Category: Sunday Bookends

Sunday Bookends: You might be a book nerd if you plan to watch a documentary about . . . books

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends15 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 review in the comments.

What I’m Watching

I don’t know if I would really call myself a book nerd. I would call my husband one. He is a definite book nerd.

I like books.

I read books.

But he is obsessed with books of all kinds. Therefore it made sense to choose a documentary called The Booksellers for our weekend movie night. But then we watched Casino Royale with our son instead since he’s getting older and we wanted to introduce him to some of the movies we’ve seen and enjoyed over the years. This was the first James Bond with Daniel Craig and a reboot of the franchise. We will probably watch The Booksellers Sunday night (tonight) or Monday instead.

According to a description on YouTube, The Booksellers is about …. yes, booksellers. “Antiquarian booksellers are part scholar, part detective and part businessperson, and their personalities and knowledge are as broad as the material they handle. They also play an underappreciated yet essential role in preserving history. THE BOOKSELLERS takes viewers inside their small but fascinating world, populated by an assortment of obsessives, intellects, eccentrics and dreamers.”

I also watched Win A Date with Tad Hamilton this week but my husband said I shouldn’t mention that to anyone. That’s probably because I fast forwarded a lot of it and it was fairly cringe worthy in some ways. All I know is I would have picked Topher Grace over that other idiot any day. If you haven’t seen the movie, you’re not missing much, but the bottom line is that Tad Hamilton is a stuck-up, shallow actor and Rosealee, a young woman from Virginia who works at a Piggly Wiggly (yes, it is a real chain of supermarkets for those not from the south) wins a date with him. Tad is enchanted by how down to earth she is and falls for her but the entire time her best friend Pete is in love with her and can’t get up the courage to tell her.

I also started watching Father Brown again, the more modern version on Britbox on Amazon (there is apparently a version from the 1970s as well. This show is based on books by G.K. Chesterton). It may be available other places as well. I’m not sure. I abandoned the show in the seventh season because they got rid of a couple of characters and some of the episodes were a bit too .. er…. sexy for me? I don’t know how to put it other than there was too much focus on sex crimes in that season and it was disturbing. I can’t binge crime shows the way some people do. If they are really dark crime shows I can’t watch them at all. Father Brown isn’t usually too dark. They do show the person being killed but it’s not usually a drawn out murder scene and they don’t usually focus on the graphic aftermath for shock value like some shows.

What I’m Reading

A Cord of Three Strands by Christy Distler

I finished this this week and will have a review of the book up on the blog on Tuesday. It is historical Christian fiction.

A Long Time Comin’ by Robin Pearson I know it’s been a long time reading too but my reading was interrupted when I read a couple books/stories for some other authors and with writing this week. I have gotten back into it this week and I am really enjoying it.

What’s Been Happening

I’m trying a real legit Facebook detox for the entire month of August. Pray for me. I really need to get my nerves under control and I think a break from social media will help. It will nice to not be told what I have to be angry about or afraid of for an entire month.

I’m also dealing with some issues with my bladder (like going to the bathroom all night long) so I’d love some prayer on that as well. I think it’s related to hormones but I have an appointment with urology in a month (if I don’t call and beg them to get me in earlier). TMI ahead for any men that might read my blog (I don’t think there are any) but what is weird is that I just had a period after a month of not having one and I didn’t go to the bathroom as much during it so I have no idea what is up, other than I really believe my hormones are off.

On a happier note, I somehow agreed to adopt a kitten this past week and we picked her up on Saturday. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had a kitten in the house so this is all pretty weird and a bit exhausting coupled with the above mentioned bladder issues. The kids have been thrilled, though The Boy was less thrilled last night when he had to watch her in his room to keep her away from the other pets (who aren’t yet sure what they think of her) but hopefully things will eventually settle down and she will fit in well.

She has extra toes so my daughter wants to name her mittens. I told my son he could name her because he always complains that he doesn’t get to name our pets but when I asked him to provide a name he said “I dunno..” and slunked away like the teenager he now is. I picked Scout after Scout Finch from one of my favorite books To Kill A Mockingbird. We will see which one we end up sticking with. We like these choices better than the name the foster family had for her at the shelter: Valerian, after the flower and root. I can’t say the word right and when I do I can’t seem to say it without a posh British accent.

Phots from the week:

I actually barely touched my camera this week. Hopefully I will pick up the camera more this next week but I at least have some photos of the new kitten I can share.

Sunday Bookends: A book challenge for me for the rest of the year; books read; and photos from the week

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends11 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 review in the comments.

What’s been happening/Garden update

Not a lot has been happening lately, but I have been trying not to kill my garden. So far we’ve eaten some summer squash from it, one piece of broccoli and we tried to eat the lettuce but it was bitter. I think we will eventually get some carrots and tomatoes from it and maybe a few more squash and zucchini. I also hope to get a few potatoes and later on some butternut squash. I’m horrible at weeding the garden. Maybe I’ll get better at it next year, but I don’t have much hope.

I took some photos of my garden but then I was going to put in the photos of my dad’s garden and tell all of you his was mine. I didn’t think that would be honest, but his looks much more impressive than mine this year, which is funny because he originally said he wasn’t doing one. I’ll share a couple photos of his garden at the end of the post.

These are my tomatoes, lettuce, and squash and a meal I made with my squash, my dad’s kale, and a pork chop. The green beans my daughter is snapping at the end of the post are 99.9 percent my dad’s and about five from my own garden. My green bean plants didn’t have enough room to grow.

I had planned to chop down some flowers outside our house before they got too big but I — uh, never got around to it (again) and they grew two feet tall and sprouted these freaky alien flowers and hundreds (okay 20) of bees of three or four different kinds of varieties swarmed them. The only good thing about leaving them there was a butterfly landed on them and Little Miss was able to enjoy watching the butterfly. I’m going to cut these flowers back before next year because they seriously took over the side of our house and they weren’t attractive at all (to me anyhow).

What I’m Reading

I am reading Misty Of Chincoteague (I definitely had to look up how to spell that) each night with my daughter I tried this before with my son years ago but he was not impressed. My daughter, however, is a huge fan of horses so I’m .hoping she will enjoy it more, even if it isn’t her regular Paddington. She has, however, asked for Paddington more this week than Misty. I’m going to keep trying because I think she will like it.

I finished By Book or By Crook by Eva Gates this week (yes, I know. What took me so long) and really enjoyed it. The book is about a young woman who moves to the Outer Banks of North Carolina to work at a library that is built inside a lighthouse. She’s moved to her family’s old vacation spot (and her aunt and uncles hometown) to avoid an awkward situation back in her hometown of Boston involving a failed relationship. Not only does Lucy encounter the mayor of the small village, Connor, who she remembers kissing on the beach when she was there on vacation and were 14, but Butch, a police officer in the village. She encounters Butch more than she might like when someone in the village is discovered murdered in the library.

The description from Amazon:

For ten years Lucy has enjoyed her job poring over rare tomes of literature for the Harvard Library, but she has not enjoyed the demands of her family’s social whorl or her sort-of-engagement to the staid son of her father’s law partner. But when her ten-year relationship implodes, Lucy realizes that the plot of her life is in need of a serious rewrite.
 
Calling on her aunt Ellen, Lucy hopes that a little fun in the Outer Banks sun—and some confections from her cousin Josie’s bakery—will help clear her head. But her retreat quickly turns into an unexpected opportunity when Aunt Ellen gets her involved in the lighthouse library tucked away on Bodie Island.
 
Lucy is thrilled to land a librarian job in her favorite place in the world. But when a priceless first edition Jane Austen novel is stolen and the chair of the library board is murdered, Lucy suddenly finds herself ensnared in a real-life mystery—and she’s not so sure there’s going to be a happy ending….

The next book I started was A long Time Comin’ by Robin Pearson and though I’m only on Chapter 5 it is already keeping me up late by being caught up in the story.

The description from Amazon:

To hear Beatrice Agnew tell it, she entered the world with her mouth tightly shut. Just because she finds out she’s dying doesn’t mean she can’t keep it that way. If any of her children have questions about their daddy and the choices she made after he abandoned them, they’d best take it up with Jesus. There’s no room in Granny B’s house for regrets or hand-holding. Or so she thinks.

Her granddaughter, Evelyn Lester, shows up on Beatrice’s doorstep anyway, burdened with her own secret baggage. Determined to help her Granny B mend fences with her far-flung brood, Evelyn turns her grandmother’s heart and home inside out. Evelyn’s meddling uncovers a tucked-away box of old letters, forcing the two women to wrestle with their past and present pain as they confront the truth Beatrice has worked a lifetime to hide.

If I can start reading faster, I would love to do a reading challenge a local library did for the summer. I definitely won’t finish the challenge before the August 15 deadline but I’m thinking of trying it for the end of the year:

  1. A book published in 2019
  2. A book recommended by a librarian (my brother is sort-of a librarian so I’ll have to ask him to recommend one to me)
  3. A book published before you were born (done)
  4. A fantasy book (this will be a bit harder for me, since I’m not a huge fantasy fan)
  5. A book recommended by a friend or relative (done)
  6. A book that became a movie
  7. A book with a character from another country
  8. A non-fiction book (uuugh. I’m not a very big non-fiction reader but luckily Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs has recently recommended a couple I am interested in)
  9. A fiction book (no problem and done)
  10. The first book of a series (already done with By Book or By Crook)

What I’m Watching:

This week I watched a movie called All Saints with John Corbett about a Episcopalian pastor who is put in charge of closing down a charge on his first assignment. The description on Google:

Michael Spurlock decides to trade in his corporate sales career to become a pastor. Unfortunately, his first assignment is to close a country church and sell the prime piece of land where it sits. He soon has a change of heart when the church starts to welcome refugees from Burma. Spurlock now finds himself working with the refugees to turn the land into a working farm to pay the church’s bills.

I really enjoyed the movie which I found terribly touching and very well acted by a strong cast. I didn’t know many of the actors besides Corbett, but did recognize David Keith from Heritage Falls, which I watched the week before. I found it on Amazon but it may be available on other streaming services.

What I’m Writing:

I’m working on finishing a novella that will combine my short stories Quarantined and Rekindle and hope to have it complete and ready for publication by the end of August. I’ll be releasing it free for blog readers, if I can figure out how to do that.

I’m also working on The Farmer’s Daughter, of course.

On the blog this past week:

On Monday I wrote about A Little Farm Making Special Milk (a blog post about a local farm);

Tuesday I rambled about me and the blog (which was totally awkward for me, to be honest);

Friday I shared another chapter of The Farmer’s Daughter.

I’ll end the post like I have been ending it lately; with some photos from the week, but I really did not take many photos at all this week. Hopefully, I will have some more from next week.

Sunday Bookends: slow summer days, slow reading, slow everything

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Sunday Bookends13 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 review in the comments.

What I’ve Been Up To

I haven’t been up to a ton this week. We did visit my parents a couple of times so we could go swimming since our area was hit with a short heatwave. I think we will also go swimming later today because it is supposed to be in the low 90s (yes, Arizona people.. I know that is not really hot. 😉)

We visited a local farm earlier in the week and ended up with a flat tire but I’m planning a separate post on that for later in the week.


What I’m Reading:

I’m reading very slow these days but am going back and forth between books. I am still reading By Book or By Crook by Eva Gates. I don’t know why I am reading it so slowly other than I’ve been switching between it and A Long Time Comin’ but Robin Pearson the last few days and I also find myself playing with the little one throughout the day and that takes up quite a bit of time. Plus cooking and taking the dog in and out. I’m not cleaning because I’m a huge cleaning failure. My husband is a cleaning success story, however.

What I’m Watching:

I watched a movie called Heritage Falls with David Keith, Coby Ryan McLaughlin, and Keenan Johnson this past week. I was pleasant suprised because it seemed like one of those faith-based independent films and they aren’t always great. This movie, however, was well, written, well-acted, and not predictable or cliche.

It was about a father and son who aren’t having a great relationship and the son is also having a challenging time with his teenage son. To try to mend things between his son and him the grandfather takes them all on a camping trip and during that time all three end up bonding and at least working through some of their issues. It was much more entertaining than I expected and also had me reaching for tissues a couple of times.

I also watched The Fitzgerald Family Christmas which was much different than Heritage Falls in some ways and very similar in others. What was different was the language (much more colorful) and what was similar was it was a movie full of a family talking things out and working through past family hurts involving a father. It isn’t a movie I would normally click on but I needed something different so I tried it out.

Sometimes I find a gem in the list of cruddy movies stream services offer and this week I found two (both on Amazon prime).

The Fitzgerald Family Christmas starred Edward Burns, who also wrote it.

What I’m Listening To:

I’ve been listening to the music my son has been listening to lately and it is interesting to see him developing his own taste in music. It’s nothing like what I expected. On his listening list lately has been John Denver, Smokey Robinson, Al Green, Queen, Marvin Gaye, Hozier, AC/DC, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, and the Grateful Dead to name a few. I’m not fans of all of these but I try to listen to a few of them with him. Maybe I can push some Needtobreathe, George Straight, Marc Martel, TobyMac, and early Mumford and Sons on him this week but I doubt it. He’s not interested in much of his “mom’s music” these days. And I thought my music was “hip” and “cool.” Hmmm..oh well.

What I’m Writing:

I’m still working on The Farmer’s Daughter and shared another chapter this week.

I’m also still working on Fully Alive.

I wrote about visiting an old stone railroad bridge in Nicholson, PA.

Photos from the week

Sunday Bookends: Joan Hickson was how old when she played Miss Marple?!

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends10 Comments

My week was fairly low key since I was recovering from a UTI (or a possible different condition. I’m not sure yet). I used to get them all the time as a kid, teenager and even my early adult years, but this is the first one I’ve had in probably 12 years and this time there wasn’t any pain, just using the bathroom all night long and totally messing up my sleep pattern. We spent a lot of time in the backyard running through the sprinkler to beat the heat and I spent a lot of time drinking water and wishing I could sleep normally again. I’ve been waking up every 90-minutes for about two weeks (maybe even a month) so, yeah, I’m a little out of it these days.

What I’ve Been Watching

Since my husband has been suggesting I watch old shows like Perry Mason and The Rockford Files with him, I talked him into a Miss Marple movie this week. We both agreed that the movie was complicated and a bit confusing, but still intriguing.

The movies are based on Agatha Christie’s books about Miss Marple. There are a number of different portrayals of Miss Marple, but my favorite is Joan Hickson, who to me is just a perfect Miss Marple even though (shhhhh) I’ve never read any of the books. *And yes, I am sure I’ve mentioned Joan Hickson as Miss Marple before on my Sunday Bookends.

When Joan came on my husband said: “I don’t mean to be rude but she looks ancient! How did she even remember her lines at her age?”

So then I started Googling and it turned out she started — I emphasize started — filming 8 years of movies as Miss Marple at the age of 78.

Yes, 78.

She was 86 when she retired and they stopped making movies. Never say you’re too old for anything.

My favorite part of her portrayal is the way she acts so sweet almost the entire movie, all the while knowing she knows what is going on when no one else does. And then at the end of the movie when she lays it out for the dolt police detectives and she says things like “Well, obviously” or “of course it was…” implying she, an elderly woman, could figure it out, since it was as plain as the nose on her face, then why couldn’t they? Those endings where she wraps it all up in a neat little bow are like the ultimate mic drop. Plus it helps me because I’ve usually lost the plot somewhere in the middle since the movies are so complex.

This week we also watched The Magnificent Seven, the modern version with Chris Pratt and Denzel Washington. I missed most of it because I was outside on the back porch playing unicorns with my daughter. I’ve seen the original and from what I did see of the modern version it was pretty close. Denzel was a good choice to play Yule Brenner’s part. Neither movie is really one of my favorites since I think the story is pretty dark and depressing. For those who don’t know it is is a western and the main plot is that a bad man is running the town and a widow hires a gunmen and others to take out the bad man and set the town free. Pretty simple explanation of it.

I also rewatched the movie Risen which is about a Roman tribune who witnesses the crucifixion of Christ and then is put in charge of making sure his followers don’t remove his body from the tomb to make it took like he has risen from the dead. When the body turns up missing, Clauvius (played by Joseph Feines), begins the search for Yeshua (Jesus in English) and a search for what he has been missing in his own life after years of slaughtering people in the name of Rome. It stars Feines, Tom Felton, and Peter Firth, so it is a Hollywood driven retelling (in a way) of the Gospels, but it is well done, despite some glaring inaccuracies, which Amazon’s trivia feature pointed out to me and some which I noticed on my own. It is also much more violent and graphic in the early part of the movie.

Despite what the words say up there, this is not in the theaters.


What I’m Reading

I’m deep into By Book or By Crook by Eva Gates and enjoying it so far.

Here is the description on Goodreads:

For ten years Lucy has enjoyed her job poring over rare tomes of literature for the Harvard Library, but she has not enjoyed the demands of her family’s social whorl or her sort-of-engagement to the staid son of her father’s law partner. But when her ten-year relationship implodes, Lucy realizes that the plot of her life is in need of a serious rewrite.

Calling on her aunt Ellen, Lucy hopes that a little fun in the Outer Banks sun—and some confections from her cousin Josie’s bakery—will help clear her head. But her retreat quickly turns into an unexpected opportunity when Aunt Ellen gets her involved in the lighthouse library tucked away on Bodie Island.

Lucy is thrilled to land a librarian job in her favorite place in the world. But when a priceless first edition Jane Austen novel is stolen and the chair of the library board is murdered, Lucy suddenly finds herself ensnared in a real-life mystery—and she’s not so sure there’s going to be a happy ending….


In the next couple of weeks I hope to start A Long Time Comin‘ by Robin Pearson; The Secret Life of Sarah Hollenbeck by Bethany Turner; Death by the Seaside by T.E. Kirney; and Top of the Heap by Earle Stanley Gardner.

What I am Writing:

I have been working on The Farmer’s Daughter this past week in between running to the bathroom and also put in a few hundred words of Fully Alive. I’ll have a new chapter of The Farmer’s Daughter on Friday and maybe a new part to Fully Alive on Thursdy.

Here is a sneak peek of what I’m working on for Fully Alive:

Atticus wiped the back of his hand across his forehead, wiping away the sweat gathering there and watched the people walking, wondering about the devotion they had to this one God they followed, this Yahweh. He’d never understood it. He was raised to believe there were many gods and it took offering them sacrifices and performing well in life to appease them. Perform well, live well. Make a mistake and suffer for it. It was all he’d ever known. But these Jews. They had been defeated time and time again, taken over by Rome, killed in the thousands, their bodies rotting in the desert, yet they still held on to the belief they were chosen by this one god who supposedly cared about them more than anyone.

A few of them were wealthy, yes; the priests, their religious leaders, tax collectors or anyone who tied their allegiance to Rome. But for the most part most of these Jews were poor, living in squalor, many begging for food. Year after year, though, they journeyed here, feasting, gathering, worshipping their “one true God.”

Atticus scoffed as a beggar held up his hand, asking him for money.

Oh, yes. Of course, the one “true God” who couldn’t even pull his people out of the depths of depravity and starvation. Atticus walked past the man, barely looking at him, sick of the beggars and the crows and the long days and even longer nights. Dreams, nightmares, had been waking him from sleep for week. Visions of his time in battle, of the men he killed filled his mind nightly and he woken more than once in a cold sweat. Long soaks in the baths hadn’t helped. Prayers to Mars, the god of war, hadn’t helped. His past mocked him and it made him angry, sickness gnawing at his gut every day.

On the blog last week:

Sunday Bookends: What I’m reading, the week in photos, and mysteries seem to be a theme for me this week

Our cat has no consideration for my mental health

Short Fiction: Rekindle Part 5

Friday Fiction: The Farmer’s Daughter Chapter 15

Planned for this week:

A review of Wooing Cadie McCaffery; a post about our trip to the Nicholson Viaduct; more fiction

How about all of you? What are you reading, watching, doing, writing? Let me know in the comments.

The Week in Photos (missing a few, including some of The Boy. He does exist, but as a teenager he is often camera shy these days.)

Sunday Bookends: What I’m reading, the week in photos, and mysteries seem to be a theme for me this week

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends5 Comments

What I’m Reading

I finished two books this week and they couldn’t have been more different from each other.

The Knife Slipped by Earle Stanley Gardner was a noire crime novel, of sorts, while Wooing Cadie Mccaffey by Bethany Turner was a well written, humorous and light romance with light Christian undertones. Even if you’re not a Christian you would enjoy Cadie and Will’s story of love, break up and maybe love again. It was extremely entertaining and not preachy at all.

I don’t usually write book reviews but I might try to do a couple on these this week, just for fun and to distract myself from the weirdness of the world.

Gardener is the author of the Perry Mason books, of which the show and movies are based. Speaking of Perry Mason movies, my husband made me watch a couple of those this past week on his vacation. We enjoyed them, since they hold sentimental value for him (he used to watch them as a kid) but we also made a lot of fun of them. We especially made fun of the one actor’s hair because each movie it became more and more “flock of seagulls.”

Books I started this week include:

By Nook or By Crook by Eva Gates, which I am really enjoying so far (I’m up to chapter 2); a Lady Hardcastle Mystery, Death Beside the Seaside by T.E. Kinsey; and A Long Time Coming by Robin W. Pearson.

Up for later are Top of the Heap by Earle Stanley Gardener, another Cool and Lamm mystery; a Perry Mason book and Dreamwalker by a self-published author, Carrie Cotton.

What I’m Wrote/writing

Last weeks blog posts included:

The Little Garden That Might Grow. Maybe. We’ll See.

Serial Fiction: Rekindle Parts 3 and 4 (a sequel to Quarantined)

Fiction Friday: Catching Up

Upcoming this week I am planning a post entitled: Our Cat Has No Consideration For My Mental Health, possibly a book review or two, and at least one installment of fiction. I also hope to share a post about the stone railroad bridge we visited this week, including its history and photos from our visit there.

I am working on some upcoming installments for The Farmer’s Daughter and would love to get back into working on Fully Alive this week. I also hope to finish Rekindle, which I want to combine with Quarantined as a novella at some point, which will probably mean adding a little more background and developing the characters more.

What I’m Watching

I already mentioned we watched some Perry Mason episodes and movies on my husband’s vacation this week.

We also watched Knives Out with Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Christopher Plummer, Don Johnson, Jamie Lee Curtis and many others. I didn’t think it would be my type of movie but I was pleasantly surprised by it. It was definitely not what I expected but I did predict the “who done it” in some ways at the end. Daniel Craig was great but his Louisiana accent was really throwing me off since I’m used to him as James Bond. If you don’t like hard language I would skip this one (even though the big F-word is only said once) but one thing you won’t have to worry about it too much gore.

I gave up on Hart of Dixie this week. I know that I am going to sound like a super, super prude in a moment but I gave up on it because some of the characters jumped in and out of beds like they were eating candy instead of having sex. I mean I get that the show is meant to be a bit silly at times but I had a feeling if I kept going I was going to lose track of Dr. Hart’s bed partners. Plus my husband made fun of me for watching it so I bailed out.

I did start Frankie Drake Mysteries on Amazon and so far I like it but I am only on the second episode. It’s about a female detective group in the 1920s. Frankie Drake is the lead detective. I love the 20s swing music featured throughout the show, but could do without them playing it in the background during some scenes where I think it is out of place. I don’t mind music during scene switches or beginnings but I don’t like when it’s played behind dialogue. Also, it’s a wee-bit preachy about feminism and their Hollywood is showing because they are sort of pushing socialism and communism. I still like the simple story lines, so far, however. And no, I’m not a tv critic but I play one on my blog.

What I’m Listening To

I’m actually not listening to a ton of music because my son has been playing music around us a lot and he has very eclectic tastes — like his dad and me and his uncle (my brother). I’m not really a fan of the 80s rock he’s been listening to or metal or whatever it is — Aerosmith, Guns and Roses and AC/DC but I’m good with Johnny Cash, The Beatles, and Bill Monroe and Bruce Springsteen. If he Rick Rolls me one more time, though, I am going to pop him one (I don’t hit me kids so this is a total joke. I may shut off the WiFi on him, however.

My daughter and I listen to Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, or Dean Martin before bed on nights she’s super tired and wants music instead of a book. I often keep listening to whichever one we’ve chosen even after she is asleep.

I am also trying to listen to more sermons lately. I listened to one by Steven Furtick called Why Am I Anxious (I listen to this one a lot) and I also listened to one by Chip Ingram, but I fell asleep (sorry Chip! It wasn’t boring. I was just tired.

What’s Been Going On Otherwise

I mentioned I’ve been watching my garden grow, and in some cases die, in a post earlier this week.

We also watched all our lovely flowers leave us and I will miss them. Luckily my parents and neighbors had some day lilies pop up to perk up the greenery a bit.

My husband was on vacation this past week and we didn’t really go anywhere other than a day trip to the Nicholson Viaduct, which is the largest stone railroad bridge in the world, or at least the country. Like I said, I’m planning another post on this later this week.

We spent all day Friday at my parents and the kids went swimming there and we had chicken and vegetables on the grill. We celebrated the Fourth with a hot dog and marshmallow roast and my dad shot off some fireworks for us. We invited one of The Boy’s friends to join us. After the fireworks we stood in my parents’ field and watched the fireflies (lightening bugs to some). I thought that they were something fading out of existence because I don’t usually see as many as I did as a kid but last night there were hundreds of them in the fields and the trees and it was so cool to watch them.

Now that we live more in the country our drive home includes a lot more wildlife sightings. This time it was mainly deer jumping out in front of us.

We still haven’t seen the bear everyone has told us about and we are starting to wonder if our neighbors are playing a joke on us and there really isn’t a bear and her cubs in our neighborhood. I joked with my son that they meet behind our backs and say “I told them I saw the mom and cubs in the backyard this morning” and laugh. The other one then says “So funny! I told the wife yesterday that I stepped out by our backdoor and the bear was right there and turned and ran away.” Then the other one says, “And then I told her that there is a huge male bear down the road too!” Then they laugh together at us and how naive we are.

Of course I am kidding about the neighbors. I really do think there is a mama bear and cubs out there and while part of me would like to see them (from the window of my home only), I’m okay with not seeing them, especially after someone about five miles down the road said they walked into their backyard and found a bear with it’s mouth around their dog’s throat. Yikes!

My son is so determined to catch sight of the bear he now goes out with our dog at night and sits on the back porch with his BB gun across his lap like a real redneck. He seems to have decided that if that bear tries to mess with our dog he’ll fill it with some BBs.

So, how did last week go for you? What are you reading, watching, listening to or up to? Let me know in the comments.

Some photos from the week

Sunday Bookends: Old houses, contemplating personal errors and finishing books

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn recap of the week, Sunday Bookends, week in focus10 Comments

What’s Going On

This week the weather was either humid or raining, with a couple of very nice days thrown in the middle. Despite the nice days, I accomplished pretty much nothing most of the week. I didn’t visit my parents. I didn’t finish cleaning out the flower beds (but I did at least start). I didn’t finish a book (although I almost did).

I didn’t see the bear that I’ve been looking out my window for for two weeks, apparently missing her and her cubs by a whole ten minutes on Thursday. Argh!

I did, however, clean out part of the area under the fence that I just found out we own so that I can put some mulch there and maybe later plant some flowers.

I did, also, take my daughter on a short walk and find a possibly haunted house down the street. It’s pretty creepy looking in the daylight. I’d hate to see it in the dark.

I also cut back some of the roses and photographed them some more before they all fall off and leave me.

And I did bury my potatoes in some dirt to see if that helps them grow some more or . . . yeah, I have no idea. I watched a gardening show from Ireland and they said to do it. I like the Irish and trust them, so, we’ll see what happens.

I also contemplated all my personal failures over the years, including some of the weird complaining posts I shared here on WordPress that made me sound like even more of a drama queen than I am.

Then later in the week I noticed how different it is to live on a hill when a thunderstorm hits than in a valley between two rivers. When we lived in the valley we were somewhat sheltered from the thunderstorms but here we hear the rumbles and watch the storm clouds roll toward us. My daughter looks at me with wide eyes when it thunders now because thunder wasn’t as loud at our old house. Sometimes it is like we are closer to the sky here and maybe we are since our hill is pretty tall. I looked up last night and saw this huge cloud hanging what felt like right on top of me. Oddly, no storm came from it — just a few haphazard rain drops.

What I’m Reading

I’m still reading Wooing Cadie McCaffie by Bethany Turner and I am really enjoying it. Will Whitaker and Cadie have been dating for four years and when he doesn’t propose like she thought he was going to she decides it’s time to end it. Will, however, doesn’t want to end it and wants to find a way to win her back again. It’s a really funny, cute book so far.

I started to give up on The Knife Slipped but have pushed through because the story is starting to intriguing me (even though I got totally confused somewhere in the middle) and I love some of the lines.

“My mind was a warped lens projecting a distorted image on the screen of my consciousness. I knew it was the end. I one way I didn’t are. I’d absorbed too much of a beating to want to fight back. My bruised body only wanted rest. Physically, I was licked. Mentally, I wasn’t. I wanted revenge. I knew I was going, but I wanted to take this guy with me. I found myself wishing my skin was stuffed with nitroglycerin, that I had some of way of exploding myself and taking us all into eternity.”

I’m a couple of chapters away from finishing it (and may have finished it by the time this publishes.)

Hopefully I will start the cozy mysteries I have lined up later this week.

What I’m Watching

I’ve been watching Hart of Dixie and during some episodes I feel more brain cells dying, but I still enjoy it.

I’ve also been watching Somebody Feed Phil. This is a food/travel show staring Phil Rosenthal or created and wrote Everybody Loves Raymond. I was sad to see that there was only five episodes but maybe there will be more episodes later. Phil’s delight when he eats food is so fun to watch.



What I’m Listening To

I’m listening to the songs that have been put out by Needtobreathe for their new album, even though I have to admit it’s weird since one of their founding members just left the group. It doesn’t feel like the same band, but yet it does. I still like the new songs.

Photos from the week

So how was your week? Let me know in the comments.

Sunday Bookends: Amazing roses, new authors, and a little too much binge watching

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends4 Comments

What I’m Reading

I found a new author this week. Someone I “met” on Instagram world where self-published and traditional authors intermingle and share their latest publications.

Bethany Turner has authored a selection of books and I’m trying out Wooing Cadie McCaffery on Kindle Unlimited. I hope to grab up her latest, Hadley Becket’s Next Dish, at another time (I have to limit my book budget or I’ll go crazy.)

Here is the Amazon description for Wooing Cadie McCaffery:


After four years with her boyfriend, Cadie McCaffrey is thinking of ending things. Convinced Will doesn’t love her in the “forever” way she loves him, Cadie believes it’s time for her to let him go before life passes her by. When a misunderstanding leads to a mistake, leaving her hurt, disappointed, and full of regret, she finally sends him packing.

But for Will, the end of their relationship is only the beginning of his quest to figure out how to be the man Cadie wanted him to be. With the dubious guidance of his former pro-athlete work friends and tactics drawn from Cadie’s favorite romantic comedies, Will attempts to win her back. It’s a foolproof plan. What could possibly go wrong?

Bethany Turner is back with more of the heart and humor readers love. Anyone who enjoys a good romance or binges romantic comedies on Netflix will devour this delightful story.


I’m on Chapter 2 and so far I’m really enjoying it. Bethany really pulls the reader into the story right from the beginning. Her writing is fully relatable and full of humor and romance. Definitely a winning combination. (Bethany did not pay me for these comments, don’t worry. She doesn’t even know me or that I’m writing this.)

Another new author to me that I hope to read this next week is Robin W. Pearson who I also just discovered on Instagram. Her first book is A Long Time Comin’ and so far I am absolutely in love with her writing and with her main character Granny B. I can’t wait to really get into t his one. I don’t often buy books at full price on Kindle but I did this one.Her second book is coming out in February and also sounds great. It can be pre-ordered at this time.

A Long Time Comin’:

To hear Beatrice Agnew tell it, she entered the world with her mouth tightly shut. Just because she finds out she’s dying doesn’t mean she can’t keep it that way. If any of her children have questions about their daddy and the choices she made after he abandoned them, they’d best take it up with Jesus. There’s no room in Granny B’s house for regrets or hand-holding. Or so she thinks.

Her granddaughter, Evelyn Lester, shows up on Beatrice’s doorstep anyway, burdened with her own secret baggage. Determined to help her Granny B mend fences with her far-flung brood, Evelyn turns her grandmother’s heart and home inside out. Evelyn’s meddling uncovers a tucked-away box of old letters, forcing the two women to wrestle with their past and present pain as they confront the truth Beatrice has worked a lifetime to hide.

(Just a FYI, I know some authors plug other authors to get attention to themselves, but that is not my intent here. I actually only thought of that after I started writing this. I don’t know these women, but I’m really enjoying their writing and wanted to pass them along because many of us need some good distractions right now.)

Looking for intense escapism to hide from the absolutely insanity of the world, I plan to head back to a familiar cozy mystery series with another Lady Hardcastle book at some point, if not this week, then next. Death Beside the Seaside sounds very interesting. T.E. Kinsley’s stories are fairly light and even if the mysteries are easily solved, it’s not always clear how Lady Hardcastle and her maid Flo will reach their conclusion.

Death Beside the Seaside:

July 1910. Lady Hardcastle and her tireless sidekick Flo have finally embarked on a long-overdue seaside break. But just as they’re wavering between ice creams and donkey rides, their fellow guests start to go missing—and the duo find themselves with a hysterical hotel manager and a case to solve.

The first to disappear is Dr Goddard, a scientist doing something terribly top-secret for the government. Gone too are his strongbox and its mysterious contents. By the time Lady Hardcastle has questioned the horde of international guests, her number-one suspect has been dispatched in grisly circumstances—and then the others start vanishing too.

As the case begins to look like a matter of national security, Lady Hardcastle takes advice from her brother in the secret service. But could there be an even more personal connection at play? To solve the case, Lady Hardcastle may face a shocking discovery of her own.



Still in my reading que:

The Knife Slipped by Earle Stanley Gardner (I hope to finish it this week. I like it so far. It’s very different from what I’ve read before. I shared a little about it a couple of weeks ago.)

By Book or By Crook by Eva Gates. This author was recommended by Erin at Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and last week I said I wasn’t sure it was my type of book, which sounded sort of rude. Well, guess what, my finger must have bumped the wrong book in my Kindle because this week I reopened it and that is not the book I started and said I didn’t think I’d like. I actually started reading the book this week and I do think I’m going to like it! I don’t know which book on my Kindle I looked at last week but this wasn’t it. So thank you, Erin! This particular book is the first in the series.


What I’m Watching

I finished Virgin River this week and totally predicted the last episode but I want more. Luckily Netflix just announced they will be having a second season.

To fill the void of missing Virgin River I’m alternating between Hart of Dixie (I’m in the first season and it’s growing on me), When Calls the Heart, and my husband and I started watching Longmire, which is different for me, but I’m really enjoying.

What I’m Writing

I’ve been sharing chapters from The Farmer’s Daughter each Friday and I’m also writing the second part of Quarantined and I’ve decided to combine it with the first Quarantined and make it a novella on Kindle Unlimited at some point. I have to fix all the typos and errors on Quarantined first, of course. (Oh my gosh, I wish I had caught those errors before sharing it on here but, well, the blog is for fun and doo-doo happens!) I’ll most likely share another part of the second part , which I am currently calling Rekindle; on Thursday. Chapter 13 for The Farmer’s Daughter was published Friday.

A New Beginning is for sale on Amazon in ebook or paperback form and it can be read through Kindle Unlimited. You can find an excerpt from it HERE.

What’s Going on Otherwise:

Our roses bloomed even more this week and I also learned from the neighbor, who once lived in the house, that the rose bush is over 100 years old. So, the bush has been growing for 100 years or more and the flowers have bloomed year after year for the families that have lived here. I love that thought.

I seem to have a slightly sad life since I check on the status of the roses every day and have possibly taken a couple hundred photos of them. I don’t know what I’ll do with a couple hundred photos of roses, but I have a feeling I may need to look back on them in these next several months and especially in the Fall and Winter when I struggle with Seasonal Depression that I have a feeling will be even worse this year with the state our world is in.

We also had another peonies bush bloom and this one produced lighter pink flowers that were gorgeous.

We, unfortunately, weren’t able to walk out and enjoy the flowers as much this week because there are a bunch of gnats swarming us in the backyard near the bushes. We aren’t sure what is up with that but our neighbor thinks maybe they just hatched and will hopefully go away. I’ve never seen them this bad and I guess the neighbors haven’t either.

This is my daughter trying to wave the gnats away.

The roses that bloomed late last week are starting to fall and I have a feeling by next week they will be gone. It’s sad how fast the flowers bloom and then fade, but I’m enjoying them while they are here.

So, how about all of you? What have you been reading, watching, or doing? Let me know in the comments.





Sunday Bookends: Holy drama and bad Southern accents, blooming flowers, and cozy mysteries

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends6 Comments

What’s Been Going On

Since moving to our new house we’ve watched various plants around the property bloom and it has been fun waiting to see what shows up. Last week, I mentioned being excited because peonies were blooming next to our house. I was excited because we had peonies outside our house when I was growing up and I haven’t really seen them since. Last week I counted four of the bushes, two on the side of the house, one on each front corner, but then I discovered there is a fifth near the neighbor’s property and Friday I discovered a sixth on the other side of our garage.

My mom told me that the blooms usually open by my brother’s birthday so I waited and the first blooms did indeed open on my brother’s birthday. He came to the house for a visit that day (he lives 90 minutes away) and had to leave before we went to see if the blooms had opened (he had work the next day) but later I checked and there they were – opened, or at least part of them.




Now we are waiting for the purple/pink ones to open fully.

The white ones were slightly damaged during heavy rains one night. Either that or the resident bear laid in the middle of them. I did mention our neighbor saw the resident bear in the backyard two weeks ago right? If I didn’t, then I’m telling all of my readers now. The bear is real and he/she was about 50 yards from our house at 5 a.m. one morning.

We missed him/her but have seen a lot of other wildlife, including rabbits, blue herons and our neighbor let us know her daughter saw a rattlesnake. My husband says if he sees the snake it will be dead within seconds. He’s not a fan of snakes. At all.

Anyhow, I digress; back to the blooming flowers. After discovering the peonies I also woke up one morning to find pink roses blooming outside behind our garage, near the lilac bush (which barely bloomed this year). I knew my daughter, who loves flowers, would be excited so we walked up the hill to see them together. We then discovered another rose bush next to the peonies bush near the neighbor’s fence.

There are also these purple/blue flowers, but I have no idea what they are. I really am ignorant about plants and flowers.

I’ve stayed away from social media, for the most part, but did jump on quick this past week. That was a huge mistake. The atmosphere there was even more toxic than it was about a week or so ago when I decided to step away. Everyone is angry, offended, and calling each other racists if they ask a question. Quite frankly, I don’t have the energy for it all so I’m back off social media. I can’t live my life offended 24/7 like the rest of the world. It’s just not healthy.

It seems like a lot of the pastors are out there trying to tell people they need to feel offended 24/7 too so I’m not even listening to well-known pastors right now. Honestly, I need to get back into the Bible and stop listening to pastors anyhow. They seem to be led by the world lately and when I listen to them I feel further away from God and my faith than ever.

What I’m Reading

I am finishing up two books, A Light in the Window by Jan Karon and The Knife Slipped by Earl Stanley Gardner and I am also hoping to dive into a couple of cozy mysteries this week, including By Book or By Crook (A Lighthouse Mystery No. 1) by Eva Gates. I’ve peaked into this book and after reading the first page, I’m not sure this is going to be my type of book, but I’m going to try anyhow because I may be totally wrong!

What I’m Watching


Sweet Magnolias


I binged watched the first season of Sweet Magnolias on Netflix this week (we have a trial month of Netflix because I’m not a big fan of them, for various reasons) and I have a lot of opinions on it, but will try to keep my “review” short.

First of all, for the writers of the show: thanks for the parenting lessons on how NOT to be a parent. None of these parents actually talk to their children or ask them what’s really wrong. They just assume and then act on what they assume and then the kids get upset and the parents get upset because the kids get upset. It’s a really strange cycle to watch and I suppose it is slightly realistic but a little overblown.

Then there is the little girl the husband hooked up with and got pregnant and the fact she’s an idiot and doesn’t understand she is only a few years older than her new boyfriend’s oldest child so she shouldn’t be acting like she’s going to be the new mom of these children.

Then there is the whole “lifetime friends” baloney. Three women who always remained friends. What is that even like? You know it’s fiction when there is a story line like that — with friends who actually talk to each other after high school.

They meet once a week or so for margaritas and seem pretty wound up in their own lives and not their kids’, but the show is primarily about them so they can’t pause it every five seconds for a heart-to-heart with the kids.

The show is supposed to take place in a tiny town named Serenity in South Carolina. The one problem is that only half the members of the town have Southern accents and the actors who do try the accents (especially Chris Kline who plays Bill) are pretty bad at it. They are some of the oddest southern accents I’ve ever heard.


I did binge-watch the show in two days but that’s partially because I fast forwarded a good portion of the last three or four episodes because the drama had gotten to be a bit too much and I really wanted to run over Bill. If you watch the show you will realize very quickly why I want to run over Bill and then back over him again. Then later I wanted to run over Maddie, but again, you’ll have to watch the show to figure out why.

I talked to the screen a lot with this one. I said things like “Hey, maybe you should have been paying attention to your kids and that wouldn’t have happened.” Then I looked up and my 5-year old was missing. Luckily she’d just gone to get a piece of bread and was still in the house, but still . . . I learned to be less judgmental of these fictional parents in that moment.


Virgin River

After fast forwarding through part of the last episodes of Sweet Magnolias, I started Virgin River, which is a fairly feel-good show that has a very similar storyline to Hart of Dixie, (which I watched a couple of episodes of this week as well.) in that a woman comes to a small town to work with a much older doctor. Oddly, the actor (Tim Matheson) playing the doctor in Virgin River also played the doctor on Hart of Dixie. Typecast much?

The difference is that in Hart of Dixie, the woman is a doctor who needs to earn more experience before she can become a heart surgeon and in Virgin River the woman is a nurse practitioner who is looking to escape her past. On Virgin River we learn about the main character’s (Mel’s) past through flashbacks throughout each show. Trigger warning: so far the show does deal with the topic of infant loss. By the way, Virgin River is the name of the town.

I much prefer Virgin River and it’s acting and story line to Hart of Dixie and Sweet Magnolias (so far anyhow). I’d have to say my favorite character in Virgin River is the mayor, Helen. She’s a pistol and I used to know a small town mayor just like her. The mayor I knew dragged an oxygen tank behind her while also smoking a cigarette, just to give a sneak peek into her personality.

What I’m Listening To

I haven’t been listening to a lot and that may be why I’ve felt off some days. I have still been listening to some of the Dead South and this week I listened to Unchained Melody by Marc Martel because his voice soothes me. I haven’t been listening to some of the worship music I used to listen to because it just seems like a big money-making machine at times since every big church sings the same songs over and over again. When I do listen to it, I listen to Michael W. Smith’s Awaken album.


I enjoy Unchained Melody by Marc Martel because the beauty of his voice makes the world seem less ugly.


What I’m Writing

I’m still in the middle of The Farmer’s Daughter and I’m also plugging away on my novella Fully Alive. I haven’t had much time to finish the short story I started — Rekindle —- which is the sequel to Quarantined.

My first two books A Story to Tell and A New Beginning are both on Kindle Unlimited, at least for the next months.

So, what have you all been up to this past week? Reading? Watching? Doing? Listening to? Let me know in the comments.

I’ll leave you with a few photos from our week:

Sunday Bookends: Finished books (finally), news detox, and what really matters

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends16 Comments

I finally finished Sweet on You by Becky Wade and I thought I should explain that it didn’t take me so long to finish it because it wasn’t good, or didn’t hold my attention, but because I was finding it hard to concentrate with everything going on in the world these days. After clicking off the news and social media for an extended time, my focus came back and I was able to read again.

Which is why I finished Sweet on You and also progressed on Light in the Window by Jan Karon and The Knife Slipped by Earl Stanley Gardner (who also wrote the novels the Perry Mason show was based on).

Here is a short description of Sweet on You for anyone who might be interested:

Britt and Zander have been best friends since they met thirteen years ago, but unbeknownst to Britt, Zander has been in love with her for just as long. When Zander’s uncle dies of mysterious causes, he returns to Washington to investigate. As they work together to uncover his uncles tangled past, will the truth of what lies between them also come to light?

This is the third in the Bradford Sisters’ series.

This is also the third book I have read by Becky Wade and I’ve discovered that she is very interested in describing the fashion of her characters, while I am not. That doesn’t mean she is a bad writer or I don’t enjoy her books. In fact, based on her Instagram account, I think Becky and I would get along nicely and we would laugh about how much she enjoys describing the fashion of her characters and how much I hate doing that with my characters. I skim her descriptions of the fashion simply because – well, I don’t care. It doesn’t add anything to the story for me to know in a very detailed way the main character is wearing. Thankfully she’s not overly detailed, just gives enough to describe the person’s outfit really.

A description of a character’s fashion can add something to the story, because what a character is wearing helps to paint a picture of who they are, so please know I’m only teasing a little about not caring about a detailed description of what the character is wearing. But I really do just skim those descriptions myself if they get too detailed.

I follow Becky Wade on Instagram (when I’m on Instagram, which I haven’t been for more than a week now, maybe two. I don’t know. I don’t really like Instagram.) and she recently mentioned the books from her Bradford Sisters series is being optioned for a movie. I would gather a Hallmark movie. I’d be interested to see those movies as there is a lot of intrigue in each of the books. These are light, somewhat schmaltzy romances (yeah, sort of like what I write) just to let you know.

I wanted to offer a description of The Knife Slipped too (not so sure about that cover but I think it is made in the style of the old Noir crime novels. So far this book is not full of s-e-x (said like Miranda Hart in her show Miranda). Just intrigue and slightly off color language.):

At the time of his death, Erle Stanley Gardner was the best-selling American author of the 20th century, and world famous as the creator of crusading attorney Perry Mason. Gardner also created the hardboiled detective team of Cool and Lam, stars of 29 novels published between 1939 and 1970—and one that’s never been published until now.

Lost for more than 75 years, THE KNIFE SLIPPED was meant to be the second book in the series but got shelved when Gardner’s publisher objected to (among other things) Bertha Cool’s tendency to “talk tough, swear, smoke cigarettes, and try to gyp people.” But this tale of adultery and corruption, of double-crosses and triple identities —however shocking for 1939—shines today as a glorious present from the past, a return to the heyday of private eyes and shady dames, of powerful criminals, crooked cops, blazing dialogue, and delicious plot twists.

Donald Lam has never been cooler—not even when played by Frank Sinatra on the U.S. Steel Hour of Mystery in 1946. Bertha Cool has never been tougher. And Erle Stanley Gardner has never been better.

This is a new genre for me so we will see if I stick with it or not.

So how am I doing on my news/social media detox I invited others to join me on this past week? Fairly well. I won’t say I’ve quit cold turkey. I still have the urge to check news sites and social media but last week something happened that really made me not care about the turmoil of fire the national media keeps flaming to line their pockets. My mom ended up in the ER. She’s fine. It was gastritis and not a heart attack but, you know what? That day I could have cared less about who was calling who racist. I could have cared less what one politician said about another politician. I just wanted my mom to be okay.

Clicking on a news site wasn’t even on my radar that day and it hasn’t been there since. Like I said, I do feel a sense of “I’m out of the loop” and think about “getting in the loop” but I just don’t go there. My brain had gone all the way to planning my mom’s funeral last week. Yes, I know. That’s nuts but the initial report I got was hazy and I thought “this is it. I finally move closer to my parents and this is it…” Even though it wasn’t “it” I was left feeling off for the rest of the day and I knew logging on to a news site would push me even further into unsettled darkness.

I decided it might do the same in the days that followed so I’m here, in semi-darkness about what is happening in the world (my husband works for a small town paper so I do know some things and I did log on Facebook once on Friday) and guess what! It feels great! I’ve never felt happier to be a clueless (or semi-clueless) schmuck with my head in the sand.

Join me.

Come to the light side.

Ignore the urge to watch the world burn around us (quite literally) and shut the computer off or click off the phone and go work in your garden, for a walk, paint, write, take a photo. I don’t know. I don’t care how you do it but just give your poor brain a break; it wasn’t meant to take in all that information at once. Of course, I sound like those people who are always telling everyone what to do here, so I’ll modify a bit and say: Do it if you want to, but I can guarantee you will feel less stressed if you take that break.

Seriously, how many more articles do we need to read with headlines like this: “[Celebrity] says he doesn’t think [politician] is/will/can/ever doing/do/do/did a good job.” I can’t find a care left for what a celebrity or politician thinks and I bet many of you are in the same boat.

Since I’m not watching news, or trying not to, I’m watching only what requires the least amount of brain cells. Things like Corner Gas (a Canadian sitcom), old shows like The Dick VanDyke Show, and British sitcoms like As Time Goes By. I also watched Murder Mystery on Netflix with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Anniston. It wasn’t award winning, but it was entertaining and a nice distraction. (My son said to add it was a little stupid as a warning.)

I don’t have much of an update on the garden because it’s growing very slowly. It rained a couple of times last week but other than that I probably didn’t water it enough throughout the week. Some additional flowers bloomed outside the house but I’m still waiting on the peonies.

I hope to have photos of them next week.

So how about you? What have you been you reading, watching, or doing lately? Let me know in the comments!