats, losing my mind, memories of Christian music festival

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Randomly Thinking14 Comments

Welcome to my Randomly Thinking post where I ramble about, well, whatever.

***

Recently my daughter was reveling in the fact that she has soft, lovely, young skin. This was after I was lamenting about my old, dry, scaly skin.

“My skin is soft, isn’t it?” she said with a thoughtful expression.

She sighed and rubbed her hands against her cheeks, then said, “Do you know what calms me? Rubbing my hands across the baby-smooth skin of my face.”

Yeah, yeah. Rub it in, kid. Also — enjoy it while you can.

***

Anyone who reads Erin’s blog at Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs probably knows she listens to true crime podcasts, but maybe you don’t know she actually listens to them while falling asleep. I was laughing about this a few weeks ago and she told me, “The people’s voices are so soothing as they say the worst things.”

It totally cracked me up, but my son said he totally understood what she meant because sometimes he listens to similar podcasts, though not quite as dark as what we adults listen to at times.



***

A recent post from The Babylon Bee referencing an old song by the Veggie Tales reminded me of the time I was at a Christian music festival and over 80,000 people (some estimates had it at 100,000) sang Where Is My Hairbrush at the top of their lungs. In case you aren’t familiar with this song, I am leaving a clip of it below.

All of those people singing this child song at the same time was surreal.

There was a guy in front of us who sang it as if he was in an opera, with an amazing voice and all the gestures to go along with it.

Up until that point, I had never even heard of Veggie Tales, let alone the song.

The video was played while we all waited for Amy Grant to come out on the stage. This was shortly after the success of her song Baby, Baby, which by the way I never liked that much.

During her concert, the power actually went out. Eventually, they were able to get the sound back, but not the lights, so she ended up singing by flashlight and candlelight for part of her performance.

***

I went to this music festival, Creation, a few times over my life and always seemed to have a story to bring back with me. One year I ended up with a bladder infection and almost passed out from the heat. I was in pain all the way back home (about three hours) and we had to find a doctor immediately to get me on antibiotics.

 Another year we took a friend and she passed out and she was taken to the first aid tent but then by ambulance because she was extremely disoriented. She was extremely dehydrated and may have had some other health issues because years later she was involved in a horrible accident and could never remember what happened. She suffered massive head injuries, but we do wonder if she might have blacked out before the accident like the day at the festival. She’s doing very well now, by the way. She’s a miracle, quite frankly.

The first year we ever went I lost my first Teddy Bear somehow. I was in the back of a pick up which my dad had stretched a tarp canopy over (it was the 80s, peeps), Dad pulled over to adjust something, and when we got to our campsite (yes, you camped at this festival), my bear was gone. There is a long story after that about meeting my aunt somewhere to conduct a type of drug deal so my grandmother didn’t find out I had lost this expensive bear, but I’ve either told that story here before or I’ll tell it again another time.

One other time I was at the festival with my brother and sister-in-law and their friend, Chris. My sister-in-law disappeared for a brief time and Chris, my brother, and I stood in one place and looked around for her. We couldn’t see her for a long time until Chris said, “I don’t know. Maybe she’s down there somewhere, getting a cold cup of iced tea, fresh brewed, with just a squeeze of lemon and the perfect amount of sugar, wearing a —”  Yeah, Chris has found her and was using a creative way to tell us. That was Chris though, funny, smart, and a jokester. He’s a blog post in himself, but not by me, by my brother who knew him best. Hint, hint, brother.

***

A couple of weeks ago I was in the kitchen when my podcast stopped playing while I was cooking dinner. I looked at the phone and it said our Wifi was out. I went to the living room to investigate. Soon my children were standing next to me as we all stared at the modem, which was dark.

We were like lost little puppies without our internet. It was very sad, actually.

There is usually at least a power button blinking on the modem. Not this time. The modem looked dead.

We pondered this predicament for a few moments and then I looked at the power strip behind the TV. It was also dark. It usually has a glowing red light.

I pointed this out to my son who turned it back on and just as I started to wonder how it had been turned off, I looked up to see Pixel, who I also call Fat Cat, watching us from the windowsill. I knew then how the power strip had been turned off. She had apparently put her foot there when she jumped up into the front window.

Our investigation seemed to entertain her and sometimes I wonder if she does this stuff on purpose.

***

A friend of Little Miss’s, who is a year older, says the most interesting things sometimes. For one, she loves to be outside, loves to have fun, and is full of a confident spirit that matches Little Miss’s, which either strengthens their friendship or creates friction between them.

I told the little girl we had a playground near us, but it wasn’t very exciting. It’s very small without many things to play on.

“I don’t care what kind of playground it is,” she told me. “It doesn’t have to have a lot of fun things. I’ll make it fun.”

I wish more of us adults had her attitude.

***

I have been forgetting things lately, mainly because I am distracted when I am doing them. Or maybe I still have Covid-brain. I don’t know. Anyhow, one day my husband placed the ibuprofen on the counter in front of me but a few minutes later I went to the medicine cabinet to retrieve it. He told me it was in my purse, where I had tossed it. I didn’t even remember doing that. Well, I vaguely did, but I was also talking at the same time and thinking about the fact I had to get our daughter to gymnastics on time. It was also PMS time (I know. Too Much Information.)

Later that night my daughter asked me to open a water bottle. Apparently, I did and handed it back to her but five minutes later I told her to get a water bottle so I could open it for her. She reminded me I already had.

Two nights later I reached for my toothbrush, brushed my teeth, and went into my daughter’s room to read to her. The Boy came in a few minutes later and asked me why his toothbrush was wet.

“Did you use my toothbrush?” he asked.

I told him I used mine but when I went in to look, he was right, his toothbrush was wet and mine was dry. By this time, I was starting to freak out a little. Was I losing my mind?

I’m still not sure and it is possible. I do have hormone and thyroid issues. For all of the incidents, though, I was pretty distracted at the same time I was completing the task.

I told my husband about the toothbrush incident and said I was talking to Pixel, who likes to jump up on the sink and drink out of it before bed, at the time.

“She must have distracted me,” I said.

I said I was asking her if she was going to take a drink or not because I needed to get to bed and while I was talking to her, I was reaching for my toothbrush. I must have simply grabbed the wrong one. This made me feel better because then I could be assured I wasn’t losing my mind. That was until my husband looked at me in confusion.

“You have conversations with the cat?” My husband asked. “I never talk to our cats.”

I shrugged. “That’s why they like me better than you.”

And it’s true — I do have conversations with our cats. Very often, in fact.

They also seem to communicate back with me, even if it is a leg rub or a nose bump or a good, long, hard stare.

Then again, I have been having brain fog issues. Maybe I just think they’re communicating with me.

***

When my son shows me a gaming-related meme, I am torn between telling him I have no idea what the meme means and just smiling and nodding. If I smile and nod at the Gen Z humor, then he laughs and moves on. If I tell him I have no idea what that is referring to, I may be trapped for 20 minutes while he explains to me what the meme means. I usually just smile and nod.

***

Earlier this week, I told my son I thought I might try my hand at meatloaf again for dinner. I’ve only tried to cook it once before — three years ago — and apparently the experience was so traumatizing to my son he couldn’t bring himself to admit to me how bad it was until now.

He said it was a hunk of meat with crushed bread inside and no flavor. It was so awful he couldn’t eat it, so he took the plate upstairs and hid it under his bed for two days until I left the house and then dumped it in the trashcan. I asked him why he didn’t just tell me, and he said it was because he didn’t want to hurt my feelings.

He honestly looked quite pained telling me this story. He had backed himself against the wall and was rubbing his face, as if the memory of the wretched meatloaf had left him scarred for life. I was waiting for him to hug himself while rocking back and forth.

“Okay, then,” I said, turning to go back down the stairs. “Tonight we’re having tacos.”

***

My son decided he would have stuffed rabbit for Easter dinner this year:

***

I forgot about this hilarious moment from the Fall but found it in some notes this week:

One of Little Miss’s friends tried to call her early one morning, but Little Miss was barely awake. She reached for the phone anyhow. I told Little Miss she needed to be awake before she could talk to her friend, so to take some time to wake up and then answer the call.  Little Miss looked at me for a second, slammed her head off her pillow, face-first, twice, looked back up and me and said, “Okay. I’m ready now. Hand me the phone.

***

Those are my random thoughts and events for the week. How about you? What random events have happened to you recently? Let me know in the comments and maybe I’ll share it in my next post. 😊

Randomly Thinking: Hair in the crack in the wall, wisdom in your teeth, and other random thoughts

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Randomly Thinking8 Comments

Welcome to my Randomly Thinking post where I share random tidbits from my life. Read on at your own risk.

***

There is a crack in the wall at my parents that has grown some and now a part of the wall has chipped off. The last time I looked at it, I noticed there was hair poking out of it.

“Uh, Dad? Did anyone from your family ever go missing?”

Dad sighed. “No. I would assume that’s when they added horsehair to the plaster to make it sturdier.”

Of course, this took me to the internet, not to look for a missing family member, but to read about horsehair mixed in plaster.

So, yes, back in the old days of construction they used horsehair in walls.

According to the National Association of Realtors, plaster walls constructed before the 1950s were “sometimes called “horse-hair plaster” because it was common to mix horsehair into the wet plaster to add strength, and to prevent cracking with minor flexing. Heating and cooling a house will cause plaster to expand and shrink slightly, so the hair helped keep the walls a bit more flexible.”

Huh. So that probably is horsehair in there and not the decomposing body of Great-great-aunt=so-and-so after all. Hopefully anyhow.

***

The crack in the wall made me think of Doctor Who and that first episode with the eleventh Doctor.

***

I have a bit of an issue with those videos popping up all over the internet of the grooms crying when they see their bride coming down the aisles. The romantic in me would love to say it’s because they are so moved by the beauty of their bride they have been brought to tears. Or maybe it is because they simply can’t believe their bride has chosen them. I would also love to say it is because it means he has decided he will devote his entire life to this woman. Really, though? A crying groom could mean anything.

I once watched a groom cry and hoped this would mean he was turning his life around, going to be a better husband than he had been a boyfriend, be a real father to his girls. Instead, a year later he was cheating on his bride, a few years later she’d taken him back and he was still cheating. Then a year after that he was in jail for various offenses.

Eventually, he was divorced, his children adopted by another man, and he was in jail for manufacturing and trafficking meth. Sometimes tears mean everything. Sometimes they mean nothing at all.

I still choose to think the crying of the men in most of those videos means something, though, and that something is very special. The romantic in me isn’t dead yet.

***

Can’t remember if I ever shared this photo of my shocked pickle on here. It looked this way right before I ate it.

***

I don’t know why this was on my mind last week (gee, I have no idea why) but I was thinking about when I was in elementary school and our teachers had us do drills where we had to hide under our desks in case of a nuclear attack. Apparently, they believed that those old metal desks along with our trapper keepers placed over our heads we’re going to protect us from the apocalypse. We also had to do tornado drills where we went into the hallways and crouched down together so if a tornado ripped the roof to our little school off, we’d all go up in the air together, I guess.

***

I spent the one day a couple weeks ago, editing Beauty From Ashes more and finding all my overused words or phrases. For example, my characters have eyebrow and chest problems. Their eyebrows are often “furrowed” and their chests are always “constricting.” Oy.

I went in and changed a lot of those, if not for the readers’ sake then for mine. I’m also removing a lot of “sighs”, “eye rolls” and “nodding moments.”

***

Little Miss just told me she wants to keep her wisdom teeth when she gets older because “I think that’s where your wisdom is, and it keeps you from talking stupid later.”

I suggested wisdom is found in a person’s brain instead and she said, “Maybe, but I think there is a little wisdom in both places.”

I told my dad her theory and he said, “Well, I still have my wisdom teeth and I still say stupid things all the time so I don’t know . . .”

***

I was raised by a very nurturing woman, so it has been a challenge for me over the years to live with men in my house who don’t want to be nurtured when they are sick. If I offer to make them tea or soup or anything I often get rebuffed with, “I’m fine. I don’t need anything. I’m not hungry.”

They walk around the house talking about sore throats or their heads hurting or how they think their nose is going to explode, but when they’re offered some help they deny being sick enough to need assistance. If I don’t pay attention to them, though? Well, then there is simply a lot more sighing and comments about how bad they feel and the cycle starts all over again.

***

On Monday of last week, I went back to that bank where the crazy car accident that I mentioned in a recent Sunday Bookends post. To give you the shortened version, a woman pulled up next to me at the bank, hit her accelerator instead of her brake and drove the car straight into the curb in front of the bank a few times, ripped the car into reverse without taking her foot off the accelerator and the car shot back, past my van, somehow missing it and a stop sign, did two doughnuts, then turned around the right way and slammed into the front of our local newspaper office. Somehow, neither she or anyone else was injured.


I have to admit that I was pretty nervous about going back to the bank two days later to cash a check, but I figure lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice so I should be good. This, of course, is a fallacy that people toss around all the time since this summer a man came into my husband’s newspaper office to tell my husband how he, indeed,  had been struck by lightning twice. Luckily, this did not happen to me and I was able to complete my business and leave without incident.

The ladies at the bank and I still don’t know how the woman avoided my vehicle when she yanked that thing into reverse, and we chatted about that as I cashed my check.


The woman who works there, a family friend, said it was nothing other than “God’s protection on me.” I think she’s right and I’m thankful for it.

***

We finally received some warmer weather this week and yesterday the kids and I went outside, swooping our caps in front of our faces and screaming, “The sun!! The sun!” because we felt like vampires after being inside for so long.

Our animals went out with us and as is common with them all three of them followed us up and down the street. We look like some weird animal trainers or something, the way they follow us up and down. Of course, when I try to get the kitten back in the house (so she doesn’t get hurt or climb up a tree again) she takes off on me. She’s not even a kitten anymore, but I still call her the kitten because she is younger.

***

I’m sure I’ll mention this in my Sunday Bookends post this week (because I really have nothing else very exciting to write about) but this week we went from snow on the ground on Monday and the kids playing in it, to 60-degree temperatures and going for walks with thin jackets. Spring in the north can be so weird.

***

So those are my random thoughts for this week.  How about you? Is anything random going on in your world? Feel free to let me know in the comments.

Randomly Thinking: I couldn’t be a 911 dispatcher, my tea needs more honey, and tomato soup cake

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Randomly Thinking8 Comments

I don’t know about you but I certainly need some silly or funny this week. It’s been a brutal one for me emotionally. Loss and heartache. It took a lot for me to even push through and post this, but sometimes we just have to push through to survive, right? (I know. I’m such a downer this week!)

Anyhow, regular readers know the drill. These are my random thoughts for the month (or two weeks or whenever I get around to writing them). Read on at your own risk, but don’t worry, I tried to keep it cheerful.




A friend recently decided she wanted to go for training to be a 911-dispatcher. She told me she’s good in emergencies, just cries afterward. I said I used to be calm about emergencies — I covered fires and car accidents during my reporting career, and it didn’t phase me most of the time. Now since seeing my kid in an ambulance and my stay in the hospital I am a basket case. I told her the patients would be trying to comfort me while I cried into the phone.

The people who need help would be like, “It’s okay, lady. It’s just a bullet wound. I’m sure I’ll be fine. You can stop crying now.”

***

When I make tea, I think of that SNL skit with Christopher Walken (back when the show was funny) where he says, “It needs more cowbell.”

 I look into my tea and say, “It needs more honey,” in Walken’s voice.

***

I recently told my son that he has the attention span of a gnat and can’t handle watching anything more than 30 seconds because of all the TikTok-like videos he watches. (He hates TikTok so doesn’t actually watch that.)

He countered by showing me this video about how to make a tomato soup cake and told me he’d watched the entire nine minutes and thirty-five-second clip. I said, “fine, your attention span is longer than a —”

And I was hooked and watched the whole thing too.

Seriously, though, did you know there was such a thing as tomato soup cake? Ew.

***

The other night my dad was looking for a quote from General Jim Mattis.

My mom recited it to him: ‘Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.’

Then she let him know she had that one written down a couple of places.

I’m sure she didn’t mean it as threatening as it sounded, but it was still pretty funny.

***

Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs, sent me this hilarious story about a man who rescued a cat out of a tree and went viral, not because of his good deed, but his good looks.

Here is a sample:



https://filterfreeparents.com/man-rescues-cat-from-tree-and-the-pics-go-viral-but-not-because-of-the-cat/

***

Here is a fun photo my husband recently had to take for his job.

Photo credit: Warren Howeler, The Rocket-Courier

9-year old Lillian and her rooster (Ron Weasly), a one-year-old English Gamer Bantam, recently took second place in the youth division at the Pennsylvania Farm Show.

Lillian lives near us and I don’t know why I love this photo so much. I guess because it just represents our area and our love of our farm animals well.

***

Thanks to that nasty virus, peanut butter, onions, and garlic smell and taste like a mix of chemicals and something that died. That means anything that has those ingredients in it tastes and smells the same.

Last weekend, though, a former classmate made a peanut butter cake for a memorial service I attended and the peanut butter frosting actually tasted normal, but that could be because it was mixed with a ton of sugar and milk.

Hopefully, that is a symptom that will gradually get better.

***

My brother suggested this guitar player named Luca Stricagnoli  and now I can’t stop watching him

***

I’ve also been watching The Dead South cover The Doors. For those who didn’t like their rendition of You Are My Sunshine, you probably won’t like this one either.

***

So there are a few random thoughts for this week. How about you? Has anything weird, unusual, or fun happened to you recently? Share in the comments and if it is okay, I’d like to share it in a future Randomly Thinking to cheer us all up.

Randomly Thinking: Horses with gas, new haircuts, David Hasselhoff in Berlin.

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Randomly Thinking7 Comments

Last month I mentioned Knight Rider and David Hasselhoff but forgot to share with you this awesome video of David singing in Berlin the night the Berlin Wall came down. Did you know that he is beloved in Germany? Well, he is and after hearing some of his songs, I think they should keep him.

***

A representation of my son’s new haircut.



Hey, at least he got his hair cut.

***

This is what the news is like for me now:

Politician complains about other politician and then other politician tweets rude comments about another politician. Wash, rinse, repeat.

***

A horse farting. I don’t know what else to say.

***

I sent this message to Erin @ Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs earlier this month:

You know that whole thing I was doing to keep posting because WordPress was telling me I posted so many days in a row? And I thought I could get to 15 days in a row? Well, apparently last week when I re-shared something on my blog they decided that wasn’t a real blog post or they lost count or something because now they say I only posted three days in a row. Gasp! I have posted 14 days in a row! 14, WordPress!!!!! Give me my little award thing!

Like, whatever. I don’t need them. I know what I did and I know that I am….well . . .

A loser.

***

Republicans and Democrats have had one thing in common for the last two presidential terms – almost every day they could answer the question of “Did you hear what the president said” with “Oh gosh what did the idiot say this time?”

***

You know it’s been ridiculously cold in your area when you look at the weather app on your phone and say “oh, it’s 25. That’s not so bad. Maybe we don’t need three blankets tonight.”

It is 1 degree while I am writing this and this morning when my husband when to work at 8 a.m. it was -6.

***

My husband bought me a huge, soft blanket for Christmas last year. This blanket is so big our family of four can sit on the couch and be covered by it. This winter I have loved sliding under it and rubbing my feet against its softness. Focusing on how good and soft it feels has helped take my mind off the trials of life many times. Do you have something like this in your life? Maybe a favorite sweater, coat, or pillow?

Those are a few of my random thoughts for this week. How about you? What are some random things that happened to you recently?