I am going to be doing another Classic Movie Impressions feature this summer and so far, I am offering it up for whomever might like to jump in during the rest of June and part of July.
Erin from Still Life, with Cracker Crumbs is too busy in June for this feature and I know Katja has been busy as well, but the invitation for her to join in is totally there.
Anyone else who wants to join may do so as well and at any point. You don’t have to watch or write about all of the movies to be a part.
Now, onto who I am featuring this summer.
Marilyn Monroe.
So yes, the feature will be called A Summer of Marilyn.
If you have been following this blog for a while, you know I featured Paul Newman for my summer movie watching last year and Cary Grant for this spring.
I thought I should choose an actress this time around and decided on Marilyn when I discovered how many of her movies we own on blu-ray. I’ve also been a little fascinated with Marilyn because of how Hollywood really abused and used her until there was nothing left of her. It’s a story with a sad ending but I guess I am looking for some happiness she might have experienced in the making of at least a couple of these movies.
I’m going to kick off the feature this Thursday with How To Marry A Millionaire, which I watched on that wonderful Saturday where I had where five hours to myself with no responsibilities and no one else to care for.
If you want to quickly watch it, or have already seen it, and want to jump in, go for it. Or you can share a post later and just link to mine and I’ll let readers know you’ve shared your views too.
Without further ado, here are the movies I plan to watch and the dates I plan to blog about them on:
June 15: How To Marry A Millionaire
June 22: Gentlemen Prefer Blonds
June 29: Some Like It Hot
July 6: Niagra
July 13: The Seven Year Itch
July 20: Monkey Business (because it’s Marilyn and Cary together)
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, and some weeks I share what I am listening to.
What I/we’ve been Reading
Last week I finished Death and Daisies by Amanda Flower, which is part of the Magic Garden Mystery series.
I borrowed the first and second books in the series from Libby and then found out that my local library hadn’t put book three in. Argh! Hopefully they will eventually so I can finish the series.
The books are pretty good but are I don’t know that I like how the mysteries are always solved in less than a week. In book two the ending was so abrupt that it was like the story just hit a wall – pretty literally actually. The stories are entertaining, though, and I guess she solves the mysteries fast to keep the action going non-stop, which keeps the reader turning the page. They are well-written books and just a nice escape from life, even if there were a couple of things I didn’t like about them.
I read plenty of books that I don’t like every aspect of it but still enjoyed the escape from life I experienced while reading them. If I didn’t like the books at all then I wouldn’t have added another one of her books from a different series to my Kindle this weekend from Libby and wouldn’t be hoping to get book three for less than the $13 being charged on Amazon for the eBook edition. I’m going to wait and see if I can get it on Libby instead at some point. I find it odd that you can get the other two books in mass paperback for $8 but it’s $13 for even an ebook for the new one, even though it is three years old, but I’ll never understand how publishers work.
Anyhow, enough rambling about books and costs and etc., etc. Here is a quick description of book two of the Magic Garden series in case you are wondering what it was about: Fiona Knox thought she was pulling her life back together when she inherited her godfather’s cottage in Duncreigan, Scotland—complete with a magical walled garden. But the erstwhile Tennessee flower shop owner promptly found herself puddle boot-deep in danger when she found a dead body among the glimmering blossoms. One police investigation and a handsome Chief Inspector names Neil Craig later and Fiona’s life is getting back on a steady—though bewitched—track. Her sister Isla has just moved in with her, and the grand opening of her new spellbound venture, the Climbing Rose Flower Shop in Aberdeenshire, is imminent.
But dark, ensorcelled clouds are gathering to douse Fiona’s newly sunny outlook. First, imperious parish minister Quaid MacCullen makes it undeniably clear that he would be happy to send Fiona back to Tennessee. Then, a horrific lightning storm, rife with terrible omen, threatens to tear apart the elderly cottage and sends Fi and Isla cowering under their beds. The storm passes, but then, Fi is called away from the Climbing Rose’s opening soiree when Kipling, the tiny village’s weak-kneed volunteer police chief, finds a dead body on the beach.
The body proves difficult to identify, but Kipling is certain it’s that of the parish minister. Which makes Fiona, MacCullen’s new nemesis, a suspect. And what’s worse, Isla has seemed bewitched as of late…did she do something unspeakable to protect her sister? The last thing Fiona wanted to do was play detective again. But now, the rosy future she’d envisioned is going to seed, and if she and Craig can’t clear her name, her idyllic life will wilt away.
Since I didn’t have book three, I jumped back into my first Nicole Deese book, All That Really Matters. It is a romance and I know where it is going but it is well-written so I’m going to keep reading it.
I am also reading The Regal Pink by Jenny Knipfer. This is a faith-based fantasy book and so far, I am enjoying it, even though it is not my normal genre.
I’m switching between books based on my mood like I usually do since I am mainly a mood reader.
Little Miss and I are still re-reading Little House on Plum Creek, but I have a few other books on my list that I hope we can start soon.
What’s Been Occurring
I posted a little bit about what was happening last week on my post yesterday if you want to read that to catch up, but I will warn you that it wasn’t terribly exciting. *wink* There was a little sadness, a bit of stress, and a lot of wildfire smoke.
Yesterday Little Miss had a friend over and we attended a graduation party for our neighbor’s daughter who graduated from high school Friday night.
The party was held at a small hall down the street from our house but then it was moved back up to the neighbor’s house, which let Little Miss and her friend play with our neighbor’s grandsons and some other children who came to the party for a little while.
She and her friend jumped on the trampoline, then played on the slip n’ slide, then went to the trampoline, then back to the slip n’ slide and so on. I’m not sure about the other kids, but my daughter slept pretty hard last night after all that playing. I also let her sleep in this morning.
We finished school last week and are looking forward to our summer break to refresh our minds and souls. We are hoping for some relaxing days, a little bit of fun, and a lot of time to simply take our time and not feel like we have any obligations to do anything intentionally academic.
What We Watched/are Watching
I started watching Victorian Farm on BritBox this week because Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs has talked about it quite a few times to me and on her blog. It is an interesting show about how farmers lived in the Victorian age in England.
Here is a little description in case you are curious:
This historical documentary series finds archaeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn and domestic historian Ruth Goodman on the Acton Scott estate, located in rural England and frozen in the Victorian era. The trio lives here for a year, using only Victorian-era tools and materials, such as those found scattered around the estate, to re-create everyday life during the late 1800s. The three must grow and harvest their own food, care for and breed a variety of livestock animals, maintain the estate’s buildings and even craft their own tools and furniture.
The Husband and I also watched a few episodes of Newhart on Amazon last week because it is such a lovely escape from life.
This morning I watched a sermon from Elevation Church and then I watched another one with Robert Madu from Social Dallas. Both were very good. One was about our need to connect with other Christians and the other one was about Jonah and God’s call on his life and on our life. Then I watched half of another sermon by Robert, which was about loving others even we do not agree with them because God loves them even if he does not love what they do (just like he often doesn’t love what we do).
What I’m Writing
I am working on Gladwynn Grant Takes Center Stage, book two in the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries. The first book comes out July 18th.
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.
Can I make you a cup of tea? It’s been a weird week here and I could use one myself.
This week took a little bit of an odd turn on Tuesday and Wednesday when our already minimal plans for the week were thrown off even more by the smoke and haze that came down from Canada and made our air unhealthy to breathe. I’m sure many of you found your week impacted similarly (except you folks in California who deal with smog all the time anyhow.)
The smoke chased Little Miss and me inside for two days since she and I are the most sensitive members of the family when it comes to smells and smoke, etc. When I first smelled it all on Tuesday, I thought one of our neighbors was burning trash since outside burning is something we are allowed to do here in our area.
I looked outside a couple of times to see which neighbor it was. My eyes were burning some and I had already been sneezing but thought it was normal allergies.
I mentioned the smoke smell to The Husband who told me it was the Canadian wildfires and suggested I start shutting all the windows to keep it out.
I started Googling and found out that air quality was getting worse in New York state and realized that the air quality feature on our weather app does actually serve a purpose. I looked at our levels and started to become concerned, but on Tuesday it wasn’t as bad as it became on Wednesday when our air quality level jumped from code red to code purple and over 330 points. I learned the scale goes to 500 so I started to wonder if we were going to get up that high or not.
I spent much of Wednesday reading about what the fires were doing to the east coast and trying to convince my dad to stop going out in it and to bring my son home since the two of them were going to do work around Dad’s house. He finally agreed it was very bad out there and brought The Boy home.
The view at my parents when Dad decided the air really wasn’t healthy to breathe.
My son snapped a couple of photos on their way through town and he took a few on his way to work as well.
I snagged this photo from a newspaper 45 minutes south of us. This photo is not Photoshopped and there is no filter on it. This is how yellow it was out there.
My son said there were more people in our small town than he’s ever seen before during the day as the smoke got thicker and they were all out there talking about how bad the air was and coughing.
Sounds like a typical human reaction. Ha.
It was very yellow outside, as the photos above show, similar to how it looks when there is a really nasty thunderstorm coming, and that yellow stretched into our house, making it look otherworldly. I wanted to pull all the curtains over the windows and pretend it wasn’t out there. This was one of the few times I regretted all the windows we have that let in wonderful natural light. Mainly because the natural light was not wonderful at all.
This introvert should have liked being forced inside for two days but I did not. I like at least being able to go outside and look at my slowly blooming flowers without coughing and my eyes burning. Grilling outside wasn’t much fun either. I ended up only going out once on Tuesday and not at all on Wednesday.
By Thursday I was excited when the air quality was improved, and I could go visit my parents. The air was much clearer with only a faint whiff of smoke by the afternoon when I went to their house. I also went into the yard Thursday to take photos of the white peonies that are already blooming and the pink ones that are just starting to open.
The peonies open every year around my brother’s birthday, which I mentioned last week, I think. His birthday was yesterday.
From what I heard from him, he had a nice, relaxing birthday.
My roses aren’t blooming yet but the buds are out and that makes me so giddy with excitement!
Let me go back to that visit to my parents on Thursday for a moment. My dad and Zooma the Wonder Dog went outside at one point, but Dad came back in a few moments later looking for his iPad. He said that there was a fawn in the backyard and that Zooma had been nose to nose with it, calmly sniffing it.
By the time we came back out, Zooma was walking away, looking very wary at the fawn. She didn’t even bark at it. Long story short, we left the fawn there as we know we are supposed to do because the mom will usually come back to the fawn and takes them back with her. We did think it was odd that the fawn was curled up in the short grass, not in higher grass because the doe usually leaves her fawn in a camouflaged area.
Little Miss and The Husband stopped by on the way back from gymnastics (Little Miss is in a new class) and Little Miss got a look at the fawn. She wanted to pet it, but we didn’t let her. After some online research, I did learn that the doe will not abandon her baby even if it comes in contact with humans or pets, but l thought she should stay back from it because I honestly thought it didn’t look like it felt well. We did read that a doe will abandon a fawn if it is sick.
We left my parent’s house and Mom and Dad went to bed later thinking the doe would come back for her fawn. In the morning, though, Dad discovered that the fawn had died.
We were all heartbroken.
When we pulled up to the house yesterday to take some packages that had been dropped off at the garage into my parent’s house, a fawn ran up the bank behind the house, near the dead fawn, (which Dad had covered with a tarp because he was going to bury later it later in the day), and we were confused, thinking maybe the fawn really hadn’t died. The fawn had, sadly, indeed died, but two other fawns were on the bank and ran into the woods. We are hoping that the three fawns weren’t abandoned by their mom somehow and we are also now wondering if the doe had triplets and the youngest one just didn’t make it.
The whole experience made me very weepy yesterday and added to a few other things that have made me weepy lately. I’ve had a lot on my mind this past week. I’ve been worrying and praying for a lot of people and situations but probably worrying more than I’ve been praying. I’m not going to share any of the situations I am worrying about because they involve situations with others.
We were glad that the heavy smoke didn’t come into our area until Tuesday because this gave Little Miss some time to visit with her friends who are moving back to Texas. They moved there once before, came back, and it looks like they are moving again. They flew out of an airport near us yesterday. Little Miss was very heartbroken that they most likely won’t be coming back from Texas again and I held her for a long time after they left, crying along with her. I had gotten used to them running up from their great-grandmother’s down the street and playing here for a while in the summer. It will be sad to no longer see them, but the move is necessary for their health and well-being for a variety of reasons.
Little Miss does have another friend coming over today to play and I know she’s looking forward to that after saying goodbye to her other friends and being locked up in the house for two straight days.
Tomorrow we may visit my parents. I will be put to work cleaning out the pool so we can eventually swim in it when the weather gets hotter, which I’m sure it will do by mid-June to early July.
As for next week, the sky is the limit. Homeschool is officially over for a couple of months (I plan to have a post up about that later in the week) so we will just take it easy until Summer Reading starts June 20th.
The local summer reading program includes activities at the local library and a couple of field trips. It should be fun and fill up our summer so we’re not sitting at home too often.
I usually share what I am drinking, tea-wise, but I didn’t do that at the beginning of the post this time. This week I went back to my regular peppermint tea because our days were a little chilly, but we are warming up again today and throughout next week. Little Miss made me some cinnamon sugar milk last week for fun and I actually liked it.
So how was your week last week? Did you have to deal with the smoke from the wildfires as well?
Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs, Katja from Breath of Hallelujah and I teamed up this spring to watch Cary Grant movies for fun and then write about them.
These were movies that I picked from a list of his movies I had never seen.
This week we are on the last movie for our feature – Notorious.
Now, I want to preface this by saying that it’s going to sound like, at first, I didn’t like this film, but that isn’t true. I didn’t like it at first because I didn’t like Ingrid Bergman’s character but I eventually got swept up in it all and recognized it for being a very brilliantly written and directed film.
The movie stars Cary, Ingrid, and Claude Rains.
This is another Alfred Hitchcock Grant movie (we watched Suspicion last week) and it again showcased Hitchcock’s brilliant cinematography and directing skills.
We start with a man being remanded to the U.S. Marshal for charges of treason and from there we will be thrown into a world of espionage and mystery as we try to find out who the man is, but most importantly, who is daughter is.
We also will be thrown into yet another world where Cary is sexy and suave and the woman is conniving, heartless, and slutty, even though she’s probably slept with the same amount of people Cary has over the years. But Cary is a man and he’s cool when he sleeps around. Women are sluts. You know how it goes.
Oh, how I hate those commentaries on movies that overthink and look way too deep into the theme of the movie. Yet here I am about to do just that.
First, a bit of a summary of the movie. Alicia Huberman is the daughter of a convicted Nazi spy in 1946. T.R. Devlin is the U.S. Marshal assigned to follow her and ask her to help break up a ring of escaped Nazis hiding in Brazil. This movie was released in August of 1946. It was filmed at the end of 1945 and the beginning of 1946. It was a very timely movie at the time and I was actually sort of surprised they made a movie so quickly about what was still a very raw subject at the time. It was easy, however, to make German Nazis the bad guys in the movie because, well, they were, but they definitely were in 1946.
After watching so many movies of Cary’s in a row, I do have to say that there is a definite theme in them and this one was no different. Cary is handsome, manly, dashing, charming, and irresistible and all the women know it and love him for it. He can get them to do anything for him. Leave their families, isolate from their friends, turn their backs on their ideals, and, in the case of this movie, spy for the United States and risk their life. Not that spying against the Germans after World War II is a bad thing, of course.
If you know the history of Alfred Hitchcock, you know that he had a particular view of women and that was that they were sort of stupid and had to be molded to the wishes of the men. He had obsessive issues with women in real life and though I hate to use the term misogynistic because it’s been abused in recent years, he truly was misogynistic.
In his movies, women are often indecisive and need to be rescued by a man, yet they are also strong and have their own minds – deceptive minds with cruel intent of course. It’s a complex dichotomy but in Notorious we see Hitchcock stick with Cary being handsome and charming and Ingrid doing what he wants because of it.
As a Guardian writer shared when commenting on Hitchcock’s history with women: “Norman Bates is Hitchcock himself, kidding himself that women are scheming devils and men are just innocent folk, acting up because they got caught in a tricky situation.”
While I do like Hitchcock’s movies, I have to admit that there is some truth in that quote and part of it was because Hitchcock had very deep issues with his own mother.
That is why so many of his movies, including this one, feature an evil mother who is behind schemes to destroy someone, usually the woman, in the movie.
There were many obvious moments in this film where I felt like the characters were just plain stupid. Like seriously, Cary keeps showing up wherever Ingrid is, even though she only met him on the plane – or so her story goes. Why would the guy she met on the plane keep showing up at parties? And the man she’s pretending to be in love with (Raines, who is the former Nazi) clearly knows the guy is more than what she says he is. Cary and Ingrid act like the bad guy should believe all their lies too. So annoying.
Like many Hitchcock movies, the mother of the former Nazi is evil and helps him figure out how to do something very bad (I won’t give away what it is in case you watch the movie.) She is more terrifying than Claude Raines and he was a former Nazi. Seriously. She’s horribly creepy. Her deceptiveness with a smile reminds me of someone in my extended family but I’ll keep that to myself for now.
All this criticism I’m offering up, though, can’t take away from the amazing cinematography and angles and use of light and shadows that Hitchcock uses to draw the viewers’ attention to the characters and their faults or to an important moment or expression. For example, there is one poignant scene when he zooms in on the guilty parties in such a unique way that I was just like, “Oh! That is brilliant.”
Yes, he was a brilliant filmmaker. A misogynist and a brilliant filmmaker. Yes, it was possible for him to be both.
Even though I sometimes get annoyed at Hitchcock’s idea that women had to be rescued, I really wanted Ingrid to be rescued in this movie – by anyone, but Cary was fine because…again…he’s good looking.
1946: Cary Grant (1904 – 1986) and Ingrid Bergman (1915 – 1982) get very close in Alfred Hitchcock’s spy thriller ‘Notorious’. (Photo by John Kobal Foundation/Getty Images)
A little trivia about the film:
Hitchcock wanted to make this film two years before it was made and he wanted Ingrid from the beginning.
He pitched the idea for the film this way: “the story of a woman sold for political purposes into sexual enslavement.”
Some think that Hitchcock maybe have gotten the idea for the plot from a short story written in 1921 by John Taintor Foote and called The Song of the Dragon.” It had appeared as a two-part serial in the Saturday Evening Post and, according to Wikipedia, “Set during World War I in New York, “The Song of the Dragon” told the tale of a theatrical producer approached by federal agents, who want his assistance in recruiting an actress he once had a relationship with to seduce the leader of a gang of enemy saboteurs.”
Whatever his inspiration, Hitchcock wrote the plot of Notorious with Ben Hecht who he wrote Spellbound with in 1944. One plot device used in the rewrites caused the FBI to begin following Hitchock. It involved uranium ore, which it later turned out was being used to build the atomic bomb. Hitchcock didn’t know this, but the FBI was worried he did when he started asking a scientist at Caltech about uranium. By August of 1945, a year before the movie was released, everyone knew about what was being used to make the bomb anyhow.
The project was originally a David Selznick production but was later passed over to RKO when Selznick got bored with it. This allowed Hitchcock to produce as well as direct and write. Selznick had 50 percent stack in the movie as part of the deal with RKO, however, and continuously harassed Hitchcock about changes he wanted.
Hitchcock ignored almost all of those suggestions. Suggestions he didn’t ignore were those by Ingrid, who he apparently worked very well with.
In fact, he made Ingrid his closest collaborator on the project, which was very unusual since, as I mentioned above – he was a misogynist in many ways.
There were some other interesting tidbits on Wikipedia but they weren’t citing sources and that drove me crazy so I’m not going to share them here.
Les Enchaines Notorious de AlfredHitchcock avec Ingrid bergman et Cary Grant 1946
One thing that is mentioned there and other sources is the very sexy two-and-a-half-minute kiss in the movie, which was filmed in a way to get it past the censors of the day, who determined that kisses in a movie could not be over a certain time limit. In the scene, Cary and Ingrid’s lips aren’t locked the entire time but they are extremely close physically and they are stealing kisses between words about what they’ll have for dinner, where they will go later, etc. The actors did find it a bit awkward to walk so close together and bump mouths off and on, but it turned out to be a classic scene.
To read what Erin thinks of the movie, check out her blog either today or at a later date (she’s been super busy all week so she may not have time to write her views this week).
Kajta has also been busy and if she writes her thoughts on it she will post it on her blog.
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, and some weeks I share what I am listening to.
What’s Been Occurring
As I mentioned in my post yesterday, I had about five hours to myself at home, which is a very unusual thing. I said I would update today whether I enjoyed it or cried because I missed my family.
Update: I had a blast.
Sure, I missed my family and if they had been gone much longer than they were I would have been a mess, but for those five hours I had so much fun by myself.
I watched whatever movie I wanted to watch (How To Marry A Millionaire) without being interrupted 18 times.
I made myself grilled chicken on our grill and ate it while it was still hot! I didn’t have to eat mine after I fixed everyone else’s plate, which I don’t always do, but still . . .
I didn’t have to get up and make anyone a snack for anyone or listen to my movie over the sound of a kid’s show on a phone or stop what I was doing to look at anything someone wanted to show me.
It was wonderful! Again, though, I also would absolutely miss those other things if my family wasn’t around, so I was super happy when they came home. I could only enjoy being alone with my thoughts for so long.
I’m doing my best to carry that relaxed feeling into today. The weather is beautiful and I just want to hold on to that feeling.
I realized at the end of the day that one reason I felt so peaceful last night even after my alone time was that I stayed off social media and the news. Today and into this week I plan to do the same thing. I’m not saying I won’t go on social media at all but I will definitely go on much less than I do some weeks.
The words that came to mind this morning on that topic were: I need to protect my peace.
It was what I did around this past Christmas. I locked myself away in a bubble of comfort, in a way, through the month of December and I need to do that more often. Of course, we can’t always keep the bad way, but we can make every effort possible to protect our peace and not go looking for those things that threaten that peace.
Calamity and chaos will always find us but there is no reason we should seek it out through scrolling mindlessly on social media or news sites. I mentioned in a recent post that I was worried that the frost and freeze we had was going to kill my peonies and roses as it did my lilacs. I am happy to report that I checked my peonies yesterday while everyone was gone and they survived and are starting to bloom.
The white ones come up first and then the dark purple/pink ones and then the light pink ones. They bloom fully every year right in time for my brother’s birthday (June 9th. Gifts can be sent to him at . . . just kidding.).
This week I am reading Death and Daisies by Amanda Flower and I should have it finished later this week. Her books are quite easy reads and fairly light. They are cozy mysteries with a bit of magic mixed in. Or at least this series (the Magical Garden series) is.
I’m also reading The Regal Pink by Jenny Knipfer. This is a fantasy/fairy book which is not usually my thing but I try to read all of Jenny’s books so I am going to try it.
At night Little Miss and I are reading Little House on Plum Creek.
The boy is finishing Fellowship of the Ring.
The Husband is reading. I can’t ask him what because he slept horribly last night and he’s taking a rest upstairs.
What We Watched/are Watching
Yesterday I watched How to Marry A Millionaire with Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable, and Lauren Bacall (and William Powell). I started it while everyone was gone and finished it with The Husband when they came home.
I watched it years ago but had forgotten most of it.
While looking for a movie to watch I found a whole stack of blu-rays we own but that I either have not watched at all or haven’t watched in years and remember very little of. Among those movies were a bunch of Marilyn Monroe movies. The Husband pulled out a couple more of her movies when I told him I was considering watching the stack I’d made for the summer and blogging about them – or just watching them without blogging about them.
Seeing that stack of Marilyn movies made me decide I am going to have a Summer of Marilyn through the month of June and July. I’ll create a list of movies I am going to watch for a post later this week. I may be doing this one alone since Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs is super busy in June. I haven’t asked Katja yet if she wants to join but I’ll ask her later this week. I’ll also open the invitation for anyone to watch along who wants to. You do not have to blog about the movies just because I plan to.
Speaking of the Classic Movie Impressions Erin and I have been doing – the last post of our Spring of Cary will be up Thursday of this week.
I watched the movie and wrote the post but then forgot to post it on Saturday, which was the day Erin and I had decided to push it off to. Erin did not have a chance to write her post, however, because she had a very, very, full week with some fun stuff and some not-so-fun stuff.
The Husband and I also watched a Miss Marple movie this weekend (well, we will be finishing it later today) and Little Miss and I watched a ton of Mary Berry clips from YouTube one night this past week.
What I’m Writing
I am working on the second book of the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries.
Are you ready to know what it is going to be called?
I think I already mentioned it, but I’ll share again that it is going to be called Gladwynn Grant Takes Center Stage.
The first book is set to release on July 18th, and you can either sign up for the ARC team (you do not have to promote the book all over – simply read and review it on Amazon and Goodreads) or pre-order it for 99 cents on Amazon.
I’ve been listening to playlists of vintage music as I write this week including this one:
Blog Posts I Enjoyed This Past Week
I have not read a ton of blog posts this week, but I was informed and made necessarily uncomfortable by this post about gender ideology by Abigail Shrier.
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.
Everyone, I am so excited because by the time you read this, or maybe while you are reading it, I will be having an afternoon to myself to write and watch movies and do whatever I want.
In other words, I will be sitting in my house completely lost and wondering why I thought it would be a good idea to accept my husband’s offer to take the kids to a movie and for me to stay home.
The whole thing sort of went down like this:
Husband: “I’m going to take the kids to Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse on Saturday and you can stay home and write.”
Me: “Uh. Oh. Okay.”
Husband: “Great. Have fun.”
And boom. Here I am. Alone. Writing a blog post.
Alone. In my house. With the dog. With my family 45 minutes away from me one way.
Alone with my thoughts and an old movie (How to Marry A Millionaire).
Ahem.
Did I ever mention that alone time is highly overrated? Because it is.
I’ll update in my Sunday Bookends post how many times I cried wishing my family was home with me interrupting me 15 times while I try to write and that I had instead gone with them.
For now, though, a little about last week.
There is very little to report, honestly. It was a fairly relaxed week – at least physically. Mentally my mind seemed to race all day.
We spent Sunday at a Memorial Day service at a small cemetery about 30 minutes away. A bagpiper played some music in honor of the holiday at the cemetery which was recently repaired and cleaned up.
The speaker who was supposed to come didn’t make it so it was just the bagpiper, but he did a wonderful job. The music was very poignant and moving as we overlooked the cemetery full of veterans of wars that our country fought as far back as at least the Civil War, if not the Revolutionary War as well.
After the service we stopped at a playground right down the road for Little Miss to play a bit. She, however, was more interested in playing in the creek behind the playground, which is totally fine with me. She had no interest in leaving the creek when it was time to go and we hope to stop by there again soon to give her even more time to play.
The water was very low there because we have not had a lot of rain recently and also did not have a very snowy winter.
I have a feeling that our county will be under a burn ban soon. In our area we are allowed to burn trash in a barrel outside in our backyards, but not if there is a burn ban in effect. That will probably come soon as our grass is starting to fade to yellow in some places and our trees are very dry.
Little Miss and The Husband threw rocks in the creek and Little Miss and I put our feet in the water. It was really a very nice and relaxing afternoon.
The Boy was home resting after working the night before.
On Monday we visited my parents for Memorial Day after The Husband went to a Memorial Day service to take photographs and my dad and The Boy went to a service downtown.
The Husband cooked steaks on the grill that my dad had bought a while ago from a local farmer.
The steaks were excellent.
Little Miss, The Husband, and the Boy took a ride on the golf cart before we left. Little Miss helped clean out the pool at my parents before the golf cart ride. My dad is trying to get it summer ready. We will have to do some more cleaning tomorrow when we visit to get it all the way ready.
On Thursday Little Miss had a friend over to visit.
Yesterday we did pretty much nothing, other than The Husband who was awesome and braved the heat we were having to pick up groceries.
It turned out to be not as hot as we thought it was going to be but he didn’t want me to have to deal with any drama after the loss of the key fob last week. There always seems to be drama when I do the shopping. Sigh. He also does a great job and keeps us well within budget. Not that I go too crazy with the budget, but Little Miss does tend to add extra fruits to the cart when we do it, which is okay by me.
This past week started writing more of book two of the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries. I am having fun crafting the story and will hopefully write a little more on it today during my break.
I started to watch Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story today but – ick. I forgot that the story was not from the books and was, quite frankly, ridiculous and way too over dramatic. The actors were too old to be playing the parts, they took the story out of Prince Edward Island and to the United States and Kevin Sullivan took way too many liberties with the characters for my taste.
I have not enjoyed every Anne book I’ve read (like Anne’s House of Dreams. Yuck. So depressing. Seriously.) but there is a reason I love L.M. Montgomery’s books. They are whimsical and full of joy, most of the time anyhow. There are some sad and hard stories but at their heart is a youthfulness and hopefulness to Anne that I really didn’t see in this mini-series or as much of it as I was able to watch today. I watched it years ago and remember not enjoying it very much then either.
Staying on the topic of Anne of Green Gables, this week I unfollowed the official account of the original mini-series when they started pairing scenes from the film with modern music – particularly Taylor Swift.
I am not a fan of Taylor, one, but, two, I am not a fan of modern music being paired with films about vintage shows or books. I read those books and watch similar movies to escape the modern world. I don’t see why they need to be combined and connected to the modern world in any way. Leave me my vintage fantasy world, please. That’s what I wanted to tell them but instead I just quietly unfollowed. No need to be a prude and a drama queen at the same time. *wink*
I usually share what I am drinking and forgot to do that at the beginning of the post so I’ll share now that I have made myself a cup of peppermint tea to sip and filled it with honey after being without honey for a week or so. The weather was very warm last week so I didn’t bother to make tea, but instead drank a lot of water with lemon or grape juice mixed in.
How was your week last week? Did you do anything exciting?
Is it just me or did May just whiz by like a race car at the Indy 500?
I don’t even know how we are already to June but we are.
Our May was busier than I expected it to be. There were homeschool trips, library visits, various outings, family days, and then the everyday homeschool lessons and finishing up the school year.
In the beginning of the month, I decided that we would focus on the arts for the month of May in homeschool. Little Miss and I especially focused on various art styles and artists, music and composers, and learned about various instruments. We spent more time doing art and listening to different styles of music.
Also at the beginning of the month, we traveled to a city near us to visit a comic shop and take in the sights. We stopped at a playground on the way back from the city and spent some time there letting the kids be kids.
Later in the month, we had a homeschool gathering at our local library where Little Miss picked out books and was able to pet a pig, which was thrilling for her.
Also in May we visited an alpaca farm as part of another activity with the homeschool group.
We visited the library quite a bit and I’m sure will be doing the same in June. Little Miss has discovered her love of books and I’m very excited by that.
In May I said I would take a photo a day for the entire month. I did not do very well at that, but I did try to take more photos than I had been taking. I plan to stretch the Photo A Day for May into June (which doesn’t rhyme like A Photo A Day in May) to make up for some of the days I lost in May. Who knows, maybe I will try to do it all summer. I always love looking back at my summer in photographs when Fall rolls around.
We spent a lot of time on the trampoline at the beginning of May, but not as much toward the end. The heat keeps Little Miss and me inside a lot. I am pretty sure I’ve mentioned this before, but the trampoline actually belongs to the neighbors who are nice enough to put it up for Little Miss to jump on. They put it up this year for when their grandsons visit as well.
As for what I watched and read in May, I detail all of that in my Sunday Bookends post, but I will say that I participated in Spring of Cary with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs so I watched a few Cary Grant movies. I also watched a few mystery shows (mainly Poirot and Brokenwood Mysteries) on my own or with my husband.
I did not read as many books as I would have liked to have for the month of May. I did, however, finish Fellowship of the Ring, which was my goal for the month of May. I was determined to finish that book, since The Boy and I started in way back in February. It was a personal accomplishment for me, even if it sounds a bit silly.
I also finished writing my own cozy mystery, Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing and it is now being edited and will be released July 18th.
Now looking ahead to June.
This past week we finished the bulk of our homeschool lessons with just a couple of things to do each day. Next week we will do a few more things just to wrap up what we need to do before we meet with the evaluator and then the school year is done for about two and a half months.
After I receive the summary from the evaluator, I will submit it and the paperwork that states that I plan to homeschool again next year all at the same time, which by law needs to be by June 30th.
We will have a short break with no activities scheduled but on June 20th the local library’s Summer Reading Program will begin for Little Miss. There will be various activities a couple days a week.
There will also be Vacation Bible Schools throughout the summer that I’m sure we will attend at least a couple of. There are two that are going to be held in our little town and I know that we want to try to go to at least one of them.
I’m sure June will also be full of plenty of playdates with Little Miss’s friends or hangouts with The Boy’s friends.
For reading, I have a couple of cozy mysteries on my list to read, a couple of books by author friends, and a book from the Anne of Green Gables series. I often plan what I will read in a month but I don’t usually read the books I say I will because I am a mood reader. My mood may change and that means my list will change. I do, however, want to finish the books by my author friends. I’ve been looking forward to reading the one author’s books (A.M. Heath) for a while now and the other author friend (Jenny Knipfer) has written a book in a genre I don’t usually read and I want to try it out.
These are the books I am currently planning to read in June:
How about you? How was your May and what are you looking forward to in June?
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, and some weeks I share what I am listening to.
What I/we’ve Been Reading
I did it! I finally finished The Fellowship of the Ring! It only took me four months (or was it five?), but I did it.
Now, did I like it?
Yes and no.
I really loved the characters and fell in love with them. I didn’t love the descriptions of trees and where they were walking as much, but I also didn’t hate them.
In some ways, I felt like entire sections of descriptions could be cut but this was a book written at a time when television and the internet were not even around or weren’t as popular. Long descriptions that may seem a bit overdone to us now were entertaining to readers back then. They are still entertaining to many readers now. I really did like the book but sometimes my eyes started to cross when he was describing what the trees on the left looked like and the trees on the right looked like and the trees in front and the trees behind and . . .
Well, you get my drift.
He wrote a lot about trees.
Imagine my sadness too when I realized that this book was not the actual ending.
I thought this book was when Frodo threw the ring to the fire, but, alas, no. There are two more books after this one! And both are just about as long.
Not only that but when J.R.R. Tolkien originally wrote the books, they were meant to be released as one huge volume. I mean – really?? It would have been like a 1500-page book or something. Yikes! You could kill a person if you hit them with that.
I guess it is better that the books are broken into “bite-sized” chunks but I can’t imagine how frustrating it must have been for readers in the 1950s to get that first book and think they were going to get some resolution – that all that reading about trees was going to pay off with Frodo completing his mission – only to get to the end and realize that that book was only the beginning.
Tolkien was like the George R.R. Martin of his time. Of course, I’m kidding. Tolkien was the father of Modern Fantasy so Martin is really just following in his footsteps. The only difference is that Martin will probably never finish his opus. Ha.
Now that I’ve finished Fellowship of the Ring, I need some lighter reads, so I am reading the second book in the Magic Garden Mysteries by Amanda Flower – Death and Daisies. I borrowed it through Libby, and it is due this week so I need to get reading. Her books are very fast reads so I should be able to do it if I just put down my phone and focus! Easier said than done these days.
I’ve also just borrowed a book by Andrew Klavan called When Christmas Comes because I’ve heard a lot about his writing and want to try one of his books and it was only one of two of his available to borrow on Libby. I guess Stephen King endorsed the book, which is funny because they two of them have vastly different political views.
Little Miss and I are still reading The Cabin Faced West during the day and Little House in the Big Woods at night.
The Husband is reading Jack Reacher: Better Off Dead by Lee and Andrew Child.
The Boy is losing his mind trying to finish The Fellowship of the Ring.
What’s Been Occurring
Earlier today Little Miss and I went to a Memorial Day service with The Husband. He had to take photos of it for the paper. The service was a man playing the bagpipes and he did a very nice job. I think there was supposed to be more to the service, but the Civil War reenactors didn’t show up. Not sure why. It was still a nice tribute to our fallen soldiers and held in a cemetery that has recently been revitalized.
Afterwards, we stopped at a playground near the cemetery and explored a creek behind the playground. Little Miss had more fun at the creek, partially because the playground is out in the blazing sun and partially because she just loves exploring nature.
Tomorrow we will visit my parents for Memorial Day and plan to have a cookout there.
We don’t have much on tap the rest of the week. I may visit my mom and help clean her kitchen floor but that’s not very exciting. I’m sure I won’t feel the need to blog about that. *wink*
What We Watched/are Watching
This past week The Husband I watched a Poirot and a Brokenwood Mysteries. Yes, I know. It’s the same every week lately, but hey, we are creatures of habit.
I also watched Suspicion with Cary Grant and blogged about that.
Then I watched Forgotten Way Farms and Darling Desi on YouTube.
What I’m Writing
I am working on book two of the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries and a book I am going to release in 2024. When I run out of ideas for one, I switch to the other.
I have not been listening to music and I hope to remedy that this week and listen to more.
Blog Posts I Enjoyed This Past Week
Now it’s your turn
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
I am writing this post while – yet again – sitting under a blanket with a dog cuddled against me.
Yes, it is still a bit chilly in Pennsylvania but that is set to change next week when temperatures will finally rise into the mid-80s.
I have mentioned before that I like chilly weather and being able to curl up under a blanket with a good book and have an excuse to not go anywhere and instead just stay at home and read a book. Still, 50 and 60 degree days this close to summer is a bit odd.
I remember one summer when Little Miss was a baby, and The Boy was also young, that it was very cold almost the entire summer. It was either cold and raining and it ruined many summer plans, especially swimming at a public pool near us – which is no longer public, sadly. The Boy was severely depressed he couldn’t do most of his summer activities. Now he no longer swims or does too many summer activities – like digging holes in the backyard. I miss that.
One summer he started digging a hole in the backyard. Why? I don’t know. Even he didn’t know. He just wanted to see how far he could get and what the hole would become. He was around 11 and I think it was around the time his closest friend stopped talking to him because I had chosen to pull him from the private Christian school he was attending at the time. Long story short, my son was having difficulties with a teacher and having panic attacks.
Regardless of all the other details, my son found new fun in his life and digging that hole was part of his fun.
He’d grab his shovel and head out into the backyard and play some music and dig a hole. Sometimes his sister would join in.
Anyhow, I have digressed a lot in this post. Back to my week recap.
This past week was very uneventful, other than an issue with the inside of my mouth and a broken tooth I’m having. Right now, I can’t get the tooth fixed because I don’t have insurance or money for the dentist (like up to $300 just to come in and see what needs to be done. No thanks.) I am thankful I am not in excruciating pain but talking has been interesting since I ripped my cheek muscle trying to get a look at the broken tooth. Fun times and stupid move by me. Hopefully it will all heal soon or I will find the money to get the one tooth pulled.
Thursday Little Miss and I drove the van up to be fixed by an exhaust specialist because the van’s exhaust system has a big hole in it.
The Husband met us there from work and brought us home. While trying to turn around because I drove past the place, some very angry man cursed at me out his truck window. I think it was at me. I’m not sure. All I know is that he sounded very angry, used extremely bad words, and then flipped off someone as I pulled out. No idea if it was at me or not because I was already going the other direction by the time he got his hand out the window.
Before we took the van, we stopped at the library to sign Little Miss up for the summer reading program and for her to pick out a few books.
Yesterday we had to pick the van back up and grab some groceries. That was a whole drama as it often is when I get groceries. Something weird happens almost every time I go. One time I locked myself out of our van and our spare keys don’t work to unlock it and the key fob lock button doesn’t work on it. It was a whole thing. Another time the youngest was just about starving and I had to get her food before we could go. This time the key fob fell off the keychain and disappeared into the void of Aldi or the parking lot or my van or I don’t even know. It was just gone. This meant I was once again stranded at Aldi with no way to get home until The Husband (who’d already had a super, super long day) could come and get me. He’d already headed home to rest because he had to take photos for the paper at a Twitty & Lynn concert. If you don’t know who they are, they are the grandchildren of Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn. Having them perform in our area was a little weird since there is nothing out here but trees and bears, but, alas there they were.
Speaking of bears, The Boy was up very late one night last week and looked out his upstairs window to see the outline of a bear in the dark sniffing our grill on the back porch. He said it was too dark to see it very well but that he could hear the bear breathing.
He left a note letting his dad know about the incident and then The Husband read in the local paper (not the one he works with) that a bear has been seen wandering our street and the streets around us.
I have been trying to see a bear for three years but only from the safety of my house. However, after hearing one is actually roaming our backyard, I’ve decided I don’t want to see one. I was even too afraid to take Little Miss to the neighbor’s trampoline this week in case the bear came out of the small woods behind it. I have no idea what I would do if a bear came out while we were up there.
It’s fairly rare for a bear to come out during the day, but a young bear was in the yard of a friend of ours down the street last summer and it had no interest in leaving, even with her daughter’s dog barked at it. Zooma the Wonder Dog likes to go with us when we go up to the trampoline and I know she’d try to defend us. This week I am going to look up what we should do because it is supposed to be very nice out, and it will be nice weather to jump on the trampoline. Or it will be too hot to jump on the trampoline. Not sure which yet. We never can tell with Pennsylvania weather.
Today we had gymnastics for Little Miss and then we will have a week off from gymnastics.
School is winding down for us and we are mainly tackling last minute tasks such as finishing book reports and a research paper for The Boy, since I am required to have writing samples for him now that he is in high school.
Our last official day of school is June 2 and then we meet with the evaluator the next week. The evaluator will go over what work we did for the year and then write up a report that says we did what we needed to do under the requirements of our state’s homeschool law. We then hand that in to the school district and the year is officially done when the superintendent sends us a letter saying we have done what we needed to do – again – under state law.
I mentioned above that I signed Little Miss up for the local Summer Reading Program. That starts June 20th and is every Tuesday and Wednesday. It runs for about a month and should keep us busy and at the library at least a couple of times a week.
The Boy is still working at a local restaurant, at least for the summer. His schedule will get busier in the fall because he is going to be attending a trade school near us a couple of times a week in addition to homeschool, so he plans to quit his job.
I have not been drinking as much tea lately because I am out of honey. I planned to get some yesterday but after all the drama, I just wanted to head home. In place of honey, I used sugar. Yuck. I don’t know how I ever drank anything in it with sugar. It’s just too sweet and doesn’t taste right.
Since it will be warm this upcoming week I’ll probably stick to cool water or cool water with a bit of grape juice mixed in.
How about you? What have you been drinking and what will you be drinking this upcoming week? Herbal tea? Iced tea? Lemonade? Let me know in the comments and let me know how your week was.
