Sunday Bookends: Changing leaves, more mysteries (yes again), and my parents’ cats

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Sunday Bookends8 Comments

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.

This week I’m joining up with Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer, Deb at Readerbuzz, and Kathyrn at The Book Date.



What’s Been Occurring

The leaves have almost all fallen off here in Pennsylvania which means it is time for leaf jumping for our youngest and maybe for our oldest too if the youngest can convince him to jump with her.

I don’t remember jumping in piles of leaves very often when I was younger but my kids have always loved it. Little Miss raked some leaves yesterday to get ready for more jumping today and as she raked, my parents’ cat, Molly, watched quietly from the porch. Looking at Molly I thought about how little I know about my parents’ current cats. My parents don’t seek out pets. Any cats my parents end up with were dropped off at the non-working barn on the property or wandered up from the neighbors who seem to refuse to spay or neuter.

Two cats, both now passed away, were mine/ours. When my parents first moved to my grandmother’s house when I was in college, our all-black at Zorro came with us. We had moved from my great-grandparent’s house across a little creek (over the creek and through the woods was how we got to grandma’s house) so I was worried Zorro would try to walk through the woods back to our old house, but, as far as I remember, he never did.

Between college and when I got married, I lived at that old house (built in the mid-1800s) and had a cat named Four that I rescued from my pet-hoarding mother-in-law’s house. The cat once belonged to my sister-in-law who adopted pets and got rid of them like she did old shoes. The cat was mostly gray but had a number 4 in orange in the gray for on the top of her head. When my sister-in-law had her, she peed on my ex-brother-in-law’s side of the bed because she hated him. I wish my sister-in-law had seen that as an omen since she didn’t see his drug use and abuse as one and remained with him for years until he cheated on her after baby number five.

My parents took Four in and when my aunt moved in she fell in love with Four.

Both Four and Zorro are gone now and I miss them terribly.

When I was in college someone dropped a cat off at my parents/grandmother’s house and I named the him before my parents and grandmother could even consider sending him to the shelter. I knew if I named him, it would be harder for them to get rid of him. I named him Leonardo after Leonardo DiCaprio because he was very popular at the time – Romeo and Juliet and Titanic had both come out that year.

Mom said there was no way she was going to go out on the back porch and yell “Leonardo!” but she did for the next several years, including one week when he went missing and we all thought he died somewhere. Instead, my dad went to the small granary where he stores lawn equipment and various other items and a skinny cat darted out and ran to the patio. Mom said, “Well, what cat is that? It’s not Leonardo. He’s too skinny.”

Poor fat Leonardo had been locked in the granary for almost a week and had lost a ton of weight.

I always wanted to pet Leonardo but he had no interest in letting me. In fact, the only one he would let pet him was my 88 year old grandmother who sat calmly in her chair on the deck to enjoy the sun. He would curl up next to her and she’d rub his head. She was not a animal person either. I never remember her ever having a pet when I grew up. Leonardo loved her though.

Anyhow, back to my parents’ current cats. They are Buzz, a gigantic, fluffy, orange beast who looks like a Main Coon, and Molly, a black and white polydactyl. I visit them once or twice a week but don’t know the cats well because they are usually hiding from Zooma The Wonder Dog when we visit which means I can’t sit and really learn about them. I’ve only managed to pet Molly once.

Buzz is almost feral, though, so I wouldn’t get to know him anyhow. My dad is the only one who can pet Buzz and the one Molly will come right up to. I think her tendency to run when we are there and her usual fear of us is why I was surprised she watched us in the yard yesterday. Zooma was even with us, which made it even more surprising. I think both Zooma’s smell and eyesight were broken because she never saw Molly or chased after her like she usually does.

By the way, none of the cats we’ve ever had have been able to be inside cats since my mom is actually very allergic to cats. They make her itch all over.

What I/we’ve been Reading

I am still reading The Case of the Innocent Husband by Deborah Sprinkle and Handcrafted Murder by Isabella Alan. I will finish The Case of the Innocent Husband this week.


I have put the Lilian Jackson Braun book on the backburner because I would really like to read The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood to see what it is like.

After that I would like to finish The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, which I recently started.

Little Miss is reading Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone at night (I’m trying to convince her to also read it during the day. Not going so well.). Some nights she and I are reading The Four Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright and during the school day we are reading Johnny Tremain which we are both enjoying. Last week we painted pumpkins while listening to it on Audible, but normally I read the book to her as part of our school day.

The Husband is reading Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie.

The Boy and I will be starting The Hound of the Baskerville by Arthur Conan Doyle this week after suffering through Beowulf, which I actually just read the summary of. I’m not going to lie about that.

What We watched/are Watching

This past week I rewatched parts of Rear Window so I could write about it for my blog post and then I watched a lot of Murder She Wrote.

The Husband and I watched an episode of the new Frasier show as well. I started watching Only Murders in the Building now that we have a Hulu subscription and then made The Husband watch the first episode with me. We are hooked and I can’t promise I won’t watch more of the show without him since he often has night meetings and I am impatient to find out what happens.

I  hope to watch some more old movies this week in addition to Dial M for Murder that I am watching for the Comfy, Cozy Cinema.


What I’m Writing

Still working on Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree and having fun.

On the blog I shared:

Photos from Last Week

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.

Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot! Come Link Up With Us

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings11 Comments

Welcome to another Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot hosted by Marsha in the Middle, Melynda from Scratch Made Food & DYI Homemade Household, Sue from Women Living Well After 50, and me.  Look for the link party to go live on Thursdays at 9:30pm EDT. 

This is a blog link-up where we not only allow you to share your past posts but we encourage it. So share away!

This week’s most clicked were:

|| A New Look and Jellicle Cats Tablescape by Thrifting Wonderland ||

My highlights for the week are:

|| The Hen and The Egg by Cat’s Wire ||

|| Hocus Pocus Pea Soup by Serenity You ||

|| Afternoon Tea At The Globe Theatre by Southwest Rambler ||

I’m so glad you are here and participating in our weekly link-up of family-friendly, fun, educational, interesting, crafty, fashionable, and whatever else posts. I hope you’ll tell your followers about our post (feel free to copy and paste the graphic) and visit the blogs in the link-up. 

Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family friendly. You can link up posts from last week or even from years ago. You can share up to three links each week.

We are always looking for additional hosts so let us know if you want to help out and we are also looking for more links from fashion bloggers so let your fashion bloggers know!

Also, please take the time to visit the other blogs on the link-up and meet some new bloggers!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

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Comfy, Cozy Cinema: Rear Window

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Comfy Cozy Cinema 2024, everyday musings11 Comments

“Nothing has caused the human race so much trouble as intelligence .” – Stella from Rear Window

Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are watching Comfy, Cozy movies this September and October and this week we watched Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window – or rewatched for me.

Rear Window is one of Hitchcock’s more well-known and praised movies because of the intricacy of the story, the attention to detail, and the masterful storytelling that makes the viewer as desperate as the main character to find out what happens.

Laid up with a broken leg, our main character, photojournalist Jeff Jefferies (Jimmy Stewart) is stuck in a two-room apartment looking out on all his neighbors on the other side of his apartment complex.

It’s like he has a bunch of TV channels in each window to watch. There’s always something on. He uses a pair of binoculars to watch what they’re doing part of the time and part of the time he can see them with the naked eye.

There is a newlywed couple who are – ahem – getting to know each other; a couple who appear to be arguing; a woman who lowers her dog down to do his business in the little yard below each day; an athletic dancer who likes to stretch in front of her window; a lonely woman who eats her dinners alone; and many other characters for Jeff to watch.

One night he wakes up in his wheelchair, where he has been sitting for the whole movie, because he hears a scream and breaking class. He can’t figure out where the sounds came from and drifts back to sleep but later, when he wakes up again, he notices the one neighbor – the jewelry salesman who argued with his wife — acting very mysterious.

The neighbor in question, Lars Thorwald, (Raymond Burr) starts going in and out of his apartment with a suitcase. It’s around 2 a.m. when this starts at it’s pouring out. Jeff can’t figure out what that’s all about and struggles to stay awake to watch the man but finally succumbs to exhaustion.

I should mention that Jeff has a girlfriend, Lisa, (Grace Kelly) who is absolutely perfect, but he is making all kinds of excuses not to marry her and one of those excuses is that she won’t enjoy traveling with a journalist.

He tells his nurse (Thelma Ritter) and Lisa about it on their separate visits, but both seem to think he just has a bad case of cabin fever.

As he continues to ponder it all and notices that the man’s wife is no longer in the apartment, Jeff pulls out the zoom lens of his camera and watches the man cutting something up, putting it in bags, and carrying it out. Now he’s starting to really get antsy about what he’s witnessed.  It isn’t until Lisa is over one night and he’s telling her what he thinks that she begins to get a little interest as well. What piques both their interest is how the man is tying up a trunk and removing the mattress from the room.

Soon the nurse, Stella, is also pulled in, and all three of them begin to speculate what really happened.

Before long Jeff has Stella and Lisa acting as willing spies for him to find out what really happened.

If you want suspense then this the right movie for you. It is one of Hitchcock’s most suspenseful and nail biting movies.

The movie is based on a short story by Cornell Woolrich. I read an essay online (the author of which I couldn’t find, but it did say it wasn’t AI) that said this movie didn’t attempt to copy the story but instead recreated the plot based on the idea of it.

I did find a summary of the story and the ending is different in some ways to the movie, but with the final outcome being the same.

This writer, as other critics, point out that one aspect of this film that makes it so brilliant is that the viewer knows as much as Jeff does during the movie. We, the viewer, are watching it all unfold as he is and are seeing it from his same vantage point. We aren’t taken into apartments where he isn’t or into scenes that he isn’t looking at from his window. We are a participant in the film, so to speak.

Rear Window was filmed on a budget of $1 million but pulled in $36 million and became the top grossing film of 1954.

According to the site, All The Right Movies, the original story was based on a high-profile murder case in 1924 in Sussex England where a man named Patrick Mahon — committed a crime – well, I won’t tell you what happened in case you haven’t seen Rear Window.

Stewart had already been in one Hitchcock movie before this one (Rope) and would film two others afterward – Vertigo and The Man Who Knew Too Much.

For this film he was anxious to work with Hitchcock and said he wouldn’t take a salary but would take part of the film’s profits, which I think worked out very well for him. While the two got along, there were also times they spoke very little to each other, according to other actors who worked with them.

Wendell Corey, who played Detective Doyle in the movie, said, “Jimmy and Hitch would communicate in unspoken glances, and Jimmy would give him a steely look if Hitch said something he didn’t like. The only direction I ever saw Jimmy take was ‘the scene feels tired’ – there was steel under all that mushiness.”

Corey wasn’t a fan of Stewart in some ways. He was a nice guy, he said, but claimed he was also very arrogant on the set of Rear Window.

Others didn’t apparently didn’t hold this assessment and to me I think it was Corey who had the arrogance issue.

I thought it was interesting that Stewart’s wife asked to be on set during the filming of this movie because of Grace Kelly. According to trivia on All The Right Movies, “Grace Kelly may have been a little too friendly for some people, though – especially James Stewart’s wife. In 1954, Kelly had a reputation for having affairs with her leading men and, after she told a magazine she thought Stewart was one of the most attractive men she’d ever met, Stewart’s wife, Gloria, insisted on being on the set every day to keep an eye on things.”

Rear Window was Stewart’s favorite film of those he worked on Hitchcock with.

“The wonderful thing about Rear Window is that so much of it is visual,” he said in an interview. “You really have to keep your eyes open in the film, because it’s a complicated thing. This was my favorite film to make with Hitch.”

One more piece of trivia that had me snickering was that Hitchcock made the bad guy in this film (Again, I’ll keep it quiet on who the real bad guy is) look and act like David Selznick who produced Rebecca with Hitchcock. Hitchcock said Selznick interfered so much on that film he disowned it. In Rear Window he got his revenge by making the guilty party look like the producer he couldn’t stand.

I love the trivia behind the making of movies, as you know if you’ve read any of my previous posts, so I could go on and on about it. I won’t though. Instead, I’ll point you over to Erin’s blog for her views on it:

Keeping with the Hitchcock and Grace Kelly movies, we will be switching up our movie lineup next week and watching Dial M For Murder. To explain why we are choosing to watch this instead of Murder by Death, I’ll refer to Erin’s well-written explanation, which she also shares on her blog today: https://crackercrumblife.com/2024/10/17/comfy-cozy-cinema-rear-window/

“We were originally going to watch a movie I chose, Murder by Death. I chose it because I read that it was funny and because it has Maggie Smith in it but I didn’t do much research on it other than that.

 However, after doing some reading it looks like it could be considered problematic so we are going to scrap that one and trade it for Dial M for Murder instead. It is probably not a bad movie, but a movie that didn’t meet the goal of what was trying to be achieved – it was actually trying to shine a light on racism and homophobia, and no one mentions the ableism but I think I read that is in there too, that was prevalent in Hollywood and the world, but instead just looks like it is in fact all of those things itself.

Anyway, we decided to watch Dial M for Murder for Comfy Cozy Cinema, since we are trying to be cozy and snug with this fun movie watching challenge.  I think both of us plan on watching Murder by Death at some point though, whether it is together or just on our own.”

Here is the rest of the full list of movies we are watching or have watched.

I’m also including a link to my blog posts up from this year’s Comfy, Cozy Cinema, at the top of the page under the heading Movie Impressions.

Before I close out for today, I wanted to mention that we did pick a winner for our Comfy, Cozy Giveaway – Yvonne – and she has been notified! Thank you to all of you who entered the giveaway, followed our blogs, Etsy and Substack and I hope you will stick around and have some fun with us as we write about books, movies, and our lives.

If you end up writing about Rear Window or any of the other movies we are watching, please feel free to link up with our linky. You can add a link to the link if it is open, even if it is for a different movie.

Lisa H. 7:59 PM (1 hour ago) to me

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Book review/recommendation: Move Your Blooming Corpse by D.E. Ireland

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn book reviews, books and reading, everyday musings11 Comments

My 10-year-old daughter picked out a hardcover copy of Move Your Blooming Corpse by D.E. Ireland for me at a used bookstore about a month ago.

As soon as I saw that cover, I had a gut feeling I was going to like it. Luckily my gut was not wrong. As soon as I saw that cover and title I wanted to know if it would feature the characters from My Fair Lady since I knew the title was alluding to the famous line Eliza Doolittle yells out in the movie. If you haven’t seen the movie, you’ll have to look it up.

When I read the title of the series on the front (An Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins Mystery), I was giddy with delight to know that it was based on the same characters.

This was a delightful, fun, and engaging mystery that takes place – as the inside cover says – in the Edwardian racing world. It is a very fast-paced story with very few slow scenes.

The book starts with Eliza Doolittle and Professor Henry Higgins at a horse race to cheer on Eliza’s father’s horse, which he co-owns with a group of about 10 other people.

When a murder occurs after the race it seems to be an isolated incident but future developments show that someone is after the members of the horse-owning syndicate. The question is – why?

Woven into the murder mystery is an underlying story of women’s suffrage as women fight for their right to vote in England.

The main characters – Eliza, Henry, Arthur (Eliza’s father), and Freddy (Eliza’s “boyfriend”) are very likable and fun, much like the characters in My Fair Lady. I will say that Henry Higgins was much more likable in this book than the film since I only wanted to throttle him a few times in the book instead of almost the entire time in the movie.

I loved the quick wit of the characters and how closely they mirrored the wit and charm of the characters in the movie. The movie is based on the 1957 Broadway Musical, which was based on the 1914 play, Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw.

The back-and-forth, quick-paced conversations between the characters, the complex mystery, and the well-developed side characters made this one a very fun read for me.

I was very excited to see there are four other books in the series. This was the second book in the series but I didn’t feel like I’d missed something by not reading the first. I also liked how the plot and outcome of the first book weren’t given away in this book, which means you don’t have to read the series in order to understand what is going on in each book.

For those who are not fans of romance in books, there is very little in this one, and the romance that is there is so minor and secondary that it’s barely a blip on the romance meter. For those who are not fans of swearing, there is, I think, only one or two minor swear words. For those who are not a fan of graphic descriptions, this book will also work for you because there are no graphic descriptions of any of the crimes.

As a side note – the cover art for the Kindle version of this book is hideous and amateur-looking to me. The cover on the hardcover/library version that I bought is – dare I say it? Delightful. So if you go to look for the Kindle edition, please don’t run away. I promise the book is much better than the cover that is shown.

Have you read this book or any of the others in the series?


Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Was Assigned To Read In School

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings27 Comments

|| Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. ||

This week’s theme is: Books I Was Assigned to Read in School (These can be books you loved or hated. Or just tolerated. Bonus points if you give us a tiny review of your thoughts!)

While I was looking up books to jog my memory on some of the books I read (I remembered many of them but was trying to get the list to ten), I found a post by a teacher on a forum lamenting the fact that students no longer want to read novels and are pretty much only interested in getting the grade, not learning. They don’t want to take the time to read the novels and learn from them and that is heartbreaking to me. Sure, some of these books were torture for me to push through, but the lessons in them were important and if a teacher hadn’t said to me, “You’re reading this or you won’t pass this class,” then I might have avoided them. That would have been a shame.

I’m glad I’ve exposed my kids to some classic books, even if they’ve whined quite a bit about it. Anyhow, I’ll step off my soapbox now and just list those books I was assigned in school.

  • Hiroshima by John Hersey – about the atom bomb being dropped on Hiroshima, Japan to end World War II. For a AP English course. Horrific, nauseating, and horrifyingly eye-opening for me.
  • The Awakening by Kate Chopin for AP English. Hated it but may suffer through it one day again to see if I hated it as much as I think I did. I probably will.
  • 1984  by George Orwell  – for AP English. Scared the living daylights out of me. Scares me more even now as I watch it unfold around me.
  • Lord of the Flies by William Golding. For 9th or 10th grade English. Disturbed me. Disturbed me worse when I read it two years ago with my son for his high school English.
  • To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I read this in sixth or seventh grade and then was assigned it in eighth grade and when the teacher found out I’d already read it she was surprised. I couldn’t get into it until my mom started to read it to me in her Southern accent. It became my favorite book. Read it again with my son two years ago for English. It impacted me even more the second time. So much so that I sobbed through half of it. It’s still my favorite book.
  • Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck – I don’t remember a ton about this book except it was sad and I didn’t like it.
  • A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickins. I don’t think we actually read this entire book. What we did read was okay for me but when I tried it again for eleventh grade English with my son we both ended up avoiding it and switched gears.
  • Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. I’m not sure this counts as a book because it is a play but I had to read it and with the help of translation by my teacher, I ended up liking it quite a bit. I also liked Taming of the Shrew.
  • Silas Marner by George Elliot. My son and I read this for his English class so I am going to count it for school, even though it wasn’t my school. I ended up like it much more than I thought I would.
  • The Year of Miss Agnes by Kirkpatrick Hill. This is another one I didn’t have to read but was assigned reading for my daughter for her history curriculum last year. We both really enjoyed and – yet again – I cried through part of it.

Have you ever read any of these?

Sunday Bookends: Adventures with the parents, fall foliage, and reading more mysteries

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends35 Comments

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.

This week I’m joining up with Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer, Deb at Readerbuzz, and Kathyrn at The Book Date.


What’s Been Occurring

Yesterday Dad, Little Miss, and I took my mom leaf peeping before all our leaves are gone. We didn’t have a very pretty year because of the warmer, dry temps we had in August and part of September but we did see some pretty trees on our drive.

We drove on some back roads (a.k.a. dirt roads) near my parents and eventually ended up at a house and former farm where some of my dad’s distant family used to live.

Throughout my whole life anytime we decided to go for a drive around the area or anywhere else, what normally would have been a routine or sightseeing trip became a weird adventure. My parents are 80 now so I thought our days of adventure were over but once again a simple leaf peeping trip became a little weird. First we passed a field of modern art sculptures all lined up in a field – sort of weird.

And when we stopped at the distant relative’s house things also got very weird.

We didn’t know who still lived at the house Dad used to visit as a kid, so Dad climbed out of the car and disappeared over a hill between the house and garage for a bit while he looked for the homeowner. While waiting for him, Little Miss, Mom and I watched another car rip into the long driveway, continue between two trees and stopped near our car. I rolled my window down and apologized for being in the way but the woman frowned and just said, “That’s fine.”

She went into the house without even asking why we were in her drive. I decided it was time to look for Dad in case she was really ticked off at us for being there, so I climbed out after telling my mom that the woman looked very familiar. I thought she looked like the manager of our local Dollar General.

A few minutes later, my dad and another man were walking from the back of the house, up the hill, and the woman, who had left the house to put the dog on a lead, marched toward my dad with her finger pointing at him and said, “You get your car out of my driveway!”

I panicked. Our trip was taking a very dark turn and I wasn’t sure how I was going to get my dad away from the crazy woman. But Dad was smiling and so was the man. I couldn’t see the woman but then she was patting my dad on the shoulder and I realized she was messing with my dad – probably how he picks on her when he stops in at the Dollar General.

In the end, we all had a good conversation and Dad shared some memories of visiting the former farm years before – like when he was 12 or 13.

After that, we took the long way home, and Little Miss and I spent the afternoon having dinner with my parents before heading home.

Today I have to pick up The Boy from a friend’s house and we will stop for lunch at my parents on the way back. Hopefully, we don’t have another weird adventure.  

What I/we’ve been Reading

The Case of the Innocent Husband (A Mac and Sam Mystery Book 1), Murder Handcrafted by Isabella Alan, and The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler.

The Secret of Red Gate Farm by Carolyn Keene (A Nancy Drew Mystery)

The Cat Who Brought Down the House by Lilian Jackson Braun

The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood

Little Miss is reading the first Harry Potter book at night. I love that she’s reading but she starts too late at night and then I have to tell her that it’s time for bed and she tries to make me feel guilty by saying things like, “But I only have 15 minutes of the chapter left to go!”

Stupid Kindles and their ability to tell you how many minutes of a chapter you have to go.

We are also reading The Four-Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright on some nights. For school/during the day we are reading Johnny Tremain.

The Husband just finished The Labours of Hercules by Agatha Christies and is getting ready to read book 99. He is going to read The Satanic Verses by Salaman Rushdie for book 100.

What We watched/are Watching


Last week I watched a lot of Lovejoy and Murder She Wrote, Blithe Spirit with Erin for our Comfy, Cozy Cinema, and Reading Rainbow for old time’s sake.

What I’m Writing

I am still writing Gladwynn Grant Shakes The Family Tree and announced on Instagram that I will be pushing off the release date to 2025 so I can take some more time on it. I was pushing myself too hard to get it done before the end of October and now I realize that I am stressing myself out about a book that I am not under a publishing contract for and that I am writing more for fun than anything else.

If anyone would like to read books one or two, though, you can find them here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C1KSQJXP

On the blog last week I didn’t share a ton since I was working on the book, but here is what I did share:

What I’m Listening To

I was listening to Ever After by Karen Barnett but I am not a big fan of the narrator so not sure I’ll finish it.

Photos From Last Week

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.

Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot: Come Link Up With Us!

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Weekend Traffic Jam8 Comments

Welcome to another Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot hosted by Marsha in the Middle, Melynda from Scratch Made Food & DYI Homemade Household, Sue from Women Living Well After 50, and me.  Look for the link party to go live on Thursdays at 9:30pm EDT. 

This is a blog link-up where we not only allow you to share your past posts but we encourage it. So share away!

Remember when I was all like, “I can’t wait for fall weather! I want to cozy under my blankets and read a book!”

Yeah, well, fall weather is one thing. Winter-like weather in October is another. This past week our temps dropped close to the 30s and I was a bit shellshocked by it. Luckily I did have a warm blanket and a book to survive it and didn’t have to leave the house too much for any appointments or other events.

How is the weather where you are?

We had some great links this week for our link up. Did you get to check some of them out?

Here is our most clicked for the week:

|| Let’s Think Fall Table and Nosegay In the Den by Thrifting Wonderland ||

And here are my highlights for the week:

|| Bushels of Fun with Apple Volcanoes, Poison Apples and More by Our Grand Lives ||

|| Autumn Adventures in Somerset: Our Weekly Postcard by Deb’s World ||

|| September: A Month of Weddings by Fine Whatever Blog ||

I’m so glad you are here and participating in our weekly link-up of family-friendly, fun, educational, interesting, crafty, fashionable, and whatever else posts. I hope you’ll tell your followers about our post (feel free to copy and paste the graphic) and visit the blogs in the link-up. 

Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family friendly. You can link up posts from last week or even from years ago. You can share up to three links each week.

We are always looking for additional hosts so let us know if you want to help out and we are also looking for more links from fashion bloggers so let your fashion bloggers know!

Also, please take the time to visit the other blogs on the link-up and meet some new bloggers!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

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Comfy, Cozy Cinema: Blithe Spirit (1945)

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Comfy Cozy Cinema 202410 Comments



Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are watching Comfy, Cozy movies this September and October and this week we watched the 1945 version of Blithe Spirit.



This is a movie my husband and I had started a few months ago and didn’t finish up because we got interrupted and distracted by life, so when Erin suggested it for our Comfy, Cozy Cinema, I was all for it.

After watching it, I can share that this was not one of my favorite movies overall but there were parts I enjoyed and performances I found very well done. I also found the dialogue brilliant.

Before I go into my impressions, here is a little online summary of the movie, which is based on a play by Noel Coward:

“Skeptical novelist Charles Condomine (Rex Harrison) invites self-proclaimed medium Madame Arcati (Margaret Rutherford) to his home for a séance, hoping to gather material for a new book. When the hapless psychic accidentally summons the spirit of Condomine’s late wife, Elvira (Kay Hammond), his home and life are quickly turned into a shambles as his wife’s ghost torments both himself and his new bride, Ruth (Constance Cummings). David Lean directed this adaptation of Noel Coward’s hit play.”

I am going to get this out of the way now – I could have completely done without Rex Harrison in this movie. I hated his character. In fact, none of the characters were likable to me, but, as Erin pointed out to me after I watched it, that’s really the point of the play/movie – hence the title.

After double-checking the definition of “blithe” it made even more sense.

Blithe: showing a casual and cheerful indifference considered to be callous or improper.

That is exactly how every character in this movie acted.

While watching this movie, I also started to wonder if Rex Harrison is only capable of playing, arrogant, tone-deaf, rude, and bullheaded characters.

After watching him in Dr. Doolittle and My Fair Lady and now this – I can’t help thinking his range of an actor didn’t go much beyond these typecasts. I’m teasing a bit here because I have not seen every Rex Harrison movie. If you know of one where he isn’t a total jerk, let me know in the comments.

During the whole film, I wanted to throat-punch Rex’s character. Repeatedly.

I mean, it could be a hormone issue (I am at that age) or Rex Harrison might really have just been that annoying of a human being in this movie.

I know he’s playing parts in his movies, but he did it so well that I imagine there must be some of himself in there. I’ll have to research that at some point.

What I did like about this movie was Margaret Rutherford and it is fitting that this is the movie where she became known nation-wide in the UK after already having established herself on the stage and on television.

I first heard her name when I was researching actresses who had played Miss Marple in the past. Her first film debut was in 1936 but it was this performance – as Madam Arcati – that is considered her breakout performance. There are two reasons she might have done so well as the character – she had already portrayed Madam Arcati in the stage version of Blithe Spirit and Coward actually wrote the part with her in mind.

According to Wikipedia, theatre critic Kenneth Tynan once said of her performances on stage: “The unique thing about Margaret Rutherford is that she can act with her chin alone.”

She received rave reviews of her performance on the stage and the movies – from both critics and audiences.

After watching this movie I can see why – she played the part of being a batty old lady very well and if you delve into her sad history and upbringing, you would see why. That’s another tale for another blog post, but I’ll leave the link to her Wikipedia page here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Rutherford

Be warned there is some sadness about her life in that article, but also some joy and a great deal of success for her.

Even if this wasn’t a favorite movie of mine, I did not hate it. There were many humorous and witty moments in this movie and overall the acting was very good. I think in the end it simply wasn’t what I had expected – mainly because I had never seen the play.

One of the funny quotes from the movie was one that was removed from the U.S. versions by censors when it first released.

During an argument with Ruth, Charles tells her, “If you’re trying to compile an inventory of my sex life, I feel it only fair to warn you that you’ve omitted several episodes. I shall consult my diary and give you a complete list after lunch.” 

As I read what other viewers thought about the movie online I saw that most enjoyed the movie immensely but a few wrote that they found that the movie felt flat because they were comparing it to the stage version. In the stage version there was more of a chance for the actors to bounce of the audience and for the audience to respond with laughter, one reviewer said. In the movie version some felt the jokes and humor just fell flat.

I spent much of the movie not finding the humor very funny because I was so horrified how Harrison didn’t seem upset by any of the events that happened. Again, though, I needed to go back to that definition of blithe when I decided to rewatch some scenes before writing this post. After that I found some of the humor a little funnier and recognized it as being more tongue-in-cheek in some places.

Some viewers might sense the lack of humor in some places because the director, David Lean, apparently did not do a good job translating the play to film, at least according to Coward, who had worked with Lean on one of his previous plays being transferred to film, and enjoyed that experience.

Coward, in fact, informed Lean, after he saw a rough cut of the film, that Lean  had “screwed up” (but used a much more colorful term) the best thing he’d ever written.

Harrison later commented on Dean: ““When you’re on a comedy like Blithe Spirit, it is awfully hard working for a director who has no sense of humor.”

According to Wikipedia Harrison wrote in his memoirs:

“Blithe Spirit was not a play I liked, and I certainly didn’t think much of the film we made of it. David Lean directed it, but the shooting was unimaginative and flat, a filmed stage play. He didn’t direct me too well, either – he hasn’t a great sense of humour…..Lean did something to me on that film which I shall never forget, and which was unforgivable in any circumstances. I was trying to make one of those difficult Noel Coward scenes work… when David said: “I don’t think that’s very funny.” And he turned round to the cameraman, Ronnie Neame, and said: “Did you think that was funny, Ronnie?” Ronnie said: “Oh, no, I didn’t think it was funny.” So what do you do next, if it isn’t funny?””

The play, by the way, was written in six days at a seaside resort, where Coward had gone to escape the Blitz, according to Criterion.com.

Geoffry O’Brien writes in the article on Criterion: “..Blithe Spirit brought superficiality to another level of ambition: what audacity to write a comedy about death in the midst of bombing that would claim tens of thousands of civilian lives, a comedy in which the memory of a lost love became material for a punch line and mortality served as simply a piquant sauce for the same sexual dilemmas that were the staple of Coward’s brand of drawing room comedy. Blithe Spirit may be defined as a very British sort of resistance literature, encouraging resistance to encroaching catastrophe by blithely ignoring it.”

If you would like to read more about O’Brien’s thoughts (even he touched on how much better it is to see the play either before you see the movie or instead), you can find his very interesting (and full of big words) article here:

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/2221-blithe-spirit-present-magic

I have to agree with O’Brien that the ending of the film is much more satisfying than the ending of the play, but I won’t share what I mean about that here in case you haven’t seen it yet.

I watched this one on Amazon Prime, where it was free with a subscription. It is also free right now on YouTube.

Read Erin’s impressions of the movie here: https://crackercrumblife.com/2024/10/10/comfy-cozy-cinema-blithe-spirit-1945/

Up next in our Comfy, Cozy Cinema is Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. I’ve seen this one before but it’s been a few years so I am looking forward to watching it again and am glad that Erin suggested it.

Feel free to link up your own impressions of the movies at our link-ups. The links close at the end of the week but feel free to leave your blog post on future link-ups, even if it is for another movie.

Here is the rest of the schedule:

Also, don’t forget our Comfy, Cozy Care Package giveaway is still open until Oct. 15. We are giving away some things to make your autumn even cozier. The gifts include my book (Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing), Erin’s poetry compilation book, stickers, a journal, an autumn-themed mug, pumpkin-shaped chocolates, a book light, a blanket, and boxes of tea. We also hope to throw a few extras in to the winners!


You can enter anytime between today and October 15th, and the winner will be announced on our blogs on Thursday, October 17th. Please enter via Rafflecopter and it is only open to those 18 or older living in the US.” You can enter here: https://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/3614a4fa2/?

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

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Comfy, Cozy Care Package Giveaway!

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings14 Comments

Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs came up with an awesome idea to offer a giveaway with our Comfy, Cozy Cinema this year and that giveaway is open! You have until Tuesday, Oct. 15 to enter it and the chance to win the items pictured here and a few more we are tossing in at the last minute!

Erin and I both have included books in the giveaway – a poetry collection put together by her and the first book in my cozy mystery series – Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing – from me.

We also have a journal in there, stickers, an autumn-themed mug, chocolate pumpkins (so cute!), tea, a booklight to read your cozy books with, and I’ll also be adding a cozy blanket for you to curl up under and these cute little corner bookmarks for you to mark the page of whatever book you are reading.

To enter you can follow this link (the embed feature won’t work on WordPress for some reason).

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/3614a4fa2/?

We’re asking you to follow our blogs, our Instagram, my Substack, and Erin’s Etsy to gain entries.

We are not going to use your email addresses for anything other than confirming you followed, etc. so don’t worry that you’re being added to a mailing list. You are not. The addresses will not be kept in any way on our end.

We are so excited to offer this comfort package so please take a chance to win it! This giveaway is for U.S. residents 18 years of age or older. It is in no way associated with WordPress or Meta or any of their affiliates.