Saturday Afternoon Tea

Saturday Afternoon Chat: This summer is too busy

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 4 Comments

Hello, blog friends!

I have missed you all so much.

I’m not even kidding!

I didn’t take the time I should have last week to sit and read blog posts but I am going to make up for that this week.

I miss finding out what is going on with all of you.

What can I get you today for our Saturday afternoon chat? A cup of tea? A glass of lemonade?

The lemonade or something else cold might be in order, especially as I see how high the temperatures are going to be this upcoming week in our area.

I hate that it is going to be so hot this next week because there is an all-day church camp that I might take Little Miss to next week and neither of us do very well in the heat.

I definitely needed tea as I wrote this post. I thought summer was supposed to be nice and relaxing.

In some ways, it has been but last week it felt like I was in constant motion – if not physically then mentally. Last night The Husband put Newhart on the TV and my cortisol started to drop as soon as I heard the music. I needed that down time.

There was a two-hour church camp at a church in town in the afternoons this past week, which I took Little Miss to. She turned out to be the only child who showed up. I don’t think the organization that hosted the camps will be trying a camp again in this town because this is the second year they’ve only had one or two children. Two years ago, Little Miss and one of her friends attended four days. Last year they didn’t hold it.

I’m beginning to think there are no other children in this town at this point.

Little Miss had a lot of fun playing with the young people who lead the Bible lessons and they will be the same young people helping at the camp next week. The difference with next week’s camp is it will be for six and a half hours. I don’t think Little Miss will want to stay that long but we will go for at least part of the day.

We didn’t attend the summer reading events at the library this week, but we did visit the library and Little Miss chose a stack of books to read. She enjoys picking out books more than interacting with the other children anyhow so it worked out well.

Our last summer reading events will be this upcoming week, which is another reason we won’t be attending the other camp every day.

I want to say that August will be less busy, but I’m afraid to say that and jinx it.

I felt very overwhelmed this week because I was offered the sales job I interviewed for on Monday and had to fill out paperwork in the following days and then begin to watch the training manuals. This will be a job that I will do from home for a small amount of hours each week, but I am nervous. I’ve never worked in sales. Still, this seems like it will be a good opportunity for me to earn some new experiences and hopefully some income down the road.

I’ll share who I’ll be working with once I complete the training and begin the actual job. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to say it yet. I can say it is not Young Living, Amway, DoTerra, or Tupperware *wink*.

I can say it is related to homeschooling.

Speaking of homeschooling, I can’t believe how fast summer is going by. Before I know it I will be planning out homeschooling days again. I’m excited and nervous for this year, mainly because The Boy is going to be a junior and I know we need to start planning for his life after high school.

We have or had an opportunity for him to attend a local trade school for at least his junior year, if not both, but at the last minute the state made some changes to the homeschool law and now it sounds as if that won’t be a possibility. I find this very frustrating since this is a taxpayer-funded school and we pay taxes but even more frustrating has been the lack of communication from our local school district which seems clueless about how to go about the new law change. That’s what is “great” (sarcasm alert) about our state: they like to make law changes and not explain what they really mean and then feel proud of themselves for making rather stupid changes.


Today Little Miss and I plan to head to the pool at my parents’ and then tomorrow we will probably go there again, since I don’t know if we will be there again next week or not with all the events we have going on.

I have to be honest; I don’t like going to a bunch of events in the summer. I like my days to be chilled and relaxed so I don’t feel like summer has rushed me by. That’s why this month hasn’t seemed as fun to me, but we still have August to save it luckily. The ideal summer for me is hanging out at home with a few trips to the pool and evenings in the AC with a good book. For the most part that has happened for us this summer but not last week.

Last weekend Little Miss and I went to the pool and my dad even joined in with us. That’s something he doesn’t do very often so it was a lot of fun for Little Miss to be able to play Marco Polo with Grandpa and show him all her jumps and funny moves.

So as I mentioned above, this upcoming week will be full of events, including a church camp, summer reading, and gymnastics and I’m really hoping for a couple of days of doing nothing, but it doesn’t look like that will happen until maybe Saturday of next week.

How about you? How has your summer been? Super busy? Super relaxed? A mix of both? Let me know in the comments and also let me know what you’re drinking today as you go about your business!


Saturday Afternoon Chat: Warm days, anniversary, and would you stab someone for telling you the end of a book?

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 7 Comments

Hello, there! How is your summer?

Can I interest you in a slice of cake? A cookie? A cup of tea?

Honestly, I don’t have the cake or cookies so you will just have to have the tea, but I do have some fresh raspberries if you’d like some of those.

Let’s kick our Saturday afternoon chat off with a weird question:

Did you hear of the man who stabbed his colleague at a science lab in Antarctica in 2018 because the colleague kept telling him the end of the books he was reading?

Do you think you’d ever go that far?

I hope I wouldn’t but I would guess that there was a lot more to that man’s stress than simply being told the end of books. The man who was stabbed lived, by the way.

Anyhow, I somehow made it through this week without stabbing anyone despite all the running around and mental gymnastics my brain kept doing.

This summer has been very busy for us in some ways, but usually we’ve only had one thing to do a day. That one thing has often been in the middle or end of the day so it has thrown some things off but that’s okay. We’ve adjusted.

I am looking forward to autumn and winter this year simply for the fact that I will have an excuse to say I can’t attend something.

“Oh, so sorry but we’re supposed to get bad weather and … yeah. I’d love to, but you know. The roads could be dangerous.”

I have that excuse practiced pretty well but, alas, I can’t use that one in the summer. Unless we get flash flooding, and I’d prefer that didn’t happen.

So, Monday I volunteered to pull weeds in my dad’s garden. I forgot how uncomfortable a person’s muscles can get after pulling weeds so the next morning I was hurting quite a bit.

I couldn’t mope around too long, though, because Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing came out on Tuesday and I worked on marketing for that most of the morning. In the afternoon Little Miss and I went swimming at my parents’. She talked me into a couple of swimming competitions which were easier for her because she was in an inflated inner tube and I was using my actual muscles to swim. Using muscles I don’t use enough other times of the year two days in a row left me in a lot of pain later that night and into Wednesday.

Working those muscles, in other words, was both good and bad for me. I had a hard time walking and sleeping this week but I was glad I got out and did things and I was proud of myself for whining less than I normally do when I am in pain.

On Wednesday I drove Little Miss about 15 minutes away to a park for the county library’s Summer Reading program. That’s one thing I don’t think I have ever mentioned on here – our county is so small population wise, we only have one library. It isn’t our town library – it’s the county library and it’s where everyone in the county goes for books and activities, etc. Since it is the county library, they try to hold events in places other than the most populated town in the county, which is my town.

The children at Wednesday’s event painted rocks, played on the playground, and participated in a rock relay race where they had to race to place rocks in the shapes that they belonged to on a large piece of cardboard.

Little Miss had fun but was ready to go home fairly quickly because there were new episodes of Bluey on Disney Plus. These episodes have been withheld for some reason for the last year or so and they were much anticipated in our house. I was glad we didn’t have anywhere else to go the rest of that day.

On Thursday, The Husband took the day off so we could one, take his car 45 minutes north to be worked on and two, go out to dinner for our anniversary.

Our view while we drove.
My lunch.

After we dropped the car off, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant we enjoy near us. The Husband took Little Miss to gymnastics that evening and I stayed home and watched an episode of Miss Scarlet and the Duke while turning the air conditioning up full blast to make the house feel like fall. I made myself a cup of peppermint tea with honey and sipped that while I watched the show and designed journals. I know I should live in the present and not wish for it to be another season, but I do have to say, yet again, how much I miss the cooler months where I can snuggle under a blanket with a good book.

Yesterday a friend came to visit for a couple of hours, and then it was back up to pick up The Husband’s car and then he went grocery shopping, something he does because he is very nice, but also because I think he just doesn’t want to deal with whatever weird calamity befalls me if I go.

If you are new here, you may not know that almost every time I go grocery shopping something weird happens to me and I have some kind of emotional breakdown because I am a bit of a mental case at times (that’s the understatement of the year).

One time I locked the keys in the car and we didn’t have a spare. The last time I lost the key fob to the van and thought we didn’t have another one so I burst into tears. It wouldn’t be so bad except we have to drive 20 minutes away from home to get our groceries and I hate when I have to inconvenience someone to dig me out of whatever trouble I have gotten myself into.

I’m a bit high maintenance, which makes it a surprise to me at times that The Husband hasn’t run away screaming and that we’ve actually made it to 21 years.

He’s really very sweet to do the grocery shopping. It helps so much, especially because, even though I hate admitting it, my chronic health issues often leave me feeling drained and achy for a day after I do something like grocery shopping or anything that leaves me on my feet for quite a while.

He does a lot for our family and we’d be lost without him.



Today I really want to stay home and do absolutely nothing other than catch up on blog posts by other bloggers, write some more in the second Gladwynn Grant Mysteries book, or read a book, but it is supposed to get up to 87 and it would be a good day for Little Miss and I to go swimming. We will see how well I get around. Tomorrow, however, I am drawing the line and staying home all day so I can do some housework and catch up on blog posts, etc., because next week promises to be another long week with a church program at a local church, Summer Reading, and probably visits to the pool again.

The pull off along the scenic bypass we travel down to go home.

How about you? How was your week last week? What have you been sipping while you work, travel, or read this week?

Saturday Afternoon Chat: Fourth of July, swimming, and a lot of running around (in my mind at least)

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 10 Comments


I don’t know about you but I really need a cup of tea today, even if it is warm outside.

It’s been a very busy week. Well, busier than it normally is for us.  Part of that busy included a fireworks show during which I felt like I was having bombs dropped around me at the end. I’ll share more about that later on in this post. It’s a hilarious story. More hilarious to The Boy than to me, but at least he had a good laugh.

We are off to yet another event this afternoon – this time for the birthday party of a friend of Little Miss’s.

We spent last Sunday at my parents and Monday at home but I spent the day putting the finishing touches on my book that comes out soon and working on promotional material for that. On Tuesday we were back at my parents where we enjoyed a brief swim in the pool and some lunch. Then we attended a fireworks show near us that night.

Wednesday was another break day, partially because it was so sweltering hot outside. Thursday we were back at my parents for a swim (again because of the sweltering heat) and then some friends stopped by unexpectedly for a fun visit. Yesterday I did some running and then I spent all day either trying to fix the cover for my paperback book because Amazon kept saying the size was wrong, or developing promotional material for my social media.

I already mentioned today’s party. Tomorrow we may have lunch with my parents or I may just fall over. I’m not sure yet.

Honestly, we really didn’t do that much but it felt like I was buzzing around a lot trying to catch up and in some ways my brain was busier than my body. I kept thinking about some personal worries, my parents and their health, and also some more exciting things like upcoming ideas for books, my newsletter, and journal designs.

The Tuesday fireworks show came at the end of a day where I made a dinner of fries and bacon-wrapped chicken and helped clean the kitchen and also went into the pool a while with Little Miss. We didn’t spend very long in the pool because the chlorine was high, which was very frustrating to my dad who had been working to get the chemicals just right for a couple of weeks.

He has also constructed an entire partially solar, partially electric-run heating system to keep the pool warm, which we fully enjoyed on Thursday when we went swimming for part of the afternoon.

When I went to the fireworks I was tired and, quite honestly, cranky. Yes, I know. The readers of my blog could never imagine me as cranky. *snort laugh*

But, yes, I was tired and worried about a lot of things, and flat-out tapped out mentally. I didn’t even want to be there and initially sat in the car while the rest of my family spread out a blanket under a tree in a field along with other viewers. The fireworks were put on by members of a local fire company, but not the fire company itself. I didn’t know what to expect but when the first few were fired off, I knew the show was going to be spectacular – and it was.

The Boy is a teenager so not much impresses him, but he really did seem quite enamored with the fireworks. This was confirmed on the way home when he told me it was the first time in a long time he had experienced childlike wonder. I think how close we were to the fireworks was part of the reason.

They were literally exploding over our heads. At the end I experienced sheer panic when they set a series of them off and flashes and explosions fired off repeatedly, making me feel like I was in a war zone. I decided it was not a good idea to be so close at that point and wanted to move further up the hill in case fireballs started falling on us, but I found when I tried to stand up the ground kept moving in fast-paced light and shadow so I kept falling over. This was amusing to my son who later said he wondered how many times I was going to try to stand up and fall over before I stopped. I eventually just hunched down, squeezed my eyes shut and prayed for it to end without killing us.

For your amusement I am sharing with you my moment of panic and my son’s amusement. I have spared you the four minutes of darkness where you can just hear me saying, “No. No. I need to get out of here” and “That was way too much. Way too much. We’re not sitting this close if we come here next year.”



I’m grateful no fireballs fell on us and we very well might go back again next year – but I will be either staying in our car or sitting much further away!

We could only spend part of the day on Thursday swimming because Little Miss had gymnastics that night. She missed gymnastics, however, after she fell on a makeshift platform my dad set up by the ladder and bruised her – well, bottom – and her shin. She was too sore for gymnastics but was able to play with her friends later. She paid for jumping with them on the trampoline by letting me know as she crawled into bed that her bottom still hurt quite a bit.

Yesterday the only thing I did was run out to buy a few groceries at the local store, but after being on my feet much of Thursday, even that tired me out.

This upcoming week may be a little busy as well. Tuesday Little Miss and I have an event in the evening with the local library for Summer Reading. We have another one Wednesday morning at a park 15 minutes away. Thursday is The Husband and my anniversary so we are going to lunch and then taking Little Miss to gymnastics that evening.

It won’t slow down much the following week as we have more summer reading programs and a church program each day of the week. We, luckily, don’t have events all day, every day, however.

I was so busy this week – or, again, my mind was – that I even forgot to watch my Marilyn Monroe movie and write about it. I will have to take the time to do that this week.

I enjoy warmer weather where we can get outside, swim, grill, etc., but I really do like it when it all slows down in the fall and winter and I can take my time a bit more. I have to admit that I become spoiled by not having to go a lot of places in the cooler months. I prefer watching my slow-living YouTubers, reading books, writing my sometimes silly books, washing dishes while I listen to an audiobook, and making cups of hot cocoa or tea.

How was your week last week? Was it super busy? Super slow and easy? Let me know in the comments.

Saturday Afternoon Chat: Donkey farm visit, first jump in the pool, the smoke is back, and little country churches

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 8 Comments



Is it too warm in your neck of the woods for warm tea or coffee?

I have to say that is warming up here but I still enjoy some warm tea in the morning shortly after I wake up. I have not tried any new or exciting teas lately.

Today I am sipping water with lemonade mixed in. I mix the lemonade with water because this lemonade, which we pick up from Aldi, is very sour and acidic for my stomach, but I still like a bit of the flavor of it and it is also a sure way to get me to drink more water.

As I am writing this the sky is darkening up and it definitely feels and looks like we have a storm coming through or at least rain. That may put a damper on our plans for later today.

This week was both a slow and busy week.

It was mainly slow, but we had some events earlier in the week, including two library events that made it a little bit busy.

Both events were related to rescued donkeys and part of the local library’s summer reading program.

The first event was the reading of a book about rescued donkeys, some crafts related to the same topic, as well as a visit by a donkey to the library.

The next day we visited a donkey rescue farm. The Husband was on vacation and was able to go with us. Dark clouds and sprinkles of rain arrived when we drove to the farm but for the most part, the rain held off until after the visit was over.

The farm owners are originally from Maryland. The wife said part of the reason they moved to our area was because of the kindness the local people showed her and her husband when they had a part-time residence in the area.

Now the locals are even more accepting and helpful and also love the donkeys they’ve brought to the area.

After meeting the donkeys, I can see why. They are so friendly. A couple of times I thought they were looking for food, which I didn’t have, but it turned out they simply wanted extra attention. They love to have their heads scratched and seem to love being talked to as well.

I talked along to the one donkey, whose name I think was Tucker, like he was another person. He bumped his nose under my belly if I stopped talking to him or petting him, which reminded me that I am way fatter than I want to be but also that I’m short enough for a mini donkey to be able to stick his little snout under my belly fat.

Little Miss woke up that morning saying she wanted a donkey ride, but I told her I didn’t think they gave donkey rides. Somehow before we left, she convinced the owner to give her a quick ride on the donkey so her day was pretty much made.

She keeps asking to go back to the farm but this was a special event organized by the library so I don’t know that I would feel comfortable just calling up the place and asking if we can randomly drop by their farm because my child is in love with their donkeys. Who knows, maybe she can volunteer her time and help them around the farm.

The view from the pasture of the farm was absolutely amazing and reminded me why I don’t mind living in Northern Pennsylvania, even if we are an hour away from all the bigger towns and stores.

After we visited the farm, we stopped by an old church that I imagine was once also a one-room schoolhouse, but I’m not sure. I found an article online about it so I’ll read that and get back to you about that later this week.



The building was locked but we could see by looking inside that the structure features very old pews that are built into the floor and a woodstove like the ones pictured in the Little House on the Prairie books. I would imagine the stove doesn’t work anymore but the fact that is in such amazing shape was fascinating to me. If they ever have an open house there I am definitely going to go so I can check out the inside of the place.

It also featured an outhouse out back, but I’m guessing that is only for looks since the locks were painted over.

I have no idea if the church is still used regularly or not. Again, I’ll see what the article says.

There is a large, old cemetery on the hill behind the church, but we decided not to explore it since it had started raining. If we make our way out there again, though, I want to go into it since it sits high on a hill and there is probably an amazing view from it.

We had our first dip in my dad’s pool yesterday after weeks of Dad trying to get the thing clean. It was covered all winter but dirt and leaves, etc. fell into it so he had to run the filter, treat it, and run his new little pool-cleaning robot (Stella) too.

Alicia from For His Purpose (https://forhispurpose.blog/) asked yesterday if Stella did her job cleaning my Dad’s pool this past week. Stella is the robot that Dad picked up to clean his pool and he named it Stella to help him remember someone who helps him in physical therapy. I mentioned last week about how we lost Stella the first day Dad set her loose and I stood by the pool yelling “Stella!” ala Marlon Brando in Streetcar Named Desire.

This week we had to rename Stella June Bug because the real Stella was a little creeped out by the robot being named after her. I think she wasn’t really creeped out. She probably thought it was funny but Dad said he didn’t feel right pulling her out of the pool and announcing, “Stella had a bunch of garbage come out of her today.”

So we now have June Bug, a name Little Miss chose for her.

To answer Alicia’s question, yes, June Bug did a very nice job and cleaned up the pool well, which is one big reason why we could go swimming. That and the level of chlorine finally evened out.

Today we are relaxing but might visit the pool later. I’m not sure yet, because of the storms coming in.  When I started this post a bit ago, I was sure we would be over there tomorrow to jump in the pool and maybe help around the house, but I’ve since looked at the weather forecast and we might get rained out again. We will still go for some lunch most likely.

We were both rained out and smoked out of visiting the local state park while The Husband was on vacation this past week. Smoke, haze, and bad air quality drifted down from Canada again this week, keeping us inside much of Thursday. Luckily the smoke wasn’t as bad as it was in the first part of June.

I’m guessing we will be back at the pool someday next week since it is supposed to be much hotter than it has been, which is typical for July in our neck of the woods. The forecast says we could have temperatures in the high 80s, which I am not looking forward to.

How is the weather where you are? Is it blistering hot yet or just comfortable?

Did you have a nice week? Do anything exciting? Let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear (read) about it.

Saturday Afternoon Chat: Wild roses, cleaning out pools, and looking for crayfish

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 11 Comments

Welcome to my corner of the internet for a Saturday afternoon chat.

Can I pour you a cup of tea or coffee? Maybe a glass of juice or just plain water?

I was out of honey all week this past week which meant I had to sweeten my tea with sugar. Yuck! It was awful.

I was so thankful to The Husband for picking me up some local honey yesterday I made myself a cup of tea even though it was humid and sticky.

Last Sunday we spent the day at my parents for Father’s Day where we helped my dad clean out the pool to try to get it ready for Little Miss and me to swim in for a couple of months this summer.

We were supposed to go back and help again this week, but Dad was either busy or the weather wasn’t great or, well, I completely forgot. This next week we will help again and hopefully, the pool will be ready soon.

Dad bought a robot to clean the inside of the pool. You start it up and lower it in the pool and the idea is that it rolls around the bottom and picks up all the dirt, leaves, and other messy stuff.

Dad decided he was going to name the robot Stella as a bit of a joke because he kept forgetting the name of the therapist that helps during his therapy boxing class. He dropped her in at one point and came back in the house and I went out to get a shirt from the car I wanted to change into before I started skimming the pool. When I started to the car, though, he told me I had to hurry and help him find Stella.

“Our pool is so dirty, she’s probably full already. Hurry and help me find her because she has the pool so stirred up, I can’t see anything and she might burn her motor out.”

So, The Husband and I ran to help. My way of helping was to yell “Stella! Stella!” like I was Marlon Brando in Streetcar Named Desire while my dad and husband searched for the robot and eventually found her. They used the end of a cane to scoop her out because the hook she came with hadn’t been put together yet.

Later in the afternoon we went inside and searched for photographs of my grandfather to use for a video that I want to pair with audio we have of him singing at a fairground near us. I had already made one video for my dad, which I shared on here last week, but I had another song and wanted to add more photos since that was the original plan for the other video.

The audio was transferred, I think, from a reel-to-reel years ago.

While looking through the photos, we found photos of my grandparents when they were young, my grandfather singing, my grandparents on their 55th wedding anniversary, my grandfather with his arm around some Hawaiian girls when he and Grandma visited Hawaii, and him with his cousin when they were young boys. The Boy looked at the photo of him hugging the Hawaiian girls with wide eyes but I explained that visitors are greeted when they arrive by young ladies and gentlemen with leis to hang over the necks of the visitors.

After we left my dad found a pile of photos of him singing and acting at community events.

If you haven’t guessed already from my writing that I have audio of my grandfather singing, he was a well-known local singer who performed for local community and fundraising events. We also have a recording of him singing at a local television station but for some reason, we only have the audio and not the video.

I know I mentioned last week that I never had the opportunity to get to know my grandfather because he died when I was 2. I only know him through stories, his poems (of which we have tons), his journals (which mainly consisted of him writing about the weather and the errands he ran that day so nothing super personal), and photographs.

On Tuesday Little Miss was able to meet with a friend who she normally only talks to online (through a kid-safe video chat). The girl’s family came to town for a dentist appointment for her dad, and we met them by the soccer field behind the dentist’s office. After the appointment, I took Little Miss and her friend to a local restaurant for ice cream. Then they explored the tiny stream that runs by the restaurant. Little Miss was looking for crayfish – which I learned this week many of you refer to as crawdads.  We didn’t have a net to catch one and she was afraid it would pinch her when she tried to pick it up so we are going to get a net soon and take her to a creek where she can catch one.

I wandered out into our yard later that day to photograph our roses because I know they will be gone soon. I miss it so much when our roses are gone. I miss the flowers and really need to take some lessons from my neighbor on how to grow them because she has beautiful flowers all summer long.

On Wednesday Little Miss had a short Summer Reading program at the local library (a book read and a craft) and The Boy went to a sleepover and birthday party for a friend.

On Thursday, The Husband took Little Miss to gymnastics and I watched a special with James Cameron on the 25th anniversary of the Titanic movie. I’m going to write a separate blog post about that one because – I have issues with it. Ha!

Yesterday I spent most of the day doing what I did Thursday which was washing dishes and doing laundry but not actually getting to the folding of the laundry. Ahem. But I did get it washed at least. On Wednesday I even hung laundry out on our clothesline, which I don’t know if I will do again because it was all stiff when I took it off for some reason.

Yesterday was very, very humid and rainy and today was supposed to be more of the same, but so far it feels much better. I am a fan of rain when it is cold out, not when it is all sticky and gross and makes my head feel icky.

Little Miss is having some friends over today and a planned sleepover with them, which will be her first time having a sleepover. Well, second, but we had to take her friend home in the middle of the night that first time. This time she is having two friends over so hopefully it goes better.

We are supposed to have rain for the next week, which will be great for the farmers and the ground, but will sort of stink because The Husband has the whole week off from work and we were going to go to a local state park which also features a lake we can swim in, but it looks like we might not be able to do that because of the rain.

How was your week last week? Do anything interesting? Let me know in the comments and tell me if you’ve found any good teas to try. I’ve written down a few of your suggestions and have been adding them to my shopping lists to try in the future.

Saturday Afternoon Chat: Roses are blooming, enjoying some relaxing days, and you don’t always have to explain yourself

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 6 Comments

I am ready for a chat this week. A happier chat than in other weeks. *snort laugh*

I’ve been a bit of a downer lately. Eek.

So today I have made myself a cup of hot cocoa. It’s not super cold today (or super hot) but I think cocoa can work any time when you are not a coffee drinker.

Outside my window, the sun is shining. The bell at the Catholic Church on the hill across from the house is chiming because it is noon.

In the yard, my roses and my peonies are blooming, though some of them looked a little sickly, are also blooming.

I’m planning to take Little Miss to the library in a bit and then spend the day working on my book with a live writing sprint with an author on YouTube.

The weather this week was rainy and wet part of the time and then beautiful and sunny. It was not too warm, not too cold. In other words, it was lovely for at least the days it didn’t rain.

We didn’t do much this week outside the house other than take Little Miss to gymnastics, explore the garden, and visit my parents. It was just a pretty relaxed week and we needed that.

Yesterday was super relaxed. I mostly wrote, designed journals (which are on sale for – ha. Kidding. I’m so tired of advertising my stuff. I’m going to take a break from that on my blog.), read a book, and watched Forgotten Way Farm on YouTube.

I really enjoy Forgotten Farms because she talks about simple, everyday things. She shares about what she is cooking, thrift shopping, what she’s reading, and simple living. Did I mention enough that she shares about the simple life? Have I used the word “simple” enough? You understand her channel is about simplicity now, right?

Okay. Moving on.

This morning I was thinking a lot about how I explain myself too much in life. I way overexplain why I am doing something because I think that the other person is thinking something negative about me. I go into defense mode way too often.

So, I kicked out this little paragraph to put on Instagram this weekend or later in the week. I’d really like to take an entire weekend off social media so it will probably be next week.

“You don’t have to explain to anyone why you want time to write. You don’t have to explain to anyone why you are writing what you are writing. You don’t have to explain to anyone why you are self-publishing. If it is making you happy and you find joy in it, or it is making you extra money that your family needs right now then those may be your reasons, but you don’t owe anyone an explanation for those reasons. Family, friends or strangers can think you are silly or ridiculous or delusional and they may even tell you that you are all those things, but you still do not owe them anything – not even a defensive response.

Tune it all out and write on, my friends!”

So today I say the same to you – tune it all out and do whatever you want to do (without hurting others or your soul, of course) and don’t explain yourself to other people as much as possible. I mean, sometimes you have to explain a little but, well, you get my drift.

In closing (I know! This post is so short today!) I am leaving you some photographs I took this week of our flowers as they started to bloom. There are more out there now, and I’ll probably take some more photographs of them for tomorrow’s Sunday Bookends post. Really, though, how many flower photos can one person have? They all sort of look the same, right? But, it makes me happy, so I don’t have to explain. Booyah!



Saturday Afternoon Chat: Hazy, smokey days and the cruelty of nature

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 13 Comments



Can I make you a cup of tea? It’s been a weird week here and I could use one myself.

This week took a little bit of an odd turn on Tuesday and Wednesday when our already minimal plans for the week were thrown off even more by the smoke and haze that came down from Canada and made our air unhealthy to breathe. I’m sure many of you found your week impacted similarly (except you folks in California who deal with smog all the time anyhow.)

The smoke chased Little Miss and me inside for two days since she and I are the most sensitive members of the family when it comes to smells and smoke, etc. When I first smelled it all on Tuesday, I thought one of our neighbors was burning trash since outside burning is something we are allowed to do here in our area.

I looked outside a couple of times to see which neighbor it was. My eyes were burning some and I had already been sneezing but thought it was normal allergies.

I mentioned the smoke smell to The Husband who told me it was the Canadian wildfires and suggested I start shutting all the windows to keep it out.

I started Googling and found out that air quality was getting worse in New York state and realized that the air quality feature on our weather app does actually serve a purpose. I looked at our levels and started to become concerned, but on Tuesday it wasn’t as bad as it became on Wednesday when our air quality level jumped from code red to code purple and over 330 points. I learned the scale goes to 500 so I started to wonder if we were going to get up that high or not.

I spent much of Wednesday reading about what the fires were doing to the east coast and trying to convince my dad to stop going out in it and to bring my son home since the two of them were going to do work around Dad’s house. He finally agreed it was very bad out there and brought The Boy home.

The view at my parents when Dad decided the air really wasn’t healthy to breathe.

My son snapped a couple of photos on their way through town and he took a few on his way to work as well.

I snagged this photo from a newspaper 45 minutes south of us. This photo is not Photoshopped and there is no filter on it. This is how yellow it was out there.

My son said there were more people in our small town than he’s ever seen before during the day as the smoke got thicker and they were all out there talking about how bad the air was and coughing.

Sounds like a typical human reaction. Ha.

It was very yellow outside, as the photos above show, similar to how it looks when there is a really nasty thunderstorm coming, and that yellow stretched into our house, making it look otherworldly. I wanted to pull all the curtains over the windows and pretend it wasn’t out there. This was one of the few times I regretted all the windows we have that let in wonderful natural light. Mainly because the natural light was not wonderful at all.  

This introvert should have liked being forced inside for two days but I did not. I like at least being able to go outside and look at my slowly blooming flowers without coughing and my eyes burning. Grilling outside wasn’t much fun either. I ended up only going out once on Tuesday and not at all on Wednesday.

By Thursday I was excited when the air quality was improved, and I could go visit my parents. The air was much clearer with only a faint whiff of smoke by the afternoon when I went to their house. I also went into the yard Thursday to take photos of the white peonies that are already blooming and the pink ones that are just starting to open.

The peonies open every year around my brother’s birthday, which I mentioned last week, I think. His birthday was yesterday.

From what I heard from him, he had a nice, relaxing birthday.

My roses aren’t blooming yet but the buds are out and that makes me so giddy with excitement!

Let me go back to that visit to my parents on Thursday for a moment. My dad and Zooma the Wonder Dog went outside at one point, but Dad came back in a few moments later looking for his iPad. He said that there was a fawn in the backyard and that Zooma had been nose to nose with it, calmly sniffing it.

By the time we came back out, Zooma was walking away, looking very wary at the fawn. She didn’t even bark at it. Long story short, we left the fawn there as we know we are supposed to do because the mom will usually come back to the fawn and takes them back with her. We did think it was odd that the fawn was curled up in the short grass, not in higher grass because the doe usually leaves her fawn in a camouflaged area.

Little Miss and The Husband stopped by on the way back from gymnastics (Little Miss is in a new class) and Little Miss got a look at the fawn. She wanted to pet it, but we didn’t let her. After some online research, I did learn that the doe will not abandon her baby even if it comes in contact with humans or pets, but l thought she should stay back from it because I honestly thought it didn’t look like it felt well. We did read that a doe will abandon a fawn if it is sick.

We left my parent’s house and Mom and Dad went to bed later thinking the doe would come back for her fawn. In the morning, though, Dad discovered that the fawn had died.

We were all heartbroken.

When we pulled up to the house yesterday to take some packages that had been dropped off at the garage into my parent’s house, a fawn ran up the bank behind the house, near the dead fawn, (which Dad had covered with a tarp because he was going to bury later it later in the day), and we were confused, thinking maybe the fawn really hadn’t died. The fawn had, sadly, indeed died, but two other fawns were on the bank and ran into the woods. We are hoping that the three fawns weren’t abandoned by their mom somehow and we are also now wondering if the doe had triplets and the youngest one just didn’t make it.

The whole experience made me very weepy yesterday and added to a few other things that have made me weepy lately. I’ve had a lot on my mind this past week. I’ve been worrying and praying for a lot of people and situations but probably worrying more than I’ve been praying. I’m not going to share any of the situations I am worrying about because they involve situations with others.

We were glad that the heavy smoke didn’t come into our area until Tuesday because this gave Little Miss some time to visit with her friends who are moving back to Texas. They moved there once before, came back, and it looks like they are moving again. They flew out of an airport near us yesterday. Little Miss was very heartbroken that they most likely won’t be coming back from Texas again and I held her for a long time after they left, crying along with her. I had gotten used to them running up from their great-grandmother’s down the street and playing here for a while in the summer. It will be sad to no longer see them, but the move is necessary for their health and well-being for a variety of reasons.

Little Miss does have another friend coming over today to play and I know she’s looking forward to that after saying goodbye to her other friends and being locked up in the house for two straight days.

Tomorrow we may visit my parents. I will be put to work cleaning out the pool so we can eventually swim in it when the weather gets hotter, which I’m sure it will do by mid-June to early July.

As for next week, the sky is the limit. Homeschool is officially over for a couple of months (I plan to have a post up about that later in the week) so we will just take it easy until Summer Reading starts June 20th.

The local summer reading program includes activities at the local library and a couple of field trips. It should be fun and fill up our summer so we’re not sitting at home too often.

I usually share what I am drinking, tea-wise, but I didn’t do that at the beginning of the post this time. This week I went back to my regular peppermint tea because our days were a little chilly, but we are warming up again today and throughout next week. Little Miss made me some cinnamon sugar milk last week for fun and I actually liked it.

So how was your week last week? Did you have to deal with the smoke from the wildfires as well?

Saturday Afternoon Chat: Some alone time, a couple of outings, visit by friends, and bad Anne of Green Gables sequels

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 9 Comments

Everyone, I am so excited because by the time you read this, or maybe while you are reading it, I will be having an afternoon to myself to write and watch movies and do whatever I want.

In other words, I will be sitting in my house completely lost and wondering why I thought it would be a good idea to accept my husband’s offer to take the kids to a movie and for me to stay home.

The whole thing sort of went down like this:

Husband: “I’m going to take the kids to Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse on Saturday and you can stay home and write.”

Me: “Uh. Oh. Okay.”

Husband: “Great. Have fun.”

And boom. Here I am. Alone. Writing a blog post.

Alone. In my house. With the dog. With my family 45 minutes away from me one way.

Alone with my thoughts and an old movie (How to Marry A Millionaire).

Ahem.

Did I ever mention that alone time is highly overrated? Because it is.

 I’ll update in my Sunday Bookends post how many times I cried wishing my family was home with me interrupting me 15 times while I try to write and that I had instead gone with them.

For now, though, a little about last week.

There is very little to report, honestly. It was a fairly relaxed week – at least physically. Mentally my mind seemed to race all day.

We spent Sunday at a Memorial Day service at a small cemetery about 30 minutes away. A bagpiper played some music in honor of the holiday at the cemetery which was recently repaired and cleaned up.

The speaker who was supposed to come didn’t make it so it was just the bagpiper, but he did a wonderful job. The music was very poignant and moving as we overlooked the cemetery full of veterans of wars that our country fought as far back as at least the Civil War, if not the Revolutionary War as well.

After the service we stopped at a playground right down the road for Little Miss to play a bit. She, however, was more interested in playing in the creek behind the playground, which is totally fine with me. She had no interest in leaving the creek when it was time to go and we hope to stop by there again soon to give her even more time to play.

The water was very low there because we have not had a lot of rain recently and also did not have a very snowy winter.

I have a feeling that our county will be under a burn ban soon. In our area we are allowed to burn trash in a barrel outside in our backyards, but not if there is a burn ban in effect. That will probably come soon as our grass is starting to fade to yellow in some places and our trees are very dry.

Little Miss and The Husband threw rocks in the creek and Little Miss and I put our feet in the water. It was really a very nice and relaxing afternoon.

The Boy was home resting after working the night before.

On Monday we visited my parents for Memorial Day after The Husband went to a Memorial Day service to take photographs and my dad and The Boy went to a service downtown.

The Husband cooked steaks on the grill that my dad had bought a while ago from a local farmer.

The steaks were excellent.

Little Miss, The Husband, and the Boy took a ride on the golf cart before we left. Little Miss helped clean out the pool at my parents before the golf cart ride. My dad is trying to get it summer ready. We will have to do some more cleaning tomorrow when we visit to get it all the way ready.

On Thursday Little Miss had a friend over to visit.

Yesterday we did pretty much nothing, other than The Husband who was awesome and braved the heat we were having to pick up groceries.

It turned out to be not as hot as we thought it was going to be but he didn’t want me to have to deal with any drama after the loss of the key fob last week. There always seems to be drama when I do the shopping. Sigh. He also does a great job and keeps us well within budget. Not that I go too crazy with the budget, but Little Miss does tend to add extra fruits to the cart when we do it, which is okay by me.

This past week started writing more of book two of the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries. I am having fun crafting the story and will hopefully write a little more on it today during my break.

I started to watch Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story today but – ick. I forgot that the story was not from the books and was, quite frankly, ridiculous and way too over dramatic. The actors were too old to be playing the parts, they took the story out of Prince Edward Island and to the United States and Kevin Sullivan took way too many liberties with the characters for my taste.

I have not enjoyed every Anne book I’ve read (like Anne’s House of Dreams. Yuck. So depressing. Seriously.) but there is a reason I love L.M. Montgomery’s books. They are whimsical and full of joy, most of the time anyhow. There are some sad and hard stories but at their heart is a youthfulness and hopefulness to Anne that I really didn’t see in this mini-series or as much of it as I was able to watch today. I watched it years ago and remember not enjoying it very much then either.

Staying on the topic of Anne of Green Gables, this week I unfollowed the official account of the original mini-series when they started pairing scenes from the film with modern music – particularly Taylor Swift.

I am not a fan of Taylor, one, but, two, I am not a fan of modern music being paired with films about vintage shows or books. I read those books and watch similar movies to escape the modern world. I don’t see why they need to be combined and connected to the modern world in any way. Leave me my vintage fantasy world, please. That’s what I wanted to tell them but instead I just quietly unfollowed. No need to be a prude and a drama queen at the same time. *wink*

I usually share what I am drinking and forgot to do that at the beginning of the post so I’ll share now that I have made myself a cup of peppermint tea to sip and filled it with honey after being without honey for a week or so. The weather was very warm last week so I didn’t bother to make tea, but instead drank a lot of water with lemon or grape juice mixed in.

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

Drink any lovely teas or lovely beverages?

Let me know in the comments.

Saturday Afternoon Chat: Still cold in our neck of the woods, digging holes, weird grocery shopping trips and homeschool wrapping up this week

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 8 Comments

I am writing this post while – yet again – sitting under a blanket with a dog cuddled against me.

Yes, it is still a bit chilly in Pennsylvania but that is set to change next week when temperatures will finally rise into the mid-80s.

I have mentioned before that I like chilly weather and being able to curl up under a blanket with a good book and have an excuse to not go anywhere and instead just stay at home and read a book. Still, 50 and 60 degree days this close to summer is a bit odd.

I remember one summer when Little Miss was a baby, and The Boy was also young, that it was very cold almost the entire summer. It was either cold and raining and it ruined many summer plans, especially swimming at a public pool near us – which is no longer public, sadly. The Boy was severely depressed he couldn’t do most of his summer activities. Now he no longer swims or does too many summer activities – like digging holes in the backyard. I miss that.

One summer he started digging a hole in the backyard. Why? I don’t know. Even he didn’t know. He just wanted to see how far he could get and what the hole would become. He was around 11 and I think it was around the time his closest friend stopped talking to him because I had chosen to pull him from the private Christian school he was attending at the time. Long story short, my son was having difficulties with a teacher and having panic attacks.

Regardless of all the other details, my son found new fun in his life and digging that hole was part of his fun.

He’d grab his shovel and head out into the backyard and play some music and dig a hole. Sometimes his sister would join in.

Anyhow, I have digressed a lot in this post. Back to my week recap.

This past week was very uneventful, other than an issue with the inside of my mouth and a broken tooth I’m having. Right now, I can’t get the tooth fixed because I don’t have insurance or money for the dentist (like up to $300 just to come in and see what needs to be done. No thanks.) I am thankful I am not in excruciating pain but talking has been interesting since I ripped my cheek muscle trying to get a look at the broken tooth. Fun times and stupid move by me. Hopefully it will all heal soon or I will find the money to get the one tooth pulled.

Thursday Little Miss and I drove the van up to be fixed by an exhaust specialist because the van’s exhaust system has a big hole in it.

The Husband met us there from work and brought us home. While trying to turn around because I drove past the place, some very angry man cursed at me out his truck window. I think it was at me. I’m not sure. All I know is that he sounded very angry, used extremely bad words, and then flipped off someone as I pulled out. No idea if it was at me or not because I was already going the other direction by the time he got his hand out the window.

Before we took the van, we stopped at the library to sign Little Miss up for the summer reading program and for her to pick out a few books.

Yesterday we had to pick the van back up and grab some groceries. That was a whole drama as it often is when I get groceries. Something weird happens almost every time I go. One time I locked myself out of our van and our spare keys don’t work to unlock it and the key fob lock button doesn’t work on it. It was a whole thing. Another time the youngest was just about starving and I had to get her food before we could go. This time the key fob fell off the keychain and disappeared into the void of Aldi or the parking lot or my van or I don’t even know. It was just gone. This meant I was once again stranded at Aldi with no way to get home until The Husband (who’d already had a super, super long day) could come and get me. He’d already headed home to rest because he had to take photos for the paper at a Twitty & Lynn concert. If you don’t know who they are, they are the grandchildren of Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn. Having them perform in our area was a little weird since there is nothing out here but trees and bears, but, alas there they were.

Speaking of bears, The Boy was up very late one night last week and looked out his upstairs window to see the outline of a bear in the dark sniffing our grill on the back porch. He said it was too dark to see it very well but that he could hear the bear breathing.

He left a note letting his dad know about the incident and then The Husband read in the local paper (not the one he works with) that a bear has been seen wandering our street and the streets around us.

I have been trying to see a bear for three years but only from the safety of my house. However, after hearing one is actually roaming our backyard, I’ve decided I don’t want to see one. I was even too afraid to take Little Miss to the neighbor’s trampoline this week in case the bear came out of the small woods behind it. I have no idea what I would do if a bear came out while we were up there.

It’s fairly rare for a bear to come out during the day, but a young bear was in the yard of a friend of ours down the street last summer and it had no interest in leaving, even with her daughter’s dog barked at it. Zooma the Wonder Dog likes to go with us when we go up to the trampoline and I know she’d try to defend us. This week I am going to look up what we should do because it is supposed to be very nice out, and it will be nice weather to jump on the trampoline. Or it will be too hot to jump on the trampoline. Not sure which yet. We never can tell with Pennsylvania weather.

Today we had gymnastics for Little Miss and then we will have a week off from gymnastics.

School is winding down for us and we are mainly tackling last minute tasks such as finishing book reports and a research paper for The Boy, since I am required to have writing samples for him now that he is in high school.

Our last official day of school is June 2 and then we meet with the evaluator the next week. The evaluator will go over what work we did for the year and then write up a report that says we did what we needed to do under the requirements of our state’s homeschool law. We then hand that in to the school district and the year is officially done when the superintendent sends us a letter saying we have done what we needed to do – again – under state law.

I mentioned above that I signed Little Miss up for the local Summer Reading Program. That starts June 20th and is every Tuesday and Wednesday. It runs for about a month and should keep us busy and at the library at least a couple of times a week.

The Boy is still working at a local restaurant, at least for the summer. His schedule will get busier in the fall because he is going to be attending a trade school near us a couple of times a week in addition to homeschool, so he plans to quit his job.

I have not been drinking as much tea lately because I am out of honey. I planned to get some yesterday but after all the drama, I just wanted to head home. In place of honey, I used sugar. Yuck. I don’t know how I ever drank anything in it with sugar. It’s just too sweet and doesn’t taste right.

Since it will be warm this upcoming week I’ll probably stick to cool water or cool water with a bit of grape juice mixed in.

How about you? What have you been drinking and what will you be drinking this upcoming week? Herbal tea? Iced tea? Lemonade? Let me know in the comments and let me know how your week was.