It’s that time again! It’s the time of the year when Erin (Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) and I host the Comfy, Cozy Christmas Link Party.
This link up is open from Dec. 1 to January 5.
Posts you share don’t have to be specifically about Christmas. They can be about any holiday or celebration in the month of December and into New Year’s. They don’t have to be new posts either. They can be posts posted years ago even.
Some ideas for blog posts:
Movies you’ve watched, are going to watch, think others should watch
Books you’re reading related to the holiday or winter season
Activities you’re doing/did
Trips you took
Traditions you hold this time of year
Favorite holiday songs
Recipes you’ve made.
Etc.
Etc.
You can save our graphic with a right click and share it in your posts and link to us if you want to let others know about the link party, but it is not required.
My feelings about The Tale of Hill Top Farm by Susan Wittig Albert are mixed, and part of that is because I listened to others who had read it and said it was something it actually isn’t.
Many who recommended this book, and even a couple of the descriptions, suggested it was about Beatrix Potter — the children’s book author — acting as an amateur sleuth.
If you read the description on Goodreads, though, which I did not read before I read the book, Beatrix isn’t the sleuth. The pets in town are, however.
Here is that description:
The author of Peter Rabbit and other creature tales, Beatrix Potter is still, after a century, beloved by children and adults the world over. In this first Cottage Tale, Albert introduces Beatrix, an animal lover who has just bought a farm in England’s beautiful Lake District. As Beatrix tries to win over the hearts of her fellow villagers, her animal friends set out to solve a mystery all their own.
And that is what happens in this book. We read about Beatrix getting to know the villagers, trying to overcome a tragedy in her life, and trying to figure out where she is going to live in the village after the farm she’s purchased is already being lived in by the family that runs it. Meanwhile, there has been a possible suspicious death and the theft of a couple of objects and some money and the pets in the village decide to solve the crimes.
I had expected Beatrix to be the main character and for her to do some of the sleuthing. Instead, she is more of a background character when it comes to the mystery, though she does throw in a couple of tips to the other three or four characters from the village who are also subjects of this book. The animals, who talk amongst themselves but aren’t understood by the human characters, solve the crimes while the humans seem to mainly ponder things.
Beatrix actually doesn’t solve anything. In at least one case, the mystery is solved while she is there, but she is simply told what has happened.
And you know what? It just needs to be said. There are too many characters in this book. There were four or five points of view going on with just the humans and several more with rabbits, mice, cats, and a dog.
It was confusing. I couldn’t remember who said what to who because two of the female human characters seemed so similar. If even two characters had been dropped, it would have made things a lot easier to keep track of.
I have to agree with what a reviewer on Goodreads said about the book: “Less of a mystery and more of life in a small town with well-drawn characters and a sentimental fantasy of Beatrix Potter’s life in Sawrey.”
Does it being “less of a mystery and more of a life in a small town” make it a bad book?
No, but having too many characters and too much background information about characters that never coincided with the overall plot, did make it a less of an enjoyable read for me.
Even with not being a fan of all of the POVs and with it not being as much of an enjoyable read as I hoped, I am willing and interested in reading another book in the series.
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
Yesterday the kids and I went to see The Husband in the play version of It’s A Wonderful Life. Attending the play has become such a wonderful kick off to the Christmas season for us since he was also in the play last year.
This play is set up as a “radio play” where the characters are radio personalities presenting a play for an audience who only had access to a radio not a TV. This means the characters are reading from scripts but there are sound effects and voice changes that bring it all alive.
Each actor plays a couple of different characters so they have to change their voices or tones throughout. The Husband played four different characters but my favorite was Mr. Potter who I think he pulled off perfectly.
After the play an older man approached by husband and told him he had brought his blind adult son. The son thanked my husband and said the production came alive for him because of the voice changes and the sound effects added in.
My husband was so touched that the production meant that much to the young man, especially since there wasn’t a huge crowd there.
I hope more people attend the production today because the play version almost touched me more than the movie version, which I totally loved. I teared up a couple of times during it — especially at the end when George realizes how special his life is and how lost those in his life would be if he’d never been born.
It’s also interesting to note that Philip Van Doren Stern who wrote the original short story was born in the small town where my husband performed the play. He didn’t grow up there, but he was born there in 1900 and his father lived there for a time. (source Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Van_Doren_Stern)
If you don’t know the story, Stern wrote the short story for Christmas cards he and his daughter were sending out in 1943. He tried to get the story published but publishers didn’t pick it up so he self-published it. Later the short story was used for a full play and then for a screenplay for what has become one of the most famous Christmas movies of all time.
Now that we’ve seen the play, I feel like I can fully immerse myself in the Christmas season and am looking forward to making a list of Christmas movies to watch and Christmas books to read.
I thought I should mention here like I did in yesterday’s post that the girl kitten I’ve been writing about that was dropped off at our house a few weeks ago, is not actually a girl. We discovered some appendages this week that girl kittens do not have so our girl kitten is a boy kitten, but we are sticking with the name Cas.
It explains a lot about his behavior and his incessant yowling too.
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 will also be hosting Comfy Cozy Christmas starting tomorrow! 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.”
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.
Last night I finished The Tale of Hill Top Farm by Susan Wittig Albert.
The concept of this book was a good one — Beatrix Potter, the children’s book author as a amateur sleuth — but when I finally got into the book, she wasn’t actually doing much sleuthing. She wasn’t even really the main character at times. There also wasn’t a ton of real “mystery” involved.
Instead, Beatrix wandered around talking to people and drawing pictures and meeting children while other characters (including the talking animals who were only understood by each other) did most of the solving of the very simple mysteries. There was more than one POV while I thought Beatrix would provide the main one.
The main mystery was a bit of a letdown for me in the end, but overall, the book had some cute, sweet moments. This was definitely a very, very light mystery with no gruesome of violent aspects (other than an owl making a meal out of some rats) and that isn’t a bad thing at all.
I don’t know if I will read more of this series or not yet. I’ll have to be in the mood for a leisurely wander rather than a strict whodunit if I do. That happens a lot so I’m sure book two will be read sometime in 2026.
I’m still reading Rebecca by Daphne DeMauier and will probably finish it this week unless I get wrapped up in Christmas movies and specials.
I might finish Nancy Drew: The Triple Hoax but I won’t finish it in time for Nancy Drew November.
I’m not really liking it, so it isn’t a priority for me.
I just ordered a copy of Letters From Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien and it won’t be here until a week before Christmas, but I think that will be perfect timing.
I plan to read at least one more Agatha Christie before the year ends and I think it will be Partners in Crime, my first Tommy and Tuppence mystery.
I also hope to read another Murder, She Wrote book but that might wait until after my Christmas reads, which including reading at least parts of Shepherds Abiding by Jan Karon and Little Woman.
I watched my first James Cagney movie, Strawberry Blond, this week. I enjoyed it and will be watching it for my planned Winter of Cagney that I will be starting in January. I will be doing that at the same time I rewatch all of the Thin Man movies in order. It will be a fun month of old movies.
I also watched my second Bette Davis movie, Another Man’s Poison, (my first was All About Eve) this past week, and hope to watch more of her movies soon for Spring of Bette.
I watched The Barney Miller Show and episodes of TJ Hooker and Hunter with The Husband. We also watched a Murder, She Wrote episode. This week I hope to watch some more old movies, maybe a couple of Christmas movies, and some movies based on Agatha Christie books or stories. I also hope to watch at least one The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries episode so I can recap it on the blog.
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.
This past week was all thrown off by the Thanksgiving holiday and by all thrown off I mean I didn’t know what day it was most of the week.
Thursday felt like Friday, and yesterday felt like Saturday.
Here we are on actual Saturday, though, and The Husband is in a play this afternoon.
It’s a Christmas play — It’s A Wonderful Life. He was in it last year as well. It’s a “radio play” so they have scripts to help them along.
I was originally going to see the second performance tomorrow afternoon, but plans changed, and I am going today.
Yesterday and today Little Miss had her friend over for a sleepover. They made videos and ran around a lot and bounced on the air mattress we have for them to sleep on in our living room.
On Thursday, we all went over to my parents for Thanksgiving dinner. The Husband got up early that morning to start the turkey and later in the day I made sweet potato soup and mashed potatoes.
Little Miss wanted the sweet potato soup and had been asking for it for weeks, but when it came to dinner she filled up on turkey and never did eat it. My mom and I really enjoyed it, at least, and there was some left over for Little Miss to have some today.
The Boy ate a ton of food that day, which is very unusual for him. He’s not a big eater. He ate so much he was almost in a coma when it was time to go home a few hours later.
We watched The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, after dinner — well, part of it because The Boy and Little Miss had watched part of it earlier in the day. It is the extended version. Whew.
That morning, we discovered the young cat that had either been dropped off at our house or found its way to our house was not the girl we thought it was.
The Husband lifted her up that morning and discovered she had grown appendages “she” didn’t have before, which means the spaying appointment I set up will now be neutering appointment. We are sticking with the name Cas as it will work with either a boy or a girl.
This is the first boy cat we’ve had in 15 years but growing up I had almost all boy cats. It will be nice to have a boy cat again.
He’s fitting in well, but it does explain why all the other animals were sniffing his backside the other day. This must have been a rather recent development. Hmmmm..
Anyhow…moving on.
It looks like we could have our first snowstorm of the season by Tuesday. Forecasters still aren’t confident enough to say how much we might get, but some are saying “plowable” which I guess would be at least eight inches. Things could definitely change by then, though.
When we get snow here I am usually stranded until it melts because our driveway is so steep. I’m also much less confident driving in snow than I used to be. If my parents need me, though, all bets are off. They live about seven minutes down the road and I’m sure I could make it that far. Or hopefully.
I wouldn’t mind being snowed in this week, though. I love having an excuse not to leave the house. I like to make a cup of cocoa, get under a blanket with my rice pack, and watch an old movie like I did yesterday. It was so relaxing.
So what have you been doing?
Anything exciting?
I hope you can find time to do something you want to do today or this week!
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 everyone in the U.S. had a great Thanksgiving today (yesterday if you are reading this Friday). My small family spent the day with my parents and ate turkey prepared by my husband. He did a wonderful job. It was one of the best turkeys I’ve ever had at Thanksgiving. Little Miss and I made a couple of pumpkin pies and then I made potatoes and sweet potato soup (usually it’s sweet potato casserole, but Little Miss wanted something different. Then when it came to dinner she wouldn’t eat it but that’s another story. Kids!)
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!
I’m a story teller. Everyday, I make someone listen to me as I talk about how I caught my bus last minute, which YouTube video I watched, why my little brother made me laugh, or what I think about a politician who’s acting up. Throughout my youth, I would victimize my mom, siblings or a fellow school buddy for this purpose. When I graduated from university, it hit me that I would no longer meet the people I’d been seeing for the past four years! And of course, it was a given that they were gonna miss hearing about my adventures… 😛 Besides, I thought having a blog would be a great way to keep in touch. It’s also fun to read a piece written by someone you personally know or have been following for sometime.
Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up!
And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:
A friend of our family, of mine, died last Thursday.
I was already having a bit of a down day and struggling with a lot of memories and feelings from past events when I received the news that Shirley had died.
How dare Shirley die on one of those down days I have from time to time. Yes, I can say that with the utmost sarcasm, knowing that it would have cracked Shirley up if she heard me say it.
Shirley and I could exchange sarcastic retorts affectionately and easily anytime we were together, no matter how long it had been since we’d seen each other.
Her youngest daughter, Denise, and I have been friends since I was probably six or seven.
We visited the Davis family often when I was growing up and there was even a short time they lived with us, pitching their teepee in our backyard. Poor Gary, Shirley’s son, was the one who had to tell me when my 14-year-old dog died. My dad had gone to work and my mom was too emotional, if I remember correctly.
When I am down or feeling off kilter emotionally, I turn on either The Andy Griffith Show or The Dick VanDyke Show and on the day I heard Shirley died, I chose Dick VanDyke. I didn’t look at what the episode was about, I just clicked on it. I need laughter, and I needed it quickly.
The episode was entitled “Never Name A Duck.”
It was about Rob Petry, the main character, bringing home two baby ducks and Laura saying they couldn’t keep the ducks but then their son Richie saw the ducklings and begged to keep them. Rob and Laura agree but, sadly, the one duck, Oliver, dies. Stanley, the other duck, lives into adulthood but Laura and Rob notice one day that he is starting to look sick, similar to how Oliver did before he died.
Rob takes the duck to a vet and comes home without him.
Laura and Richie think Stanley has died, but Rob tells them he didn’t die; Rob just released him into a lake to be with other ducks because he was slowly dying in captivity. He didn’t belong in a human house. He belonged in nature with other ducks. It was what the vet suggested.
Richie is absolutely devastated and screams that if Stanley can’t live there, he doesn’t want to live there either. He runs from the living room, to his bedroom and slams the door.
Rob follows him and they have a heart-to-heart. He tells Richie he knows it hurts, but that by making Stanley stay in their home they were actually being selfish. Stanley was sad in their house. He needed to be with other ducks and in nature. That was his real home.
He asked Richie if he would want to take his goldfish out of its bowl and lay it on his pillow next to him at night.
“No,” Richie says tearfully.
“Why?” Rob asks.
“Because he’d die out of water,” Richie responds.
Rob explains that this was what was really happening to Stanley. He was slowly dying in their house.
In a similar way, we humans don’t belong on earth. Not really. This is not our ultimate home and we Christians believe our body is also temporary- a shell to hold our spirit or soul.
As Rob had this conversation with Richie, I immediately thought of Shirley.
Much like Richie didn’t want to let go of his duck, and I didn’t want to let go of my aunts and uncles and my grandparents and won’t want to let go of my parents one day, I don’t want to let go of Shirley.
I want Shirley here with us.
I want to hear her laughter and see her mischievous smile.
I want to watch her eat a whole watermelon drowned in salt.
I want to hear her preach again about the goodness of God despite all her family went through.
I want to hear her saying, “Oh, shut up, you” when I one-up her on the sarcasm level.
I want to hear her tell my parents, again, how much she loves them.
I have what Rob Petrh called selfish-love.
“I love Shirley. I want her here, so am I really being selfish?” I asked myself that day when I thought about this connection.
The answer that came to mind was, yes, I am selfish because Shirley is worshipping Jesus now.
She’s in his arms. Tom, her husband, and her children, Gary and Mechelle, are with her. They have surrounded her, and they are having what my family calls a group hug right now — a very long, very overdue group hug.
One day, a very, very long time from now, Denise will join them, so it is up to all of us to give Denise group hugs here on earth until God chooses to take her home.
It is selfish of me to want Shirley to leave all that beauty, all that glory, all that all-encompassing love and come back to all this pain and sadness here on earth.
She is where she was meant to be, created to be. Earth was never her permanent home, and it is not ours.
I once heard a story about a very young girl dying of cancer and shortly before she died, she took her mom’s hand and said, “Don’t worry, Mom. Heaven is closer than you think.”
Heaven is closer than we all think which means Shirley is also closer than we think.
Shirley is home, her real home, with her family and more importantly her creator. That home is also our home when we ask Jesus to forgive our sins and become our savior.
Shirley would want you to form a personal relationship with Jesus because she wants you there with her. Don’t make her eat all that watermelon on her own.
When it is time for you to leave this temporary home, when God decides it is your time, Shirley and Jesus are waiting for you.
They’ve left a seat for you, for all of us, at the table.
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
Before I get too far into this post, I want to mention that today is my husband’s birthday and my brother and sister-in-law’s anniversary.
Happy birthday to The Husband and happy anniversary to Butthead and Kim. Er….Bryan and Kim.
I have to say that I feel a bit bad telling this next story, considering it is my husband’s birthday, but I am going to do so anyhow because he’s a good sport. And please know that this story is shared in good humor, not as an actual complaint – since you can’t hear my tone which would be one tinged with laughter.
Last night he picked me up from my parents where I had been visiting them after he dropped me off. He suggested I sit in the back with our dog who tries to push her way into the middle console and bump against his arm while he’s trying to drive if there isn’t someone in the backseat with her.
I did so and when we got home, after dark mind you, my husband asked the dog if she was going to exit through the front door or would wait for me to move so she could exit through the back door. The dog stayed sitting next to me, so The Husband closed the door and walked into the house.
I thought he was going to go turn the outside light on and come back to help me with my bags, but instead when the dog and I got out of the car I found out we were totally alone in the driveway and backyard.
We’ve been married for 23-years and the man didn’t even open the door for me. Gasp! I was certain he would look out the back door to see if I was coming but after a few minutes, Zooma the Wonder Dog and I were still outside in the cold. I went inside and said, “Hey! Thanks a lot for leaving me!”
I found The Husband staring at The Avengers movie with the kids.
“I could have been eaten by a bear!” I told him.
“You wouldn’t have been eaten by a bear,” he insisted. “We’re located in a fairly safe neighborhood with a fairly well lit driveway. You were fine.”
For the record, we live on the end of a street at the far end of a tiny town, surrounded by the woods, and a couple of months ago Zooma the Wonder Dog had a stand off with a black bear in our backyard – a few hundred feet from where I was standing (alone and in semi-darkness).
“I just read a story about a black bear chasing a boy into a Dollar General in Pennsylvania!” I told him.
“What part of Pennsylvania?” he asked.
“Pittsburgh area but we still have bears around here you know!”
Chivalry is dead, ya’ll. Dead.
Something else that is also dead is my desire to worry about the number of books I am reading each year.
In 2026 I am simply going to read whatever I want and take as long as I want to read the books I choose. It isn’t that I worry about how many books I’ve read in a year too often anyhow, but sometimes I do find myself feeling bad I’m not reading more, usually because I am comparing myself to other bloggers or readers on social media.
It’s really silly to compare ourselves to others, especially at my age, but luckily it is a very brief comparison when I do so.
This year, I chose books I wanted to read, not books others said I should read, and I hope to do the same next year. I still want to list the books I read in my reading journal because I enjoy doing that and looking back at them at the end of the year, partially so I can recommend them (or not) to others, but I think next year I’ll simply list and not number. Or maybe I’ll just stop overthinking it? That might work too. *wink*
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 will also be hosting Comfy Cozy Christmas starting the day after Thanksgiving! 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.”
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.
I finished The Whispering Statue last week. It’s a Nancy Drew mystery and it had a lot of plot issues, but yet, it was also an interesting mystery, or had interesting aspects.
I am still reading Rebecca by Daphne De Maurier — a few chapters a week.
I added The Tale of Hilltop Farm by Susan Wittig Albert to break up the drama of Rebecca.
Here is a quick description of the book from online: “The author of Peter Rabbit and other tales, Beatrix Potter is still, after a century, beloved by children and adults worldwide. In this first Cottage Tale, Albert introduces Beatrix, an animal lover and Good Samaritan with a knack for solving mysteries. With help from her entourage of talking animal friends, Beatrix sets out to win over the human hearts of Sawrey, where she’s just bought an old farm–and plans to stay.”
Up soon I plan to read an Agatha Christie book but I haven’t decided which one yet.
I have been watching mostly old shows again but also movies with the kids who are making their way through the Marvel movies. This would be a first time for Little Miss (11) and many times for The Boy (19).
This past week it was The Avengers and Iron Man 3. I hate Iron Man 3 so I tried to do other things while it was on. It was like watching a train wreck. It is the worst of the series for the Iron Man part. We just skipped the second Thor movie (The Dark World) because it is also horrible.
I also started a Bob Hope movie called I’ll Take Sweden. Frankie Avalon is also in it and it’s ridiculous. I had to go to bed before I could finish it.
And I watched a couple of YouTubers this week, including The Cottage Fairy who has been gone for a long time after having a baby but put up a new video this week.
I’ve been listening to The Jack Benny Show at night before bed.
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.
I’m under a blanket as I write this while my 11-year-old daughter rips around the room on a hoverboard, my dog stares at me because she thinks I’m going to give her some of the chicken I was eating (I’m not. It’s gone.), and my husband rushes around the house cleaning because he is neater than I am.
Where is my 19-year-old son? Sleeping most likely.
At the end of his school career, I told him to take his time figuring out his next step in life, and he has taken that advice very seriously. *wink*
I’m about to make myself a cup of peppermint tea with local raw honey. (Update: The Husband made it for me.). I had to go back to peppermint after I tried an elderberry mixed tea that had so many other ingredients in it that it simply made me sick. One tea that makes me feel gross — small headache and icky stomach gross — is chamomile and it is in every single tea I get lately.
Elderberry blackberry? Yup..chamomile.
Apple Cinnamon Spice? Yup…chamomile.
Even the cold infusion ones add chamomile. What is the obsession with chamomile with these tea companies? Gah! Give me something without chamomile. Thank you very much!
Small, unimportant rant over.
This past week was uneventful and apparently gave me plenty of time to ponder tea concoctions and their overabundance of chamomile.
I worked on the fourth book in the Gladwynn Grant series, finally buckling down when even my own parents started asking me where the book was. To make sure I am on track my mom asked me yesterday, “You’re working on the book, right?” That isn’t exactly how she phrased it but close.
I told her I was. I even participated in a two-hour writing sprint with an author I follow to make sure I got a few hundred words in. I hope to have it out in February.
On Friday, The Boy, Little Miss and I went on a drive to get some more hours in for The Boy’s permit.
One of the main streets to get out into town involves a very challenging intersection where it is difficult to see around cars parked at a local bar and grill. The Boy pulled out, and a car came around the corner very fast, essentially almost out of nowhere, and we were almost t-boned. Miss New Jersey was non-too happy and let us know with a horn and a middle finger.
She, however, was most likely speeding around the corner, like most cars are.
What’s silly is that we always go out that way when there is another street we could go up and then around on to get to the same street. Instead, we all arrive at that intersection, our stomachs in knots and worrying we are going to get hit by a car or one of the many tractor trailers that come blazing around that corner. I don’t know why we haven’t, in the five years we’ve lived here, learned to go up and around, but we haven’t. I, however, am going to start doing that because I don’t relish the idea of being slammed into on the driver’s side by drivers who refuse to slow down.
The rest of our drive to a small town about ten minutes away was uneventful. There is nothing in the town to visit so we simply went there, turned around, and drove home, trying to figure out the speed limit on the stretch of highway right next to our local state police barracks.
My dad tells me it’s 55 unless otherwise marked but I don’t trust our local state police to hold to that old adage and figure they’d tell us it was marked a mile back and we were breaking the law.
One driver decided the speed limit should be more as they passed us while we were going 55 but at least the driver did it in a legal passing zone. It offered yet another learning opportunity by reminding The Boy to let up on the accelerator when someone passes so they can get by whether they are doing it legally or not. No need to create even more of a potential for an accident.
Before I forget, I’ve been mentioning in various blog posts that we had a cat with an injured back paw and were going to be taking her to the vet. Luckily, she started walking again normally right before we were supposed to take her and seems to be doing fine now. It took two weeks for her foot to heal completely.
As for the kitten who was dropped off at our house, or somehow found us, we are keeping her and will be getting he spayed in December. Please pray with me that she doesn’t find a boyfriend in that timeframe and become “in the family way” shall we say. I would prefer not to have a litter of kittens to find a home for before we get her spayed.
She is a crazy cat who likes to climb the glass door in our living room for some odd reason. She also yowls a lot, hides under chairs and tries to grab our feet when we walk by, and annoys the older cats just by breathing and being in the house.
Jumping subjects again but AI — yeah….I am not a fan. Not in the least. This week I found out the top song in Christian music right now is an AI artist.
I became physically ill at that news and at the people defending it by saying God can use anything to get his message across.
People, listen to me. AI is Artificial Intelligence. There is no soul behind it. There is no human who is expressing their worshipful praise to our Heavenly Father.
There is simply a computer mimicking other songs and, to me, mocking what true worship should be.
This is horrific to me, and I will not be listening to AI worship music at anytime. I am so worried that real artists will start to use it too which, again, makes me sick to my stomach.
On the same wavelength, I am so disgusted with indie authors or traditional publishing houses who are using AI created images to portray humans on the covers of books. Stop it. Just please. Not only do these fake models have nothing behind their eyes — no soul, no feeling, nothing — the photos look cheesy as all get out.
I will not pick a book up with a cover like that because who knows if the person really wrote what is inside.
Now, I am not including illustrated books in this rant. My Gladwynn book covers have illustrated art that I put there piece by piece. Many other designers do the same. This doesn’t bother me, even if I am not a huge fan of all the animated/illustrated romance covers out there.
The AI looking faces with their soulless stares creep me out to no end.
And the advertisers using AI models for ads where someone is speaking? Stop that too. I’m so disturbed.
I am also not a fan, in the least, of AI audiobooks and will not buy them. If I see an indie author has offered one of their books for sale as an audiobook, I always listen to see if the voice sounds like a real person. If it doesn’t, I’m out.
All of this AI creation and AI pushing has led me even further into the desire to go old school in my life. My husband and I have a huge collection of CDs and we have a record player/CD player/cassette player/radio that we can use to play those CDs. It’s nice to have the songs on my phone too but sometimes I just want the phone to be put away so I can pretend I’m in the 90s again without the crazy hair-sprayed bangs.
I find myself reaching for old music, old movies, and old books, knowing they were not created with AI. Sure, some of the old music might include auto tune or changes by a computer but at least it started out with a real human.
Old movie makers might have used practical effects to create scenes but, again, those were real humans figuring out how to set it all up to create the look our outcome they wanted. It wasn’t someone being lazy and punching a bunch of information into a computer and waiting to see what it spit out.
I’m worried about AI and what it means to our future and our humanity, as you can clearly see. I’m doing all I can to stay away from AI and use my brain and hope to make my children do the same, especially after I heard this week that developers are trying to create AI friends for children. Oh heck no. It’s hard for my daughter to find friends while being homeschooled but I will send her to public school before I will ever let her have an “AI friend.” That’s like opening up the portal to hell to me.
I’m done with my rant now. Ha!
Now I am going to go read a physical book (even though I do still enjoy my Kindle), sip some peppermint tea with no chamomile, and later watch a movie made before 1960 to help me feel a little more grounded.
What are you going to do to feel more grounded on this fine Saturday afternoon? Or whatever day/afternoon it is when you read this?
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 can’t remember if I mentioned my injured cat on one of these posts or not but I thought I’d update that the cat with the injured paw is doing much better. In fact, she started walking on the sore foot again yesterday for the first time, the day before we were set to take her to the vet.
A new kitten was dropped off at our house a couple of weeks ago and she is also doing well, and we have not found her family so far, so it looks like she’ll be staying with us.
I told the kids, and my husband, that this is the last pet though. Three cats and a dog who want to go in and out all day and two cats who either chirp or yowl, plus the three cats currently fighting with each other is quite enough for me.
If any other cat gets dropped off at our house, they are going to the local no-kill shelter. There is no more room at our inn for stray pets.
Don’t get me wrong — I love the cats and our dog — I just can’t handle worrying about anymore animals.
With all that being said, let’s move on to introducing our hosts for this link up!
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!
My blog is a wonderful way to reflect on life changes i.e., work commitments, getting older, children leaving the nest…. (then, returning, ha-ha), and relationships – the list goes on. My writing style is authentic and down-to-earth, probably my North East of England roots.
My mum worked in “high fashion” throughout my youth, which ignited my love of all things “couture”. Most days, after school, I would go to wait for her at her place of work. There was always the latest copy of Vogue and Marie Claire to read. I’d still rather read a physical copy than a digital one. This is partly because I don’t like to overdo being online. I enjoyed wandering through the classy showroom wafting through the new stock of the season, thrilled by the beautiful colours, sumptuous materials and wonderful cut of cloth. Sometimes, I would be asked to try things on for customers, which I loved. This is where I earned my pocket money. It awoke something in me that I have never switched off.
Thank you for joining our link-up!
And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:
