Welcome to the A Good Book & A Cup of Tea (A Monthly Bookish Link Party)!! This link-up is for book and reading posts or anything related to books and reading (even movies based on books!).
1. For Bloggers, you can link unlimited posts related to books and reading. They can be older posts or newer posts. These can be posts about what you’re reading, book reviews, books you’ve added to your shelf, reading habits, what you’ve been reading, about trips to the bookstore, etc. You get the drift.
2. Link to a specific blog post (URL of a specific post, not just your website). Feel free to link up any older posts that may need some love and attention, too.
3. Please visit at least two other bloggers on this list and comment on their posts. Have fun! Interact! Get some book recommendations.
4. Readers can click the blue button below to visit blog posts.
5. If you add a link you are giving me permission to share and link back to your post(s).
Thank you to all who participated in December and throughout 2025. Please be sure to visit other posts in the link-up and support each other!
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
My 11-year-old daughter was upset at me the other night but the funny thing is I had no idea and was just skipping around through life and our bedtime routine while she was all stewing under her covers.
She later told me she kept sighing heavily and changing positions to see if I would notice she was upset but I never did.
I even suggested we do our nightly prayers, having no idea she was holding a grudge over something I said that she took wrong.
Why this is so funny to me is that when she shared with me how upset she’d been I kept thinking of a video I recently watched where a cat owner is saying she can’t be upset when her cat does something annoying because she imagines the cat with some derpy/dorky music in her head and feels sorry for her. I just kept imagining myself as the cat, skipping along through life, clueless while my kid was all annoyed at me. I even shared this with Little Miss and let her know that the next time she is sitting there annoyed at me just imagine that most of the time I have no clue I’ve said something wrong and am instead just listening to dumb music in my head.
Luckily Little Miss and I worked things out when she was able to tell me how she felt and I was able to clarify what I actually meant by the comment.
What I/We’ve Been Reading
Just Finished
Nothing yet.
In Progress
My Beloved by Jan Karon is growing on me and I’m glad I didn’t give up on it but it is still disappointing in many ways overall. I feel like Jan’s notes, in their chopped up form, were just shoved into a book without flushing it out or connecting it.
I do recommend the previous 14 books in The Mitford series, however.
I started the first book in the Miss Read series, Village School, this week, putting the second book, Village Diary, aside after realizing it was the second book and I should probably read the first book in the series…first.
It’s a very slow paced book so to move things a long a bit I started The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie and am realizing that sometimes the “Britishness” of her books goes over my head.
Chimneys is an area in the country, not the appendage on a house roof, it turns out.
Up Soon
After these books, I plan to read The Tiger in the Smoke by Margaret Allingham and start Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien
What The Family is Reading
The Husband just finished his first book of the year —
The Boy is listening to a Warhammer book.
Little Miss is reading Nancy Drew: The Secret of the Old Clock.
What I/We’ve Been Watching
The past week or so since my husband has been off work so we’ve watched a variety of things together. We watched some Murder, She Wrote, Parks and Recreation, Car 54 Where Are You, and Midsomer Murders which The Husband likes better than me. The series is a bit dark for me, but the mysteries are interesting.
The Husband got caught up in a movie called Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy but I didn’t realize he was going to keep watching it and that I should follow along so I didn’t pay attention at first and then when I did tune in, I was so confused that I had to take to Google to catch up with what was really going on.
Even after reading the summary, I was completely confused but sort of figured things out.
I also rewatched McLintock with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara.
And I watched Yankee Doodle Dandy with James Cagney, which I wrote about on the blog.
Erin (Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) and I host a monthly bookish link party called A Good Book and A Cup of Tea. This link-up is for book and reading posts or anything related to books and reading (even movies based on books!). Each link party will be open for a month. You can find that link up for this month here.
Each week, I host the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot with some great hosts. It goes live Thursday night but you can share any kind of blog posts (family-friendly) there until Tuesday of each week. You can check my recent posts on the sidebar to the right for the most recent link-party.
Now It’s Your Turn
What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
For winter this year, I am watching James Cagney movies.
First up is Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) which Cagney won an Oscar for.
This is a biopic about the entertainer George Cohan. Actually, though, he was more than just an entertainer. Under that umbrella, he was a playwright, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer, and theatrical producer.
Don’t think you know who Cohan is?
Well, if you’ve ever heard the songs “You’re A Grand Old Flag”, “Over There”, “Yankee Doodle Dandy Boy,” or “Give My Regards to Broadway,” then you have heard some of George’s work.
Yankee Doodle Dandy is his story, but . . . with some poetic license from what I’ve been reading. Cohan comes out looking a bit better than he might have been in real life, considering his first wife divorced him for adultery and that mysteriously didn’t make the movie. The movie did portray him as a bit of an arrogant kid who pushed his way to stardom, so he wasn’t portrayed as totally perfect, however. Plus, Cohan had the final say on the movie so maybe that’s why he looked a bit better in the movie. *wink*
Cohan was born July 3, 1878 according to baptismal records but according to him and his parents, he was born on the Fourth of July. This “fact” would be used throughout his career as he asserted his bold patriotism for the United States of America.
“I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy A Yankee Doodle, do or die A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam Born on the Fourth of July I’ve got a Yankee Doodle sweetheart She’s my Yankee Doodle joy”
From the musical Little Johnny Jones
Cohan’s was an Irish immigrant named Jeremiah (Keohane) Cohan. His mother was Helen “Nellie” Costigan Cohan, and his sister was Josephine “Josie” Cohan Niblo (1876–1916). Together the four of them would form a Vaudeville act called The Four Cohans.
George began singing and playing the violin at the age of 8 and toured with his family from 1890 to 1901.
During these years, he made famous a speech at the end of their show that you might have heard over the years, or even said yourself as a joke: “My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, my sister thanks you, and I thank you.”
The Four Cohans with George on the left.
He and his sister made their Broadway debuts in 1893 in a sketch called The Lively Bootblack.
I won’t give you his entire biography here, so if you want to know even more about his life, the movie will fill you in or there is a ton of information about him online.
Many people think of James Cagney with a New York accident asking questions like, “You talking to me?” because of the many mobster-themed movies he appeared in in the 1930s. (I don’t think he actually ever said that line, though. Much like he never actually said, ‘You dirty rat! The quote was actually longer and included the words “You yellow-bellied dirty rat” in the movie Taxi, 1931.)
“There is a story that James Cagney stood on his toes while acting, believing he would project more energy that way,” Roger Ebert wrote. That sounds like a press release, but whatever he did, Cagney came across as one of the most dynamic performers in movie history–a short man with ordinary looks whose coiled tension made him the focus of every scene.”
Yankee Doodle Dandee showed there was lot more to Cagney than many moviegoers realized.
For one, Cagney could dance, which he had showcased in other movies but really was able to showcase in this movie.
Cagney could also be funny and charming — which moviegoers had seen in other movies but really saw in Yankee Doodle Dandy.
Cagney almost didn’t get the role that he would later call his favorite, according to an article on TCM.com.
Originally Cohan and MGM had combined to make a film that would cover when Cohan had toured with his family. It would have starred Mickey Rooney. The deal collapsed because the studio head, Louis B. Mayer, refused to let Cohan have the final cut on the film.
Samuel Goldwyn then expressed an interest in making a movie with Cohan and planned on giving the role of Cohan to Fred Astaire.
Astaire turned it down, and Warner Bros. picked up the rights and cast Cagney, who at the time was being suspected of being a communist sympathizer due to being president of the Screen Actors’ Guild a — gasp! — union!
“He wanted to show his patriotism on screen,” the TCM article reads. “And the George M. Cohan story was the perfect vehicle to do that.”
Cagney broke into infamy with this movie. I am sure many of you have seen one of his most famous scenes — when he tap dances down a long flight of stairs while leaving the white house after talking to President Franklin Roosevelt. This scene, like many others in his career, was improvised by Cagney, who called it his favorite moment in the movie.
“I didn’t think of it till five minutes before I went on,” Cagney later recalled. “And I didn’t check with the director or anything; I just did it.”
Yankee Doodle Dandy was directed by Michael Curtiz (most well-known for directing Casablanca).
According to TCM and other sources online, Curtiz letting Cagney have free rein in the role is what made it such a success and made him so enamored with Cagney as an actor.
“The ordinarily hard-boiled Curtiz was so moved by the scene in which Cohan bids farewell to his dying father (Walter Huston) that he reportedly ruined a take with his loud sobs,” reads the article on TCM.com. “According to Cagney biographer Michael Freedland, tears streamed down Curtiz’s face as he stumbled away to find a handkerchief and exclaimed to Cagney, “Gott, Jeemy, that was marvelous!’”
I can speak from the experience of seeing the movie that that scene was heartbreakingly marvelous. I wasn’t super emotionally invested in the movie as I watched it, but during that scene, I teared up and failed to hold back a small sob. Maybe it’s because my parents are older, so I could relate to that scene more than I might have been able to if I had watched this when I was younger.
Critic Brenden Gill said of Cagney’s role in the film: “George M. Cohan was by all accounts something of a scoundrel. He was an impossible human being, but he was a tremendous actor, comedian, showman, and he wrote great popular songs. He exists in our memories now not as George M. Cohan but as James Cagney in the movie.”
“Cagney managed to capture this persona that Cohan created,” another critic I heard (but couldn’t find the name of) said. “It was brash. It was pushy. It was aggressive. It was funny. Very American. Very New York. And Cohan created this character as his own persona on stage, but it really became the emblem of Broadway itself.”
Cagney, according to TCM.com writer Jeremy Arnold, wanted to portray Cohan correctly, not only because Cohan — 63 at the time the movie was made —had final approval over the film, but for accuracy.
“To perfect Cohan’s distinctive, strutting style of dance,” Arnold writes. “Cagney rehearsed with choreographer John Boyle, who had worked with Cohan extensively in the 1920s. Cagney also channeled Cohan’s singing voice, which was more like rhythmic speaking, and brought his own charismatic talent to the romantic, comedic, and dramatic scenes.”
There were liberties taken with Cohan’s life, as I mentioned above. For instance, his two wives were combined into a single character. Also, the chronology and order of his parents’ death was also switched around (probably to make that death bed scene even more emotional). Additionally, in one scene when he suffers a flop with a non-musical drama called Popularity, a newspaper seller announces the torpedoing of the Lusitania. The play flopped in 1906, but the Lusitania sunk in 1915, according to TCM.
Despite these changes, most critics agree that the movie captured Cohan’s life and music perfectly.
“Yankee Doodle Dandy, with its many flag-waving musical numbers, proved just the ticket for World War II-era audiences and became the top-grossing movie of its year, as well as Warner Bros.’ top-grossing movie to that time,” Jeremy Arnold wrote for TCM.com.
In addition to Cagney, the movie also starred Joan Leslie, Walter Huston, Richard Worf, Irene Manning, Rosemary Decamp, Jeanne Cagney (Cagney’s sister who played his sister Josie in the movie), and Eddie Foy Jr as Eddie Foy Sr.
So, a pause here. Eddie Foy Sr. was another entertainer of a similar style and also performed vaudeville with his family, The Seven Foys.
There is a movie called The Seven Little Foys (1955) starring Bob Hope as Eddie Foy Sr. and in it there is a cameo by Cagney, who portrays George M. Cohan, reprising his role from Yankee Doodle Dandy.
The two dancers face off in a very fun tap-dancing routine on a boardroom table. You can catch that here:
As for what movie watchers or critics now think of Yankee Doodle Dandy, you can find a variety of opinions online — some calling it satire to make fun of capitalism and nationalism while others say it is a disgusting display of support for capitalism and nationalism.
Some love the over-the-top patriotism and some absolutely hate it.
I guess you’ll have to make up your own mind what it promotes or represents and what it doesn’t, but what many can’t deny is the talent Cagney displays in the movie.
I definitely enjoyed seeing Cagney’s talent, but at first glance didn’t enjoy his dancing style. It was floppy and lanky instead of smooth and debonair like Gene Kelley or Fred Astaire, who I am more used to, but after seeing footage of Cohan, I now get that Cagney was imitating Cohan’s dancing style.
After hearing and seeing recordings of Cohan this week, I realized how perfectly Cagney nailed Cohan in the movie. No wonder he won the Oscar for best actor that year. It was also his only Oscar, incidentally.
Cagney pulled the role off even though “he (couldn’t) really dance or sing,” observed critic Edwin Jahiel, “but he acts so vigorously that it creates an illusion, and for dance-steps he substitutes a patented brand of robust, jerky walks, runs and other motions.”
Ebert wrote in his review of the film : “Unlike Astaire, whose entire body was involved in every movement, Cagney was a dancer who seemed to call on body parts in rotation. When he struts across the stage in the “Yankee Doodle Dandy” number, his legs are rubber but his spine is steel, and his torso is slanted forward so steeply we’re reminded of Groucho Marx.”
I’ll have to check out Cagney’s dancing in other movies to really get an idea of his actual style.
Cohan saw the picture shortly before he died in November 1942, by the way, and reportedly said afterward, “My God, what an act to follow.” The next morning, he sent Cagney a congratulatory telegram. And then he died. Ha! Kidding. I have no idea when he actually died but I do know he was only 64 so it was shortly after the movie was released.
I was amazed by the amazing sets for the incredible musical scenes in this movie. The scenes — which included moving sets and fireworks, and a floor like a conveyor belt that made the actors seem like they were continuously marching toward the audience — were way ahead of moviemaking at that time
Maybe that is why the movie cost so much to make, which was $1.5 million and well above the standard for the time.
Luckily, it grossed $6 million.
You can catch some of that movie/Broadway magic here:
As for Cagney’s acting in the movie, I thought it was great and engaging. Even parts that could have been a bit cheesy were enhanced by Cagney’s performance.
I loved the dancing and singing sequences throughout the movie. Those snippets were perfect introductions to the style of musicals and Broadway at the time, though that style became the style of Broadway in the future as well, thanks to Cohan.
Have you seen this one?
You can learn a bit more about Cohan in this clip:
If you want to see Cohan himself perform “Over There,” you can see that here:
And for a sneak peek of the movie, here is the trailer from when it was released:
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.
Here we are in a New Year which seems totally crazy to me!
I hope you’ve been having a wonderful week and had a nice New Year’s Day and have an amazing weekend. I don’t have a ton to share (it’s too cold in Pennsylvania to think right now!) today so let’s get right on to introducing our hosts, highlights and the link up!
First, 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.
Cat from Cat’s Wire is a bookworm, movie fan, crazy cat lady, armed with beads, cabs, wire and a very jumpy brain which loves to go down rabbit holes!
Rena from Fine, Whatever writes about style, midlife, and the “fine whatever” moments that make life both meaningful and fun. Since 2015, she’s been celebrating creativity, confidence, and finding joy in the everyday.
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 don’t know about you, but my family is the most important thing there is to me. I love knowing we are can be a family forever. But that’s a long time…so I’m here to help myself, and other moms, to make the journey to forever a little more fun!
I hope you’ll join me.
Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up!
And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:
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When people think of the actor James Cagney, many might think of his roles as gangsters, bad guys, and double-crossers. He was much more than that, though, in his acting roles and in his life.
This month I am watching James Cagney movies as part of my Winter of Cagney movie event.
To kick it off, I thought it might be good to share a little about the actor’s life.
Cagney was born to an Irish bartender father (James Francis Cagney) in the rough lower east side of New York City. His father, who Cagney says was an alcoholic, was also an accomplished boxer and at the age of 14 Cagney followed his footsteps and became one of Yorkville’s best fighters. James’ mother was Carolyn Elizabeth Cagney (my mom’s name is ironically Carolyn Elizabeth..but not Cagney).
“My childhood was surrounded by trouble, illness, and my dad’s alcoholism,” Cagney wrote in his autobiography, Cagney on Cagney. “But as I said, we just didn’t have the time to be impressed by all those misfortunes. I have an idea that the Irish possess a built-in don’t-give-a-damn that helps them through all the stress.”
While in high school, Cagney worked wrapping packages at Wanamaker’s Department Store, for $16 a week. His introduction into entertainment came when a fellow employee at Wanamaker’s told him a vaudeville troupe paid its players $35 a week. When Cagney auditioned, he told them he could sing and dance. He couldn’t do either, but he still had a successful audition. It was while working in Vaudeville that he met Frances Willard. They married in 1922 and remained married until his death 64 years later. She lived until 1994.
Cagney’s big break on the stage came in 1929 when he acted opposite Joan Blondell in Penny Arcade.
His big screen debut came in 1930 with Sinner’s Holiday, and he made four more films that year. Public Enemy (1931) and Taxi (1931) are two movies where the world was introduced to him as a gangster.
Growing up, I heard a lot of impressions of Cagney and those always claimed he said, “You dirty rat….” Or “All right, you guys.”
For the record, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica website, Cagney never actually said the words “You dirty rat,” or “All right, you guys” in any of his movies. Wow. Talk about a disappointing revelation there. Ha!
He did, however, say, “Come out here and take it, you dirty yellow-bellied rat or I’ll give it to you through the door,” in the 1931 movieTaxi.
According to The Kennedy Center website (he was honored there in 1980), “The unforgettable ‘fruit facial’ scene, in which he rams a grapefruit into Mae Clarke’s nose is exemplary of Cagney’s spontaneity, for the script called for him to slap Clarke with an omelet.”
Eventually, though, Cagney would tire of “packing guns and beating up women,” as he said in his autobiography, and after a string of movies where he played a gangster type figure, he did try some different roles, including the one he won an Oscar for — playing George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy.
“No matter the genre of the film he was in, James Cagney always brought unique, riveting energy to the screen,” writes Jeremy Arnold for TCM.com. “Known best for his tough-guy and gangster roles, a persona cemented by his fourth picture, The Public Enemy (1931), Cagney had actually started his showbiz career in 1920s vaudeville as a song and dance man, and to the end of his life he thought of himself primarily as a hoofer. Hollywood didn’t give him a chance to show off those talents until his fourteenth film, Footlight Parade (1933), and even after that movie’s success, Cagney went on to make surprisingly few musicals.”
In 1934 and 1940, Cagney was accused of being a communist sympathizer and many say this is why he took the part in Yankee Doodle Dandy — to attempt to clear his name and show that he really was a true patriot. His brother, in fact, urged him to take the part for that very reason.
Information online from various sources also suggests Cagney once had a hit on him by the mafia for work he did against the Chicago Outfit and the Mafia because they were extorting money from Hollywood studios by threatening to strikes by a mob-controlled labor union.
Cagney once shared that a hitman was sent and a heavy light was dropped on his head but it didn’t kill him, and the hit was eventually dropped when actor George Raft made a call to have the contract canceled. Raft was an American actor who played mobsters in movies and was (apparently) connected to the mob as well.
Some of Cagney’s most famous movies, besides the ones already mentioned, include:
White Heat (1949), Come Fill the Cup (1951), Love Me or Leave Me (1955), Mister Roberts (1955), and Man of a Thousand Faces (1957).
White Heat is one film that Cagney enthusiasts say you have to watch (and I will be). One reason is for the scene where Cagney breaks down after finding out his mother has been killed. The scene was shot with 300 extras in a prison cafeteria and none of the men knew what Cagney was going to do. Many of the men in the scene actually thought he had lost his mind which is why their reactions in the background are so real.
“I didn’t have to psych myself up for the scene in which I go berserk on learning of my mother’s death,” he wrote in his autobiography Cagney by Cagney. “You don’t psych yourself up for those things. You do them. I knew what deranged people sounded like. As a youngster I had visited Ward’s Island. A pal’s uncle was in the hospital for the insane. My God, what an education that was. The shrieks. The screams of those people under restraint. I remembered those cries. I saw that they fit the scene. I called on my memory to do as required. No need to ‘psych up.’”
White Heat is also where Cagney uttered one of his most famous lines, “On top of the world, Ma!”
After playing the manic Coca-Cola executive in Billy Wilder’s One Two Three in 1961, Cagney retired from acting and moved to an 800-acre farm in Dutchess County, NY with his wife where he relaxed, read, played tennis, raised horses, swam, and wrote some poetry.
It was on that farm where he died on Easter Sunday, 1986, of a heart attack at the age of 86.
I was saddened to read from a couple of sources that he did have adopted children, but the relationships with them fell apart, and his adopted son died of a heart attack when Cagney was 84, without them really speaking to each other for years..
Many actors and famous people have commented on Cagney, his acting, his movies, and his life in general.
One of those actors was George C. Scott who never worked with him but met him toward the end of Cagney’s life and borrowed a quote about General Robert E. Lee that Scott said fit Cagney as well: “What he seemed he was, a wholly human gentleman. The essential elements of whose positive character were two and only two — simplicity and spirituality.”
Scott said he was “perfectly himself” and “he was what he seemed to be.”
I will be watching the following movies for my Winter of Cagney:
I originally wrote this in 2019, the year after my aunt had passed away unexpectedly in my parents’ home December 29, 2017. She absolutely loved Christmas so while I think about her often, that’s one time of year I really think about her.
—-
My aunt Dianne was sitting in her recliner bundled up in a thick sweater over her plaid button up shirt and tshirt and a thick, fluffy blanket across her legs. A knitted shawl and hood combination was draped around her head and shoulders.
She looked, as she might say herself, a tick about to burst.
“Lisa, is that heat on?” she asked and when I assured her it was, she shivered. “Well, good gravy, I don’t think it’s working.”
On the TV Ree Drummond was pouring half a quart of whipping cream into a bowl of potatoes and telling viewers “Now, don’t judge me, or judge me if you want, but I just think these mashed potatoes are so much better with all this whipping cream.” Then she smiled at the camera.
“I can’t believe she’s not 300 pounds,” I said.
“That is a little overboard isn’t it?” Dianne asked, rhetorically
We both laughed a little and shook our heads.
We watched The Pioneer Woman whip up the potatoes and set them aside.
“Now it’s time for my famous chicken fried steak, which cowboys just love,” Ree said and smiled at the camera again, dimples showing.
I rolled my eyes.
“How hasn’t anyone in that family had a heart attack?” I wondered out loud, the irony not lost on me since my aunt had had at least two heart attacks already. I hoped she didn’t take my comment as a personal jab at her.
“Well…..” Dianne said and shrugged a little, leaving the rest of her response to be guessed.
The Pioneer Woman drives me nuts with her fattening recipes but her chipper personality and knowing I can modify the recipes for a healthier option make looking away hard to do.
Next to me the Christmas tree was bright with lights and ornaments. Out the window Dad’s star was shining bright against the dreary winter clouds at the edge of the field and woods.
Before long, my aunt was asleep in her chair, chin into her chest. She’d been falling asleep a lot like that lately, sometimes almost in mid-sentence, and I knew her health was getting worse. So that day we enjoyed her when she was awake and tried not to think about how much longer we might have her with us.
A couple weeks before she’d been messaging me, asking me for gift suggestions for my son and daughter and I knew she was anxious to spoil them and see them smile as they opened their gifts. She was planning how to make sausage balls, a Southern tradition, without “poisoning me”, knowing I was allergic to corn and had also gone gluten free. I told her not to worry about me and simply make the treats for the rest of the family. I offered to make some as well so she wouldn’t have to do all the work.
We messaged back and forth and then I accidentally bumped the video chat button in messenger. The button is annoying and most days I hate it because I rarely want to video chat with anyone, especially via Facebook. I missed her call, but she tried to call me through the ap and her voice was recorded. It was only for 17 seconds, enough for me to hear her voice call my name, thinking I’d picked up. I didn’t discover it for a couple months, when she was already gone.
Sometimes, when I’m missing Dianne the most, I scroll back to the recording and listen to her call my name. Of course, I always cry.
When I first discovered the recording, I hit the play button without thinking. Her voice could be heard throughout our house and my son’s head lifted quickly. He looked at me in confusion and then we burst into tears.
My mom said many days Dianne could barely make it from the bathroom to her chair without needing to sit down and catch her breath, but she sat the kitchen table for hours that last Christmas and made the sausage balls, kneading the meat and flour and cheese together and rolling them to put in the oven to be cooked.
“She just seemed so delighted she could do that,” Mom remembered. She grew quiet and I saw tears in her eyes. “Well, anyhow…” her voice trailed off and I knew she was trying to stay happy and not bring the mood of the day down.
On my phone is a video of my aunt opening a gift from her grand-nephew, my son. She could barely catch her breath, but she seemed excited and hugged him and told her how much she loved the gift.
Four days later my husband’s phone rang, and I heard him from upstairs.
“No! Oh no!” I heard emotion heavy in his voice.
He came downstairs and held the phone against his chest.
“It’s your mom,” he said.
I didn’t want to take the phone, but I did.
“Dianne died,” Mom said in a voice mixed with sadness and shock.
She’d called my husband first to make sure someone was with me when I was told, just as she had when my grandmother had died 15 years before.
Though I knew it was coming my head still spun when she said it and I had to sit in the floor because my legs didn’t seem to want to hold me.
I sat in my parents living room the other day.
The chair was empty.
The Southern accent couldn’t be heard.
I couldn’t kiss her soft cheek or try to squirm away when she blew “zerberts” (messy, slobbery kisses) against my cheek.
I couldn’t feel her arms around me or hear her laugh when one of the kids said something funny.
Somehow it feels a lot less like Christmas this year with her gone.
Still, I know she would scold us for dreading gathering without her.
So, we’ve promised each other to cook the sausage balls, decorate the tree, wrap the gifts and to cook the collard greens I forgot to get her last year, even though she asked.
We will drink hot cocoa while we watch her favorite Christmas movies: “It’s A Wonderful Life” and the black and white version of “A Christmas Carol.”
We will share the funny stories and laugh as we remember her.
We will, somehow, find the joy in the midst of sadness and enjoy those who are still with us because that is exactly what she would have wanted us to do.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to. Feel free to link your posts about
I am starting this post on Christmas night, cuddled up under a blanket with a heating pad because we chose not to light our fire since we were going to be gone most of the day, visiting my parents for Christmas. We have another heat source but it’s hard to get the house warm on cold nights like this with just the baseboard heat. It’s 18 degrees tonight and tomorrow (Friday) we are set to get a few inches of snow as well as ice. We are definitely lighting our fire tomorrow.
The Husband is off work for the next couple of weeks, and Little Miss is off school as well.
We don’t have any grand plans, other than going to see a light display at a golf course near us.
On Monday, The Husband took our new cat Cass up to an animal clinic about 45 minutes north to be neutered in the morning. The kids and I headed up in the afternoon to pick Cass up but the trip took longer since we had to run to the Wal-Mart near there to pick up a gift for my dad and some grocery items at the pickup area in the parking lot.
The wait to get those items turned out to be a lot longer than we had anticipated because of how busy it was since it was three days before Christmas. My son was driving and it was very nerve-racking for him (a new driver) to be driving in a packed parking lot while people walked to their cars, without even paying attention to the cars trying to get through the parking lot and back onto the street.
There were cars everywhere in this town, which is much bigger than where we live now and by the time we reached the road that would lead us to where we could pick up Cass, The Boy and I were both a bit on edge. I took over the driving to the animal clinic when we stopped to grab a couple slices of pizza but let The Boy drive again after we picked Cass up because it was getting dark and I can’t see as well in the dark as I once could.
We were given a cone to put on Cass’s head to keep him from licking or chewing at the stitches and it was while working to put that on him Monday night that I smelled something awful. Apparently, Cass was having some issues controlling his spraying because before I knew it, I smelled like cat urine.
It was on my clothes and somehow in my hair so I had to head up the stairs to take a shower and on my way up the stairs I mumbled, “Well I didn’t have getting cat pee in my hair on my bingo card for today.”
When we left the clinic, the woman at the front desk gave me a long list of guidelines for Cass. At the top of the list was to make sure he didn’t lick his wounds too much. Next, we were told to make sure he didn’t jump and leap around too much. Huh. Yeah right.
We have two archways (or whatever they are called) in our living room, high windows in our laundry room, and his food is on a counter, so the dog doesn’t eat it.
By the second day, he kept jumping on anything high to try to find a way out. On the third day he fell into a laundry basked under our laundry room window while trying to get to the window to see if it was a way for him to get out.
The day after Christmas, he climbed the glass doors in our living room — how, I have no idea.
Last night I found him in the other laundry room window and when I told him to get down he jumped about three feet, landing on top of the washer. I am beginning to think he’ll be safer when he can go outside and stalk birds or whatever he does out there.
Back to Sunday now and I am writing after Little Miss had a wildly fun sleepover with her friend, complete with sledding, cooking making, and general mayhem without devices other than the ring camera where they kept recording hilarious messages for me.
The friend is going home today as we try to beat another freezing rain winter storm coming in this afternoon.
It will continue into tomorrow and then there will be just rain.
This weekend has been very nice and cozy, though, and so much fun. It was fun to watch the girls have so much fun together. We still have another week with everyone off work/school, so there will hopefully be more of these fun moments.
Our Christmas was nice and quiet with my family visiting my elderly parents for the day.
I didn’t finish anything this past week but am reading My Beloved by Jan Karon and The Christmas Quilt by Jennifer Chiaverini. I might give up on The Christmas Quilt because it is more like being told the story instead of being immersed in the story.
My Beloved is not what I expected and while the story is a cute idea and there are sweet moments so far, it also seems oddly set up with individual very short chapters from the POV of different characters. I sort of wonder why Jan’s editors didn’t combine some of the chapters instead of making them separate chapters. I love Jan’s books and her writing, but this one simply isn’t clicking with me like most of her previous novels. I am withholding my final opinion until I have finished the book, though.
Coming up next week, I hope to read some more mystery books. I did not receive any new books for Christmas, which is okay because My Beloved was my birthday/Christmas gift and because I have sooo many books on my shelves already. I did receive a very nice journal/personal planner, though, that I am already starting to use.
Little Miss and I will be starting a new historical fiction book when our new year starts and I purchased fantasy books by Ted Dekker and his daughter for Christmas for her so I am hoping she will start one of those.
The Husband just finished a Cormac McCarthy book called Stella Maris.
I watched a few movies this past week, either with the kids or The Husband, including:
The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, The Thin Man, White Christmas, The Bishop’s Wife, The Benson Murder Case, Tenth Avenue Angel and part of It’s A Wonderful Life.
I also started Yankee Doodle Dandy with James Cagney for my Winter with Cagney movie event for the blog but had to stop it to go to bed. That movie is a lot longer than I realized. So far, I am enjoying it, even though it is a bit schmaltzy at times.
I also have to finish A Child’s Christmas in Wales today, which my brother recommended to me on Christmas Day. I got interrupted watching it and just remembered I haven’t finished it yet!
Erin (Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) and I host a monthly bookish link party called A Good Book and A Cup of Tea. This link-up is for book and reading posts or anything related to books and reading (even movies based on books!). Each link party will be open for a month. You can find that link up for this month here.
We are also hosting Comfy Cozy Christmas until the end of this week! As Erin said on her blog, “Anything holiday related – any December holiday – at all that strikes your fancy and you write about, please think about sharing on our linky.” You can find the link for that at the top of my page in the menu or here.
Each week, I host the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot with some great hosts. It goes live Thursday night but you can share any kind of blog posts (family-friendly) there until Tuesday of each week. You can check my recent posts on the sidebar to the right for the most recent link-party.
Now It’s Your Turn
What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this. You can copy my blog graphic to your computer if you want to participate in my link party or you can join the other awesome link-ups below.
Sleet was slamming against our windows and had been doing so for close to 90 minutes when I started writing this Friday night. It continued for another couple of hours until our driveway and streets were a thick layer of ice.
The first alert about a winter storm said we might receive up to eight inches of snow but then we were told we would get more ice than snow. It appears the report about the ice was right.
This unexpected storm scuttled our plans to go see a big Christmas light display Friday, so we stayed inside with the tree still lit, the fire burning in our woodstove, and an old movie on TV. Actually, we watched three old movies Friday — The Thin Man, Meet Me In St. Louis, and – uh-oh, a mystery one from the 1930s with William Powell that I don’t want to look the name up of now. I’ll do that for tomorrow’s Sunday Bookends post.
Today we are inside again as the leftover from the storm has made travel a little dicey or at least unpredictable. Little Miss has a friend over and they were looking forward to the light display but we feel safer hanging out at home. Luckily we still have a few more days to see the display.
We might say we are recovering from Christmas, but we really aren’t. Christmas wasn’t too big of a challenge since the kids, husband, and I simply headed over to my parents for pizza and wings on Christmas Eve and Christmas dinner on Christmas. We provided the pizza and wings and the dinner but none of it was too hard to make.
The Husband has more reason to be tired since he worked part of the week. Luckily, he is now off until January 5.
Earlier in the week, The Husband drove our new cat (Cass) to the vet to be neutered, and we went up in the afternoon to pick Cass up. It’s about a 45-minute drive to the clinic. Our son (The Boy) drove up and then we both became a bit overwhelmed with the Christmas traffic in the town we used to live in – which is much bigger than the town we now live in.
The worst was the Walmart parking lot, where we went to wait for a pickup order that included a new iPad for my dad.
I believe social media can be very evil, but Facebook has given my dad a way to connect with friends and family. His old iPad has been dying for a bit, so it was time for a new one for him.
He didn’t exactly act surprised when he opened it but he did act appreciative.
I’m sure he overheard Mom making the suggestion to me a couple of weeks ago. It’s funny because I had a similar idea about that being his gift this year.
My brother and his wife helped with it as well (a lot actually), it was my mom’s idea, and we drove to pick it up after I ordered it, so it was a joint gift.
Back to the cat — he is recovering well from his surgery, but has been desperate to get back outside. He cried and cried and yowled for the first couple of days, but then he got very quiet and kept lying on the floor looking sad as if he had given up hope of ever being let outside again. I decided to let him outside a bit today to cheer him up, and I think he was very happy at first — until he realized how horribly cold it was. He didn’t last long, but I think it was a relief to him to realize he had the freedom to come in and out again.
Now he’s back inside, curled up and happy to be in the warmth as he continues to heal.
When I let the cats out, I try my best not to worry about them being hit by the cars that sometimes fly by our house to take a shortcut to the local garden store.
Sometimes I would prefer to keep our cats inside all of the time, but they love to explore and hunt and mainly stay close to home. I have a feeling they won’t want to be outside much next week since we will have a stretch of days with temps that won’t even reach above 18!
Totally off the subject, but today I watched White Christmas by myself on my laptop and noticed things I don’t normally notice about the movie. For one, I never noticed how when Bing and Rosemary’s characters meet and start to argue, they keep inching closer to each other instead of farther away. The body language is so subtle yet makes it clear that the two feel a pull toward each other but are both stubborn and want to be right.
I noticed a lot more little details this time around that I don’t normally notice, maybe because I had the laptop so close.
I’ve been doing this a lot lately – watching movies on my laptop with a blanket and my heated rice pack. I pull the blanket up over my head and laptop and have a little heated comfort cocoon. The only days I don’t do it are when we have the fire roaring. Then it is too hot. I find this little cocoon very comforting and a chance to recharge mentally. Maybe I need to buy one of those heated igloos that restaurants use so people can sit outside on the patio in the winter. I could just sit in it while my family does whatever they do around me.
I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. Let me know in the comments how it went or if you received anything special as a gift.
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.
On Thursdays, I am part of the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot blog link party. You can find the latest one in the sidebar to the right under recent posts.
I also post a link-up on Sundays for weekly updates about what you are reading, watching, doing, listening to, etc.
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.
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.
I hope all who celebrate had a wonderful Christmas today.
I am scheduling this post ahead of time so I can spend time with my family and I hope you are able to do the same.
Let me hope this post goes better for me this week than last week when I posted the wrong featured blog AND forgot to change the code for the link up! Good grief! I was a mess! 😂😂
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.
Cat from Cat’s Wire is a bookworm, movie fan, crazy cat lady, armed with beads, cabs, wire and a very jumpy brain which loves to go down rabbit holes!
Rena from Fine, Whatever writes about style, midlife, and the “fine whatever” moments that make life both meaningful and fun. Since 2015, she’s been celebrating creativity, confidence, and finding joy in the everyday.
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!
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