Sunday Bookends: Balancing Books and Feeling like we live in Antartica

On February 14, 2021February 13, 2021 By Lisa R. HowelerIn books and reading, everyday musings, Sunday Bookends6 Comments

Welcome to another Sunday Bookends where I share what I’m reading, watching, writing, eating, seeing, smelling — no, wait. Only what I’m reading, watching, writing, sometimes what I’m listening to and a little about what we’ve been up to. Feel free to let me know what you’ve been up to in the comments.

What’s Been Occuring

Aparently we are never going to have warm weather again. Or that’s how it feels right now, anyhow. I know we will eventually have warm weather, of course, but this has been one long winter.

Most of the 21 inches of snow that fell on us the week before last is still here and now they are calling for several more inches on Monday and Tuesday. We just got our driveway cleared from the last storm and now more snow is coming. I can’t even wrap my head around it. While the snow can be pretty, there has been anywhere from 2 to 24 inches of snow in our backyard since the end of December and at least a foot of it there since the beginning mid-January. There is so much snow that the deer are now coming into our yards to eat our bushes and trees.

We were able to get out of the driveway last week to go to my parents for a game night and the little supermarket downtown. Saturday my husband took me out for Valentine’s Day and we were able to get out of town and explore an area about 45 minutes away from our house. We had a late lunch at a restaurant we hadn’t been to before and then we – I can’t believe I am writing this but we went to buy cat food and cat litter at Walmart.

Yes, that was part of our Valentine’s Day date. This shopping trip for necessities was promptly mocked by The Boy who texted to me (after I told him where we were):

“Ah yes Walmart the most romantic place in the world. It’s the only place where you can find scented candles right next to the guns. Waiter: here are your Walmart specials pulls out Twinkie’s and a half warmed up frozen pizza.”

He’s quite funny and we’re hoping that he’ll be a famous comedian one day and puts us in a nice nursing community. You know, if the world allows us all to have humor again.

What I’m Reading

I’m almost finished with ‘Til I Want No More by Robin W. Pearson, which I am really enjoying, even though Maxine (the main character) was really driving me nuts in the first part of the book. When you read it, you’ll know what I mean. This story of redemption is very complex and a little heavy at times, but Robin is such a wonderful writer, it makes it all easier. Plus, we get to see Evelyn again from Robin’s first book A Long Time Comin’. The two books are not connected, other than Evelyn and Maxine being friends and both facing difficult secrets in their lives they needed to address.

I will probably finish Harriet Beamer Takes A Bus in the next couple of days as well. This book is so charming and sweet, I don’t want it to end, but luckily I have discovered that there is a sequel.

Little Miss and I just finished Misty of Chincoteague by Margaurite Henry last week and have moved on to Stormy, Misty’s Foal.

The Boy and I continue to suffer through The Lord of the Flies (good book, but a bit depressing with all the craziness going on in today’s world). It’s taking us a while because he has chapter questions and quizes every two chapters and I am really not in any rush to read it since I know how it ends.

What I’m Watching

I’ve been watching McLeod’s Daughters, an old Australian show on Amazon. It’s essentially a soap opera set out in the bush of Australia but without graphic sex or violence.

My husband and I are also watching Lovejoy, an older British show about an antique dealer who often gets wrapped up in some sort of criminal situation when trying to sell or buy antiques. It is much more interesting than I just made it sound. I promise.

We continue to watch Wanda Vision (a Marvel show on Disney), which is getting better each week.

What I’m Writing

Last week I wrote about censorship and freedom of speech;

Some random thoughts

And, the second part of chapter 1 for The Farmer’s Son.

I’m also finishing up edits on The Farmer’s Daughter and it will go live on Kindle on February 23rd.

What I’m Listening To

I am try to listen to more sermons and will continue that this week. I listened to a good sermon by Holly Furtick from Elevation Church, which I missed Sunday because I watched Robert Morris from Gateway Church. Here are links to those sermons in case you need some spiritual guidance or Biblical thoughts to chew on this week.

I’m also trying to make more time for podcasts and this week I hope to listen to more of Relatable by Allie B. Stuckey and The Babylon Bee podcast.

So that was my week in review. How about you? What have you been reading, watching, listening to, or doing? Let me know in the comments.

Sunday Bookends: New Books, More Snow, and comedy clips

On February 7, 2021February 7, 2021 By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends27 Comments

What’s Been Occurring

After last week’s snow that buried us in another two feet of snow, the kids and I were stuck in the house all week, unable to completely clear the driveway of snow and ice and afraid to back the van out of the garage. My son went out everyday and shoveled, especially since the wind was blowing and causing snow drifts throughout the week.

I tried Mama’s Empty Nest. I tried to focus on the beauty of the snow! I promise! But all the shoveling and wind and blowing snow and the ice. Oh, the ice! Now, honestly, I did see the beauty in the snow and the kids did have a little fun in it (though not a lot because the windchill on this hill was so horrible), but next time we get snow, I hope it will be a little bit less.

We tried a science experiment I saw on Instagram the one day and it was an utter failure. We were supposed to build a snow volcano and I was supposed to put a bowl in the middle for the baking soda, food coloring, and vinegar so it would overflow down the sides. Instead, we just poured it in the snow and, of course, it melted the snow and left a pool of red in the snow. It ended up looking like a murder scene.

After the experiment, The Boy lifted his sister and tossed her into the snow, like big brothers do, which resulted in her yelling in anger and frustration because she doesn’t have any snowpants right now (she grew out of hers). My 6-year-old stood in the driveway, her little fists clenched, and yelled (so the whole neighborhood could hear), “Thanks to you I’m going to get hypothermia!”

Spoiler alert: she didn’t get hypothermia and she wasn’t even that snow-covered. In my defense to the above photo, I didn’t know she was legitmately crying when I took the photograph and her crying stopped within seconds after I took the photo so she was more indignant than anything else.

We’ve also been having sleep issues with Little Miss. She used to never wake up in the middle of the night but now she wakes up, wants me and we have to listen to Frank Sinatra until she falls asleep. The issue with this is that I can’t go back to sleep after this – either because of itching from dry skin or a stuffy nose, so I’ve been having some really rough days of struggling through with very little sleep. I really hope this is a phase she’s going through that she breaks out of soon because I feel pretty useless most days even without the lack of sleep.

What I’m Reading

The snow delayed the arrival of a paperbook copy of ‘Til I Want No More by Robin W. Pearson but when it finally came I dove right in and haven’t been able to put it down since.

Here is the description:

When the man she loved years ago returns to town, one young woman’s complicated past rises again, threatening to expose her well-kept secrets.

If Maxine could put her finger on the moment when her life went into a tailspin, she would point back twenty years to the day her daddy died. She tells herself he’s the only person who ever really knew and loved her, and if he hadn’t left her behind, her future would’ve taken a different path. No absentee mother, no stepfather, no rebellious ripping and running during her teenage years. And no JD, who gave her wandering young heart a home, at least for a time.

But that’s over and done with. All grown-up now, Maxine has pledged her heart and ring finger to Theodore Charles, the man she’ll promise to love, honor, and obey in front of God and everybody. At least that’s what she’s telling anybody who will listen. The only folks buying it are the dog and the readers of her column, however. Her best friend and family aren’t having it―not even Celeste, the double bass–playing thirteen-year-old the community of Mount Laurel, North Carolina, believes is Maxine’s adopted sister. And apparently, neither is the newly returned JD, who seems intent on toppling Maxine’s reconstructed life. As her wedding day marches ever closer, Maxine confronts what it means to be really known and loved by examining what’s buried in her own heart and exposing truth that has never seen the light of day.

I’m also continuing Harriet Beamer Takes The Bus by Joyce Magnin, which I’m really enjoying.

Here is the description for that one:

Aging and recent widow Harriet Beamer insists she’s getting along fine with her dog Humphrey in Philadelphia … until she falls for the fourth time, injuring her ankle, and causing her son and daughter-in-law to cry foul. Insisting Harriet move in with them in California, they make a bet that her ankle is broken, and she foolishly promises to move if they’re right. Four x-rays later, Harriet’s ankle—and her heart—are broken. She packs up, ships her huge salt and pepper collection to California, and prepares to move away from the only life she knows. The only catch? She’s doing it her way. Just wait till her daughter-in-law hears Harriet will travel cross country only by public transportation and alternate means. What follows is a hilarious, heartwarming journey by train, metro bus, ferry, and motorcycle. Along the way, Harriet discovers that although her family thinks it’s time for her to be put out to pasture—God has a different plan.

What I’m Watching

This week I watched a couple episodes of Murdoch Mysteries, an episode of Lovejoy, and then I watched some favorite comedy clips, including this one from John Branyan (which I find to be brilliant):

The Boy and The Husband have also been watching Wanda Vision, which is a show from the Marvel Universe (that’s comic book language for anyone unaware of what Marvel is).

So that’s my week in review. What was your week like? What have you been watching, reading, listening to or doing? Let me know in the comments.

Sunday Bookends: Unrealistic books, lots of Andy Griffith, banning books and boring days

On January 24, 2021January 25, 2021 By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends6 Comments

This is my weekly post where I share what I am reading, watching, writing and occasionally what I am listening to.

What I’m Reading

I’m jumping around to different books right now. I feel like a Christian looking for a new church at this point.

I’ve been bouncing back and forth between And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, which I am enjoying; a Christian fiction romance called Rescue Me by Susan May Warren, which is so-so; and a Christian suspense book, Northwest Counter-Terrorism Taskforce Book 1 by Lisa Phillips.

Rescue Me is unrealistic in many ways, like most romances (and my books. *wink*).

First of all two of the main characters are stuck on a ledge at one point in a van after an accident, with teenagers and having a heart to heart, flirting session in the front seat. Everyone can hear them. This isn’t the time to be all gushy. The kids have just gone through a a car accident and this is after one of their friends was mauled by a bear a week earlier (but somehow lived) and a few weeks before that stranded in a flood. All of this, mind you, happened under the watch of the same girl who is pouting in this book because the church had decided she shouldn’t be the youth leader anymore. I can’t imagine how they let her take the kids anywhere after the bear mauling and what in the world kind of youth group is this that the go on all day and all night hikes every weekend? It is extremely far fetched to me.

I think the reader is supposed to feel sorry for the main character and hope she gets together with the love interest but I don’t feel sorry for her. Every comment made to her about how stupid she was is justified. Every thought she has that she is awful for being in love with her sister’s boyfriend is spot on. It is rare I dislike the main character from a book I am reading as much as I do this one. I want to throttle her despite her awful upbringing by a crazy woman who took her to live in a commune as a child. In real life some of the supporting characters of this book (her sister, her sister’s boyfriend, the pastor and his wife, and the youth pastor) would have already throttled her.

Despite all the “complaints” here, (I am teasing about most of it) I can’t seem to put the book down and I do want to know what happens. It is still well written and at least my complaints aren’t as rude as one of the negative reviews of it that I read on Amazon.

I couldn’t read the following review without picturing a woman with clenched teeth pounding on her keyboard, seething with absolute jealousy. You have to read it in a really snotty, “Karen” type voice. I also left in all the typos: “Susan apparently lives in a city, and doesn’t use search engines to research her writing. In this book, I had to skim several pages to avoid the absolute ignorance displayed in this book about, well, anything related to mountains, rescue, or climbing. It’s too back the background for the book is RESCUE. It simply ruins the book. The highlights are a group of kids and adults crossing a mountain river WITHOUT A ROPE, which they were carrying, or how about the grizzly 15 feet above a ledge taking a swipe at the rescue folks below (where do I start on that?) who then SPIDER REPEL (for those not in the know. which is everyone but Susan and her editor, it’s repelling head first) . *Clue clenching teeth, pounding keyboard* Clearly Susan should get out, you, know, get a clue, or actually research what she’s poorly attempting to write about. *Cue jealousy and inability to spell…even worse than me* Oh, and Susan, not everyone is beautiful, hansom, capable, and oh so desirable….like ALL of your characters. Oh, wait. Maybe you were writing about Olympus? I hear all the gods and goddesses there are hansom, beautiful, and quite desirable!

Two books I am looking forward to coming out in February are ‘Til I Want No More by Robin W. Pearson:

And a non-fiction book (which I rarely read), Andy Ngo’s Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy, which Antifa is currently trying to get banned from all major bookstores because ya’ know – “freedom of speech ain’t real, ya’ll”.

Their efforts to censor the book was why my husband and I preordered a copy to help it climb up the bestseller list on Amazon. I don’t know, when someone wants to ban something, or squealch free speech, it makes me want to know why. I figure there must be a wee bit of truth in there if certain people are afraid for it to go public. An aside, Andy was beat by Antifa last year while peacefully filming their terroristic activities and left in the hospital with a brain bleed. He’s been covering Antifa as an independent journalist for several years now.

When I heard that thin-skinned people wanted to ban Jordan Peterson’s new book, 12 More Rules for Life, I decided to pre-order that one as well.

I find Jordan Peterson fascinating and I don’t know if I agree with all his observations, but I haven’t heard anything he’s said that should be banned. So I’m looking forward to his book in March and hope to get his first book before it arrives. I like to have hard copies of non-fiction books, that way I can make notes in them if I want to.

I plant to talk about this renewed trend of banning books and other things we don’t like in a post later this week. Should be fun. Will probably step on some toes, but everyone is offended these days so what’s new?

What I’ve Been Watching

I’ve been watching a lot of The Andy Griffith Show, which I watch when the world feels off kilter and I am watching Murdoch Mysteries with the hubs most nights. We are taking a break from Doc Martin. We are still traumatized from “the scene” I mentioned last week (which will from now on be just referred to simply as The Scene) but I am also dreading future episodes becaues I worry that the romance that has been blossoming between Martin and Louisa is just going to implode and make me weepy.

What’s Been Occurring

Nothing has been occurring. Not really anyhow. We’ve been iced or snowed in for a couple of weeks now. We had to escape one day this week because Little Miss was exhibiting symptons of a bladder infection but it turned out she didn’t have one. After some research, we have decided her frequent urination may be caused by stress she is feeling from only friends moving away, from all the world stuff I haven’t done a good enough job sheltering her from, and simply growing pains. It may have also been caused by her drinking more juice than she should have and causing some irritation of her bladder.

The doctor we took her to had no idea and wasn’t very helpful other than saying if it doesn’t clear up we can take her to a specialist. The doctor (who is actually a physician assistant, technically) was very nice, however. The nurse and PA were both nice, even when my daughter looked them straight in the eye and announced, in a very firm, non-emotional tone: “I don’t want to be here.” She was extremely indignant I made her pee in a cup as well, but the nurse was very nice and had me come to the office and pick up the cup so Little Miss could pee into the cup in the comfort of her own home. By Saturday, the issue had started to improve immensely.

What I’m Writing

I started writing The Farmer’s Son this week and I am working on edits/proofreading of The Farmer’s Daughter. On the blog, I rambled out some random thoughts and shared a prologue to The Farmer’s Son for Fiction Friday.

What I’m Listening To

Brandon Lake has a new life album on Apple so I’ve been checking that out and also a new band called CAIN.

So that’s my week in review. How was yours? Let me know in the comments.

Sunday Bookends: Floods, Plagues, and A New Year of Reading

On January 3, 2021January 3, 2021 By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends11 Comments

Here we are in a new year and — yeah.

That’s all I got.

No big goals for me this year.

No big plans.

My goal is simply to survive, while also having some fun.

If that sounds like I’m depressed, don’t worry. I’m not. I’m simply going to take it day by day this year, which is something positive that 2020 taught me.

This week I am recapping two weeks of what I’ve been reading, watching, listening to and doing. My heart really wasn’t in writing last week for many reasons, but partially because Christians can be mean, which I will leave for another day. They (we) can also be lovely, so don’t take the first statement as a broad-brush stroke declaration. Christians are human too, despite my belief to the contrary some days. (The previous sentence is a joke, in case you need me to tell you that.)

What I’m Reading

I have seen a lot of book bloggers and bookstagramers announcing their first read of the new year this year.I never get official about that stuff, since I’m not an actual book blogger. But I have just downloaded And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie into my kindle at the suggestion of my husband so that may be my first book of the new year. I’m also reading Rescue Me by Susan May Warren

I finished Home to Holly Springs this week. It wasn’t my favorite book from Jan Karon’s Mitford series, but it was a very interesting look into the past of her main character Father Timothy Kavenagh. Even though I liked the book, I was disappointed that Jan got stuck in some familiar tropes in this one; one of them a theme that seems to run throughout her books, but I won’t say which theme so I don’t ruin the secret Father Tim learns.

I actually already knew mostof what happened in this book, because I had read about it in subsequent books in the series. I did read some reviews on Amazon for Home to Holly Springs out of curiosity once I finished it and found that and a lot of Karon fans did not enjoy it because it strayed from the usually cheerful Mitford stories. There was much less humor in this book as it dealt with some tougher topics, including racism, rape, adultery, and Father Tim’s decades long anger toward his father.

The book dragged in a few parts. Those parts involved very long storytelling dialogue by side characters, which were fairly unncessary for the plot of the book. I “fast forwarded” through my Kindle to push through those parts. Those sections aside, the book was well written and kept me interested long enough to find out what happened. I think the pages and pages of dialogue between Father Tim and people he met during his return to his hometown of Holly Springs could have been eliminated. The characters weren’t integral to the story whatsoever and I didn’t need to know their backstories through long winded conversations.

The ending of the book was lot like the Lord of the Rings movies for me – it could have and should have ended a lot earlier than it did.

The thing about Jan’s books, though, is that you really do feel like you’re getting to know her characters even through the long and rambling conversations or mundane details. In other words, even though there are times you want to say “Okay..move along already, Jan,” you also find yourself feeling like you are sitting in a cozy living room listening to your elderly relatives chat after Christmas dinner. Or maybe I just feel that way because Jan’s characters are mainly from North Carolina and my mom’s family is from there as well so that is what Christmas’ were like in my childhood.

I put Maggie by Charles Martin on the back burner when I was reading Home to Holly Springs and Shepherd’s Abiding by Karon and A Christmas Carol by … well, you know who, I don’t have to tell you, (by the way, don’t ever Google his life story. Yikes.) in December. I hope to finish Maggie this week because I really am enjoying it, though I know some tough parts are coming up in it.

What I’m Watching

We finally watched Alfred Hitchcocks Rope last week and it stressed me out!

I was cringing and squirming even without any gore or violence. It was all psychological, as Hitchcock’s films are, and my psyche took a direct hit while watching it. I recommend it. Highly.

We’ve also been watching Murdoch Mysteries for the last couple of weeks and this past week we watched all three Christmas specials and enjoyed them. They are fairly light mysteries that are often easy to solve and that’s just fine with me and my husband. It’s about all our brains can handle at this point with all the other craziness in the world.

We also watched a couple episodes of Lovejoy, which I always seem unable to follow the plot of for some reason, but am still entertained by.

This past week we started Doc Martin which made my husband and I realize we watch a lot of British shows and movies because pretty much every British actor we’ve ever seen in any British show has been on this show at one point or another. We were hooked in the first episode, breezed through the first season and are now into the second.

What’s Been Occuring

My husband has a scanner app on his phone now to keep track of any emergencies he might have to cover for work in the evenings and on weekends. Hearing the tones drop sent waves of anxiety rolling through me, even though some of the situations weren’t even life threatening.

On Christmas Eve we had to listen to the scanner because our area was under a flood watch. After receiving 24 inches of snow the week before, it rained steady all day Christmas Eve, washing the snow into the rivers and streams around us, of which there are a lot. Rivers and streams continued to rise on Christmas Day and then temps dropped fast. It made for some interesting travel situations but also some interesting situations for people along the river who had to flee from their homes on Christmas. In the end, there was no major flooding.

Christmas Eve I kept an eye on the street down below our house, wondering if the pond in town would flood across it. It didn’t. Then we thought snow on the rain covered roadway might keep us from visiting my parents, but it didn’t. In the end, the calamity I expected to highjack our Christmas didn’t come.

We were able to spend the day with my parents, but did leave early as the temperatures dropped so we wouldn’t be driving the five miles to our house in the dark and possibly hit black ice.

My parents bought new bikes for both of the children, which was a total surprise for them. They will love riding the bikes as soon as their hands won’t freeze to the handle bars when they go outside. Winter had been mild to begin with but colder temps seem to be here to stay.

I think one of the more poignant moments of our Christmas break this year was when we listened to Linus’ speech on A Charlie Brown Christmas where he told everyone what Christmas is really about. In case you’ve forgotten, I found that clip on YouTube.

This past week we didn’t do much of anything at all other than a game night at my parents.

We will start school again tomorrow with some new curriculum for both kids, but especially Little Miss who will start a new Kindergarten curriculum. In some educational areas she is beyond Kindergarten curriculum and in others she almost beyond it or way beyond it. Verbally and cognitively she’s at a sixth grade level or beyond, so most days it’s like living with a 6-year old going on 16-year old.

She has some issues with her letters but over the break she seemed to be getting a lot better at recognizing her letters by typing out what she wanted to name things in Minecraft. Who says video games can’t be educational? But all of that school stuff is something I’ll have to ramble about in a future Homeschool update post, which I have already started drafting.

So that’s my weekly (but actually two week) review. What have you been up to lately? Let me know in the comments.

Sunday Bookends: Special Christmas Music, Christmas books, and More Snow

On December 20, 2020December 20, 2020 By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends8 Comments

What I’m Reading

I am reading A Christmas Carol with my son for school (we will be reading Lord of the Flies and To Kill A Mockingbird next semester and already read another classic – Silas Marner.)

I’m also enjoying a slow read through Home to Holly Springs by Jan Karon and Maggie by Charles Martin, but will take a break from them this week to read A Shepherd’s Abiding by Jan Karon because it has a sweet Christmas theme.

What I’m Watching/Have Watched

I watched a really stupid, cringe-worthy movie on Amazon prime that I had to fast forward through part of because the acting was pretty bad but then also cried through – and not because the acting was bad.

It was called Holiday Switch and the whole premise was that this woman was unhappy with her life with her poor husband and kids and when she runs into her rich ex-boyfriend, she wonders what her life would have been like if she married him instead. She bumps her head and crawls in a — hang in here with me — a dryer and comes out in an alternate life where she would have been married to the ex-boyfriend instead of the current husband. Long story short, she discovers life with the boyfriend wouldn’t have turned out like she had hoped, even with all that extra money. While in the “other life” she runs into her real life husband and children and falls apart at the idea that the don’t know her and her real husband is married to another woman.

I’m sure my having a sinus headache and being very tired had nothing to do with me crying while this poor woman cried, thinking about how awful my life would be if I didn’t have my family (kids and husband) and holding my kids in vice grips while I sobbed into their hair. They were so bewildered, poor things.

“I love you too, Mom,” The Boy said, adding quickly to ruin the mood, as he always does, “The cat scratched my nipple last night.”

With that mood ruined, I sent him off to do the schoolwork he’d skipped doing when I gave the kids a snow day on Thursday (more about that later).

Sunday night we watched a livestream of The Chosen Christmas Special on Youtube. It’s still available on Youtube but it will also be shown on some Christian cable networks on Christmas and Christmas Eve. It will also be on TBN on Christmas at 8:00 PT/9pm MT/10pm CT/11pm ET and on UPtv: December 24th @ 4:30pm PT/5:30pm MT/6:30pm CT/ 7:30pm ET.

You can still watch the livestream on Youtube and I highly recommend it and staying until they show The Shepherd, which was a short film Dallas Jenkins (writer and director of The Chosen) made for his church, before he made the series. Season 2 of The Chosen is supposed to start airing sometime around Easter, I believe.

This upcoming week we will watch The Man Who Invented Christmas, which is a movie about Charles Dicken’s and how he created A Christmas Carol. It’s a fun movie that I am sure ‘takes liberties’ with the real story, but is more entertaining than seeing yet another retelling of the story. We are watching it because my son is reading A Christmas Carol for English and is scheduled to finish it this week. He’s cheating some by listening a reading of it and earlier in the week he tried to do that while playing a game on the Playstation. I have informed him that’s not how school works and he can play games after his work is done. Homeschooling is not for the faint of heart.

What’s Been Occurring

As I mentioned yesterday in my Photos of the Week post, we had 24 inches of snow dumped on us Wednesday into Thursday. We spent the rest of the week digging out. Or I should say, my husband spent the rest of the week digging out. I really didn’t help at all other than making a couple lunches and dinners and cheering him on. Towns about 40 minutes north of us ended up with between 3 and 4 feet of snow.

I shared the majority of the photos yesterday, but will share a few here as well .

One adventure I didn’t mention yesterday was that one of our neighbors actually tipped her car over the embankment leading to their house during the beginning of the storm. It was almost completely tipped on it’s side. My neighbors and I watched in horror as her car slid sideways, (slowly thankfully) and ended up on it’s side and she had to be lifted from the car through the passenger side door. My neighbors had been on their way to help her get unstuck from the snow next to the long driveway and I was looking out the window, getting ready to head out to see how I could help (which would have been very little, I imagine), which is how we watched it all unfold.

It was surreal to see a car of that size and weight move like a matchbox car and tip over. Thankfully she was fine, the car was able to be pulled upright about a half an hour later, and all ended well. I did not take photos of the incident, even though I was sorely tempted since I had never seen a car end up tipped like that without completely tipping over.

This is our first winter at our new house, but I grew up a few miles from the town we now live in so I’m used to the heavier snow the county we now live in can get. This area had not had two feet of snow dumped on it during one storm in quite a while, though, so the neighbors assured us this isn’t the norm for our little hill. I asked my neighbor, “Are you ready for the snow?”

He said he was but when I said, “This is our first snowstorm up here. I’m sure it will be fine,” he looked a little worried and said, “Well, two feet is a lot of snow.”

At that point the Weather Service was telling us we could get anywhere from 8 to 20 inches, so they didn’t even seem to know what to expect.

My neighbor’s apparent lack of confidence that the storm wouldn’t be so bad made me a little nervous, but we still tried to anticipate the storm with some sense of wonder and excitement. We had worried we would lose power (aka WiFi!) but somehow we didn’t. We live in a more rural area than we had for the last 18 years and while digging out of snow can be a downside, we still love our new house, our new neighbors, and are glad we made the move.

We’re even glad we made the move when we are chasing our six month old kitten out through two feet of snow (three foot snow drifts in some places) or digging our happy puppy out a spot in the backyard where she can use the bathroom.

This upcoming week we might get some more nasty weather on Christmas Eve and Christmas day but not 2 feet. That we know of anyhow.

We don’t have anything too exciting planned for the week. There will be three days of school for the kids before a week long break, making sausage balls with my mom one day (in memory of my aunt Dianne), making homemade pizzas on Christmas Eve, and then spending Christmas with my parents.

What I’m Writing

I will not be writing as many blog posts in the upcoming weeks as I have lately. Posting a blog post a day for a week was a personal challenge, but I don’t have as much to write about this next week (lucky for all of you, huh?!).

I’m still working on editing The Farmer’s Daughter and am starting a couple of other stories that are connected to The Tanner’s story.

On the blog last week I wrote a lot (too much), but couple of them I didn’t write myself:

Photos of the Week (our first little snowstorm)

Victorian Reading Challenge

Want A Way to Delete Your Facebook And Never Look Back?

My Grandfather’s Pipe (written by my husband) (By the way, he says ‘thank you’ to all those who commented on it. He doesn’t always hear feedback on his columns unless a reader disagrees with him and wants to complain.)

Fiction Friday: The Secrets We Hold

Photos of the Week: Now That’s a Lot of Snow ( I had two Photos of the Week because I am moving Photos of the Week to Saturday. I think. Maybe. We’ll see.)

So that was my week in review, what was your week like? Let me know in the comments and if I don’t talk to you again before the end of the week, have a Merry Christmas!

Sunday Bookends: Reading Books, Long Old Movies, and Snow . . . Again

On December 13, 2020December 13, 2020 By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends5 Comments

What I’m Reading

I am really enjoying the two books I’m switching back and forth between: Home to Holly Springs by Jan Karon and Maggie by Charles Martin.

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Home to Holly Springs is the story of Jan’s Mitford character Father Tim returning to his hometown to confront his past relationship with his father. While there he will stumble on a family secret that will shatter the view he had of his father and other members of his family. He takes this journey at the age of 70, which puts an entirely different perspective on things for me, thinking about a man at this late stage of his life learning how much of his past was a lie.

It is written in the same charming way Jan writes all her Mitford books. I pretty much love it, in other words, and don’t know why I never read it when it first came out and my husband bought me a beautiful hardcover copy of it for Christmas.

Maggie is the sequel to The Dead Don’t Dance and takes the reader down the road of healing in a marriage and of a couple who suffered the loss of a baby in childbirth. These are the first two books Martin wrote, on his way to becoming a NY Times best seller, and he’s a master writer and storyteller.

Here is a quote from Maggie I really enjoyed: “Love has its own communication. It’s the language of the heart, while it has never been transcribed, has no alphabet, and can’t be heard or spoken by voice, it is used by every human on the planet. It is written on our souls, scripted by the finger of God, and we can hear, understand, and speak it with perfection long before we open our eyes for the first time.”

I don’t have plans for what to read after these two books because I’m just enjoying getting to know the characters in both of them. Maggie is a little heavy in spots, so I try not to read that one before bed.

What I’m Watching

Last week I watched a movie with my mom. I’ve been trying to do this on Sunday afternoons to give my mom a break from all the politics or news stuff of the world. A little escape for her and me, I guess you’d say. So last week I decided we would watch Anchors Aweigh with Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly (1945). My husband and I had watched it before years ago. Apparently, it was so many years ago that I forgot how blasted long that movie is. It was like the movie that would not end. I mean, it’s pretty entertaining, but how many times do we have to watch a Gene Kelly movie and be subjected to half hour dance scenes. Frankly, I would have preferred to have more scenes with Frank in them, but oh well, Gene was the movie star back then.

My mom has a cataract she will eventually need surgery on, and I always worry it will affect her eyesight but so far it hasn’t. This was proven to me again last week when she noticed in the beginning credits that Dean Stockwell was in the movie. I was like, “How old is that guy that he was in this movie and was still acting in the 90s on Quantum Leap.” I couldn’t imagine who he had played in the movie so, of course, I Googled it, imagining it was a different Dean Stockwell. It wasn’t. It was the actual Dean Stockwell and he played the 5-year old little boy in the movie. Apparently, Dean started as a child star in several big movies of the 40s.

One interview with him that I found said he didn’t enjoy the experience on Anchors Aweigh because he was supposed to be tutored during the filming but was usually only tutored for 15 minutes every few hours and worked 8 to 9 hour days for six days a week at a time. He also didn’t like working with Gene as much as he liked working with Frank, but that’s not new. I’ve read that from other co-stars of his, but Dean said that like most movie stars, Gene didn’t like playing opposite children because the child inevitably got all the attention. He said that Frank didn’t care about that stuff and was more down to earth and had fun with him.

So, there is your movie trivia for the week. If you do choose to watch the movie, just be warned that it is long and to be ready to skip past a few dragged out Gene Kelly dance scenes. You will, of course, want to pause in your fast-forwarding for the infamous scene where he dances with Jerry, the cartoon mouse from Tom and Jerry and any singing scenes with Frank.

While watching the movie my daughter said, “Hey! That guy sounds like that Frank Sinatra we listen to before bed!” She’s never seen a photo of Frank, but we have listened to him before bed almost every night (when we don’t read Paddington) since she was a few months old.

I also watched a couple Hallmark-type movies this weekend but I don’t want to talk about them. They were too stupid to mention.

What I’m Writing

I finished The Farmer’s Daughter last week and then started ripping it to shreds and rewriting/rearranging it for when I throw it up as an ebook in February.

I also started The Farmer’s Son and a story about Liz which will be called The Secrets We Hold.

I wrote a couple of blog posts this week:

Photos of the Week

Randomly Thinking: The Weird Things Children Say and Do and other Random Thoughts

The Farmer’s Daughter Chapter 37 (final chapter).

What’s Been Occurring

Snow fell this week and I hiked up behind our house, trespassing on our neighbors’ land to take some photos of the snow all over the trees.

Little Miss hiked up behind me, complaining part of the time that she was cold (it would have helped if she had buttoned her coat) but then enjoying collecting snow to roll into snowballs that we eventually placed in our freezer in the garage. I don’t know why we are collecting snowballs and mini snowmen in our freezers, but I guess because Little Miss wants to hold on to her happiness a little longer and she’s happy in snow.

Zooma The Wonder Dog was very happy that day because I let her off the lead so she could run all over in the snow and sometimes jump up and smack Little Miss’s snowballs out of her mitten-covered hands with her nose.

Hubby was not as happy with the snow because the car wouldn’t go up the driveway, he fell twice trying to get in the house and then got stuck in the spot across from the driveway the next morning.

I fell on our sidewalk taking snow photos when my foot slipped into a crack between panels, which I couldn’t see because it had been covered by snow. It was one of those fall where you know you are falling and you can’t do anything about it. I told my husband I toppled over slowly like a toy top, but I guess it would be better to say I toppled over slowly like a toy soldier. Either way, the slow fall was good because when I slammed my elbow into the hard sidewalk, it didn’t hurt as much as it could have.

I will share a few more photos tomorrow for my Photos of the Week post.

So that is my week in review. How about you? What are you reading, watching, writing, listening to, or what have you been doing? Let me know in the comments.

Sunday Bookends: Death Comes to Pemberly, Books finished and Snowy Days

On December 6, 2020December 5, 2020 By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends5 Comments

What I’m Reading

I finished Wild Montana Skies by Susan May Warren last week. It was a good book and I will read the next one in the series, Rescue Me, when I get it. I’m waiting for a used paperback of it to come in the mail.

I decided I wanted to hold and read a paperback again. Christianbook.com had a huge Cyber Sale last week (it ends tomorrow, December 7) and they had a few books on sale, but they also had a Fiction Mystery Box for 93 percent off ($9.99) and it included ten Christian fiction books from a variety of genres (romance, Amish romance, suspense, thrillers and general). I won’t list them all here, but there were a couple from authors I’ve been wanting to try so I’m sure I’ll mention them in future Sunday Bookends posts.

This week I plan to read a Christmas novella by Julie Klassen called An Ivy Hill Christmas, keep reading Death Without Company by Craig Johnson, and Maggie by Charles Martin. Yes, these are all very different books from each other. That’s how I roll in book reading and in life. I’m very eclectic. And sarcastic.

What the Family is Reading

My husband is going to start Night World by F. Paul Wilson this week, which he said is a reread for him. My son is reading World War Z (a book about zombies and please don’t ask who told him he could read that. No, it wasn’t this parent.). My daughter is having Paddington Races Ahead by Michael Bond read to her and then we plan to finish up How to Explain Christmas to Chickens by John Spiers from My Life With Gracie.

What I’m Watching/Watched

This past week I watched Death Comes to Pemberley twice, once by myself and once with my husband. It was a three part mini-series made in 2014 and based on a book by P.D. James. It continues the story of Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy (swoon! Mr. Darcy!) by Pride and Prejudice in an imaginative retelling and continuation that involves a murder in Pemberley Woods.

I thoroughly enjoyed that when I watched it again when my husband was in the room, he got wrapped up in it.

I had to give him the entire background of Pride and Prejudice, which was fun, and it was also fun to watch him talk to the characters.

“Don’t do that. No! Your just a young girl that made a mistake!”

“So, they’re saying he hadn’t slept with her all those years and then he knocked her up that one time?”

It was as entertaining to watch him as it was the show.

This triggered a couple of days of watching Jane Austen based movies including Northanger Abbey on Amazon, which was also very good. I don’t know if any of this will encourage me to actually read Jane Austen, but we shall see.

I’ve now started Beechum House and was hooked in the first episode.

What’s Been Occurring

Cold weather kept us inside most of the week. The only trips we took out of the house involved chasing our six-month old kitten outside in the snow when she escaped the house. She’s still very young so we don’t want her out where a racoon, coyote, or fox could eat her or she could be run over. She’s delighted to run out the door but then completely freaks out once she’s outside, losing her mind and dashing from our front bushes, to under our van, to the neighbor’s bushes and front porch, to our front porch — back and forth until we’re all breathing hard and she looks like she might pass out. Little Miss and I spent 15 minutes in the snow chasing her one day and then I spent a few minutes another evening, but finally gave up because I needed to cook dinner. The Boy eventually brought her inside.

After snow fell another day, Little Miss went outside and made mini-snowmen. We know winter has come when we open our freezer and see mini-snowmen sitting there. It seems to be a winter tradition. Another tradition for us is to try to make a gingerbread house, which almost always end up in a disaster. As usual, the house looked pretty awful, but the kids had fun making it.

What I’m Writing

I did not write a lot of blog posts last week because I am working on finishing revisions for The Farmer’s Daughter and have also started The Farmer’s Son and another yet to be titled book about Liz, Molly’s friend.

I did share a blog post about novel writing called Creatively Thinking: When You’re Okay Not Writing Deep and Praiseworthy Books and two chapters of The Farmer’s Daughter.

So that’s what I’ve been up to. How about all of you? Let me know in the comments.

Sunday Bookends: Christmas displays, somewhat unrealsitic books, Maggie Cole

On November 29, 2020November 29, 2020 By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends6 Comments

Sunday Bookends is my week in review, so to speak. It’s where I share what I’ve been up to, what I’ve been reading, what I’ve been watching, what I’ve been listening to, and what I’ve been writing. Feel free to share a link or comment about your week in the comments

What I’m Reading

I started one of those books that annoy me because part of the premise was stupid but the more I got into it, the more I was accepting of the dumb premise, probably because the characters were somewhat interesting and the writing well done. I don’t know that the premise itself was really stupid, but aspects of it were. I don’t want to say what I didn’t like about the story because it would be a spoiler for those who might read it in the future. Of course, now that I said I didn’t like part of the book, others will say they won’t want to read it, but I wouldn’t discourage you from reading it because even though aspects of it irritated me, I had a hard time putting it down.

The storylines in Wild Montana Skies by Susan May Warren were actually very engaging. There are four main characters. Two major main characters and two minor main characters. Their stories intersect at times, but the main story is of Kasey and Ben, young lovers who grew apart when Ben left to become a Country Music star. The book sets up future storylines or at least future characters, including the story of billionaire Ian Shaw who spends this book look for his niece who has gone missing. I do enjoy how Susan May Warren writes, but I don’t know if I will buy the other books in this series or not. I am reading this first book in the series because it is on Kindle Unlimited and I usually only pay $9 for an ebook if it is from an author I really enjoy, which isn’t to say I don’t enjoy this author’s work. I’m just not sure I’m going to keep buying the ebooks for that price when I can get the paperbacks for about the same price. I’ll probably purchase paperbacks of hers in the future.

I’ll probably finish that book in the next couple of days and then I plan to read a book by Ted Dekker, who I’ve heard a lot about recently, and one by James L. Rubart, who I’ve only just heard about.

Dekker’s is called Water Walker, which is a book that combines four serial “episodes”. The description on Amazon is: “My name is Alice Ringwald, but the man who kidnapped me says that’s a lie.”

Thirteen-year-old orphan Alice Ringwald has no memory beyond six months ago. The only life she knows is the new one she’s creating one day at a time with the loving couple that recently adopted her and gave her new hope. That hope, however, is shattered one night when she is abducted by a strange man. In a frantic FBI manhunt, the kidnapper vanished with Alice.”

Rubart’s book is Rooms. The Amazon description: What if you inherited a brand-new mansion on the Oregon coast—from a great uncle you never knew? Would you blow it off? Or head down there to check it out?

Micah Taylor isn’t stupid. He’s made a fortune building a Seattle software empire. But he can’t figure out why he’s been given a 9,000 square foot home right on the beach.

And not just any beach. The one beach he loves more than any other. The one beach he hates more than any other. Both at the same time. Micah drives down to check out the house. On the surface, everything seems legit. He instantly feels at home and then he meets a beautiful young woman at the local ice cream shop. Now there’s two reasons to keep coming back to Cannon Beach. But the house still feels off. Things start happening that Micah can’t explain. That Micah doesn’t want explained. Because he’s slowly realizing the house isn’t just a house. It’s a physical manifestation of his soul.

He begins a journey into the most glorious rooms of his life, but also the darkest. Rooms where terrible things happened. Things that must not be remembered, but scream out to be heard. Micah can’t run. Can’t hide. Because the memories aren’t just memories. They’re real. Memories that can heal and set him free. But that can also destroy him. And there’s no way to know which side will win in the end.

What I’m Watching

My husband and I finished The Trouble with Maggie Cole this week, which we found on the PBS Masterpiece channel on Amazon. I mentioned this show in my post last week. It was six episodes and we really enjoyed it. We don’t see how they could have a season two but Dawn French, who stars in the show, says a second season is planned. I was so nervous that the show, which was fairly clean, was going to delve into this super dark place in the last couple of episodes, but it didn’t. Instead, it was a nice, but suspenseful story with redeeming characters.

The show starts with Maggie Cole (French) being interviewed by a radio show host who gets her drunk so she will gossip about the people in town. She doesn’t remember or know the gossip part will be on the show when she sets up a party at her house for everyone in town to listen with her. She thinks the man is going to be doing a story on the 500-year celebration party she is organizing for the town, which is what they agreed on when they first met.

The show follows her efforts to make it up to the people she “outed” but also the stories of each person who she shared gossip about. Throughout the series, we learn what is true and what isn’t about the six victims of her drunken ramble.

As I said last week, I completely relate to Maggie, except that I don’t feel I am a pushy person who forces people to do what I want. Sadly, when I asked my husband if that part of her was like me, he paused much too long. He’s still taking care of that lump on his head from the book I threw at him. That last part, of course, is a joke. The part about him pausing too long is not.

Christmas season is starting so I’m sure I’ll watch my share of stupid Hallmarkesque Christmas movies this week.

What’s Been Occurring / What I’m Writing

I finished the first draft of The Farmer’s Daughter yesterday. The final version will be a bit different than what I shared here on the blog since I have removed both Franny and Jason’s storyline from this book. Their stories will be separate novels or novellas. It felt pretty good to finish the book since I’ve been working on Molly’s story for the last couple of years when I first wrote the kiss scene on a whim. I started her story before I started A New Beginning and in the middle of writing A Story to Tell. I’m so glad I won’t be saying goodbye to Alex and Molly, though. Their story will continue some in The Farmer’s Son, which will be Jason’s story, and in The Business Man’s Son, which will be Alex’s story.

I will be working on rewrites and edits this week if I can keep my brain from jumping to the other stories I am planning for the series.

Last week’s posts included:

Last week we spent my husband’s birthday visiting a light display at a golf course about a half an hour away. The Christmas lights lined trees and displays across the course and it was a beautiful sight. The way they made lights look like a running river was amazing. I’m sure my photographs don’t do it justice. I’m sharing a few here and will share more in my Photos of the Week post tomorrow. The only issue we had during the tour were the odd comments from my kids, including when my daughter asked if that was Santa in an airplane in one of the displays and when my husband said “yes,” she said “That is so cringe.”

After the tour, they offered hot chocolate, cookies, and other snacks in a space near the main club room location. One of those snacks were smores kits., which were simply one marshmallow, a mini Hershey chocolate bar, and two graham crackers. The marshmallows were roasted over fire pits they had set up in the open courtyard.

We spent Thanksgiving with my parents, enjoying three different types of pies they made, a turkey my husband made, and a variety of other food we all made together.

So that’s what I’ve been up to this week. How about you? Let me know in the comments!

Sunday Bookends: Too.Many.Books. And cold weather comes to stay

On November 22, 2020November 22, 2020 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Sunday Bookends16 Comments

What’s been occurring

Cold weather moved in this week (except one day when it oddly went up to 60) and I think it’s here to stay. Sadly. We’ve pulled out our winter coats and had to wear them most days. We even had snow on the ground two mornings in a row.

To cheer us up and fit in with the cold weather, and the neighbors, we also started decorating for Christmas this weekend. We decorated mainly inside the house but we did wrap some ribbon and a bow around our lightpost out front. We will probably decorate more outside today or later in the week. We do know one thing – keeping our kitten out of the tree is going to be very difficult since it is now her favorite place to lay and play. She almost knocked it over nore than once the night we put it up and had to be pulled out three times. If you have any tips on how to keep her out of it, I’d love to hear them.

I told my neighbor this week that I’m not used to the time change yet so I didn’t know what time my dog had run into her yard and got herself wrapped around their cinderblocks (which they use during the summer for their gazebo). I said “It felt like 9 but it was probably 6. My body hasn’t adjusted to the time change yet.” She texted back: “Just wait until our Christmas lights come on. It will feel like daytime at night.”

I asked her if it will be like National Lampoon and she said “not that bad.” I was actually hoping it would be that bright, to be honest. We are looking forward to the display, which our other neighbors have already been telling us about. I think it will be so cheerful to see full-on Christmas lights right now.

What I’m Reading

I just finished Whose Waves These Are by Amanda Dykes. It won a Christy Award last week.

It’s beautifully written. It’s also very poetic. It was almost too deep for me with where my brain is, or rather isn’t, lately, but it was a wonderful story. I was determined to finish it last week because it was taking me so long to push through it with all the metaphors and characters speaking in riddles. That sounds like a complaint and I don’t mean it to be. It was just a lot for my muddled brain. I hope to have a review of the book next week sometime. Until then, here is a description for anyone interested:

In the wake of WWII, a grieving fisherman submits a poem to a local newspaper: a rallying cry for hope, purpose . . . and rocks. Send me a rock for the person you lost, and I will build something life-giving. When the poem spreads farther than he ever intended, Robert Bliss’s humble words change the tide of a nation. Boxes of rocks inundate the tiny, coastal Maine town, and he sets his calloused hands to work, but the building halts when tragedy strikes. Decades later, Annie Bliss is summoned back to Ansel-by-the-Sea when she learns her Great-Uncle Robert, the man who became her refuge during the hardest summer of her youth, is now the one in need of help. What she didn’t anticipate was finding a wall of heavy boxes hiding in his home. Long-ago memories of stone ruins on a nearby island trigger her curiosity, igniting a fire in her anthropologist soul to uncover answers. She joins forces with the handsome and mysterious harbor postman, and all her hopes of mending the decades-old chasm in her family seem to point back to the ruins. But with Robert failing fast, her search for answers battles against time, a foe as relentless as the ever-crashing waves upon the sea.

I’m trying to choose which book I want to read next. I have a Kindle full of books I haven’t read but want to read. It’s hard to choose, especially since I have downloaded books by a lot of new authors recently. The candidates for this week are Wild Montana Skies by Susan May Warren,

Messenger: A Walt Longmire Story by Craig Johnson, (Update: I finished this Saturday night. It turns out it was a short story. Oops!)

Home to Holly Springs by Jan Karon (not sure how I never read this one. I have a beautiful hardcover copy my husband bought me when it first came out.)

and

Heart Restored by Elizabeth Maddrey.

I’ll let you know next week which one I chose.

What I’m Watching

I’ve got completely caught up in The Trouble with Maggie Cole, which I discovered during a trial of PBS Masterpiece. Actually, I got the trial because the description of the show completely intrigued me. I probably won’t pay for another month of it because we have enough subscriptions already but I’m going to make sure I go through all five of the episodes that are up for now and if they are going to keep adding them, since this is a new show for 2020, I will probably have to cancel Hallmark to keep Masterpiece so I can finish it.

I looked for a full description on PBS but their description didn’t really do it justice. I found a better one on Wikapedia:

The six-part series takes place in the coastal village of Thurlbury and follows the local busybody Maggie Cole (Dawn French). Maggie refers to herself as a “local historian” and owns a local heritage-gift shop, while her husband Peter is the headmaster of the local primary school. Self-important Maggie has spilt the beans, drunkenly, on local radio about six village characters with secrets, and is thus racked with guilt for her pointless gossip. But she somehow seems to have hit a seam of truth about at least two or three, and thus the stage is set for confrontations and reckonings.

The show stars Dawn French from The Vicar of Dibley fame.

I think one reason the show is both cringeworthy and interesting to me is because, well, I’m Maggie Cole in real life. I’m the person who eviserates friendships and family relationships by somehow sticking my foot in it, or blowing up and regretting it later. After watching the first episode with me, my husband said he’s glad I’ve never gotten drunk because if I did I would scorch the earth with what I would say. Ouch. I wasn’t sure how to take that, but, well, he’s right. I’m bad enough sober.

My husband said “If you got drunk, you would lose control. You are one of the most controlled people I know.”

I looked at him in shock, thinking of the former friends I had told off in the past (though not as bad as I could have) and laughed. “Most controlled?!”

He smiled, “You could be worse. Trust me.”

And yeah, I guess he has a point. I could be. Also, I pointed out to him the many times I really could have let someone really, really have it in the last four years, but haven’t. We also both agreed that neither of us have felt an urge to really let someone have it since we’ve moved to our new town, mainly because we are a lot happier where we live now.

What I’m Writing

I’m working on The Farmer’s Daughter and shared a new chapter Friday. I hope to finish it and have it out on Kindle by February, but we will see how revisions and editing goes. Rekindle (the new name for Quarantined) is free on Amazon through Thanksgiving day.

On the blog last week I wrote:

Randomly Thinking: I want my men to be men and other random thoughts

Faithfully Thinking: When You Don’t Follow Your Own Advice

So what are you reading, watching, writing, listening to or doing this week? Let me know in the comments.