Visiting the Tunkhannock Creek/Nicholson Viaduct; one of the largest stone railroad bridges in the world

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings15 Comments

Because we don’t want to travel a lot these days (since the world has lost its’ ever-loving mind) we have been checking out some of our local sites this summer. One of those was the Tunkhannock Creek Viaduct (railroad bridge) in Wyoming County, Pa. The bridge is also called the Nicholson Viaduct because it is located in Nicholson, Pa.

It isn’t like visiting a playground or a water park, but it’s something still worth traveling to see, especially when you find out that it is one of the largest stone railroad bridge crossings in the world. Built in 1912 and open for business in 1915 it is 2,375 feet long and 24 feet wide. It is 240 feet above stream level and 300 feet above bedrock.

As we were driving toward it I could tell the kids and my husband were wondering when we would arrive at it. It had been years since I had been there but I knew there was no way we could miss it by traveling on that road. You can’t miss a 300 foot stone structure that rises above the highway and the little town of Nicholson.

According to the Nicholson Heritage Association, the project used 185,000 barrels of cement which produced 67,000 cubic yards of concrete. About 1,140 tons of steel were used to reinforce the concrete. The bridge was built to endure 6,000 pounds per square foot, since some engines at that weighed 233 tons. The bridge cost $1,735,000 to build.

There were about 500 men who worked on the bridge and less than half of them were skilled laborers. Many of them were farmers who worked on the bridge during the winter or when it wasn’t a busy harvest season. The men worked 24 hours using dynamite, steam shovels, and a cement mixer that was built on site. The bridge was born by the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad, who wouldn’t allow the dynamite to be transported on their railway so the Lehigh Railroad transported the dynamite to Springville and then it was carried the rest of the way by horse and wagon.

There are 12 arches and 10 of them are 180 feet across.

According to the heritage association: “In Theodore Dreiser’s 1916 travel biography, he called the bridge: “A thing colossal and impressive. Those arches! How really beautiful they were. How symmetrically planned! And the smaller arches above, how delicate and lightsomely graceful! It is odd to stand in the presence of so great a thing in the making and realize that you are looking at one of the true wonders of the world.” Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and former President Theodore Roosevelt were among the many people that came to view the bridge.

If you would like to learn more about the viaduct you can visit the site for the heritage association.

We also saw some beautiful scenery as we drove to the viaduct and on the way back we visited a small playground because my daughter was missing playgrounds.

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.)

Fiction Friday: The Farmer’s Daughter Chapter 15

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn fiction, Fiction Friday4 Comments

After taking a break last week I’m back this week with Chapter 15. Things might start to pick up this week with Alex and Molly, but you will have to see.

You can find the link to the rest of the story so far HERE, or at the top of the page.

Molly looked at the scale and growled. She’d lost five pounds. Five lousy pounds in three weeks. After eating tasteless food, drinking so much water with lemon she was floating away, and working out until her brain had practically melted, she’d only lost five pounds.

She sat on her bed then flopped back on it hard, laying on her back and staring at the ceiling. Why had she suddenly become so obsessed with weight loss anyhow? Was it her increasing attraction to Alex? The weird way he was now acting toward her? The sudden reappearance of Ben? Her strong urge to leave the farm and find out if there was something out there for her?

She knew deep down that it was all of those things.

Everything in her life during this season was making her want to lose weight and fast. She was tired of being boring, fat Molly. She was tired of looking in the mirror and crying. She was tired of being winded when she finished working in the barn. Then again, she’d always been winded after working in the barn, even before she’d gained the weight, so maybe losing weight wouldn’t solve that problem.

She rolled on her side and looked out her window. She needed to get back to the barn and clean out the stalls before the cows came in from the field for milking. She needed to get back to the routine and mundane.

Again.

Same old, same old.

Just like at the farm store.

Except it wasn’t really the same old, same old at the barn recently. Her relationship with Alex was changing, though she couldn’t exactly say how, and that had changed the dynamic in the barn, not in a bad way exactly; just different. She didn’t know what she thought about that change. She didn’t have time to think about it now, though. There was work to do. She’d have to think about Alex later.

Inside the barn Alex was shoveling old hay out of the hayloft to make room for fresh hay. Wearing a white, sleeveless shirt and stained blue jeans he paused in between throws to wipe sweat off his forehead and wave at Molly as she walked in. Molly waved at him without much enthusiasm, even as she admired how good his shirt looked on him.

Jason was holding a plate of cookies, choosing one off the top and passing the plate toward Molly.

“Hey, Aunt Hannah dropped off some cookies. Grandma’s recipe. Have one.”

“No, thank you.”

Molly kept walking, reaching for the shovel.

“What’s with you lately anyhow?” Jason asked, following her and pushing the plate toward her. “Eat a cookie, Molly. You’re always eating that salad crap. You’re becoming like Liz.”

Molly glared over her shoulder at her brother and pushed the shovel into the pile of manure.

“It wouldn’t be so bad to be like Liz,” she mumbled. “Pretty and cute and skinny.”

“Whatever,” Jason said, rolling his eyes. “Just eat a cookie already.”

Anger seethed through Molly. Why was her brother so clueless? “I don’t want a cookie, Jason. Fat girl doesn’t want a cookie. Okay? Why don’t you just shut up already?”

Jason swallowed the bite of cookie, watching his sister with wide eyes. “I didn’t call you fat. What’s your problem? I wasn’t serious, I was just —”

“Just stating the obvious, I know. The obvious that your sister is always going to be fat and therefore she shouldn’t even try to lose the weight, right? I get it. I’m fat and I’ll always be fat.”

Jason swallowed hard and looked up at Alex for help. Alex’s surprised expression and somewhat blank stare wasn’t any help at all.

Tears hovered on the edge of Molly’s eyes when she tossed the shovel into the manure pile and stomped by Jason, brushing her hand across her face quickly.

“I’m going for a drive,” she snapped walking toward the open barn door.

“Molly, I didn’t mean anything,” Jason called after her. “I’m sorry. You’re not fat, okay?”

Alex climbed down from the hayloft and patted his friend’s shoulder. “I’ll  go check on her. She’ll be okay.”

Jason sat on a haybale and tossed the remainder of the cookie into a pile of hay, leaning his arms on his knees. “Yeah. Okay.”

Alex left him with his chin in his hand, looking at the floor with furrowed eyebrows and a creased forehead, an expression mixed with concern and confusion on his face.

Alex caught up to Molly as she flung the door to her truck open. He reached out quickly and wrapped his hand around hers, snatching the keys from her hand.

“Hey, lady, you look a little too stressed to be driving. Let me, okay?”

Molly brushed her hand across her face again. She didn’t not need Alex to drive her anywhere. Especially when she was feeling fat, ugly, out of shape and her face was splotchy from crying.

“I’m fine,” she snapped. “Give me my keys.”

Alex held the keys out away from her as she reached for them. “Now, now. Calm down. I want to take you somewhere.”

He stepped back and opened the driver’s side door. “Let me drive.”

Molly stood outside the truck with her arms tightly folded across her chest.  “Get in,” Alex said, jerking his head toward the passenger side and turning the key in the ignition. “Let’s see what this piece of junk can do.”

Molly folded her arms across her chest, stomped to the passenger side and slid in, furious, sad, and annoyed all at the same time. Alex revved the engine, grinning. “Let’s hope the engine doesn’t fall out before we get out of the drive.”

Molly scowled at him. “Don’t make fun of this truck,” she snapped. “It was my grandpa’s truck and it’s all I have left of him.”

Alex’s grin faded and he nodded. “I know. I’m sorry. I’ll take good care of it.”

The farm faded out of view, replaced by open fields, then wooded areas, groves of trees and open spaces, places where deer wandered into on cool summer mornings and where her grandfather used to set up a deer stand when he was able to hunt.

When Alex pulled into a space between a grove of maple trees she knew exactly where she was. The farthest end of her family’s property, where, when you got out of your car and walked toward rolling hills at eye level, you could overlook the entire farm and some of the additional land the Tanner’s had purchased over the years.

She hadn’t been here since her grandfather had died. It had always been too painful.

Alex shut the truck engine off and opened the door. “Come on. Follow me.”

Molly slumped down in the seat for a moment, fighting back emotions. She didn’t want to follow him and be reminded of all she’d lost when she lost her grandfather. She finally pushed open the door, listening to the familiar squeak, knowing she should oil it but finding it comforting somehow since it’d always made that noise when she wrote in it with her grandfather.

Alex sat on a tree that had fallen over since Molly had been there last. He patted the tree next to her and she sat next to him, feeling anxious, awkward, and like she’d rather crawl inside a hole than be here with him so close to her and her feeling so disgusted with her physical appearance.

Alex took a deep breath and let it out again. He hadn’t felt nervous until now, sitting alone with Molly practically in the middle of nowhere. He’d driven her here so he could tell her she wasn’t fat, she was beautiful and smart and worth so much more than what she thought she was. But now, he found himself struggling to share with Molly his true feelings, not the joking, teasing feelings they usually shared with each other.

He let out a slow breath. “Your grandpa took me up here once right before sunset a year or so after I started working here,” he started. “He told me the history of this farm, about his struggles, about his dream of passing it down to his children and grandchildren. He gave me a little history of his family, his children, his grandchildren, even you and Jason. He was proud of all of you, Molly. Very proud.”

“Talking to him gave me a whole new perspective about working here. It made me see it as more than a job, but as a way of living – taking care of the land, taking care of the livestock and taking care of family. You know I didn’t have a great family life growing up. It was everyone for themselves. We weren’t really a team like your family is. I think that’s why I’ve fallen in love with his place.”

 And with you, he wanted to add, but didn’t.

“Because your family has accepted me as part of the team. Your family loves you as you are, Molly. They wouldn’t love you anymore if you lost all that weight you think you need to lose to be good enough.”

Tell her you love her the way she is too, Alex. Dang it already. Just tell her.

Alex clearly saw light pink spread along Molly’s cheeks as she looked down at the ground and kicked at the dirt with her mud-covered boot. God, how he wanted to kiss that cheek, kiss that pink away, and tell her she didn’t need to be embarrassed, tell her she was beautiful just the way she was.

“Thank you, Alex. That means a lot. It really does.”

He heard the emotion in her voice, catching in her throat.

He needed to kiss her. Right now. The sun was setting, casting a pink and purple hue across them. There was a light breeze, the smell of summer heavy in the air. It was the perfect moment. He watched her looking at the ground, sitting on the tree, a tear slipping down her cheek and he wanted to kiss that tear away then kiss her mouth and make her forget about everything that was making her cry.

He reached out and gently laid his hand over hers. “Molly . . .”

The buzz of his cellphone startled him, and he dug quickly in his pocket to silence it, but it was too late. It had already ruined the moment.

“That’s probably, Jason,” Molly said, standing and stepping toward the truck. “He’ll need help getting the cows back in. We’d better head down. I’ve still got to shovel the stalls out.”

“Yeah.” He looked at the phone. “It is him.”

Dang it all to hell, Jason, he grumbled to himself. You’ve got the worse timing.

Following her to the truck his heart pounding with a mix of adrenaline from almost kissing her and disappointment that he hadn’t actually done it, he wondered how she would have reacted if he had taken her face in his hands like he wanted to and kissed her softly, finally tasting the sweet red lips he stared at so often.

“Where are you?” Jason asked when he returned the call while they drove down the dirt road.

“Just up on the hill looking at the farm. We’re on our way back.”

He wondered what Jason would say if he knew he’d almost kissed his sister on top of that hill. Maybe he wouldn’t say anything. Maybe he’d simply grab Alex around the throat and throttle him until he lost air. He wasn’t sure, but he was glad he didn’t have to find out. Not yet anyhow.

“I miss Ned, you know,” he said as they drove. “He was a good guy. Reminded me of my own grandfather.”

“Is your grandfather still alive?”

“No. Both of mine are gone actually. One to lung cancer right after I graduated college. The other committed suicide before I was born.

Molly winced. “Ow. That must have been awful for – your mom or your dad?”

“My dad. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why he was such an awful dad, you know? He really didn’t have his dad long enough to teach him how to be one.”

“I can see how that would happen. What about your other grandfather? Did you know him well?”

“Very. He’s the grandfather who literally dragged me out of a jail cell by my ear when I was 18 and told me I wasn’t going to ruin my life. He made me work at  his garage that whole summer and the next year and then insisted I go to college. If it wasn’t for him, I’d probably still be in a jail cell somewhere.”

He pulled his shirt collar down with one hand, revealing the tattoo. “I got this in his memory, so I’d never forget what he did for me, how much he wanted me to succeed.”

I wish I could look at with pride, knowing I’ve lived up to what he wanted for me, instead of in shame, he thought as he let go of the collar.

Molly smiled, watching him, grateful he was showing her a tender side she’d hadn’t seen very often before, a side usually covered up with jokes and laughter and gentle teasing.

“How did you end up in jail anyhow?” she asked.

Alex laughed and shook his head as he shifted gears. The truck groaned a protest. “Punched a guy at a football game because he tried to get with a girl I liked. I was such a loser back then.”

He decided to leave off that he’d also been drunk at the time and the stunt had landed him in jail because it was his second offense, his second time getting in a drunken fight in less than six months. His third offense had been breaking and entering at his dad’s business, stealing a car and taking it for a joy ride. His grandfather had bailed him out each time, the last time with a strict warning that it was the last time he’d help him. The next time he’d leave him in the jail cell and to face the consequences.

“We all do stupid things when we’re young,” Molly said.

Alex scoffed. “I bet you’ve never done anything stupid.”

Molly looked out the windshield at the farm now coming into view. She thought about telling Alex about how she was being stupid now, falling for him when he was completely out of her league. She could tell him how she was stupidly wishing he’d pull this truck over and kiss her until she didn’t have to think about the farm anymore, or her weight, or wonder how he really felt about her.

“Dating Ben was stupid,” she said finally. “Making out with a guy I met at community college behind the bleachers was pretty stupid too.”

Alex’s eyebrows raised. “I’m sorry? What?! Are you serious?”

Molly laughed and dropped her face into her hands. “Yes. Ugh. It was such a weak moment. I was lonely and Ben had dropped me a year before and the guy was interested in me and guys aren’t usually interested in me so . . .”

I’m interested in you. Very.

Alex shrugged and cleared his throat. “Well, that is a bit of interesting information I didn’t know before. The making out session aside, you were very young and from what it sounds like to me, Ben was very stupid when he walked away from you.”

Molly tipped her head to the side and raised an eyebrow. “How did you know Ben walked away?”

Alex cleared his throat, pulling into the driveway for the farm. “It’s just . . . uh . . . the impression I got one day when I  . . uh. . .” he laughed softly. “Well, I overheard your parents one day in the barn. I wasn’t eavesdropping. Exactly anyhow. I was just getting feed and they were talking and —”

Molly wasn’t sure how she felt about her parents talking about her relationship with Ben, in private, let alone where other people might overhear them. “What were they saying?”

“Just that  — Listen, it wasn’t anything bad. They just . . .” he glanced at her, trying to gauge her annoyance level on a scale of one to ten. She looked to be about a four, so he plowed ahead. “They were just worried about you because they felt Ben hurt you more back then than you let on. I stepped away when I heard what they were talking about. It wasn’t right for me to be listening in.”

Molly chewed on her bottom lip. “Oh. Well, that was sweet of them really.” She shrugged. “But I’m okay. That was so long ago.”

She was not okay, but she was not about to tell Alex she was not okay.

 She felt a sudden urge to jump out of the truck and run. She didn’t want to talk about Ben at all, let alone with Alex. And did she really just tell him about the guy she kissed from community college? The only other person who knew about that was Liz.

Alex’s hand around her wrist was firm, yet gentle. “Hey.”

She turned to look at him, the door to the passenger side open and her ready to climb out and head to the barn to finish her work.

His blue eyes were brighter than she’d ever remembered them being, or maybe she simply hadn’t looked at them as closely as she was now. Were those flecks of green always there?

“I know you said the truck is all you have left of your grandpa,” he said. “But it isn’t true. Your grandpa taught you a lot so what’s left of him is still inside you. Just like what my grandpa taught me is still inside me.”

 He laughed and shook his head. “Of course, I haven’t always listened to it, but it’s there.”

A smile tugged at Molly’s mouth. She moved her other hand to cover Alex’s, feeling a rush of energy when her skin touched his.

“Thank you, Alex,” she whispered, her hand lingering on his..\ “That really means a lot.”

Kiss her, Alex. For God sake, just kiss her already

Her eyes focused on his for a few seconds longer and then her hand slipped from his, her skin soft against his rough palm.

“You’re welcome,” he whispered.

Molly closed the door to the truck and walked back to the barn, Alex watching her until she disappeared inside. He leaned back and chewed at the nail on his thumb, a habit he’d recently picked up, thinking, silently cursing himself for chickening out, for keeping silent when he should have told Molly how he really felt about her. He climbed out of the truck, heading back to the barn, knowing that conversation would now have to wait for another day.

Fiction Thursday: Rekindle Part 5

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn fiction, Fiction Thursday1 Comment

You can catch up with the previous parts of this short story HERE.


The election had been brutal. There was no denying it. Worse than the campaigning, the traveling, the long days, had been the media coverage; non-stop negative stories aimed at destroying Matthew Grant before he could even open his mouth. The media machine was out of control. There was no denying it, especially after that first month of campaigning when one of the state’s biggest newspapers had questioned his staff’s lack of diversity.

From there it had been combing through Matt and Liam’s social media accounts, searching for anything that would sink them in the political arena. One rogue satirical Tweet from his college days, labeled as sexist by feminists, dominated headlines for a few days, but as it always was with the current 24-hour/7-day a week news cycle, the press had turned it’s hungry eyes to another candidate, another subject the following week.

The polls showed Matt losing and big, right up until election day, but the night of the election the numbers had come in fast and furious late in the evening. Matt had won by a landslide. Apparently the silent voters, the one who didn’t want to be yelled at or condemned for their opinions, had come out in droves and sent a hard message home to the incumbent and his political party: “We’ve had enough of the status quo and of corrupt politicians with empty promises and even emptier apologies.”

Matt knew, though, that in six months he could be in the same boat and it could be his rear end with the boot of the voter against it as they shoved him out the door. Voters, like public opinion, were fickle and ever changing and some days nothing a congressman did could make anyone happy. Matt had only been a congressman for two years but he felt like it had been ten. Now he had a small idea why so many presidents went gray while in office, though thankfully he didn’t have the same pressure as a president.

He yawned, stretching his arms out as if he intended to stand up and head up to bed, but he didn’t. Instead he fell back on the couch again, remote in hand. He surfed streaming services, suggested shows and movies scrolling by his eyes, but he wasn’t really seeing any of it. His mind had slipped back to two and a half years ago, to near the end of the election when the news stories were at their worst. He was being called a racist, anti-woman, anti-this, anti-that. He had lost count of all the names they had called him during that time.

“Is this even worth it?” he asked Cassie one night in bed, snuggled close against her.

“If you can get in there and really help facilitate some change, then, yes, it’s worth it,” she assured him.

But then the win came and with it came more news stories, personal attacks against him and his family. The worst came when one of his staff members brought him an article about Cassie, accusing her of being fired from her previous job.

He was furious. “Where did they even get that story? Cassie was never fired from her job. She left to support me and be with the children.”

Scanning the story he saw a former co-worker of Cassie’s was quoted and offered only summations, not facts. Still, the headline suggested the accusations were true. It wouldn’t have upset Matt as much if it had been about him instead of Cassie. He’d grown accustomed to being accused of inappropriate acts or offensive words, or anything else the press could come up with, but Cassie?

Cassie was off limits.

Only she wasn’t off limits.

She wasn’t off limits because he had made her fair game when he’d decided to accept the party’s urging to run. He’d dragged her out into the open and essentially thrown her to the wolves. The story had been pushed to the side quickly in a few days with another news story, about another congressman, overshadowing it. The fast pace of the 24/7 news cycle was one of the only good aspects of it. It meant a story that was in the forefront one day, was gone by the next day and even though the story on Cassie had faded fast, he still felt incredible guilt about how much he’d exposed his family during this process.

He’d always wanted to protect Cassie now he didn’t know how to. The negativity was coming at him from every side in a hyper-political atmosphere that was beginning to suffocate him.

His phone rang and he glanced at the ID before answering it.

“Hey, bro,” he said to Liam. “You hanging in there?”

“Yeah. Locked myself in my office. You?”

“Yeah. Feels weird just to be sitting at home.”

“A good weird or a bad weird?”

“Both.”

“Things okay with Cassie? The kids?”

“Kids are doing great. They don’t know much about what’s going on. Cassie’s . . . okay, I guess. She seems tired.”

“Is she mad at you for all this?”

Matt laughed. “She doesn’t seem mad, really. She just seems like Cassie. She’s cooking for the kids and me, cleaning, checking on her parents.”

“Did you ask her if she was okay?” Liam asked.

“Yeah, she said she’s fine.”

Matt heard a small laugh on the other end of the phone.

“What?” he asked. “No, don’t even say it. You think ‘I’m fine’ is code for something else.”

“You know I’m not expert on women,” Liam started.

“Uh, obviously,” Matt snorted.

“But, I am learning during this that apparently when a woman says she’s okay, she’s really not,” Liam continued. “I didn’t know that Maddie was struggling, Matt. I just thought she hated me, that I was doing everything wrong, but I think she feels — I don’t know. Abandoned. She pretty much told me she feels like I abandoned her.”

Matt sighed, laying on his back, staring at the ceiling. He slid his arm behind his head. “In what way did you abandon her?”

“Staying at work too much, for one,” Liam answered. “She says I worked more so I didn’t have to face us losing the babies.”

“Did you?”

“No, I . . .”

Liam’s voice trailed off and then there was a brief silence. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Yeah, I did. When you asked me to be your press secretary I jumped at it because I knew I would be so busy I wouldn’t have to think about losing the babies, about that empty hole in the center of my chest.”

Matt sat up, propping his elbow against his knee. “Liam, I’m sorry I was so focused on the election, on me, that I didn’t notice all you were going through.”

“Dude, I’m not trying to make you feel guilty. I didn’t even admit to myself how much it was bothering me.”

“I know, it’s just — I’m really realizing how out of touch I’ve been with what really matters; you and Maddie, the kids. Cassie. When I decided to run I pulled all of you —”

“Matt,” Liam said. “No. You were doing what you felt was right. And it wasn’t just you who decided to run. We all decided. As a family. We knew this could be rough. Yeah, it’s a little worse than we expected with all the extra political drama going on these days, but we are still in this together. It’s okay. We’re all okay. Well, we will be okay, one way or another anyhow. None of this is your fault.”

Matt flopped back on the couch again. “I know it isn’t. But I still feel . . . guilty. I don’t know. What I do know is that all of this, this forced slow down, has opened my eyes up to what I’ve been missing lately. I don’t like that our family, or our country, is going through this, but it’s putting some things in perspective for me.”

Matt heard his brother sigh on the other end of the phone.

“Yeah,” Liam whispered. “It’s doing the same for me.”

Our cat has no consideration for my mental health

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings11 Comments

Our cat thinks she rules our house.

Well, she sort of does rule it, like any other cat.

She also thinks she can walk in and out of our house anytime she wants.

And apparently she can because she does. A lot.

All of this behavior isn’t unusual for a cat, but it is annoying for me.

See, our cat has no consideration for my mental health.

When she’s out there, wandering our new property, which is near some woods that are inhabited by bears, foxes, raccoons, and who know what else, I sit inside and waffle between hoping she isn’t killed by a wild creature to hoping she dies so I can stop worrying.

It isn’t just that I worry about her. There are others in the equation.

I’ll miss her if she dies, of course. I’m fond of her.

She’s not the most cuddly cat ever but sometimes she climbs on me and shoves her claws into my flesh while she kneads and draws blood, purring the whole time and sometimes she screams at me to put her up by her food and I do and she lets me pet her, and every night she yowls for someone to turn the water on in the faucet in our bathroom and I’m the only one who does it (sometimes my son does actually, but it sounds better to say I’m the only one. ) so I guess we have some sort of connection.

The real issue isn’t only my worry our cat — who we named Pixel when she came to live with us in 2017 — will die. It’s my worry that our cat will die and I’ll have to tell the kids she has died and how she has died.

To explain, the kids and the cat sort of tolerate each other. They aren’t really in love with each other. Still, we’ve all gotten used to her being there – taking up the foot space in our beds, scratching our couch and our kitchen floor, rolling in catnip like a stoner, screaming at 1 a.m., 2 a.m,., 3 a.m., 4 a.m. whatever time she wants because she either wants the water in the faucet turned on, the stool to get up to her food has been moved (we put it up to keep the dog out of it), she wants to go out, or she’s simply . . . a jerk.

See? She’s sticking her tongue out at me. She’s saying “Pfffffbbt. I’ll do what I want. “

So if she gets eaten by a fox or a bear (my daughter keeps reminding me they are mainly omnivores and yes, my 5 1/2 year old uses that word), or mauled by a raccoon, or hit by a car in front of our house, I’ll have to break it to my kids she’s dead.

I’m pretty sure they’ll be sad, and therefore, my cat is acting irresponsibly and not considering my mental health at all.

She definitely was not considering my mental health last Sunday when my son and I realized at 12:30 at night that she wasn’t in the house. We have three doors in our house – a back, a front and a side door. I went to all three doors but no cat, which is unusual, because usually she runs inside at some point, looking for food or water or to simply be a nuisance. This time, though, she was nowhere near the door.

I figured she was probably out exploring and I didn’t want to keep waiting for her.

“My life is not going to be ruled by a cat,” I grumbled, stomping up the stairs.

But I could barely sleep and I have enough trouble sleeping. I slept fitfully, dreaming of our cat being eaten by a bear or fox, or me opening the door and her finally running in.

“I’m not going to be ruled by a cat,” I told myself each time I woke up from a scary dream of her nocturnal demise.

I did finally sleep and in the morning my husband peeked his head in and said “Have you seen the cat?”

I informed him I had not and told him of my nightmares.

“Whatever,” he said. “If she wants to live outside, then let her.”

But then, as he was in the shower, I remembered an incident with our family cat Leonardo years ago. Yes, I named the cat Leonardo after Leonardo DiCaprio. He was dropped off at my parents’ barn as a stray and my parents said ‘Do not name him because if you name him, we have to keep him.’ So I had just watched Romeo and Juliette with Leonardo and named the cat Leonardo and my parents had to keep him because I named him.

You would think the cat would have liked me the best since I named him and my naming him meant my parents kept him, but no, he did not like me. He would rarely let me pet him. The only one he did like was my grandmother, who we all lived with at the time. They would sit together on the porch and he laid on her lap while she caressed him. She wasn’t a cat person so this was a fairly unusual thing for both of them. Unusual and touching.

Anyhow, my mom insisted: “I will not be out there yelling ‘Leonardo!'” But when Leonardo went missing one week, there she was out on the deck yelling “Leonardo!” Leonardo didn’t come back for three days and they decided he’d been killed by one of the area tomcats or a fox or maybe hit by a car and laying somewhere. That’s when my dad went out to their grainary (which used to store grain, but just stores garden equipment now) and a very skinny, very scared Leonardo ran out.

I didn’t feel like getting out of bed so I texted my husband (I know. So sad.) to check for her in the garage before he left. We aren’t parking our cars in the garage yet because we still have some of our boxes from moving in there. He texted me back that the lost had been found and later that night told me he heard her yowling before he even opened the door.

I will say, Pixel was a lot more affectionate with me that day, rubbing her head against me, laying on me, licking me. And she didn’t rush back outside that day either. She spent most of the day asleep on our bed upstairs.

Despite her affection, I could tell she had no concern for my emotional well-being and that I had been worried about her. I could tell it even more when she ran out of the house again the next day when I was letting the dog out, but I’ve decided that since she has no consideration for my mental health, I’ll stop having concern for her physical health — unless she doesn’t show up again, of course.

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

Fiction Friday: Catching up

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn fiction, Fiction Friday3 Comments

I’m not sharing any new fiction this Friday to give time for people to catch up to what I’ve written so far.

You can catch up with all of the chapters I’ve shared so far here or at the link at the top of the page under The Farmer’s Daughter.

If you’ve already read the chapters so far, I’d love to know in the comments what you think of them and what you think should happen next.

I have also posted another fictional serial, Fully Alive, which you can find here; a short story, Quarantined; and another short story I’ve started called Rekindle.

Serial Fiction: Rekindle Parts 3 & 4

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn fiction, Fiction Thursday1 Comment

I’m sharing parts three and four of Rekindle today. To read the first two parts, click HERE.


With the children in bed, it was just Matt and Cassie alone in the living room. Alone. Together. With a canyon of silence between them.

Matt slumped further down on the couch, drumming his fingers on the cushion. He had no idea what to do with himself without hearings to plan for, committee meetings to gather research for or statements to draft for the press with his brother. He should probably be on the phone with John and Liam, preparing their plan of action for when they got back into the office in the next week or so. He looked at his phone on the end of the couch but didn’t feel any motivation to reach for it.  In fact, he didn’t feel any motivation at all to deal with his job, especially the press.

He’d already drafted a statement with John. There really wasn’t anything else to say. For now anyhow. He was sure in the next day or so he’d be getting calls from other congressmen and congresswomen looking to set up virtual meetings to draft various bills or establish plans of action for the current situation, but for now his phone had gone silent and he should enjoy the silence while he could. He would have enjoyed it, if it just wasn’t so weird.

He felt his forehead. Maybe he was coming down with that virus after all. He’d been going full bore at his job for two years straight now, but today he’d finally hit some kind of wall. He wasn’t even motivated to reach for the remote and watch television.

He looked over at Cassie sitting sideways on a chair, her legs hanging over the arm of it, her head bent over a book. She was wearing a pair of hot pink short-shorts, a loose fitting white t-shirt and her hair was falling out of a messy bun she’d piled on top of her head. Her long legs were as shapely and attractive as the first day he’d met her. His eyes followed the length of them from her bare toes to the edge of her shorts and remembered the many times his hand had traveled that path over the years.

Desire swelled in his chest as he thought about the night they’d celebrated his congressional win. She’d worn that black skirt with the slit in the side, the slit that went from her knee to the middle of her thigh. Only she hadn’t even known the skirt had that slit until she was at his victory speech and he’d laughed later in the back of Liam’s car when he had watched her try to hold the pieces together, her cheeks flushed pink. Cassie always was fairly modest in how she dressed and he knew she never would have worn the dress if she hadn’t been rushed. The election results came in earlier than expected and she’d snatched the skirt out of her closet, the skirt she’d purchased a few days before but hadn’t had a chance to try on. She knew Matt’s acceptance speech was going to be closely watched by many since he had run against a long-time congressman who had been thrown in the middle of a scandal the year before.

“I can’t believe I wore this skirt to your acceptance speech,” she hissed. “I can imagine what the press will be saying tomorrow.”

“That your gorgeous?”

“Or that I’m a floozy.”

Matt tipped his head all the way back and laughed. “A floozy? What happened right there? Did we just teleport back to the 40s?”

Cassie punched Matt in the upper arm, giggling. “Shut up.”

Back at the house, the children staying with Cassie’s parents, Matt had stood behind Cassie as she unhooked her necklace and took her earrings out.

“For what it’s worth,” he said, stepping closer, reaching out to touch the edge of the skirt. “I really like this skirt.”

“Oh, you do, do you?”

His finger found the slit and slipped inside, touching the skin there, on her upper thigh.

His mouth touched her bare neck, his voice husky as he spoke. “All I wanted to do was get back here with you. No kids. All alone. Finally.”

She turned, smiling, pushing her hands into his hair. “And what can we do here, all alone?”

He didn’t need words to answer her question. His mouth found hers while he gently pushed her back toward the bed, lowering her to it.

“You okay over there?”

 Cassie’s voice interrupted the memory of his hand traveling under that skirt, up that leg, that night.

“Huh? Oh yeah. Good. I’m good.”

“You miss work, don’t you?”

“Um. No. Actually. I don’t. And that weirds me out a little.”

“Oh.”

She shrugged and turned back to her book. “This break is probably just showing you how burned out you are.”

“I’m not burned out. Am I?”

Cassie was back into her book. “Mmm. If you say so.”

Matt sat up straighter and leaned forward on his knees toward Cassie.

“We haven’t spent a lot of time together lately, have we?

She glanced up from the book, one eyebrow cocked.

“No. Not really, but you’ve been busy. I understand.”

“Do you want to spend more time together? I mean, maybe you’re bored with me? Our life here together?”

Cassie laughed. “Matt, where is this all coming from?” she closed the book. “Is this because of Liam and Maddie?

Matthew shrugged. “Yeah. Maybe. It’s got me thinking a lot, I guess.”

“So? What’s the verdict? Are Liam and Maddie getting a divorce?”

Matt sighed. “I don’t know. I mean, they’ve been meeting with a divorce attorney. The only reason they missed the last meeting was because of this whole debacle.”

He looked at Cassie, watched her watching him and wondered again if Cassie would ever want to divorce him. If she did, he wouldn’t blame her. He’d dragged her into this crazy political world, under a never-satisfied microscope of public scrutiny. The same with the kids. What had he been thinking? Of his constituents? The future of the country? Or had it really just been of himself and his own desire to reach a certain level of success?

“And now they are stuck together in that house,” Maddie said with a shake of her head. “Wow. That has to be super awkward.”

“Yeah. It is. Liam said Maddie accused him of cheating on her.”

Cassie’s eyes widened. “No way.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, did he?”

“Cassie! You know Liam wouldn’t do something like that.”

“I don’t think he would, no, but . . .”

“But what? Men do those things because we’re all jerks, is that what you mean?”

“I’m not saying that but long hours, all those pretty women around, he and Maddie so distant after the miscarriages, especially after the last one.”

Matt was feeling uncomfortable with his wife’s line of thinking. He stood and walked toward the kitchen for a glass of juice. His wife really thought his little brother could cheat on his wife? If she thought that then what did she think of him? He’d been working long hours too. Around a lot of pretty women, many of them more than willing to sleep with a congressman to work their way up the ladder in their careers. Was Cassie drawing a line between the possibility that Liam had cheated to the possibility he had too?

He poured the juice and heard her footsteps behind him. “I’m sorry, Matt. I really can’t see Liam doing that, no. Your brother has just been under a lot of pressure and —”

“Being under pressure doesn’t lean to affairs every time, okay?”

Cassie raised her eyes brows and held up her hands. “Okay. I wasn’t trying to pick a fight. I was just trying to enjoy a quiet night for once with a book. I’ll leave you alone.”

Matt turned toward her. “Cassie, I didn’t mean to start a fight either. I just —”

“It’s fine.” Cassie walked to him and kissed his cheek. She stepped back and looked him in the eyes. “You just need to unwind. You’ve been put through the ringer by the media, other members of congress, and now Liam’s drama. I don’t blame you for being tense. Why don’t you go watch one of your favorite shows. I’m going to turn in early.”

“You don’t need to turn in early.”

Her mind had been made up though. She was weary of discussing Liam and politics and viruses and . . . life, quite frankly.

“I really do need to,” she said softly, already at the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. “See you in the morning, Matt.”

Matt finished his juice and shuffled back to the living room. Watch one of his favorite shows? He didn’t even have any favorite shows. Not current ones anyhow. He never had time to watch television anymore. He sat on the couch and slumped in the corner of it again, even further down this time than before.

He didn’t have time for anything anymore other than political fights and trying to put out fires. He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. Dang it. What had he been thinking dragging his family through all of this? Just, seriously, what had he been thinking?

***

Cassie climbed under the covers and flopped on her back to stare at the ceiling, barely lit by the moonlight outside.

What was with all of Matt’s weird questions tonight? The situation with Liam and Maddie must be rattling him even more than she realized. She fluffed up her pillow, hugged it and tried to get more comfortable. It wasn’t working, though. Her mind was racing too much.

She was thinking about viruses and if her family was safe and Liam and Maddie and how to get groceries if they had to shelter in place and the media and what they’d be saying for the rest of the week with Matt and his staff having still worked for a week after they knew they’d been exposed to a contagious virus. She squeezed her eyes shut, took in a deep breath and held it for several seconds before letting it out again. She had to calm down.

She couldn’t deny that there were days she regretted agreeing with Matt that he should run for Congress. They both had such high hopes three years ago; hopes that they could make changes for the voters who had put their faith in Matt, while not being changed. But it was impossible not to be changed by the influences of Washington, D.C. Nothing in this city was like the small upstate New York town Cassie had grown up in and it was also nothing like where she and Matt had lived before he had been elected.

Stevensville, Ohio was small. Very small. It was also still her and Matt’s home in the summers when they left Washington D.C. behind for much needed breaks. Only that break wouldn’t be coming this year. Not with all the craziness about viruses and quarantines and freezes on travel. Cassie wanted to cry but she was afraid to because once she started, she might not stop. She was homesick for Ohio, for her own family, for Matt’s family, for the familiar she’d left behind when Matt was elected two years ago.

She sighed and opened her eyes, looking at the other side of the bed where Matt slept most nights of the week, unless he was working late and then he stayed at John’s apartment, closer to his office. She touched the side of the bed, feeling the cool sheets, thinking of how many nights they’d laid here next to each other, back to back, rarely speaking because she knew he needed his sleep, because she knew he needed to get up early in the morning, because she didn’t want to burden him anymore than he was already burdened.

But she missed him. She missed him holding her and them talking about their future, instead of him telling her about the stress he’d been under that day and then falling into a fitful sleep. She missed his hand on her cheek as he moved closer late at night, a small, mischievous smile that signaled he wasn’t ready for sleep yet.

She missed long, slow kisses, roaming hands, but as much as the physical, she missed the emotional connection they’d once had. The connection when Matt wanted to talk with her before anyone else, when he didn’t want to make a decision unless he’d asked her, and when she’d known so much about his day, his job and his life that it was as if they were thinking like one person.

“Cassie, are you sure you’re okay with this?” he’d asked three and a half years ago when he’d considered running for congress.

“Yeah. I am.”

That’s what she’d said, but she really wasn’t sure she was okay with it. She was okay with Matt wanting to help the people of his small hometown and the surrounding counties by becoming a congressman from Ohio, but she wasn’t really sure she was okay with the lives of their entire family being upended. She’d given up her social worker career five years before, deciding to spend more time at home with the children. Matt’s career as a lawyer had exploded and from there he’d become involved in county politics and then state politics. When the state’s Republican party came to him and asked him to run for Congress, he’d turned them down at first. But after several meetings, a few months of consideration, and talking to Cassie, his parents, his sister and brother, he’d decided to step into an already contentious race for the seat.

From the moment he’d announced to the day he won the seat, the lives of the Grant family had been a whirlwind. After the election, the moving began, the children were enrolled in new schools; every effort was made to ensure that the children and Cassie would see Matt as much as possible, despite his job.

The idea had been a good one, but the execution of it had started to fail within six months. Meetings, conferences, sessions that ran late into the night, and media-made emergencies were constant, taking over every aspect of Matt and Cassie’s life. Matt still made every effort to attend baseball games, dance recitals, and Saturday mornings at the park, in addition to balancing his responsibilities as a congressman, but that left little to almost no time for him and Cassie.

For the most part, Cassie was okay with being the last in line for his attention. She preferred he spend as much time as he could with the children during their formative years. This was a season of life, not a new normal. Time for them, as a couple, would come later, when things slowed down.

If things slow down, Cassie thought, panic suddenly gripping her, like a heavy weight in the center of  her chest. If Matt gets reelected we could have another two years of this and maybe even another two after that. . .

She shuddered, pulling the covers up around her, even though it wasn’t that cold in their bedroom. She tried to imagine two more years, or even more, of accusations against her husband, and sometimes even her, in the press. She tried to imagine two more years of barely seeing her husband; of feeling like her husband’s nanny, even though she loved her children desperately; and of constituents confronting her husband when they were out in public, complaining about this or that change he’d promised he’d make if elected but still hadn’t been able to.

Cassie knew it wasn’t only the town she and Matt had lived in before moving here that she was homesick for, or the quiet life they’d led before he’d entered politics. She was homesick for time alone with Matt. She was tired of sharing him with his staff, his fellow congressmen, his constituents, and the press. She was tired of feeling like she was second in line for his attention, even though she knew he didn’t mean to make her feel that way.

Who knows, she thought, feeling sleep finally settling on her. Maybe this quarantine will be good for not only Liam and Maddie but for Matt and me. Maybe I’ll actually get him to myself for once.

The little garden that might actually grow. Maybe. We’ll see.

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings25 Comments

I don’t have a ton of hope for my garden to excel this year, but a few things are popping up at least. I don’t think the soil we bought from a local place in the beginning of the summer to fill the raised bed was very good because the plants in it are growing very slowly or not at all while anything I planted in the actual soil in the backyard (in the space my dad rototilled for us) is growing fast.

People kept giving me tomato plants but I don’t have room for them in the garden so I planted them in pots and they’re starting to take off. I have a feeling we might have a lot of tomatoes this year. What I am really hoping for is a lot of summer squash because we can freeze that throughout the year. I also hope the butternut squash yields a bit so we can use that for butternut squash in the fall.

My green beans are definitely struggling. One row is coming up but the other one isn’t really growing at all. My dad left a pathway between the two beds and either I or Little Miss dropped some lettuce seeds there so lettuce is growing in what was supposed to be my path. I am not really sure when to pick it but I think I am going to pick a few leaves today or tomorrow and toss it in with my salad for lunch.

I plopped four broccoli plants in the one bed and they look healthy but I don’t know if they will grow actually broccoli or not. I have very little hope for the carrots. Only one tuft of the three rows I planted is actually sprouting at this point.

I gave up on the Swiss Chard. It wasn’t growing at all. Instead of growing, it shrunk and turned yellowish. I think I transplanted it too late in the season so I dug it out and replaced it with the basil and cilantro I had in another container.

I also have a zucchini plant that is trying its best to grow from an old seed my dad gave me. We will see if it can make it or not. Right now my goal is to remember to shut the gate to the garden so the little rabbits that have been hoping around don’t hop in and get my lettuce or other plants. My dog chases them when she sees them but she has little legs so she usually can’t catch up to them.

Dogs in this area aren’t allowed to chase deer (if hunters see a dog chasing a deer they will shoot the dog) but I wish she could chase the deer that is eating my hostas plants in front of the house. That deer seems to only come out at night, though because I’ve yet to catch her in the act. I double checked with my neighbor that it could be the deer and she confirmed that the deer do eat the Hostas each year. I plan to Google and see if there are any natural ways to deter the deer from doing that.

I did catch a pretty little young doe at the back of the house earlier today. She looked at me with wide eyes, chewing grass while I calmly told her, from about 30 feet way, that I’d like her not to eat my Hostas in the front of the back of the house. She didn’t look too concerned and finally trotted away. My dog was standing next to me but she was completely distracted and somehow missed the entire exchange.

Some guard dog she is. She can warm off the bunny rabbits, but not the Hostas eating doe who seems to think she’s part of the family now.