It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
My 11-year-old daughter was upset at me the other night but the funny thing is I had no idea and was just skipping around through life and our bedtime routine while she was all stewing under her covers.
She later told me she kept sighing heavily and changing positions to see if I would notice she was upset but I never did.
I even suggested we do our nightly prayers, having no idea she was holding a grudge over something I said that she took wrong.
Why this is so funny to me is that when she shared with me how upset she’d been I kept thinking of a video I recently watched where a cat owner is saying she can’t be upset when her cat does something annoying because she imagines the cat with some derpy/dorky music in her head and feels sorry for her. I just kept imagining myself as the cat, skipping along through life, clueless while my kid was all annoyed at me. I even shared this with Little Miss and let her know that the next time she is sitting there annoyed at me just imagine that most of the time I have no clue I’ve said something wrong and am instead just listening to dumb music in my head.
Luckily Little Miss and I worked things out when she was able to tell me how she felt and I was able to clarify what I actually meant by the comment.
What I/We’ve Been Reading
Just Finished
Nothing yet.
In Progress
My Beloved by Jan Karon is growing on me and I’m glad I didn’t give up on it but it is still disappointing in many ways overall. I feel like Jan’s notes, in their chopped up form, were just shoved into a book without flushing it out or connecting it.
I do recommend the previous 14 books in The Mitford series, however.
I started the first book in the Miss Read series, Village School, this week, putting the second book, Village Diary, aside after realizing it was the second book and I should probably read the first book in the series…first.
It’s a very slow paced book so to move things a long a bit I started The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie and am realizing that sometimes the “Britishness” of her books goes over my head.
Chimneys is an area in the country, not the appendage on a house roof, it turns out.
Up Soon
After these books, I plan to read The Tiger in the Smoke by Margaret Allingham and start Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien
What The Family is Reading
The Husband just finished his first book of the year —
The Boy is listening to a Warhammer book.
Little Miss is reading Nancy Drew: The Secret of the Old Clock.
What I/We’ve Been Watching
The past week or so since my husband has been off work so we’ve watched a variety of things together. We watched some Murder, She Wrote, Parks and Recreation, Car 54 Where Are You, and Midsomer Murders which The Husband likes better than me. The series is a bit dark for me, but the mysteries are interesting.
The Husband got caught up in a movie called Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy but I didn’t realize he was going to keep watching it and that I should follow along so I didn’t pay attention at first and then when I did tune in, I was so confused that I had to take to Google to catch up with what was really going on.
Even after reading the summary, I was completely confused but sort of figured things out.
I also rewatched McLintock with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara.
And I watched Yankee Doodle Dandy with James Cagney, which I wrote about on the blog.
Erin (Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) and I host a monthly bookish link party called A Good Book and A Cup of Tea. This link-up is for book and reading posts or anything related to books and reading (even movies based on books!). Each link party will be open for a month. You can find that link up for this month here.
Each week, I host the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot with some great hosts. It goes live Thursday night but you can share any kind of blog posts (family-friendly) there until Tuesday of each week. You can check my recent posts on the sidebar to the right for the most recent link-party.
Now It’s Your Turn
What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to. Feel free to link your posts about
I am starting this post on Christmas night, cuddled up under a blanket with a heating pad because we chose not to light our fire since we were going to be gone most of the day, visiting my parents for Christmas. We have another heat source but it’s hard to get the house warm on cold nights like this with just the baseboard heat. It’s 18 degrees tonight and tomorrow (Friday) we are set to get a few inches of snow as well as ice. We are definitely lighting our fire tomorrow.
The Husband is off work for the next couple of weeks, and Little Miss is off school as well.
We don’t have any grand plans, other than going to see a light display at a golf course near us.
On Monday, The Husband took our new cat Cass up to an animal clinic about 45 minutes north to be neutered in the morning. The kids and I headed up in the afternoon to pick Cass up but the trip took longer since we had to run to the Wal-Mart near there to pick up a gift for my dad and some grocery items at the pickup area in the parking lot.
The wait to get those items turned out to be a lot longer than we had anticipated because of how busy it was since it was three days before Christmas. My son was driving and it was very nerve-racking for him (a new driver) to be driving in a packed parking lot while people walked to their cars, without even paying attention to the cars trying to get through the parking lot and back onto the street.
There were cars everywhere in this town, which is much bigger than where we live now and by the time we reached the road that would lead us to where we could pick up Cass, The Boy and I were both a bit on edge. I took over the driving to the animal clinic when we stopped to grab a couple slices of pizza but let The Boy drive again after we picked Cass up because it was getting dark and I can’t see as well in the dark as I once could.
We were given a cone to put on Cass’s head to keep him from licking or chewing at the stitches and it was while working to put that on him Monday night that I smelled something awful. Apparently, Cass was having some issues controlling his spraying because before I knew it, I smelled like cat urine.
It was on my clothes and somehow in my hair so I had to head up the stairs to take a shower and on my way up the stairs I mumbled, “Well I didn’t have getting cat pee in my hair on my bingo card for today.”
When we left the clinic, the woman at the front desk gave me a long list of guidelines for Cass. At the top of the list was to make sure he didn’t lick his wounds too much. Next, we were told to make sure he didn’t jump and leap around too much. Huh. Yeah right.
We have two archways (or whatever they are called) in our living room, high windows in our laundry room, and his food is on a counter, so the dog doesn’t eat it.
By the second day, he kept jumping on anything high to try to find a way out. On the third day he fell into a laundry basked under our laundry room window while trying to get to the window to see if it was a way for him to get out.
The day after Christmas, he climbed the glass doors in our living room — how, I have no idea.
Last night I found him in the other laundry room window and when I told him to get down he jumped about three feet, landing on top of the washer. I am beginning to think he’ll be safer when he can go outside and stalk birds or whatever he does out there.
Back to Sunday now and I am writing after Little Miss had a wildly fun sleepover with her friend, complete with sledding, cooking making, and general mayhem without devices other than the ring camera where they kept recording hilarious messages for me.
The friend is going home today as we try to beat another freezing rain winter storm coming in this afternoon.
It will continue into tomorrow and then there will be just rain.
This weekend has been very nice and cozy, though, and so much fun. It was fun to watch the girls have so much fun together. We still have another week with everyone off work/school, so there will hopefully be more of these fun moments.
Our Christmas was nice and quiet with my family visiting my elderly parents for the day.
I didn’t finish anything this past week but am reading My Beloved by Jan Karon and The Christmas Quilt by Jennifer Chiaverini. I might give up on The Christmas Quilt because it is more like being told the story instead of being immersed in the story.
My Beloved is not what I expected and while the story is a cute idea and there are sweet moments so far, it also seems oddly set up with individual very short chapters from the POV of different characters. I sort of wonder why Jan’s editors didn’t combine some of the chapters instead of making them separate chapters. I love Jan’s books and her writing, but this one simply isn’t clicking with me like most of her previous novels. I am withholding my final opinion until I have finished the book, though.
Coming up next week, I hope to read some more mystery books. I did not receive any new books for Christmas, which is okay because My Beloved was my birthday/Christmas gift and because I have sooo many books on my shelves already. I did receive a very nice journal/personal planner, though, that I am already starting to use.
Little Miss and I will be starting a new historical fiction book when our new year starts and I purchased fantasy books by Ted Dekker and his daughter for Christmas for her so I am hoping she will start one of those.
The Husband just finished a Cormac McCarthy book called Stella Maris.
I watched a few movies this past week, either with the kids or The Husband, including:
The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, The Thin Man, White Christmas, The Bishop’s Wife, The Benson Murder Case, Tenth Avenue Angel and part of It’s A Wonderful Life.
I also started Yankee Doodle Dandy with James Cagney for my Winter with Cagney movie event for the blog but had to stop it to go to bed. That movie is a lot longer than I realized. So far, I am enjoying it, even though it is a bit schmaltzy at times.
I also have to finish A Child’s Christmas in Wales today, which my brother recommended to me on Christmas Day. I got interrupted watching it and just remembered I haven’t finished it yet!
Erin (Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) and I host a monthly bookish link party called A Good Book and A Cup of Tea. This link-up is for book and reading posts or anything related to books and reading (even movies based on books!). Each link party will be open for a month. You can find that link up for this month here.
We are also hosting Comfy Cozy Christmas until the end of this week! As Erin said on her blog, “Anything holiday related – any December holiday – at all that strikes your fancy and you write about, please think about sharing on our linky.” You can find the link for that at the top of my page in the menu or here.
Each week, I host the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot with some great hosts. It goes live Thursday night but you can share any kind of blog posts (family-friendly) there until Tuesday of each week. You can check my recent posts on the sidebar to the right for the most recent link-party.
Now It’s Your Turn
What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this. You can copy my blog graphic to your computer if you want to participate in my link party or you can join the other awesome link-ups below.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to. Feel free to link your posts about
I can’t believe that Christmas is this week. This month went so fast! This year went so fast for that matter.
Tomorrow we will have to take a trip almost an hour north to pick our cat up from being neutered. The Husband is taking him there in the morning and we will be picking him up in the afternoon. Otherwise we will be mostly laying low this week until Thursday when we will visit my parents for Christmas.
I still feel like there was so much more I wanted to do to celebrate Christmas before we got here, but, as usual, we are behind. One thing I do regret is that we never got our nativity set up this year. We had such cold weather for about two weeks and The Husband, who is the one who usually puts it up for us, has been super busy at work. Those combining factors made finding the time difficult.
Maybe we can get an Easter display up instead this year.
Erin (Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) and I host a monthly bookish link party called A Good Book and A Cup of Tea. This link-up is for book and reading posts or anything related to books and reading (even movies based on books!). Each link party will be open for a month. You can find that link up for this month here.
We are also hosting Comfy Cozy Christmas! As Erin said on her blog, “Anything holiday related – any December holiday – at all that strikes your fancy and you write about, please think about sharing on our linky.” You can find the link for that at the top of my page in the menu or here.
Each week, I host the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot with some great hosts. It goes live Thursday night but you can share any kind of blog posts (family-friendly) there until Tuesday of each week. You can check my recent posts on the sidebar to the right for the most recent link-party.
I finished Waiting for Christmas by Lynn Austin this past week. It was a cute and sweet Christmas novella.
I’m now reading My Beloved by Jan Karon and so far I am enjoying it even though it is bouncing back and forth between characters. I was so excited to get the book back from my mom who I let borrow it before I read it because I know how much she enjoys the Mitford books. She was afraid to read it anywhere other than her chair so it took her a month or more to finish it but I was fine with that. Now I can sit down in the days leading up to Christmas and savor it.
This is most likely the final Mitford book since Jan is 88 now so I will definitely savor it.
I am also reading an Elm Street Quilters book called The Christmas Quilt by Jennifer Chiaverini but only at night when I don’t want to hold my big hardcover of My Beloved up in the dark in bed.
Coming up I am looking forward to Miss Read Village Diary by Miss Read, which is an author Jan Karon actually said inspired her Mitford series.
The Husband is reading Showdown by Mike Lupica.
The Husband and I watched The Bishop’s Wife with Cary Grant and David Nivin last night.
Earlier in the week I watched a Christmas special from 1957 with Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby.
I also enjoyed a new-to-me vlogger who shared suggestions of books that are written with each chapter representing a month of the year.
We also watched an episode of Murder, She Wrote, Car 54 Where Are You?, and Shakespeare & Hathaway.
This week I will be watching only Christmas movies. Maybe. We will see.
The kids and I tried a Hallmark Christmas movie last night and couldn’t make it through. We got about a half an hour in but only survived by making copious amounts of fun of it. Hopefully we will find something better this week.
I’ve been listening to Letters From Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien off and on.
Now It’s Your Turn
What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this. You can copy my blog graphic to your computer if you want to participate in my link party or you can join the other awesome link ups below.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to. Feel free to link your posts about
I usually mention what I have been watching down below but today I thought I’d mention part of what I’ve been watching here because I have been watching a lot of clips of or interviews with or about Dick VanDyke since yesterday was his 100th birthday and he’s still alive.
When I was a kid, I watched The Dick VanDyke Show on PBS in the evenings after dinner and it became a comfort watch to me. As my mom said last night, The Dick VanDyke Show was something you could watch and know it was just going to be good, clean comedy and fun.
The show still holds up today too. I still watch The Dick VanDyke Show, especially when I am down about something.
In fact, when I am down or sad about something my husband will ask, “What can I do? How about I make a cup of tea and find you a Dick VanDyke episode to watch?” Sometimes he doesn’t even suggest it, he simply turns an episode on and backs away — much like a man might toss a bar of chocolate to a woman on her period and run away.
Of course I have also watched Dick VanDyke in movies like Mary Poppins, but, for me, my memories of him will always circulate around The Dick VanDyke Show.
I loved this interview with him from People Magazine. My brother sent it to me last night and I cried because it was just nice to see him doing so well at his age and hearing all his memories of the various projects he was involved with over the years.
This past week we were plunged into deep cold and also had snow a couple of days which left it hard for me to back out of our steep driveway. Yesterday was my first day out all week and the kids and I took some bean soup to my parents…yes, that bean soup from my post yesterday.
We are facing below freezing temps today, but later in the week temps will rise into the mid-40s. Why do I give weather reports in my blog posts?! I have no idea, but I always do it.
Our cats aren’t sure what to think of the weather. Somedays they want to go out but within ten minutes they are back at the kitchen window begging to come in.
We had a bit of cabin fever this week so Little Miss took Zooma The Wonder Dog for a walk down the street. Scout decided she wanted to see what was going on but she didn’t last outside long, dashing back inside through our side door when I wasn’t looking.
Since I wasn’t looking, I panicked a bit later when I couldn’t find her in the house and it was getting dark
I feel like I spend most of my days counting fury heads and asking, “Has anyone seen…” whichever cat I haven’t seen for a while.
Cass is our “new cat” who we’ve had since the end of October. He is a he and not a she like we normally thought and we are getting much better at calling him “he” as we get used to that change. We called him “she” for the first month of his life.
Our cat Scout has always been the crazy one, climbing up trees and having to be rescued by the fire company or falling out of them and almost dying, but now Cass is the craziest because we’ve found him on our snowy roof twice this month and twice he stole chicken from the stove or counter when I wasn’t looking.
I discovered him on the roof after a small snowstorm this week when Zooma was barking at him and snow trickled down from the roof as I opened the door. Our son looked out his upstairs window to see if he could bring Cass in but he had already found a way down to the porch so he could come in the door the normal way.
Yesterday, the same thing happened, but this time Cass thought he could climb onto the open door frame and jump down. The only problem was once he got on the narrow door frame he tried to step on our wreathe which kept moving and then panicked. He had no idea how to get off the door frame so eventually our son reached up for him and Cass fell, upside down, into his arms.
I’ve learned to duct tape the knobs on the stove so he won’t hit them with his foot when he thinks he can jump up. I’m also learning not to leave food on the counter that I plan to eat unattended. I hope to break him of these stealing habits soon — probably with a spray bottle, which is how I had to stop Scout from climbing our window screens when we first adopted her.
I’m curious if he will calm down once he is neutered a few days before Christmas.
This is off the subject — I don’t know about any of you have bots on your site or not lately, but I have tons from China and have for about three months. I’ve contacted WordPress but have been told to ignore them unless I start receiving a ton of comments. That’s great, I guess, because right now I get 30,000 fake views a week from China and I’ve heard and read on forums that this happening to a ton of other blogs and sites in the United States.
REMINDERS*: Erin (Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) and I host a monthly bookish link party called A Good Book and A Cup of Tea. This link-up is for book and reading posts or anything related to books and reading (even movies based on books!). Each link party will be open for a month. You can find that link up for this month here.
We are also hosting Comfy Cozy Christmas! As Erin said on her blog, “Anything holiday related – any December holiday – at all that strikes your fancy and you write about, please think about sharing on our linky.” You can find the link for that at the top of my page in the menu or here.
Each week, I host the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot with some great hosts. It goes live Thursday night but you can share any kind of blog posts (family-friendly) there until Tuesday of each week. You can check my recent posts on the sidebar to the right for the most recent link-party.
At the beginning of the week I stayed up past 1 a.m. one night finishing Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. While I felt it was a bit wordy at times and maybe even a little repetitive with all that comparison by the second Mrs. DeWinter of herself to Rebecca, I really enjoyed it and do think it is as good as so many reviews I have read said it was (that sentence doesn’t make much sense but hopefully you can decipher it.)
Last night I finished Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie. It was very good, (though a bit rushed) but I think I’ll look for sweeter reads for the next couple of weeks as we make our way toward Christmas.
Little Miss and I also finished Caddie Woodlawn’s Family (also known from it’s original title Magical Melons).
I will probably read a couple of Christmas short stories by Dickens and L.M. Montgomery, as well as finishing reading A Christmas Carol to Little Miss. I will also read at least part of Shepherd’s Abiding by Jan Karon.
Coming up soon will be a book of short stories by Louis L’Amour, Damsel in Distress by P.G. Woodhouse, and Murder, She Wrote Brandy and Bullets. I’m also hoping to start Glorious Intruder by Joni Eareckson Tada as a slow read. After all that or somewhere in between I want to start The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis.
This past week I rewatched part of Meet Me In St. Louis, Wartime Christmas, and on YouTube a couple episodes of Real Vintage Dolls House. I started a couple of movies too but have not finished them yet.
I’ll be making a formal announcement later, but I’ll be watching James Cagney movies this winter and I’m looking forward to it because I’ve only ever watched one Cagney movie, so I will probably add one of his movies into my Christmas movie watching this week.
This morning, we watched the first episode of the new season of Shakespeare & Hathaway. It wasn’t as good as the earlier seasons (we skipped Season 4 filmed during “You Know What” because the one episode was just bad beyond bad) but it was nice to see their banter again after a two-year break. We will see how the rest of the season is.
I also watched “my farmer”, Pete, on Just A Few Acres Farm, which I do almost every Sunday after watching online church.
I made a lot of progress on Gladwynn book four this past week. I thought I’d share a little description I put together:
Small town newspaper reporter Gladwynn Grant is not going to get involved in any more mysteries. She’s learned her lesson. The hard way.
Her resolve starts to crumble, though, when someone tries to drop an industrial size light fixture on the Brookstone School District Superintendent during an interview. Was Superintendent Ellerton the intended target, though? Or was it actually Gladwynn herself?
While all this is unfolding her ever-busy grandmother, Lucinda, has been told by her doctor she needs to rest more and run around less while Gladwynn’s sister, Iona, is feeling overwhelmed with her role as a mother of three.
A new friendship between State Police Detective Tanner Kinney and Pastor Luke Callahan, the two men family and friends like to joke are battling for Gladwynn’s affections, has Gladwynn a bit perplexed, but also relieved.
Will Gladwynn be able to help find out if someone wants Superintendent Ellerton out of the picture, all while trying to keep Lucinda resting, Iona from cracking, and everyone in town from spreading rumors about her and one of the men in her life?
Find out in the latest Gladwnn Grant Mystery, Gladwynn Grant Goes Back to School.
If you want to read the previous three books, you can find links at the bottom of the page. They are available as ebooks and paperbacks.
What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this. You can copy my blog graphic to your computer if you want to participate in my link party or you can join the other awesome link ups below.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to. Feel free to link your posts about
Some husbands show their wives their love by buying them flowers or chocolate. My husband shows me love by buying me books and I’m here for it.
A couple of months ago he bought me My Beloved, the new book by Jan Karon, for my birthday/early Christmas gift. I haven’t read it yet because I gave it to my mom to read first.
Yesterday The Husband went Christmas shopping for the kids and came home with gifts for them but also a pretty copy of A Christmas Carol for me.
It’s a reproduction of a reproduction but that doesn’t matter to me. I love it, and I love how it includes the original introduction and preface that was in the 1922 version. To explain, there was a version of Dicken’s original version of A Christmas Carol published in 1922 by the National Book Trade Provident Society. Their version was republished this year by another publisher. So, a reproduction of a reproduction.Whatever it is, I love it. It’s little and cute and inside it features an introduction by GK Chesterton and original illustrations published in the original A Christmas Carol.
I read the story to my son several years ago so Monday I plan to start reading it to Little Miss.
This week we received our first snowfall of the year, and since the temps dropped so fast afterward, we still have snow on the ground and probably will for a while. Temps are going to stay very low for several more days.
I took this photo at my parents yesterday. I love this view.
Erin (Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) and I host a monthly bookish link party called A Good Book and A Cup of Tea. This link-up is for book and reading posts or anything related to books and reading (even movies based on books!). Each link party will be open for a month. You can find that link up for this month here.
We are also hosting Comfy Cozy Christmas! As Erin said on her blog, “Anything holiday related – any December holiday – at all that strikes your fancy and you write about, please think about sharing on our linky.” You can find the link for that at the top of my page in the menu or here.
Each week, I host the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot with some great hosts. It goes live Thursday night but you can share any kind of blog posts (family-friendly) there until Tuesday of each week. You can check my recent posts on the sidebar to the right for the most recent link party.
This past week I breezed through a novella called Christmas in Harmony by Phillip Gulley. I really enjoyed it. It’s part of the Harmony series by Gulley, which I recommend if you’ve never tried it.
I almost finished Rebecca and probably will finish it by tomorrow. It was very slow at first with so much melodrama and description but it picks up halfway through and now I have to read to the end, even though I did see the movie in the past. I forgot the ending of the movie so this will remind me if the two are the same.
I am taking part in the 13th annual Ho Ho Ho Readathon from November 26 to December 17th. I finished my first Christmas/winter themed book with Christmas in Harmony.
This week I’ll be starting A Christmas Carol with my daughter and also continuing Hercule Poirot’s Christmas and A Christmas Scrapbook, a short story by Phillip Gulley.
I will also be reading excerpts from Little Women and Shepherd’s Abiding (a Jan Karon book and part of the Mitford series) at some point.
If you want to know more about the challenge, hop over here:
Little Miss and I will finish Magical Melons or Caddie Woodlawn’s Family (which the name was changed to) by Carol Ryrie Brink this week. This is the sequel to Caddie Woodlawn, which we listened to on Audible. We’ve been slowly reading it along with other school books for quite a while now. Each chapter is like its own short story. I really enjoyed a chapter we read this past week about Christmas and ended up crying over it. I’ll share more about the book in a future post.
I have a Murder, She Wrote book, The Murder of Twelve, by Donald Bain on tap for sometime soon, but will probably end up reading more Christmas stories/books throughout December.
This week I watched an old movie called Ball of Fire, part of the PBS Little Women mini-series, and tried to watch a movie called Wonder Man with Danny Kaye but couldn’t get into it.
I honestly can’t remember what else I watched this past week so I guess it wasn’t very exciting.
Today I will be watching some sort of Christmas movie but I am not sure which one yet.
I added a couple thousand words to Gladwynn Grant Goes Back to School last week.
I am listening (off and on) to Letters from Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Now It’s Your Turn
What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this. You can copy my blog graphic to your computer if you want to participate in my link party or you can join the other awesome link ups below.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to. Feel free to link your posts about
Yesterday the kids and I went to see The Husband in the play version of It’s A Wonderful Life. Attending the play has become such a wonderful kick off to the Christmas season for us since he was also in the play last year.
This play is set up as a “radio play” where the characters are radio personalities presenting a play for an audience who only had access to a radio not a TV. This means the characters are reading from scripts but there are sound effects and voice changes that bring it all alive.
Each actor plays a couple of different characters so they have to change their voices or tones throughout. The Husband played four different characters but my favorite was Mr. Potter who I think he pulled off perfectly.
After the play an older man approached by husband and told him he had brought his blind adult son. The son thanked my husband and said the production came alive for him because of the voice changes and the sound effects added in.
My husband was so touched that the production meant that much to the young man, especially since there wasn’t a huge crowd there.
I hope more people attend the production today because the play version almost touched me more than the movie version, which I totally loved. I teared up a couple of times during it — especially at the end when George realizes how special his life is and how lost those in his life would be if he’d never been born.
It’s also interesting to note that Philip Van Doren Stern who wrote the original short story was born in the small town where my husband performed the play. He didn’t grow up there, but he was born there in 1900 and his father lived there for a time. (source Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Van_Doren_Stern)
If you don’t know the story, Stern wrote the short story for Christmas cards he and his daughter were sending out in 1943. He tried to get the story published but publishers didn’t pick it up so he self-published it. Later the short story was used for a full play and then for a screenplay for what has become one of the most famous Christmas movies of all time.
Now that we’ve seen the play, I feel like I can fully immerse myself in the Christmas season and am looking forward to making a list of Christmas movies to watch and Christmas books to read.
I thought I should mention here like I did in yesterday’s post that the girl kitten I’ve been writing about that was dropped off at our house a few weeks ago, is not actually a girl. We discovered some appendages this week that girl kittens do not have so our girl kitten is a boy kitten, but we are sticking with the name Cas.
It explains a lot about his behavior and his incessant yowling too.
Erin (Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) and I host a monthly bookish link party called A Good Book and A Cup of Tea. This link-up is for book and reading posts or anything related to books and reading (even movies based on books!). Each link party will be open for a month. You can find that link up for this month here.
We will also be hosting Comfy Cozy Christmas starting tomorrow! As Erin said on her blog, “Anything holiday related – any December holiday – at all that strikes your fancy and you write about, please think about sharing on our linky.”
Each week, I host the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot with some great hosts. It goes live Thursday night but you can share any kind of blog posts (family-friendly) there until Tuesday of each week. You can check my recent posts on the sidebar to the right for the most recent link-party.
Last night I finished The Tale of Hill Top Farm by Susan Wittig Albert.
The concept of this book was a good one — Beatrix Potter, the children’s book author as a amateur sleuth — but when I finally got into the book, she wasn’t actually doing much sleuthing. She wasn’t even really the main character at times. There also wasn’t a ton of real “mystery” involved.
Instead, Beatrix wandered around talking to people and drawing pictures and meeting children while other characters (including the talking animals who were only understood by each other) did most of the solving of the very simple mysteries. There was more than one POV while I thought Beatrix would provide the main one.
The main mystery was a bit of a letdown for me in the end, but overall, the book had some cute, sweet moments. This was definitely a very, very light mystery with no gruesome of violent aspects (other than an owl making a meal out of some rats) and that isn’t a bad thing at all.
I don’t know if I will read more of this series or not yet. I’ll have to be in the mood for a leisurely wander rather than a strict whodunit if I do. That happens a lot so I’m sure book two will be read sometime in 2026.
I’m still reading Rebecca by Daphne DeMauier and will probably finish it this week unless I get wrapped up in Christmas movies and specials.
I might finish Nancy Drew: The Triple Hoax but I won’t finish it in time for Nancy Drew November.
I’m not really liking it, so it isn’t a priority for me.
I just ordered a copy of Letters From Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien and it won’t be here until a week before Christmas, but I think that will be perfect timing.
I plan to read at least one more Agatha Christie before the year ends and I think it will be Partners in Crime, my first Tommy and Tuppence mystery.
I also hope to read another Murder, She Wrote book but that might wait until after my Christmas reads, which including reading at least parts of Shepherds Abiding by Jan Karon and Little Woman.
I watched my first James Cagney movie, Strawberry Blond, this week. I enjoyed it and will be watching it for my planned Winter of Cagney that I will be starting in January. I will be doing that at the same time I rewatch all of the Thin Man movies in order. It will be a fun month of old movies.
I also watched my second Bette Davis movie, Another Man’s Poison, (my first was All About Eve) this past week, and hope to watch more of her movies soon for Spring of Bette.
I watched The Barney Miller Show and episodes of TJ Hooker and Hunter with The Husband. We also watched a Murder, She Wrote episode. This week I hope to watch some more old movies, maybe a couple of Christmas movies, and some movies based on Agatha Christie books or stories. I also hope to watch at least one The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries episode so I can recap it on the blog.
What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this. You can copy my blog graphic to your computer if you want to participate in my link party or you can join the other awesome link ups below.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to. Feel free to link your posts about
Before I get too far into this post, I want to mention that today is my husband’s birthday and my brother and sister-in-law’s anniversary.
Happy birthday to The Husband and happy anniversary to Butthead and Kim. Er….Bryan and Kim.
I have to say that I feel a bit bad telling this next story, considering it is my husband’s birthday, but I am going to do so anyhow because he’s a good sport. And please know that this story is shared in good humor, not as an actual complaint – since you can’t hear my tone which would be one tinged with laughter.
Last night he picked me up from my parents where I had been visiting them after he dropped me off. He suggested I sit in the back with our dog who tries to push her way into the middle console and bump against his arm while he’s trying to drive if there isn’t someone in the backseat with her.
I did so and when we got home, after dark mind you, my husband asked the dog if she was going to exit through the front door or would wait for me to move so she could exit through the back door. The dog stayed sitting next to me, so The Husband closed the door and walked into the house.
I thought he was going to go turn the outside light on and come back to help me with my bags, but instead when the dog and I got out of the car I found out we were totally alone in the driveway and backyard.
We’ve been married for 23-years and the man didn’t even open the door for me. Gasp! I was certain he would look out the back door to see if I was coming but after a few minutes, Zooma the Wonder Dog and I were still outside in the cold. I went inside and said, “Hey! Thanks a lot for leaving me!”
I found The Husband staring at The Avengers movie with the kids.
“I could have been eaten by a bear!” I told him.
“You wouldn’t have been eaten by a bear,” he insisted. “We’re located in a fairly safe neighborhood with a fairly well lit driveway. You were fine.”
For the record, we live on the end of a street at the far end of a tiny town, surrounded by the woods, and a couple of months ago Zooma the Wonder Dog had a stand off with a black bear in our backyard – a few hundred feet from where I was standing (alone and in semi-darkness).
“I just read a story about a black bear chasing a boy into a Dollar General in Pennsylvania!” I told him.
“What part of Pennsylvania?” he asked.
“Pittsburgh area but we still have bears around here you know!”
Chivalry is dead, ya’ll. Dead.
Something else that is also dead is my desire to worry about the number of books I am reading each year.
In 2026 I am simply going to read whatever I want and take as long as I want to read the books I choose. It isn’t that I worry about how many books I’ve read in a year too often anyhow, but sometimes I do find myself feeling bad I’m not reading more, usually because I am comparing myself to other bloggers or readers on social media.
It’s really silly to compare ourselves to others, especially at my age, but luckily it is a very brief comparison when I do so.
This year, I chose books I wanted to read, not books others said I should read, and I hope to do the same next year. I still want to list the books I read in my reading journal because I enjoy doing that and looking back at them at the end of the year, partially so I can recommend them (or not) to others, but I think next year I’ll simply list and not number. Or maybe I’ll just stop overthinking it? That might work too. *wink*
Erin (Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) and I host a monthly bookish link party called A Good Book and A Cup of Tea. This link-up is for book and reading posts or anything related to books and reading (even movies based on books!). Each link party will be open for a month. You can find that link up for this month here.
We will also be hosting Comfy Cozy Christmas starting the day after Thanksgiving! As Erin said on her blog, “Anything holiday related – any December holiday – at all that strikes your fancy and you write about, please think about sharing on our linky.”
Each week, I host the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot with some great hosts. It goes live Thursday night but you can share any kind of blog posts (family-friendly) there until Tuesday of each week. You can check my recent posts on the sidebar to the right for the most recent link-party.
I finished The Whispering Statue last week. It’s a Nancy Drew mystery and it had a lot of plot issues, but yet, it was also an interesting mystery, or had interesting aspects.
I am still reading Rebecca by Daphne De Maurier — a few chapters a week.
I added The Tale of Hilltop Farm by Susan Wittig Albert to break up the drama of Rebecca.
Here is a quick description of the book from online: “The author of Peter Rabbit and other tales, Beatrix Potter is still, after a century, beloved by children and adults worldwide. In this first Cottage Tale, Albert introduces Beatrix, an animal lover and Good Samaritan with a knack for solving mysteries. With help from her entourage of talking animal friends, Beatrix sets out to win over the human hearts of Sawrey, where she’s just bought an old farm–and plans to stay.”
Up soon I plan to read an Agatha Christie book but I haven’t decided which one yet.
I have been watching mostly old shows again but also movies with the kids who are making their way through the Marvel movies. This would be a first time for Little Miss (11) and many times for The Boy (19).
This past week it was The Avengers and Iron Man 3. I hate Iron Man 3 so I tried to do other things while it was on. It was like watching a train wreck. It is the worst of the series for the Iron Man part. We just skipped the second Thor movie (The Dark World) because it is also horrible.
I also started a Bob Hope movie called I’ll Take Sweden. Frankie Avalon is also in it and it’s ridiculous. I had to go to bed before I could finish it.
And I watched a couple of YouTubers this week, including The Cottage Fairy who has been gone for a long time after having a baby but put up a new video this week.
I’ve been listening to The Jack Benny Show at night before bed.
Now It’s Your Turn
What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this. You can copy my blog graphic to your computer if you want to participate in my link party or you can join the other awesome link ups below.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to. Feel free to link your posts about
Last week I mentioned our cat Scout had been injured. She was unable to put weight on her back paw.
We had a vet appointment for her last week but thought she was doing better and canceled it. Sadly, she came back into the house that day and was not doing better so we now have another appointment for next week and are on a cancellation list.
She is allowing us to touch her paw now and is less cranky. She is also learning how to run on three legs, like when she slips out the door and tries to run off down the street. We’ve let her outside a couple of times, either because we thought she was better, or yesterday because I knew she could get away from a predator fast even with her injury. I watched her run on three legs at me across the yard the day before when I called her inside.
The animals have been a comfort to me this week as we mourn the death of a close family friend.
This weekend I focused on comfort shows and books and shut down social media and news sites. It’s been so nice, I’ll probably continue it into the rest of the week.
This week I finished Nancy Drew: The Mystery of The Fire Dragon and started The Mystery of The Whispering Statue for Nancy Drew November.
I also finished At Home in Harmony by Philip Gulley.
I really enjoyed The Mystery of The Fire Dragon, even though the Nancy Drew books are pretty simply. I definitely loved the heartwarming stories in At Home in Harmony and will read more of the books in the series. The chapters are a series of short stories that connect with the same characters.
As I mentioned, I am reading The Mystery of The Whispering Statue but I am also reading Rebecca by Daphne De Mauier.
I plan to read The Triple Hoax, a Nancy Drew Mystery, later this week and follow it with Pure Poison, another Nancy Drew Mystery.
Then I will start My Beloved by Jan Karon.
Little Miss and I are reading a book about two young girls who went through the Civil War — one as a regular citizen in the South and the other as a undercover boy/soldier for the North.
This week I watched Murder, She Wrote, The Dick VanDyke Show, and started a movie called A Weekend At the Waldorf but it got a bit boring so I bailed for now. I also rewatched a couple of All Creatures Great and Small episodes as a comfort watch.
My son has been showing his sister all the Marvel movies so this week we watched Captain America: The First Avenger and The Avengers. Or I should say rewatched since I’ve seen most of these movies more than three times over the years, some of them in the theaters.
What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
Our son turned 19 on Friday. We had a chilled day that day and didn’t do a lot at his request but yesterday he and his dad went to a college town a couple of hours away and explored the town, visited a comic shop, had breakfast and lunch, and just generally had a great time.
The Boy picked up this awesome double record of Johnny Cash at a used book/record store.
The Husband found this for me at a store —
I used to drink these all the time in college and was thrilled to have a bit of a blast from the past.
We call him “The Boy” by the way as a sign of affection because he is the only boy grandson out of seven grandchildren on my husband’s side. Someone my husband knows was afraid the term would offend our son (she was very polite in her concern), but we mainly only use it online and sometimes my husband will jokingly say, “Where is the boy?” when he walks in the house. We obviously call him by his given name offline.
I also don’t use his real name on my blog to protect his privacy a little because I used to use it and … it was sort of weird for him, even though I no longer share anything too personal about his life here. He wasn’t angry about me using his real name but I felt like I should protect him and Little Miss as they grow. They are okay with me occasionally posting photos at least.
Today we plan to go to my parents and have lunch with them and make apple pie together for The Boy’s birthday, which is a tradition because he is not a cake fan.
On Friday night, our cat Scout was unable to put weight down on her back paw.
All the vets around her in the Middle of Nowhere Land are closed for the weekend so we’ve tried to make her comfortable until we can get in somewhere. If she were yowling the whole time and it was clearly broken, we’d call the emergency line of the vet we usually go to. For now, she’s just extremely angry we won’t let her outside, so I am guessing she’s going to be okay.
She also bit me this morning while I tried to see if there is something in her paw or if it had been cut. We think, however, that the paw got pinched between the bed and the wall when Scout tried to curl up with Little Miss on Friday morning.
I am not the type of person who can handle a cat being in pain or upset, so this has been emotional for me. Having a new kitten in the house has also thrown things off, and our eldest cat has been angry and hissing and also trying to bite. I’m about to take them all to the no-kill shelter and be done with it, but, of course, I really can’t do that. They are family, and we just need to adjust to living as a family with a new member.
I am reading my first book for my Nancy Drew November, The Mystery of the Fire Dragon. I will have it finished today. Honestly, it’s pretty good other than Nancy getting hit in the head AGAIN and no one taking her to the hospital AGAIN. This time it was a flowerpot that fell from a third story window. In reality she’d be dead.
I am also reading Rebecca by Daphne De Maurier. Earlier this week I mentioned on Instagram that I was reading Rebecca by didn’t say by who and some very young Bookstagrammer said, “Oooh…what’s that?”
I felt very old. Another person thought I was reading Rebecca Yaros and said they loved Fourth Wing. Siiiiigh.
I’m really enjoying Home the Harmony by Phillip Gulley. I was reading it before bed the week before last but laid it aside most of this week to read Nancy Drew and Rebecca. Last night I picked it up again and ended up laughing so hard at one part. The book isn’t really a cohesive story, but a series of short stories about the same characters, with the main character being a Quaker minister. I am fairly certain I read part of this book if not all of it when I was in my 20s, and it seems familiar, but I don’t remember a lot of it so it’s like reading it all over again. I am enjoying it and would recommend it for a light, humorous and touching read.
Coming up, I hope to read another Nancy Drew, but my husband also picked me up a fancy copy of The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie. I’ve never read or heard of this one so I might bump one of my planned autumn reads to read this one instead.
After that, probably more toward December, I want to start My Beloved by Jan Karon. I am so excited for it but my mom loves Jan Karon so I let her read the copy The Husband bought me first. She hasn’t shared what she thinks of it yet, but I hope it is good.
Little Miss and I are reading a Civil War-based book right now for school called Secrets of Civil War Spies by Nancy LeSourd.
This past week I watched a movie called Storm in a Teacup with Rex Harrison and Vivien Leigh. I believe it was released in 1937 and is an English movie. It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed seeing both actors when they were so young.
I watched a couple of later episodes of Murder, She Wrote, my farmer (Just A Few Acres) on YouTube, and more The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries from the 1970s. The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries are both good and horrible at the same time.
I just wanted to leave a little note to thank any of my blog readers who have taken the time to read my cozy mysteries, the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries. Those stories are fun for me to write, and I appreciate anyone who indulges my little hobby. I would love to say writing books is more than a hobby but for now it’s essentially a time consuming hobby and I’m finally okay with that.
I am working on book four, Gladwynn Grant Goes Back to School, and it is taking me a while but I do have much of it outlined so I am hoping I can get it finished and released by February.
I have links to the books at the bottom of this post.
What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
