Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, where we offer a place for bloggers to link up and get a fresh set of eyes on their posts. We also feature one blog a week, letting our readers know about the blog and providing a link so readers can learn more about it.Please feel free to post new blog posts or old ones you want to bring attention to again.
Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.
This week, we have a little announcement because we are saying goodbye to Sue from Women Living Well After 50.
We are all sad to see her go, but Sue has some other things she wants to pursue and may take a break from blogging altogether for a bit.
I know Marsha, Melynda, and I certainly appreciate her being part of this link party and hope to see her in the blogsphere in the future. If you are interested in being a co-host please leave a comment and I will put you in contact with Marsha, our fearless leader.
Now, let’s introduce our current hosts for the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot:
Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!
Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household – The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!
Lisa from Boondock Ramblingsshares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.
We would love to have additional Co-Hosts to share in the creativity and fun! If you think this would be a good fit for you and you like having fun (come on, who doesn’t!) while still being creative, drop one of us an email and someone will get back with you!
WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!
I’m Val , Canadian born, Vancouver BC raised! Here you’ll find top resources to plan your dream trip: In the USA, Canada & Europe. We are experts in travel to Portugal , the Pacific Northwest, Vegas and other Hidden Gems Around the Globe. Thx for joining my journey!
Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up!
And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:
Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are hosting Comfy, Cozy Cinema again this year and up this week was The Young In Heart.
And, yes, that title is the actual title: The Young IN Heart.
I feel like I cheated a little bit this week because not only have I watched this movie, but I also wrote about it when I watched it for the Winter of Douglas Fairbanks Jr. That means I had an advantage to Erin when it came to writing this week’s post because I am going to quote a lot of my original post.
This is part of what I wrote in that post: “I absolutely loved Douglas in this one. He played a more prominent role than in Gunga Din and was simply … shall I sound completely cheesy? Yes, I shall. He was completely delightful.
At one point, I texted my friend Erin that a drunk Douglas is adorable.”
Yes, I did text Erin this past January to tell her he was adorable. Yes, I am weird.
Before I forget, I found this one for free on YouTube.
So, let’s get to the movie.
The Carlton family, of which Douglas is a part of in this movie, are not a family you would want to know in real life. They are swindlers and grifters. They mooch off and manipulate people to scrape by in life.
We open the movie in the French Riviera with Douglas’s character (Rick) ready to marry a young woman whose father is rich.
Everything falls apart, though, when the police find out about the family and reveal their conniving ways to the family of Rick’s future wife. The family is told to get out of France and end up on a train where they meet a ridiculously sweet woman (Minnie Dupree) who has only recently come into a great sum of money.
Ironically, her last name is Fortune. George-Anne sets out to swindle the woman out of paying for their lunch, but the plan expands as the woman explains she lives alone in a big mansion left to her by a former suitor. She is saying how lovely it would be if all of them came to stay with her when there is a train derailment. Their car tips and at first Rick and George-Anne believe the old woman has died. She’s still breathing so the siblings carry her from the car and George-Anne covers her with her own coat.
We begin to wonder if the family is rotten through and through and are still playing things up as the woman later recovers and invites the family to come live with her.
George-Anne suggests to the family that if Miss Fortune believes they are a respectable family she will be more willing to let them live there and maybe even leave them money when she leaves. To play up this ruse she suggests the men get actual jobs and she and her mother act like caretakers and women who don’t swindle people out of money.
This is all very baffling to the family who has always cheated and stole for a living. When the men decide George-Anne’s plan might work and go to look for jobs, the scenes that follow are some of the most hilarious tongue-in-cheek moments I’ve seen in a movie.
Spinning around in the background of the family’s drama is the romance between George-Anne and Duncan Macrae (Richard Carlson), who she originally considered marrying when she thought he was rich. Duncan learned she was a con-artist along with everyone else and was shattered but still ends up chasing her down on the train back to London to tell her he still loves her.
The rest of Rick’s family — father, Col. Anthony “Sahib” Carleton (Roland Young), mother Marmey Carlton (Billie Burke), and daughter George-Anne (Janet Gaynor) — are thrilled with this plan because they know it will also set them all up for a rich life. George Anne might be even more thrilled because then she can marry a poor Scottish man who she’s fallen in love with, and the rest of her family will support her financially.
She tells him to get lost, believing he’s much too good for her and . . . well, you’ll have to see where all that ends up.
Rick is also having his own romance with Leslie Saunders (Paulette Goddard), a secretary and the engineering business he applies at for a job.
This is the second – or shall I say third – movie I’ve watched in recent months with Billie Burke and there is no mistaking that voice if you have seen The Wizard of Oz.
Yes, she is Glenda the Good Witch.
The screenplay for this movie was written by Paul Osborn and adapted by Charles Bennett from the serialized novel, The Gay Banditti by I. A. R. Wylie. That title certainly would have had a different connotation in the modern day, eh?
Anyhow, the novel appeared in parts in The Saturday Evening Post from February 26 to March 26, 1938.
The movie was released in November of the same year. They certainly worked fast back then.
I found it interesting when I read that Broadway actresses Maude Adams and Laurette Taylor screen-tested for the role of Miss Fortune and that the footage is the only audio-visual samples that existed of both of them.
The movie was produced by – can you guess? Because it feels like every movie I write about lately is produced by him.
Yes. David Selznick. The man who produced what is considered one of the biggest movie triumphs in the world — Gone with the Wind.
This movie was one of many he produced leading up to Gone With The Wind. The Prisoner of Zenda, which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, was another. Goddard was actually rumored to be being considered to play Scarlet O’Hara in Gone With The Wind, which later, of course, went to Vivien Leigh.
While I was watching the part of the movie where Mr. Carleton goes to apply for a job, I was fascinated by the fancy car they showed. It was spinning like a pig on a spit at the front of the building and it was a very modern looking car and a very modern looking set up altogether.
The six-passenger 2-door sedan Flying Wombat featured in that scene was actually the one-of-a-kind prototype Phantom Corsair. The Phantom Corsair concept car was built in 1938 and designed by Rust Heinz of the H. J. Heinz family and Maurice Schwartz of the Bohman & Schwartz coachbuilding company in Pasadena, California.”
I also found it interesting that this was Gaynor’s last movie before retiring while she was at the top of her career. She made one last movie in 1957 called Bernardine.
Like I said above, I loved this movie. It was just what I needed to watch this week with so much sadness going on in the world. There was a lot of humor from all the cast, but Douglas really had me smiling throughout. Not only because he is my latest old Hollywood star crush (watch out Paul Newman!).
Have you seen this one? What did you think of it?
You can read Erin’s impression of the movie on her blog.
Next week we will move into a bit of spooky with Coraline.
The rest of our movie list can be found on this graphic:
This week’s prompt was: Books I Wish I Could Read Again for the First Time.
Little Women by Louise May Alcott
(I know…sooo cliché. But really. I held off on reading this book for years because I thought it just wouldn’t be my thing and then it really was!
2. The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
It took me a long time to read this one too and when I got to the beginning of it I wasn’t sure I was going to make it, but I pushed through and fell in love with this group of misfit friends and their journey.
3. On The Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder
I loved reading these books when I was a kid and I would love to experience the excitement of finding out what was going to happen next again.
4. The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery
This became one of my favorite reads of all time and I would love to read it for the first time again. The story is so unique and interesting and the romance so subtle yet swoony!
5. The Cat Who Talked to Ghosts by Lilian Jackson Braun
I love many of the books in The Cat Who series but this one has been my favorite by far. It was written in a very different style from the other books so maybe Lilian didn’t write it. Ha! Either way, I enjoyed this one very much and would love to feel the excitement of solving the mystery again.
6. Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz
I truly enjoyed this Sherlock Holmes story told by Horowitz with the endorsement of the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I would love to experience the thrill of reading this mystery again.
7. The Scarlet Pimpernelby Baroness Orczy
This one was so much fun and I would love to experience the magic of the story unfolding again and looking forward to figuring out how it was all going to turn out!
8. All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot
I love these books and I’d love to read the first one for the first time again but I am very glad to get to read it again and again whenever I want.
9. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
I really enjoyed this one as a kid. I am listening to it on Audible and will probably order a new book so I can read it again. It has been so long since I have read it, that it will probably feel like I am reading it for the first time again.
10. King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry
This is the first book I ever took out or a library (at school) and read in full. I loved it – now when I read it to my daughter a couple of years ago, I did discover it was much darker than I remembered but it was still very good.
If you write book reviews or book-related blog posts, don’t forget that Erin and I host the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea Monthly Bookish Blog Party. You can learn more about it here.
Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.
You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
This past week I had a sciatica issue. I didn’t think it was my sciatica because the tightness and pain was in my calf muscle. Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs told me that she’d had sciatica and it went all the way down her leg though so I decided to look for stretches for sciatica, which I’ve had to do in the past, even though the pain had never been this bad. I found a couple of stretches and they helped a little but I was still in a ton of pain.
I saw one stretch that I thought looked stupid so I refused to do it. The guy was saying something about leaning against a wall and pushing on your hip. I thought that sounded like the dumbest, useless thing ever.
I saw it again two days later, though, when I was still in pain. It was a “shorts” video on YouTube.
This time I really listened to the guy (a physical therapist) and actually tried it. Within five minutes the pain was gone. Later in the day it was like I’d never had the injury at all.
I have reinjured it a couple of times since then but so far, the stretch has worked each time.
I’m leaving the link here for anyone who might need the stretch in the future:
I hope the pain stays away this week — I have things I need to do, including driving 45 minutes one way to get Zooma the Wonder Dog a check up and her nails trimmed.
I’m still reading A Fatal Harvest by Rachael O. Phillips because I lost the book for two days. I’m also reading Come, Tell Me How You Live by Agatha Christie. My week last week seemed to be full of less reading time than I hoped but I actually think I will have these books read this week.
After these two I’ll be diving into Murder, She Wrote: Trick or Treachery.
Coming up later will be Hours We Regret by Chelsea Michelle and Damsel in Distress by P.G. Wodehouse.
Little Miss and I will be finishing The Good Master this week.
Last week I watched It Happened One Night with Clark Cable and What’s One More with Cary Grant. Last night I watched Pennies from Heaven with Bing Crosby.
What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, where we offer a place for bloggers to link up and get a fresh set of eyes on their posts. We also feature one blog a week, letting our readers know about the blog and providing a link so readers can learn more about it.Please feel free to post new blog posts or old ones you want to bring attention to again.
Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.
Now, let’s introduce our hosts for the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot:
Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!
Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household – The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!
Lisa from Boondock Ramblingsshares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.
Sue from Women Living Well After 50 started blogging in 2015 and writes about living an active and healthy lifestyle, fashion, book reviews and her podcast and enjoying life as a woman over 50. She invites you to join her living life in full bloom.
We would love to have additional Co-Hosts to share in the creativity and fun! If you think this would be a good fit for you and you like having fun (come on, who doesn’t!) while still being creative, drop one of us an email and someone will get back with you!
WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!
Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are hosting Comfy, Cozy Cinema again this year and up this week was The Five-Year Engagement.
I am going to share right off the bat that this was not the movie for me. Erin enjoys it (though she had not watched in a long time and forgot some of the aspects of it) and you can find a more positive view of it on her blog.
Disclaimer: The fact I did not enjoy it is NOT an attack on anyone who did enjoy it. All views expressed here are my own opinions on the movie only. I don’t think anyone is awful for enjoying it. It simply was not my cup of tea.Everyone has different tastes.
I probably should have researched this one a little more when I agreed to watch it because it really wasn’t a movie I’d normally watch. It also was not cozy at all to me personally, but it probably has some sentimental value to others.
For my regular readers who know I usually recommend books and shows without a ton of swearing and crude “jokes” or references, you can know I don’t recommend this one because that’s the majority it.
When I did finally look up the movie this morning, I learned that it featured “more than 205 obscenities and profanities and lots of verbal sexual humor.”
Yeah. I really need to look this stuff up before I go into a movie. *wince*
I am not going to sit here and say that I do not swear. I certainly do. I wish I didn’t, but I do. I’m in a deep depression this week and have sworn about ten times already today (and asked God to forgive me).
Despite that personal flaw confessional moment, movies that throw swear words in for no reason aren’t my thing.
Here is a bit of a description of the movie from online:
“On their one-year anniversary, sous chef Tom Solomon (Jason Segel) plans to surprise his girlfriend, Violet Barnes (Emily Blunt), with an engagement ring. The lovers do end up engaged, but the fact that the proposal does not go exactly as planned proves to be a harbinger of things to come. Each time they try to set a date, various obstacles stand in their way. As more and more time passes, Tom and Violet begin to wonder if perhaps their marriage is not meant to be.”
The movie is rated R, so a lot of it the languag and sex scenes are to be expected but I just wasn’t comfortable with the level of crudeness or how many times I had to see Jason Segel having sex. Eek.
Also, Jason Segel plays pretty much the same character in every movie or TV show he has ever been in so if you like him in other movies or TV shows you should like this – just add a few more penis jokes, f-words, and views of his naked butt.
Again, Erin has more positive reasons she enjoyed the film (and I totally get her reasons!) so you can check out her views and more information on her blog here:
Next week we are writing about The Young In Heart (1938), starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
The other movies we will be watching are on this list:
I was surprised this past weekend to find a ton of classic movies for free on Tubi so I thought I’d share some of the better classic (before 1970) movies with my blog readers today. I have watched these and really enjoyed them! I’ll have a part two for this one down the road sometime.
Talk of the Town
Leopold Dilg (Cary Grant), who was wrongfully convicted of arson, manages to escape from prison. While on the lam, he finds the home of Nora Shelley (Jean Arthur), an old friend from school for whom he harbors a secret affection. Nora believes in Dilg’s innocence and lets him pose as her landscaper; meanwhile, Professor Lightcap (Ronald Colman), a legal expert, has just begun renting a room in Nora’s home. Lightcap, like Dilg, also has eyes for Nora, leading to a series of comic misadventures.
My Man Godfrey
Fifth Avenue socialite Irene Bullock needs a forgotten man to win a scavenger hunt, and no one fits that description more than Godfrey Park, who resides in a dump by the East River. Irene hires Godfrey as a servant for her riotously unhinged family, to the chagrin of her spoiled sister, Cornelia, who tries her best to get Godfrey fired. As Irene falls for her new butler, Godfrey turns the tables and teaches the frivolous Bullocks a lesson or two.
The Philadelphia Story
This classic romantic comedy focuses on Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn), a Philadelphia socialite who has split from her husband, C.K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant), due both to his drinking and to her overly demanding nature. As Tracy prepares to wed the wealthy George Kittredge (John Howard), she crosses paths with both Dexter and prying reporter Macaulay Connor (James Stewart). Unclear about her feelings for all three men, Tracy must decide whom she truly loves.
The Third Man
Set in postwar Vienna, Austria, “The Third Man” stars Joseph Cotten as Holly Martins, a writer of pulp Westerns, who arrives penniless as a guest of his childhood chum Harry Lime (Orson Welles), only to find him dead. Martins develops a conspiracy theory after learning of a “third man” present at the time of Harry’s death, running into interference from British officer Maj. Calloway (Trevor Howard) and falling head-over-heels for Harry’s grief-stricken lover, Anna (Alida Valli).
The Manchurian Candidate
Near the end of the Korean War, a platoon of U.S. soldiers is captured by communists and brainwashed. Following the war, the platoon is returned home, and Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) is lauded as a hero by the rest of his platoon. However, the platoon commander, Captain Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra), finds himself plagued by strange nightmares and, together with fellow soldier Allen Melvin (James Edwards), races to uncover a terrible plot.
Merrily We Live
The wealthy Kilbourne family is tired of Mrs. Kilbourne (Billie Burke) hiring ex-convicts as servants. After a servant steals the family’s silver, Mrs. Kilbourne agrees to never hire another drifter for help. But when a rough-looking man named Rawlins (Brian Aherne) arrives at her doorstep, she cannot help but hire him as the new chauffeur. As Rawlins catches the eye of their oldest daughter, Jerry (Constance Bennett), the Kilbournes realize that he may not be the vagrant he claims to be.
Bringing Up Baby
Harried paleontologist David Huxley (Cary Grant) has to make a good impression on society matron Mrs. Random (May Robson), who is considering donating one million dollars to his museum. On the day before his wedding, Huxley meets Mrs. Random’s high-spirited young niece, Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn), a madcap adventuress who immediately falls for the straitlaced scientist. The ever-growing chaos — including a missing dinosaur bone and a pet leopard — threatens to swallow him whole.
Without Reservations
Famous author “Kit” Masterson (Claudette Colbert) needs an actor to portray the lead character, a soldier, in the upcoming movie version of her book. While on a train to California, she meets Marine Rusty Thomas (John Wayne) and his friend, Dink (Don DeFore). She begins to imagine the macho Rusty as the lead, and attempts to stay in his company. However, since Rusty did not like her book, Kit must conceal her identity, all the while growing more attracted to her potential actor.
It Happened One Night
In Frank Capra’s acclaimed romantic comedy, spoiled heiress Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) impetuously marries the scheming King Westley, leading her tycoon father (Walter Connolly) to spirit her away on his yacht. After jumping ship, Ellie falls in with cynical newspaper reporter Peter Warne (Clark Gable), who offers to help her reunite with her new husband in exchange for an exclusive story. But during their travels, the reporter finds himself falling for the feisty young heiress.
A Woman of Distinction
Reserved college dean Susan Middlecott (Rosalind Russell) is all business and can’t be bothered with love. However, when Susan meets charming British astronomy professor Alec Stevenson (Ray Milland), it seems that romance could be in the air. Though she resists being paired with Alec, things don’t go as planned — particularly when a publicity agent and even Susan’s amiable father (Edmund Gwenn) get involved. Soon, Susan may just be in love, whether she likes it or not.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
We’ve been celebrating Little Miss’s birthday for the last couple of days and today is the last activity we are participating in. She had a special breakfast out and a special lunch with her grandparents on her birthday, an outing and dinner at a restaurant Friday and a sleep over with a friend last night. Today she is going to see reptiles with her friend at a reptile zoo because she is a huge fan of reptiles. They have other animals as well, but mostly reptiles.
I wrote more about our week last week in yesterday’s post if you want to catch up there.
Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are still hosting crafternoons. We will be announcing a date for October later on. If you are wondering what Crafternoons are it is a monthly Zoom meet up where we get together with other bloggers/crafters and do a craft while we chat about life and books and all kinds of other things.
If you are interested in the crafternoon, you can find more information here.
Erin and I are also hosting a monthly bookish link party called A Good Book and A Cup of Tea. You can find that link up for this month here.
Last week I finished The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis. I did not think I was going to like it at first but it was very good. I don’t know if I ever read this one when I was younger and I didn’t think I was going to like it but I got more into it as it went on. I am looking forward to reading the rest of the series before the end of the year.
I’m still reading Come, Tell Me Where You Live by Agatha Christie Mallowen. This is a non-fiction book/memoir written about Agatha’s travels with her archeologist husband Max Mallowen to Syria from 1935 to 1937. Max was her second husband and she remained married to him until his death.
Her stories about their travels are candid, very funny, and full of her natural wit.
I’ve been reading other books in between this one. It’s taken me a little longer to read it because it isn’t really a novel and because the print is very small and the lines are close together. Somehow that makes it feel more difficult to read and like I’ll never finish it but, honestly, it does move along quite nicely and is very interesting. I am learning a lot about that part of the world and how archeological digs worked in the old days. I’ll have it finished this week.
For fun I am reading A Fatal Harvest, an Amish Inn Mystery, by Rachael Phillips. Liz Ekhardt runs an Amish Inn in ….um…Iowa I think. She has a group of friends and a “friendship” with the town mayor, Jackson. She also has a pet bulldog named Beans. He came with the inn when she purchased it.
In this installment, Liz and her friend Naomi have discovered the body of one of Liz’s guests under the haybales on the hayride. Liz is always stumbling into a mystery and this time she wants to find out if her guest had a local connection that could have led to his death.
After that I’ll probably dive into Murder, She Wrote: Trick or Treachery.
Little Miss and I will be finishing The Good Master this week.
This past week I watched a crazy old movie called Autumn Harvest. It was a wild ride involving a shell shocked World War I vet who loses his memory, falls in love, and then regains his memory but forget his wife. Oh man, it was crazy, but the ending was nice at least.
I also watched a movie with Cary Grant called. It was about a couple who kept adopting children that no one else wanted. It was really beautiful and had me weepy. I’d never even heard of this one. It was a comedy drama with a very beautiful message about taking in children who don’t seem to be wanted.
I am still slowly working on Gladwynn Grant Goes Back to School. It will be out in February. If you would like to read the other three books, though, you can find them on Kindle Unlimited on Amazon and you can find paperbacks on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Now It’s Your Turn
What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
I personally liked the peppermint bark, but not as much as plain peppermint.
The last couple of days we have been celebrating Little Miss as she turned 11 on Thursday. We didn’t mean to celebrate her for four days but that’s how it worked out because activities we wanted to do with her were spread out a bit.
On Thursday she wanted to have pancakes at a diner downtown so her brother and I took her down. She had chocolate chip pancakes and a fresh fruit cup. The owner sang happy birthday to her.
The diner was decorated very nicely for fall. This diner always does a very nice job at decorating, from what I understand, but I have only visited there twice. My dad and son have visited there more.
After breakfast, we hung out at home for a bit and then Little Miss and I headed to my parents’ for some pizza and to celebrate her birthday with them.
We played a board game called Aggravation and Little Miss won (with a little help from Grandma and me this time, but usually she wins outright on her own). What was funny was my dad was going to play but sat down in his room for a few minutes and drifted off to sleep. I decided I would play for him and for myself until he woke up, but in the end, he didn’t wake up until the game was almost over.
Dad usually wins at this game, and he almost won this time, even though he was asleep. He was three spots from winning when my mom sent him home again because she didn’t have any other moves she could make.
After we played board games, Little Miss had an animal club meeting on Zoom and then she went home and rode bikes with her brother and then …. Yes, there is more… they watched two Disney movies. She really wrung every last minute out of her birthday and crashed pretty hard that night.
The Husband had to work on her birthday but yesterday he took the day off and we all went out to dinner at a nice restaurant and then they all went in Walmart to pick out a new dog bed and a gifts for the dog because that is what Little Miss wanted to do for her birthday. She also picked out a gift for her friend who is coming for a sleepover today because that little girl’s birthday was this past Monday.
I stayed in the car due to a sore leg and read my book. It was very cozy.
Tomorrow we are headed to a reptile zoo called Reptileland because Little Miss loves reptiles.
We are already fairly tired from celebrating already. By tomorrow night The Husband and I will be virtually comatose. We will be this way because we are, as Little Miss has reminded us a few times this week — old.
She’s been watching YouTube Shorts making fun of life in the 1990s and early 2000s and asking us if that is what it was really like “back then.”
It is hard to accept those years are so long ago, so I just pretend they aren’t and ignore her. Ha!
To show how old I am and how I have failed at educating my children about the 1990s — I learned yesterday that neither of them knew who Whitney Houston was. They sort of rolled their eyes when I mentioned her. There was some meme that mentioned her and my almost 19-year-old son said, “I don’t even know who that is.”
I was horrified and pulled up YouTube to educate them. They did recognize “I Want to Dance With Somebody” and “I Will Always Love You,” but I also made them watch her doing the Star Spangled Banner and The Boy was blown away.
“Okay, yeah, she was amazing,” he told me.
I went to tell him how she threw her life away and it was so heartbreaking to me and started to cry. She shouldn’t have died so young. No matter her talent and her beauty, she never seemed to feel worthy enough to enjoy her life of happiness and health and that always broke my heart. Now all we have left of her is her music and memories and we should have had her for so much longer.
Thank God we still have her friend and my favorite female singer CeCe Winans.
I am going to have to show them videos of CeCe this week too.
Earlier in the week I saw a beautiful sunset and even though I’m having an issue with my sciatica and leg, I made it outside to take a photo. While I was there, two guys (probably about my age) riding bikes came by our house. We do have some bike or foot traffic on our street but it is a back street so we don’t as often as some streets.
I was startled a little by them but had to laugh when the one guy looked at the sunset, pumped his fist and yelled out “’Merica!”
The other guy, with a shirt or something wrapped around the top of his head, looked up at me smiling and said, “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
I said it was, and they kept going while smiling and left me smiling.
Later, Erin (Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) told me she thought it was cool that we’d had that shared moment together. I hadn’t thought of it that way, and her comment made me think.
After weeks of anger, hatred, and just all out sadness in the world, it was nice to have that shared moment of joy while admiring a gorgeous sunset.
The photos do not do it justice.
How about you?
How was your week last week? Anything exciting coming up for this week?
