Saturday Afternoon Tea

Saturday Afternoon Chat January 27: warmer temps (for a bit anyhow), relaxing with Miss Marple, and kids should be able to play and get messy

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 8 Comments

I really enjoy our Saturday Afternoon Chats. I feel like I am talking to my friends – even if I can’t see most of you.’

I had considered dropping this weekly feature and rolling it into my Sunday Bookends but that would make that post very long and rambling so I’ve decided to ramble here on Saturdays instead. Ha.

The fire is not burning in my woodstove this weekend as we are in a warm-up after the horrible cold we experienced last week (the week before this past week I mean) and last weekend.

Yesterday it was 60 degrees in the little village I was visiting a friend in and our kids were outside playing barefoot in her yard..

Almost eight days of arctic and bitter cold are behind us for now and we can finally go about our business without worrying about our fingers and noses being frozen and asthma attacks being triggered.

We do, however, have snow and ice coming tomorrow so winter is not done with us yet.

Still, those nice warm temps and the sunshine were very welcome yesterday as Little Miss and I drove 40 minutes South to hang out with our friends.

The family has three cats and three dogs and the youngest dog is just a couple of months old, tiny, and very cute.

The youngest cat is also pregnant.

So in between cats and dogs running in and out of the house, there were also children running in and out of the house and onto the trampoline behind their house, an activity Little Miss hasn’t been able to do for a few months now. In other words, it was a very nice and fun day.

While we were chatting my friend and I spoke about parents who like their children to remain clean and not play in the mud and dirt too much. That concept is very foreign to us. Our children love to get messy, run in the mud and climb trees or play in creeks, or even wrestle at times.

The idea that they couldn’t do those things because we don’t want their clothes to get messy is weird to us.

That’s why I buy used or cheaper clothes – because I know my kid is going to roll down a hill or play in a pile of mud – okay, well, maybe not the mud. She’s always been a bit resistant to getting herself too muddy, but she was still running barefoot through our friends’ yard yesterday and I didn’t even think twice about it.

The drive back to our house was a little stressful because we have the headlight to replace the headlight that was damaged in October when we hit a deer but haven’t had time to set up an appointment with a mechanic to have it replaced.  I tried to leave our friends’ house before it got dark but that didn’t happen so I drove with my hands tightly gripping the steering wheel and trying to see the road in front of me with a busted headlight that was pointing up toward the top of the trees and the other one trying to light the road on its little own.

I already have horrid night vision so this added to the stress of night driving for me. There was a deer along the road at one point and I put the brakes on to see what she was going to do. She just stared at me with her buddies in the woods behind her so I laid on the horn and she and her friends took off, away from the road.

I was so grateful when we made it home. It felt like a much longer drive than it would have been if it had been light out. I made myself some dinner (The Boy had already eaten and Little Miss was snacking on these little cans of tuna fish salad that she likes), grabbed a blanket, curled up under it and just relaxed the rest of the night, with the plan not to leave my house again until at least Sunday.

Today I am watching Agatha Christie’s Marple, the series based on the Miss Marple books by Agatha Christie, that ran from 2004 to 2013. I will talk about that more in tomorrow’s Sunday Bookends post.

I have that blanket over my lap again and I’m sipping hot peppermint tea and munching on French fries cooked in the air fryer.

I could have cooked the fries in my oven, though, since my husband fixed it last week after a year of our oven not working. We had an idea of what was wrong with it but it would have cost $200 to have the repairman come so we kept putting off getting it fixed. We have an air fryer, a stove, and an Instapot that we can use to cook anyhow so we didn’t miss it too much. I use the stove and Instapot more than the oven anyhow. It turned out that the part for it was only $30 but neither of us are very mechanical and didn’t want to bother my dad to help us.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the episode of Little House on the Prairie where Pa is trying to buy a new glass window for the cabin, but in the episode the modern glass windowpane repeatedly gets broken and he has to keep going back to the store for a new one. It’s a running gag throughout the whole episode. I don’t remember all the ways he breaks it but I think one time he drops it and another time Laura is upset and climbs into the back of the wagon and steps on it. I think someone in town runs into it or hits it with a broom handle too.

In the end, Pa gives up and just puts up the old-fashioned glass paned window.

I thought that might be like what would happen with us after The Husband ordered the part, showed it to me so I could see how fragile the part (an ignitor) was, returned to the kitchen, sat it on the tabletop, and then it rolled off and broke. He had to order a replacement and start all over again. Luckily the second time was the charm and he didn’t break it. He replaced it on Monday night and was very proud of himself since he isn’t someone who often does house repairs.

Tuesday night I made some breaded chicken in the oven, made waffles in our new waffle maker, and tried chicken and waffles.

The Boy had started suggesting we try to make chicken and waffles since The Husband picked up the waffle maker in December.

My recipe didn’t come out exactly like real chicken and waffles, but everyone said it was pretty good. I’m trying to cut out gluten so I just ate the chicken with some peas (honestly because I had already had gluten earlier in the day. I’m not doing great at the no-gluten thing in other words.).

I’m looking forward to relearning recipes that I can cook in the oven.

We usually visit my parents on Sunday afternoons but we might have to skip it tomorrow since we are supposed to get a snow and ice mixture.

If we stay home, The Husband and I hope to try out the mystery show Vera and maybe some more Marple. We haven’t had a lot of time to watch things together because he has been working a lot lately.

The rest of today will be me watching more Marple, maybe some more Lark Rise to Candleford, reading and hopefully finishing Little Women (after leisurely reading it for a couple of months I now hope to finish it and move on to some other classics. I’ve been enjoying it). I will be drawing some with Little Miss too. She already has the sketch paper and markers all set up.

I want to sit down at least once a week for an hour with her from now on and just draw with her and talk about art.

She really loves art and has since she was a toddler. Her current sketching obsession is dragons. I haven’t really sketched in years so I try to draw people when we sit down to draw and then I notice that the proportions are off and crumple it up and throw it away.

It’s nice to take some time, though, even an hour or so, to step away from social media and my computer and use my brain for something other than trying to figure out how to promote my books or write them in the first place.

I think this week we will draw and listen to an audiobook or a story from Adventures in Odyssey and completely remove ourselves from the rest of the world, so to speak. What’s nice is that our art time can count toward our homeschool lessons for the week.

How was your week last week? Do anything fun or exciting or just relaxing? I’d love to know.

Saturday Afternoon Chat: Cold weather, a warm fire, and making myself sit down and read.

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 9 Comments

The fire is still burning away today in our woodstove, orange and yellow merging together in a cacophony of raging warmth to chase away the insanely bitter cold outside. All week the family has been stuck inside because of the fall in the thermometer and the additional lower temperature brought by the windchill.

The fun of playing in fallen snow by the youngest was stolen by the cold. She lasted about ten minutes outside before she announced she couldn’t feel her face, her fingers, or her toes, even with all her thick winter gear on.

Zooma the Wonder Dog was quite depressed that the ground was white with snow but she and her favorite playmate weren’t out, rolling in it, tossing it in the air, and catching snowballs.

Instead, we had to find inside activities to do. I tried to read and work on my book. Little Miss was able to talk to her friends on the phone and play online games with them. The cats slept almost all day every day, especially when the fire was roaring. The Boy played some video games, did some homework and helped bring in wood to keep the fire going.

He also walked to the neighbor’s house one day and helped clean the snow off her steps and car. He only had one day of school again this week. He attends the morning session of a vocational school and if the local school district calls for a two-hour delay then the morning session is canceled.

He has been enjoying his time off and is a bit disappointed that the weather looks better next week and he’ll have to go back. We encouraged him to take a building and construction course at the local trade school as part of his education but so far it is not his favorite thing to do. He might change his course next year or try something else, but at least he has some experience and knows more what he doesn’t want to do when he gets out of school.

I’ve been missing going to my parents but either our driveway was slippery or it was super cold outside. I mentioned in the Sunday Bookends last week that I had tried to go to my parents on Sunday afternoon but there were tree branches in the road and ice forming as the temperatures dropped as we tried to drive there so I turned around. It will still be cold this Saturday but it shouldn’t be slippery or windy so we will be heading there for lunch and maybe a movie and a game of cards.

A couple of days this week I forced myself to sit down in front of our woodstove with a book to feel the warmth and enjoy some quiet time. I don’t sit down and just read like I want to very often so I have to say to myself, “No. You’re not going to pick up the room.  You’re not going to wash dishes. You’re not going to work on your book or scroll through Instagram. You’re going to sit on this floor and read this book and lose yourself in it.”

It’s like I feel like it is wrong to just be sitting and reading but really, there are times we need to do that. We need to sit and take even 15 minutes to ourselves to settle our brains and calm our souls. We can either read a book we like, read the Bible, read a verse, listen to an encouraging sermon, worship music, or journal but we need to take that time for ourselves more than most of us do.

I don’t know why we don’t take the time we should for ourselves but I say this year work to feel less guilt when you sit in some quiet for yourself. I know that’s a goal for me.

I had to laugh the one night because both of my kids kept talking to me as I tried to read, as if I wasn’t sitting there, on the floor, with a physical book opened, clearly reading.

“Oh. You’re trying to read, aren’t you?” asked my son.

“No. No. I’m just holding this book to make myself look smarter,” is what I could have said, but what I really said was, “Yes, but it is okay. I like to talk to you.”

And I do like to talk to him because soon he will be grown up and out of the house and I won’t have as many opportunities to talk to him. He and I are both night owls who open up at night. I am not as much of a night owl as I used to be because I am old and start to fade by 11. If I get a second wind, though, I’m often up until 1 a.m. reading. After 11 is the only quiet time I get to read unless I wake up early to do so instead.

The Boy might not talk to me all day but when midnight hits that’s when he wants to talk so that’s when we talk. I’m fine with it unless I’m fading and feel guilty because I am not really listening.

How was the weather where you were this week? I know most of the United States was thrown into an arctic freeze and I think most of us will be out of it next week.

Have you been trying any new teas?

This week I drank my regular tea and some hot cocoa. I have tried a new probiotic tea and that was okay. What I hope to get some more of soon is some elderberry tea.

Let me know how you’ve been in the comments and I’ll see you again tomorrow for Sunday Bookends.

Saturday Afternoon Chat: Crazy weather and crazy weather and some reading time

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 5 Comments

I read on Instagram that today is National Drink Hot Tea Day. There is always a national something or other day and I sometimes wonder who even keeps track of them all so people on social media can use it as content to talk about.

Anyhow, I’m drinking some peppermint tea with honey later today, not because I don’t have any other tea, but because I had some other types of tea earlier in the week and I wanted my old standby today.

Also later today I will be lighting a fire because our temps are going to plummet very fast this afternoon into this evening until they are in the 20s tomorrow and then the single digits at night and in the mornings starting Monday.

We are also under a high wind advisory today and when you live in a semi-rural area surrounded by trees (including a really old, really tall one in front of my house), you tend to get very nervous about high wind advisories. You also expect to lose power at some point, which makes me a little nervous since today it will be just me and Little Miss at home. The Husband is working and The Boy is going to a friend’s house.

I don’t do well health-wise in either very hot temperatures or very cold ones so I am not looking forward to the cold weather. I will not be leaving my house much at all during the cold weather snap because it irritates my asthma. I will be going out enough to pick up my son from the bus stop because I don’t want him to have to walk up our hill in such cold weather.

I am supposed to go visit my parents for lunch tomorrow when it is only supposed to be about 26 but I’ll see if I still want to do that or not. I practically have to be dragged outside kicking and screaming when it is super cold or when it is super hot.

The weather has been very odd here lately but that is somewhat normal for Pennsylvania this time of year.

Last weekend we had a snowstorm that lasted two days. By Tuesday it was rain and wind and the threat of flooding. Then off and on during the week snow and hail came and last night there was a burst of snow that covered the ground right before freezing rain came in and left the entire yard in a sheen of ice. To say winter has decided to show up this month is an understatement.

This past week I stayed inside every day and was a slug part of the time because of the weather. I read books, worked on my novel, wrote some blog posts, made some social media posts, enjoyed the fire, sipped tea and cocoa, cooked dinner, did the dishes a couple of times, ignored piles of books and papers I don’t know what to do with, and overall just enjoyed being a hermit and not having to go anywhere.

Yesterday I had to go pick up groceries but I really can’t complain because one, I had to drive there and they put them in the car, and two, my husband had to go out in this awful weather all week for work so he’s got the real cruddy end of the bargain here.

No one went with me to pick up groceries this time so it was just me in the car, listening to James Herriot’s Treasury for Children on Audible. I was going to listen to a Jane Austen collection but my phone claimed it wasn’t downloaded and it turned out better to listen to the one from James Herriot anyhow because it is so relaxing and my day really wasn’t relaxing for a variety of reasons – mainly family stuff and a lot of things on my mind about said family.

Today I hope to relax some but Little Miss wants me to play a video game with her and watch a movie. I honestly do not understand why my children always want me to play video games with them. I do not enjoy video games but they are just so excited to show Mom how to play it and then laugh at her when she can’t figure it out. My son wanted me to play Skyrim one time and I ran the guy into the wall over and over for like ten minutes.

It’s now a running joke in our house. My son will say something like, “Look, I’m Mom playing Skyrim,” and then just run into a wall several times while looking over his shoulder saying, “Don’t worry, Havar. I’m coming! I swear! If I can figure out this controller, I’m coming to help you.”

Of course, by then Havar was dead because I was still running into a wall.

This upcoming week I really need to work more on my book, Cassie. It’s been hard to get going on it but I hope to have it done in February so I can start work on my next Gladwynn book.

This week my dad left me a comment on my Facebook cover where I was promoting the second book and it really meant a lot because my dad is not a reader. He’s really never had time to read and if he did, he chose non-fiction books, such as theology books.

Mom told me he read my first book in the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries, though, reading a chapter or so a night before bed. When he was done, he told me it felt weird not having the book to read so I was glad that it wasn’t long after that when I realized the second book.

Now he is in the middle of the second book so I really need to start writing book three for him.

This is the message he left on the photograph for the book on my page: am not much of a reader at all and very seldom read fiction and I watch very few movies.

Like who wants to read about something that is not? Lol. Evidently a lot of people.

Anyway, I got into the first Gladwyn Mystery and found it intriguing, and starting this one I find it more so.

Sometimes I think wow, I never knew that 😉lol. You see Gladwynn Grant, a mixture of intelligent, ditzy curious, and almost cunning, was my mother’s name.

Okay off to store a few more clues and along the way to the hometown theater find out what happened to Samantha.👩‍💼🧐🤔 🙂😋“”

Dad hasn’t always been super supportive of me writing fiction (“You have to actually go places to write books and you don’t go anywhere or have a lot of experience,” he told me once. Sigh. Dads.) so the fact he’s enjoyed these Gladwynn books has meant a lot to me.

Well, I am off to watch the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice, which I am watching as part of Erin (Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) and my Jane Austen January Feature. I will warn you that this version is not my favorite and I am actually finding it a bit annoying at this point. I promise to try my best to be polite about it when I write about it on Thursday.

I will be back tomorrow with Sunday Bookends, where I will ramble about what I’ve been reading and what I hope to read and all that jazz.

How was your week last week? Did you do anything exciting? And what’s your tea of choice these days?


Saturday Evening Chat: Looking back at the blog in 2023 and a thank you to readers

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 12 Comments

The fire is crackling in the woodstove and vegetable soup is cooking in the Instapot.

Outside snowflakes are falling softly at a fairly fast clip and the forecasters say we will have up to nine inches by the time this Nor’easter is done.

I started this blog post a bit ago but kept getting interrupted by lighting the fire, cutting up the potatoes for the soup while listening to a couple of lovely Christmas stories by L.M. Montgomery on Audible (no, this is not a paid ad), and chatting with my parents, brother, and a couple of friends. It was almost like life got in the way of my blog. Like – what?

(If you’re new here I’m typically sarcastic and snarky.)

Today I wanted to take the time to thank anyone who stopped by my blog in 2023 and left me comments or encouragement. It is very much appreciated.

I write a lot about – well, nothing.

Ha!

But people seem to need to focus on a bit of nothing these days so I am okay with writing mainly about nothing.

I wrote a lot about movies in 2023. I wrote about books and family outings and a bit about family history.

I wrote about my fiction books that I am working on and shared some of them. (They are currently on sale and links are at the top and side of the page. Commercial over.).

I wrote less about my Christian walk, not because I’m not still doing it, but because I was struggling with life part of the time and didn’t feel like I should be writing about it while I was trying to figure it all out. That’s pretty silly, I know. As Christians we should be talking about our journey no matter where we are because we never know who we will help along the way. I hope to fix that a bit in 2024.

I enjoyed meeting a ton of new bloggers this past year, which was the best thing about blogging in 2023.

I hope to “meet” even more in 2024. The only thing about meeting new bloggers is I have a hard time keeping up with everyone’s blogs and leaving comments. Sometimes I will read posts but run out of time to comment or fall asleep in the middle of commenting and thing I already did. Maybe I should meet less bloggers this year then. Ha.

As I write I am looking out at my neighbor’s front lawn and it’s weird how sad it looks now that the husband took all the Christmas decorations he had up down. I know it was time and I’m sure their electric bill will appreciate them not being up any more, but his wife and I both said how much we miss them. She managed to get him to leave up some of the sparkling rainbow lights at least so there is a nice sparkle for right now over there.

What can I say? Our house always looks pretty depressing in the winter without all the green on the trees and the flowers out so I am sure it isn’t fun for them to look at our house either.

Our Christmas decorations are now down too and I told The Husband I need to figure out ways to decorate the house for all seasons like people I follow on here and YouTube.

Yesterday we went to pick up groceries and also some pizza and wings for my dad, whose 80th birthday was yesterday.

We ate some lunch with him and my mom and then came home to put up our groceries and get ready for the storm.

Today I’ve been goofing off, as I mentioned above, but after I post this, I think I will watch some more Miss Scarlet and The Duke and read another chapter of Little Women. With a blanket, of course.

We usually visit my parents on Sundays but it looks like we might be stuck inside tomorrow as well since getting out of my driveway in icy or snowy weather is not easy at all.

That means more reading and writing time for me.

Oh and while I am thinking of it – I’ve actually purchased a tea other than peppermint to try and it’s not too bad – it is a ginger, turmeric, and orange tea. Ginger is great for digestion and turmeric can be great for inflammation and aches and pains.

How was your week last week?

Do anything exciting?

Try any new teas?

Let me know in the comments.

I’ll be back tomorrow with Sunday Bookends.

Saturday Afternoon Chat: Christmas, Christmas light displays, and special Christmas gifts

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 14 Comments

Good afternoon!

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas or holiday and are ready to celebrate the New Year.

We had a really fun, but relaxing Christmas Eve and Christmas.

We spent both days with my parents.

Christmas Eve we bought pizza and wings and watched the movie Elf with them and on Christmas Day we went there for a gift exchange and dinner. We watched White Christmas after all the gifts were open.

Every year before we open gifts we read the Christmas story from Luke. Either Dad or Mom or my brother usually reads it but my brother couldn’t be there this year so Little Miss and The Husband volunteered to read. It was very nice to have them read it.

There were a couple of very nice surprise gifts for me, including a new Kindle from my husband. I always joke how he rarely buys me books for Christmas, even though that’s what I want most of the time (he really just wants me to choose what I want on my own so he isn’t being a jerk) so this year he put me in my place and bought me a device where I can read hundreds of books.

It was a total shock.

I like the Kindle Paperwhite I have and it was working okay but earlier in the year I thought the battery wasn’t holding a charge as well. It turns out my case wasn’t closing right and failing to put it into sleep mode.

Regardless, The Husband got it in his head that I needed a new Kindle so he kindly used a portion of his bonus to buy one of the newest generations. He wanted me to have one that I could adjust the warmth setting on so I can use it more at night before bed without it messing with my melatonin. It also features a larger screen.

I certainly appreciated the thought and while I first thought it was a bit clunky compared to my older and lighter paperwhite, after a couple of days of using it (it came on Wednesday), I love it. I even hug it when I close the cover. I know. I’m weird. I also hug books after I smell them. Ahem. I’ve heard of weirder habits by people so I’m not worried about my mental status. At least for that reason.

Another surprise for me was a six-month membership to Ancestry.com so I could finish researching our family.

I already had an entire family tree put together but had to take a break because of expenses. Now I have to start a new account and redo some of my research but I can hopefully draw from my old account and quickly add some of it. After I am done, I will make sure to print it all out and save all the documents I want to save in a place I can find it this time.

Among my favorite gifts was a huge three-pound jar of local honey. The Husband joked it should last me a week and after looking at how much I’ve used already he might be right – though it will probably be at least a month.

Little Miss was surprised with two music boxes from my parents among some other gifts. The Husband was given a clock that used to belong to my paternal grandmother.

I bought my son a sword for Christmas. Yes, a real sword. Okay, not really that real but a little real.

It’s fairly solid and it’s something he has wanted, though he later told me it was a bit of a joke. Joke or not, he now has a sword to go with his helmet.

He also received two hammers from his grandfather and I’m not sure if he knew what to think of them but he did say they would be nice to have for personal projects or for his building and construction class. When he was little he used to hand his superhero figures to me and ask me to put them in my purse but on Monday he asked me to put his hammers in my purse. In the end, they were too heavy to be put in there and had to be carried out to go home in a box.

My dad received a gift from his neighbor of a piece of ash wood that had the pattern from the ash bore in its bark and was carved by his neighbor into the shape of a tree.

We have been using this wood in our woodstove and I thought the patterns in the bark were from the wood laying in the dirt and worms making the patterns.

(Speaking of our woodstove – we haven’t had to use it all week but will have to light it tonight as the temperatures drop back down into the 30s.)

My dad always does a beautiful job at wrapping the presents and this year was no exception.

As an aside, Dad will be 80 this Friday. He still likes to try to trick us at Christmas and wrap our gifts in a way we can’t really tell what it is until we open it. This year he wrapped each of us special gifts (like my Ancestry membership) around a can of sardines. We all guessed that was what it was but weren’t sure if they were real sardines or just the cans.

It turned out they were real sardines but money or notes about items that were ordered for us were wrapped around them. Both Little Miss and the Boy tried the sardines. The Boy liked his since they had a Louisiana hot sauce on them. He was disappointed he left them at their house when we left that evening.

Gifting The Boy underwear became a theme for a few years so one year my dad wrapped his underwear in a box of nails which made The Boy think he was receiving a Lego set.

The day after Christmas we all headed to a festival of lights – or Christmas light display about 45 minutes south of us.

Usually we attend this site the day after Thanksgiving, or at least before Christmas, and there aren’t as many people but this year there was a huge line of cars traveling through the lights with us. The lights are set up on a golf course and each display is very impressive, especially for our small area.

This year they enlarged the display and also added a tribute to the victims of 9-11, which was very impressive to us all.

On the way to the display we picked up two friends of Little Miss’s and they regaled us with Christmas carols as we rode because The Husband still hasn’t figured out how to operate the radio in his new-to-him truck so he didn’t know how to turn to the radio station they tell you to play while going through the display.

I tried to play Michael Buble’s Christmas album for everyone but they weren’t that interested.

The rest of the week was spent relaxing for most of us (The Boy has enjoyed staying up late and sleeping in on his break) and some work for The Husband but luckily not all week.

Today The Husband is taking us somewhere for dinner and shopping. Tomorrow we will either relax at home or my parents for New Year’s Eve while The Boy has a friend over for a sleepover. I hope to make Aunt Dianne’s famous sausage balls for either Sunday or Monday.

How was your Christmas or holidays?

Did you receive any special gifts or just have some special family time?

I’d love to know.

I’ll be back tomorrow for Sunday Bookends to discuss what I’ve been reading and watching.

Saturday Afternoon Chat: I can’t smell. I can’t taste. But I can feel the wind on my face.

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 10 Comments

Hello! Welcome to my Saturday Afternoon Chat.

Would you like a cup of coffee or tea?

Or a glass of juice?

No matter what we have, I won’t be able to taste it after I caught Covid again this week and have lost my smell and taste.

(Update: the rest of this post is still accurate but I scheduled it last night and forgot to change it before it went live – as of this morning I can taste and smell a lot better than I could. It is not 100 percent but it is so much better!

That’s right. I’m having an awesome week, one which started with me slipping in the snow and doing a type of split. My body is not built for splits.

I was okay, despite the fall, but my back was sore and spasming in pain off and on that day and night. Then the fever and chills hit – fever and chills The Husband had also had but we thought was a cold or the flu.

Yesterday morning a home test said I had the dreaded virus.

If you’ve been here a while, you know I had a pretty severe case of Covid in 2021 so catching Covid again definitely has me on edge.

This case feels way different than that one, but I still wonder if I will have similar issues with my oxygen this time around.

So far this is more like a head cold with a stuffy nose and a lot of nose and head pressure. My oxygen has also been fine but I won’t lie that I have had to fight a battle of my mind this week.

My mind has gone back time and time again since yesterday morning to two years ago when I was in the hospital, hooked up to oxygen and wondering what my future was going to hold or if I’d even have one.

Yesterday I found myself wondering – will it happen again? Will I think I’m doing okay, but suddenly I won’t be?

Not that I thought I was doing okay that first time around but I was still shocked when I was admitted because I thought I was breathing fine.

The blood gas said I was not doing fine at all it turns out.

So I spent the next five days in the hospital getting an antiviral through an IV even though my oxygen did come back up on only a small amount of oxygen.

(You can read more about all that here and here and here and here.)

By the time I tested yesterday I was already feeling a bit better. My fever had even started to go down on its own – without medicine. Still, I had no smell and taste and that’s how it was in 2021 so I tested.

I tried to stay calm this time – unlike in 2021 when I Googled anything and everything about Covid for ten days straight, didn’t take care of myself, and ended up in the hospital.

Yesterday I tried to remember the verse that my mom gave me earlier in the week about another issue:

Philippians 4:7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

I tried to remember this verse and most of the time I succeeded but there were moments it all fell apart and my imagination took off again.

It hit 53 here yesterday so I walked outside and breathed in some fresh air (like an author friend suggested) and I squished the grass between my toes even though it was still cold from the snow we’d had earlier in the week that hadn’t melted all the way yet.

I sat down on the porch and began to cry. I could see the sun shining around me and the still-green grass and my cat playing on the hill, but I couldn’t smell anything. Like anything. It’s like being in a vacuum or something – a smell less, lifeless vacuum. If you’ve never completely lost your taste and smell, trust me, it is awful. Eating is a struggle because there is no taste to anything (don’t ever eat hamburger with no smell or taste. Just … horrifying.). A huge chunk of life’s enjoyment is just ripped away from you and life seems very empty somehow, especially when you are someone who relaxes themselves through aroma therapy or the taste of sweet honey in your tea.

I sobbed for quite a long time on the porch, worrying about the future, mourning the loss of my taste and smell – yet again after just getting almost all of it back again.

Then I started to say to myself and to God – “So I have lost my sense of smell and taste but I can feel the warm sun on my face, the cool breeze on my skin, pet my dog’s soft fur (and not have to smell her weird dog smell she gets when she runs in the sun) and watch my young cat jump and play in the grass on a rare warm winter day.

I have lost something very important to me – something that can truly lead to deep depression but I am fever free. I am breathing. I am not weak and totally out of it like I was the first time I had this.

I have a lot to be grateful for despite it all.

As I write this I am also grateful I can breathe through my nose because it has been closed with snot for the last three days.

I am grateful I didn’t have more pain from the fall and that has not been a serious issue.

I’m grateful for my family being supportive, for my son immediately asking if I was okay when I told him I had Covid, for my daughter not being as sick as she was when we had it in 2021.

I am grateful for good movies I could watch and good books to read.

I am asking, though, that you would all pray that the upswing continues and that my son doesn’t get this bad enough to steal his sense of smell and taste. He and I were both hit hard with that in 2021 and the developed parasomia (altered smell and taste) for several months. He could barely eat and he already doesn’t eat well and is very skinny.

He still can’t eat peanut butter because it is absolutely disgusting to him. I eat peanut butter but it hasn’t tasted the same since 2021. I was just finally able to start eating onions and garlic in the last several months without them having what can only be described as “the Covid taste.” It’s like a mix of burnt rubber and smelly feet – not idea how else to explain it.

Little Miss says she feels like the smell loss will last less time this time around and I hope she is right.

Everyone hopes when the inflammation in my nose goes away that will get better.

I don’t know since I know this dreaded virus attacks the olfactory glands in a very odd way, slowly destroying them.

What I want most, though, is for this not to go in my lungs or into the lungs of anyone in my family.

I appreciate my blog readers so much – you don’t even know.

You lifted my spirits the last time I had this and your posts are lifting my spirts now as I read about all that all of you have going on.

Which reminds me – what is going on with all of you? Let me know in the comments – distract me from my worries for a few minutes.

Saturday Afternoon Chat December 2: A hodgepodge of thoughts about my week and the week to come

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 11 Comments

Dry skin. That’s what I’ve got right now.

Horrible dry skin from the dry air in our house.

Don’t worry – it just feels dry. I won’t describe how it looks because it doesn’t look bad. It just looks — pale and dry.

We don’t have a humidifier downstairs but I think we are going to have to get one because when I get dry skin it causes my entire body to feel inflamed with itchiness. It’s a horrible feeling and sometimes I have to practically bathe myself in lotion to get relief.

I have a soap I use from Cetaphil that is moisturizing and helps immensely.

I find it fairly cheap on Amazon and at Walmart (no, this is not a sponsored post. I promise.) but I’m sure you can find it in other places as well.

Cetaphil used to make an amazing lotion too, but they changed the ingredients earlier this year and I don’t think it works as well.

My mom keeps telling me to put lotion or coconut oil on right after a shower to help my skin absorb the moisture but I always forget and pay for it later.

What do you, dear readers, use to help your dry skin if you have it? My curious mind wants to know.

An uneventful week where we almost died . . .

This past week was a rather uneventful week.

The only day I had something to do was yesterday when I drove 30 minutes down and back to pick up our groceries. On our way there some driver decided he’d try to pass a truck and a car on a stretch of road right on a corner, where there were double lines, and in a spot on the highway near my parents where there have been a number of fatalities over the years. When I saw him in my lane I couldn’t believe it.

I laid on the horn and luckily, he yanked back into his lane but it was certainly a frightening experience.

I’m not sure what was so important that this person needed to risk everyone’s life but I have a feeling he needed a beer.

I’m kidding.

Sort of.

Tonight The Husband, Little Miss, and I are headed to a Christmas parade in a tiny town half an hour away. He has to attend the event for work and I decided Little Miss needs to get out of the house and see her friends because she’s so bored that she’s started asking The Husband and I to play Hide and Seek or Red Light, Green Light with her.

She’s really gotten desperate for entertainment apparently. We are not really the most fun and we are easily distractable.

A question for my readers . . .

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend recently. I said Little Miss wanted me to play dolls and stuffies with her and she said she was always impressed with how I played with my daughter because most parents she knows don’t do that.

I have a variety of ages reading my blog so my question to all of you is if you play(ed) with your children when they were young or if you did what my mom did which was essentially tell me to go find a way to entertain myself. She wasn’t rude at all. She just had work to do in the house and couldn’t sit and play all afternoon so she’d gently suggest I go draw or play with my dolls on my own if I asked.

I don’t even remember asking, actually. I was used to drawing or playing on my own a lot. I was sort of a lonely kid with only a handful of friends my entire childhood. In fact, I was a lot like Little Miss is now and only had two close friends (sisters) until junior high.

She also has two sisters as her friends.

Her other two friends moved to Texas in the summer but are returning for a visit around Christmas.

As a follow-up to the question of if you played with your children, did your parents play with you? I mean, I know most parents at least throw a ball with their kids or play some board games, but did you really sit down and play with the dolls and their stuffed animals?

I like to do that some with Little Miss because I think it helps to develop her imaginative play and I know how important play is to the development of a child. I can’t, however, do it all day like she wants me to.

Moving on . . .

Right now I am listening to Cozy Cafe Ambience – Relaxing Smooth Jazz Music with Rain & Thunder Sounds at Night on YouTube. I’m trying to drown out the noise of my house. We don’t have a lot of people in our house but it is very noisy.

Little Miss seems to think she has to have the TV on at all times, even while talking to her friends on a chat app while they play online games.

She’s not watching anything bad – it’s often a show on YouTube about reptiles that she likes. I don’t allow her to have YouTube on her phone anymore because she was watching all those Shorts and they were kicking out some very inappropriate stuff at her.

Even though the shows she watches aren’t bad, it’s constant noise.

I find it hard to focus on what I am writing with the constant chatter and interruptions. (How many times should a dog need to go out in an hour? Asking for a “friend.”) Sometimes I’m amazed I get any books or blog posts written but I do so by making myself get up early, before all the chatter starts, and also by going into the kitchen and sitting at the kitchen table where I’m a little bit more removed from the noise.

Oh and sometimes I just tell Little Miss to turn it all off! That helps too.

Today I goofed off this morning when Little Miss and others were sleeping so that’s my own fault for having to deal with the noise and activity.

We are having a slightly warmer day with rain forecasted for later on.

Then we will be dropping back into the 30s tomorrow. I know I was wishing for the cooler weather so I could cozy up under a blanket with a good book but on days like this when it isn’t exactly cold enough to light the fire but we don’t really want to turn the heat up too much and use up our heating oil, I find I don’t enjoy cuddling under a blanket as much as I hoped I would.

We do tend to romanticize the whole idea of a warm blanket, a cup of tea, and a good book, don’t we? We never factor in our cold nose or fingers, the cat that wants to warm up with us so she lays on our chest (right under our chin), or the way the tea gets really cold in the chilly air so we have to keep getting up to warm it up.

Or at least I don’t always think of all those negatives.

But, I think I’ll still continue to romanticize my life a little. Finding those little moments of magic are important, even if they aren’t as perfect as we had imagined. Plus, I have the option to turn the heat up, I have a roof over my head and a nice house, my family around me to make me laugh and smile (even if I sometimes have to tell them to be quiet so I can think.), I have food in my cupboards and fridge, and I have the luxury of being able to choose when I want to read or right – most of the time.

I’m very lucky and even though I grumble a bit from time to time (usually in jest, not a real grumble) I recognize that and I am grateful for it all.

“When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.”

— G.K. Chesterton

How was your week?

Did you do anything holiday-related yet?

Read anything good or have a fun experience?

Let me know in the comments.

Saturday Afternoon Chat: Cozy weather, making soup, my racing mind

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 8 Comments

I’m so glad to be able to just sit down and chat with you all today.

I’ve been doing a lot of writing about many different things the last few weeks but today I just want to write about nothing. Okay, so most of the time I write about nothing, but…go with me on this.

I started this post on Thursday. It was chilly outside but not as cold as it was earlier in the week. Friday we were supposed to have warmer temps again and get some rain and we did – late in the day. Then temps dropped sharply again today and we will be back to lighting the fire at night or even during the day this next week.

I really do like having the fire and enjoying its warm glow during the colder weather. The only thing I have to watch for is that too much wood doesn’t get loaded into it that the living room becomes a sauna and that has happened a lot in the past. We are supposed to get the temperature up to 300 degrees at least once during the day to burn off the creosote in the pipes so our smallish living room can get a bit too toasty when we do that.

All day Friday I wanted to sit in front of the fire and read a book but we didn’t start a fire since it wasn’t cold enough and I didn’t have time to open a book. I finally opened a book at almost 11 but then remembered I still had editing to do on my book.

My brain was a racing mess all week. It jumped from thing to thing to thing that I needed to do.

“Oh, I promised this group I’d post this.”

“Oh, I promised I’d write this post.”

“Oh, I need to get that one post ready.”

“Oh, I forgot to make the corrections on my book and it comes out in only two weeks.”

“Oh, I forgot to plan our homeschool lesson.”

“Oh, I wanted to make soup for that lady The Boy rescued this past summer.”

“Oh, I need to outline my next book.”

“Oh, look the animals have fleas again despite using the same flea medicine we’ve been using for years.”

“Oh, look we have a full on flea infestation in the house now.”

“Oh, I forgot that one bill.”

On and on it went and still it goes. Today I am desperate for a small amount of time where my brain only says, “That was a nice chapter,” or “I liked that video. It was peaceful,” or “Bob Newhart is so funny.”

I’m craving calmer days where I don’t feel like I’m plugging my finger in another hole in the dam of life which is about to burst and send me careening down a river of trials.

I don’t know if that is going to happen any time soon so I am going to enjoy some pockets of peace instead, stealing those quiet moments when and where I can.

Today (Saturday) The Husband has taken Little Miss to a makeup gymnastics class and I am watching Darling Desi’s latest video, will make some tea, and will hopefully read another chapter of Little Women.

Then I need to make the corrections from The Husband and my mom on Gladwynn Grant Takes Center Stage before it goes to another editor this upcoming week.

After that, I really hope to watch a cozy movie and work on some upcoming blog posts, but I don’t want to feel as rushed as I did all week long.

The rushing really hasn’t helped any situation – I haven’t sold more books (in fact I’ve sold almost none this entire month), I haven’t brought any more money in for my family to help as we struggle that way (in fact I have spent money will trying to bring in money so that has defeated the purpose), and I haven’t solved even one problem with the rushing and worrying.

This upcoming week will be Thanksgiving and we will spend the day with my parents. My brother and his wife will be home because my sister-in-law has to work the night shift (she is a 911 dispatcher) and it is also their anniversary. My brother is going to spend time with his wife before she has to go to work.

Thanksgiving is also my husband’s birthday which means the pies we make can be for his birthday and Thanksgiving.

Since Erin (from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) and I are kicking off our Cozy Christmas the week after next, I’ll also be spending some time to plan out my posts and grab onto the cozy feel of the season as much as I can, despite all the oddness going on in my life.

In addition to trying to figure out finances, my animals have fleas right now and our normal OTC flea medicines (both are very well-known, high-quality medicines) are not working. It’s possible we have an infestation in the house so we are working to solve that issue without having to set off one of those awful bombs that requires everyone to leave the house for two days.

While things have been stressful here, there have also been some lovely moments. Little Miss has made another one of her cozy forts for us to snuggle in at night when we want to read. Adding an extra pillow to the floor has helped this old lady with sciatica issues be able to sit there and I’m sure we will find time to snuggle tonight and this week while reading books.

I’ve pulled out my fluffy, very warm, blue blanket my husband bought me for Christmas our first Christmas here and put it on the bed and it’s been wonderful to snuggle under it while reading Little Women with a booklight at night.

We’ve had some nice family nights with my parents, playing charades and laughing while we all try to figure out what the other person is trying to describe. My dad is the best at charades, I should add. Mom and I are probably the worst.

Later today I hope to make some sweet potato and butter squash soup, which Little Miss has been asking for. She lost a tooth the other day and that reminded her of her dental surgery earlier this year and how I had to make her a variety of soups to eat while she recovered so she asked for sweet potato soup again.

I also hope to make potato soup at some point this week. I had planned to make it last week but never got around to it.

It will be a week of soups, I think, because I also have some frozen roast and potatoes to add to the Instapot to make vegetable beef soup later in the week.

Today I am closing my post with the Darling Desi video because the end of the video really hit me this week in a place I needed it.


How was your week last week?
Did you do anything fun?

Try any new teas or warm drinks?

Let me know in the comments.

Saturday Afternoon Chat: The missing cat, the viral reels that made me no money, and I didn’t leave the house all week (oops)

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 8 Comments

The flames are curling around the pieces of wood in our woodstove as I write this. My daughter made me a cup of hot cocoa sweetened with maple syrup and it was so good.

Earlier this week we lit the stove one day and didn’t the next, pretty alternating like that all week, because the temperatures were warm, then cold, then warm. Today they are back to cold and I think they are going to stay that way through tomorrow.

My sinuses (and those of my family) are not a fan of the up and down temps of autumn and spring in our area.

I need the weather to pick one temperature and stay there.

I did, however, appreciate the sun and warmth we received this week, even if there was a bit of a chill to it.

This morning I realized that I had not left the house all week. I had no reason to because the Husband took Little Miss to her events and I stayed home and worked on my books, blog posts, social media posts, and washed dishes. I washed dishes all week. That’s how I felt at least. I would finish dishes right before dinner and then everyone would use dishes for dinner and then it would start over. The day our dishwasher died was a very sad day for us, but that’s life.

Usually, The Husband does the dishes and folds the laundry more than I do because he gets to it quicker. I seem to be interrupted every five minutes when I am trying to do something but no one interrupts him, I have no idea why. He’s also just very organized and I am not, which I think I’ve mentioned on here before. I am trying to do a bit better at the housework but if the pile of unfolded laundry in our laundry room is any indication of how I am doing – well, you know how that is going.

On Tuesday I thought we had lost our cat for good when she didn’t show up after being out all night. I woke up early to the sound of Zooma the Wonder Dog barking and when I went downstairs to find out what was going on, our other cat ran in, but not the youngest.

The Husband and The Boy (my now 17-year-old teenager) went to work and when I came downstairs later, I thought I would find Scout, the youngest cat, back inside or on the back porch. She wasn’t there and a quick text to The Husband confirmed that she had not returned that morning. I had to wait a couple of hours for The Boy to come home from trade school to ask him if he had seen her and in that three-hour wait, I had this horrible feeling that she had been hit by a car or eaten by an animal the night before.

Usually, when she comes in in the morning she heads straight to my daughter’s room and curls up with her but she wasn’t there. She is also usually around my feet at some point in the morning.

We do our best to make sure the cats are inside at night because we do have foxes, bears, and occasionally coyotes in the area. A text to my neighbor to see if she had seen Scout made me even more nervous because my neighbor said there had been a huge catfight that morning in her backyard but she didn’t see which cat it was.

A friend of ours down the street has a male cat that likes to come up and try to act like he lives here and can tell my girl cats to get lost, so I worried he might have attacked Scout, but another neighbor also has a cat that fights with my cats (or vice versa).

When The Boy came home, I decided not to mention the cat’s disappearance to him because it was his birthday and I didn’t want him to be worried about her on his birthday. Finally, though, I asked him if he’d happened to see her when he walked to the bus for school.

“Yeah, I let her in this morning,” he said.

So, at some point, she’d been in the house.

That’s when I asked my daughter if she had been in her makeshift fort that morning (she has turned one of our couches to face our large window and has her stuffed animals and toys in there for her own little safe haven). She ran to the fort and – yes, there was the cat. She’d been there the whole morning and completely ignored me while I called for her. I felt stupid for not checking in the fort since she loves to curl up there.

This is the second time in two weeks Scout has done something like this, which should be a sign to me that I need to stop worrying about her and accept that she’ll show up eventually.

Now that the weather is colder, I want to make more soups for dinners and lunches. Earlier this week I made chicken noodle soup. I cooked a whole chicken in the Instapot and later added some carrots and farfalle pasta. The one thing I forgot about cooking a whole chicken down in the Instapot is that the bones crumble so you have to strain the broth and catch them in a strainer.

The only problem is that I don’t have a strainer right now so I tried to pick them out. That didn’t work great since we still found some bones in the soup. Hopefully I’ll get better at the soup making as winter sets in. Also, I’ll hopefully get a strainer.

My plan this week is to make butternut squash/sweet potato soup and maybe vegetable beef (we had some beef left over from the week before last and I froze that) and potato and ham soup. I’ll keep you updated on how that goes.

On Thursday I created a reel on Instagram to promote the blog post feature that Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I do together. It was simply a clip of the documentary we watched about dames Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Joan Plowright, and Eileen Atkins with a quote from the clip above it. I tossed it up and moved on with my day because usually Erin and I don’t get a lot of views on those reels or on our blogs (which is fine – we do this stuff mainly for fun and distraction for us and our blog readers).

By the end of Thursday I had a lot of people commenting on the reels or liking it. By Friday morning I had some 250,000 views and even more comments and shares.

By Friday night the number was 450,000 or so and the comments kept coming from people who just loved the clip and said how happy it made them.

This morning the number was 1.2 million. As of the time I am writing this, it is at 2 million plus views, 56.2 thousand shares, and 809 comments. I have reached 1.3 million accounts

What does all this mean? Will it help me sell books or make money or … do anything exciting with my life?

Nope. None of that really at this point. I don’t get paid on Instagram for my posts and people are liking this video but they aren’t really there for my books. I did gain more followers but, again, they are following me for my posts that aren’t related to my books.

And, honestly? That’s okay because the clip is bringing people joy and one thing I realize as the number of views increase on this is how hungry the world is for joy right now.

Here is a link to the reels:

There is so much sadness, hatred, depression, darkness, and hopelessness. Escaping for even three minutes as we watch four legendary actresses laugh and tease each other is a blessing. Then finding out we can escape for 90 full minutes? Whew! That’s a Godsend for many people right now. I’m glad that people were able to enjoy that clip.

So often lately I am trying to figure out how I can use any kind of social media success to help my family financially as we struggle, but most of the time it is enough that something I put out there gives people joy.

Sometimes we look for a bigger meaning in the things we do in life and I think it is okay if there isn’t a bigger meaning beyond what we did, saw, heard, read, or participated in that brought us joy.

If you want to read the blog posts where Erin and I talked about the documentary, you can find my post HERE and Erin’s post HERE.

How was your week last week? Did you do anything exciting?

Do you like to cook soups when the weather is colder? What kind of soups are your favorite to make or eat?