The world is absolutely insane right now, I think many of us can agree on that.
Yesterday, Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs wrote about combating all the stress from national/world event by focusing on some small things that make her happy and I thought that today I would copy her.
First, I have to agree with Erin wrote about enjoying oranges lately. My parents’ neighbors gave them some oranges called Cara oranges the other week. They are pink inside and so delicious. We picked some up from Aldi for ourselves and now opening one is like having a moment of respite in the middle of a crazy day.
This is not my photo…I didn’t have any of the oranges left to take a photo of! Ha!
I love the smell of them, but I’ve always loved the smell of citrus things. I have an essential oil called Energy and it is full of citrus essential oils — lemon, orange, etc. It’s such a mood booster for me when I sniff it. Sadly, I haven’t been able to find my bottle, so I’ll have to get another one soon.
Another small thing that is making me happy these days is reading Miss Read’s Village School by Miss Read.
It’s an easy-going book about a teacher in a small school in a small village in England. There are quirky characters and interesting storylines throughout, with most of the chapters set up as their own little stories, but with the same characters.
Reading it helps me feel like I can escape the craziness of my life and the world right now, if only for a half an hour or so. I read and I step from Little Town, Pa. to Faircare, England.
Another small thing that is making me happy is finding Cagney & Lacey on Amazon Prime and starting to watch it for the first time.
For those who aren’t familiar, it’s a show about two women cops that use to air on CBS back in the 1980s.
The main characters are Christine Cagney (Meg Foster for the first six episodes and then Sharon Gless) and Mary Beth Lacey (Tyne Daly). The show is surprisingly pretty good, though there are some cheesy 80s moments. It’s similar to Murder, She Wrote in that it is good and addictive but sometimes it must be made a bit of (affectionate) fun of.
I’m also finding happiness in the journal The Husband gave me for Christmas. It’s a journal in the front with an agenda in the back. It has a pretty front cover and nice lined pages inside with a place to write the date as the month, day, and year.
I am using it to get back into personal, daily or at least weekly journaling. I hope to record the good as much as the bad because when I was younger, I recorded mostly the bad, which made me look either super depressed or super cranky all of the time.
If I don’t write a full entry, I am trying to at least list three things I am thankful for. Let’s see how long that lasts.
Another small thing that is making me happy is warming up my rice pack in this cold weather (which is starting to return), sticking it under my blanket near my feet and either writing, reading, or watching something.
I’ve already shared that sometimes I then pull my blanket over my laptop and head and create a makeshift heated dome/tent for myself.
It’s very cozy and feels like shutting out the world in a small way.
My neighbors have not taken all their Christmas lights and displays down yet and I love looking out my window and seeing them. They started taking them down today but I told the wife I’d love if they at least leave the ones up on their front porch (they’re white and blue) to perk up the darkness of January and February.
I could probably list a few small things that are making me happy, but I think I’ll save those for another day because I have a feeling I am going to need to make my world smaller again to feel less overwhelmed.
Glad you stopped by for a chat and thanks to my sister-in-law’s gift of some new teas, I can offer you some different varieties.
She even brought them in a very cute little basket that Little Miss had fun rearranging yesterday. She plopped my jar of honey right in the middle of the teas.
I have never tried the cold tea brews before so I am excited to do that later this week.
The Boy has already tried the pumpkin spice one and has loved it.
Yesterday was my birthday and The Husband took me to a very fancy restaurant in our area that he’s been saying he wanted to take me to for a long time.
Every time we would drive by it on our way to cities southeast of us, he would say, “I’m going to take you there for our anniversary one day.”
Well, he didn’t for our anniversary, which was totally fine with me, but he did for my birthday, and it absolutely lived up to the hype.
We sat out on the patio overlooking a creek and a tiki torch, as well as the walking trails. The weather was absolutely perfect, even if the trees had not changed as fast as the ones near us are changing.
The food was much fancier than what we would normally eat and absolutely incredible. I’ve never tasted steak like that. It was like butter in my mouth it was so tender. I mean, it tasted like steak not butter, but I think you get what I mean.
I gave my daughter a sample when I got home and she said she had no idea what I meant by the butter comment and sort of looked annoyed at me, but for me it was amazing.
The Husband had chicken marsala.
We both had potatoes with a fancy name, which the waitress explained was simply mashed red potatoes with the skin on. Ha! Fancy name or not, the potatoes were insanely good.
It was very relaxing to sit there and look out over the small creek that runs on the property. They have a botanical garden somewhere but we didn’t find it. They also have a garden on the property where they grow food for the restaurant. So, it is essentially farm to table.
The restaurant is also an inn and it’s a gem in the middle of nowhere really. It’s not in a bigger city near us — it’s a little bit away from a small “city” near us but there really isn’t anything else around it. I will say I felt a little out of place there, since I would say most of the clientele is in a different financial bracket than my me and my husband. I ignored those feelings, though, and made up stories in my head about the people around us as I waited for our food.
I decided the man sitting behind my husband, who did look a bit tired and unshaven, though well dressed, was a businessman who hadn’t yet told his wife that things were falling apart. He was also a closet gambler and alcoholic.
The young waiter who looked about 16 but was probably older, was a rich kid made to work there after his family kicked him out because he was an entitled brat who felt he didn’t have to do anything to contribute to his family, alone society. (Of course I didn’t really think this about the kid, despite the weird side eye he gave me on the way by — these are just stories I made up!)
Then there was the group of friends all in their 50s or 60s who were sitting in chairs along the creek, sipping their various alcoholic drinks.
I definitely knew they could be the basis of a murder mystery and tried to choose which one might get knocked off first. I chose the one man in white shorts and blue polo holding his cocktail, looking annoyed as everyone else pulled chairs up to sit next to him. I also imagined he used the word “insufferable” a lot in every day conversation, especially when referring to some of the women around him.
Most of the men and women in the group were wearing blue tops and white pants. I don’t know if that is a rich person thing or just a style choice. Either way, they all looked lovely and like they were having a good, yet slightly annoying time. By “slightly annoying” I mean none of them were really smiling much. They seemed somewhat annoyed at each other. Gosh, looking back, maybe they had come from a funeral or something. Like the funeral of their murdered friend….
Okay, yes, I need to stop reading and watching so many murder mysteries.
The man behind us was in the middle of an interview for a job at State Farm with a guy who made a lot of dad jokes, so I don’t think he needed a made up story. He just needed an escape. I didn’t hear the first comment, but I did hear when the older man said, “Because we’re always there. Get it? Like State Farm is there…”
There was some nervous laughter that trickled around the table and then the sales pitch to join the team started after that.
After dinner, we headed to where all birthday girls around here go — Walmart. Ha! Actually, The Husband ran in to grab some bottled water my parents. We made a quick stop after that and picked up a treat for the kids.
At home I watched a couple episodes of Supernatural with The Boy, but don’t know if I will do that again. I enjoyed them to a point, but they were also quite disturbing in parts.
It was hard to see Jared Padalecki as anyone but Dean on Gilmore Girls and it was confusing that his name was Sam in this show, but his brother was Dean. I kept getting confused.
Speaking of The Boy — he got his driver’s permit yesterday and we were so happy for him. He was a little nervous about the test but it turned out to be much easier than he thought. Though he has waited a bit to get his permit, he has been driving grandpa’s tractors and truck around his property for a couple of years now, so he knows what he is doing.
Right after he passed the test my dad actually took him driving around some backroads for a couple of hours.
We are definitely having fall weather and fall vibes in our neck of the woods right now. The trees are changing fast and falling down on the ground. It seems like we got our color much quicker than I thought we would and I am trying to enjoy it as much as I can before our trees are bare.
When even more of the trees have changed we plan to go leaf peeping and admire the views.
I hope to post some photos for all of you of the leaves on here but I am having an issue with WordPress,, who says my storage is almost full and they want me to pay even more than what I do so I can add more storage.
I’m rejected the idea of paying more by backing up some old posts, deleting them from this blog, and moving them to a backup blog. These are posts from seven or eight years ago, not recent ones.
I’ve also been combining photos on collages I’ve made in Canva to help cut down on how much storage space I am using.
Another blogger friend of mine, Mama’s Empty Nest, has been struggling with this for months now. She’s also been struggling with a lot more as her husband had to undergo an emergency surgery and her daughter was admitted to the hospital after going into labor way too early. I don’t know if she has mentioned this on her blog yet, but the baby did not make it and I just ask that you pray for that family right now. This would have been her daughter’s second child, as she has an older daughter. The little girl is around the same age as Little Miss and was really looking forward to a sibling. Just please pray for their healing and comfort at this time.
Luckily, Mr. Empty Nest is doing fairly well after his surgery, but I just can’t imagine how hard it was for him and his wife with him recovering and their daughter suffering as she lost her little one in the hospital.
I would say that I am ending my post with some sadness, but there is also joy in the story. This little one has gone back to Jesus where her family will meet her again one day and her grandpa is getting healthier by the day and will be able to spend more time with her older sister. There is some joy in the midst of heartache, thankfully.
This upcoming week isn’t yet a busy one for us, but we will see how that goes.
Do you have anything interesting planned for next week?
I hope everyone in the U.S. had a very nice Fourth of July. My family did and partly thanks to cooler temperatures in our area.
It wasn’t too cold or too warm for our afternoon cookout and an early evening waving of sparklers in the backyard at my parents’ house.
Today we stayed inside from the warming temps and watched movies and relaxed while our son went to visit a friend.
Last night some neighbors were shooting off fireworks, which always freaks out Zooma the Wonder Dog.
She hates gunfire (which does happen here occasionally), thunder, and fireworks and lately when she hears any of those she has been getting so nervous she just paces back and forth and goes to each of the family members and paws at us. She was doing this last night. We tried to let her out to see if she needed to use the bathroom, gave her an extra treat, and do other things we thought she might want but finally decided it was indeed the fireworks upsetting her.
So last night I finally got a clue – after looking online and after an hour of her pawing and pacing and refusing to settle. I closed all the windows and turned on the fan and air conditioner for some white noise. Then I wrapped a blanket around her (thankfully yesterday was a cool day) and rubbed her temples and she started to close her eyes and finally flopped over on the couch next to me and fell asleep.
The poor thing had had a long day at my parents, running all over their property, and I knew she had to be exhausted. She laid next to me asleep under that blanket for a good hour.
I think the blanket is a comfort to her because in the winter our daughter covers her up like she is a baby and they fall asleep together that way.
She is a bit of a spoiled dog and she pretty much knows it.
Tonight I also I want to offer up prayers for the people of Kerrville, Texas and the surrounding area. I’m sure many of you know about the flooding there so I won’t go into detail. I’ve been struggling with the news of this since last night. My 10-year-old daughter has gotten a lot of hugs and kisses since I first heard yesterday. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about those girls and their families and the other victims.
I know that it seems to be common these days for people to try to politicize absolutely everything, but in this case, I wish people just wouldn’t.
The fingers of blame have been shot out at everyone from the current administration, the past administration, meteorologists, camp leaders, media, and everyone in between.
The fact is that sometimes some people might be to blame for a response to a weather event, but sometimes weather is going to do what weather is going to do. That doesn’t make the aftermath any easier or less horrifying, of course.
In 2011, when I lived 45 minutes north of where I live now, we were told by the National Weather Service we would get heavy rain from the remnants of Tropical Storm Sandy. There might even be flooding, we were told. It could be significant flooding, especially since our town was along two rivers that converged right at the end of town. We were not told the whole town might flood, though. That hadn’t happened since the remnants of Hurricane Agnes in 1972.
What we were not told until the middle of the night, mainly because forecasters didn’t know this was going to happen, was that the storm system had stalled over our area. That meant that rain kept falling and falling and falling. Hours earlier, business owners in our town’s business district were told they would get some damage, but their businesses should be fine. Homeowners were told to get to higher ground, but they should be okay.
By 2 or 3 a.m., though, it was clear those assurances were absolutely wrong. One business owner recalled to my husband that when they got the middle-of-the-night call from the fire department, they were told, “We were wrong. The weather people were wrong. The river is coming over its banks. You’re going to lose everything. You can’t come into town, though because there is water over the bridge and it’s not safe.”
The business district was destroyed. The next day, people were in boats on main street, just like in the photos I had seen from 1972. It was completely surreal.
People who hadn’t left their houses were trapped on their roofs. A few houses floated downstream, just like the photos we are seeing in Texas. As far as I know, the owners were not in the houses at the time. We did not have the high number of fatalities like they have in Texas.
I’m sure a lot of blame flew around after that flood, but most people understood what really happened was that nature did what nature does — acted in an unexpected way for us, but an expected way for it.
No one, or at least very few people, could have predicted that storm system would stall and dump more than 10 inches of rain on the area overnight and even more the next day.
From what I am reading about Texas, a similar situation occurred, but even worse because dams overflowed. I watched a video of how fast it all happened and yes, people knew there would be flooding, but flooding that wiped out entire towns? No. They didn’t predict that because the area had been a drought about two months ago. A lot of news channels are choosing not to share that because they want to stir up controversy.
While some responses might have been lacking (I have no idea yet), most people were completely caught off guard — even officials. This area isn’t like a city or even a well traveled rural area, from what I understand. This is true wilderness without not a ton of communication and that’s how people want it. These are campgrounds. They did have cellphones in some areas but even then they were keeping an eye on the water, but had no idea it was about to break loose further upstream.
I just wish the hyper-political people in our country (those who see life through political lenses only) would keep their mouths shut until we can at least bury the dead.
I should also add that there are still people missing in North Carolina from the flooding last autumn which surprisingly people have stopped talking about. That entire area is still devastated, and people are living in temporary housing, and others are still waiting to bury their dead.
There is too much tragedy in the world for us all to keep up on it, so I don’t blame people for not knowing about what is happening in N.C. still. I can’t take it all in most days. I disassociate myself by watching movies, reading books, and then writing blog posts about it all.
I simply wish we didn’t all have to start dividing each other even more during these tragedies. Screaming that this or that party is to blame for this or that natural disaster isn’t going to help these families through their grief. I hesitate and hate to say this, but I think in this situation, no amount of warning was going to help stop some of this from happening.
Even if they had known the rivers would rise fast, I don’t see how they could have known it would rise up to 20 feet in less than an hour. That’s just not something that normally happens….which brings me to another topic that I probably won’t write about on this blog ever because I usually try to keep posts here as happy as I can.
All this being said, I’ll be back to happier topics tomorrow in my Sunday Bookends when I write about Thriftbooks sending me the wrong book but it turned out to be a possible collectible.
Next week Little Miss and I will be going to VBS, helping my parents, and dealing with some heat again. Maybe we will even find some time for swimming.
What have you been doing and what do you have going on next week?
Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.
You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
Welcome to my Sunday Chat where I ramble about what’s been going on in my world, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading, watching, listening to, andwhat I’ve been writing.
“Let’s just use paper plates for Christmas dinner,” I told my mom.
We’ve had a lot going on and some members of the family haven’t been feeling well from couple different health issues.
Plus it was only the six of us so there was no need for anything fancy.
I heard a small “uh-huh..” on the other end of the phone and figured she was agreeing with me. The next day, though, The Husband, kids and I walked into a kitchen that had been set with a Christmas tablecloth and very fancy plates and goblets.
“These were my Mama’s,” Mom said of the plates. “And we thought we better get them out now because we might never have a chance to use them again.”
I figured that might be their dark humor since they are in their 80s and often say odd things like this to us.
Mom said she actually meant because we might not want to take the time to drag them out again. I added that we might not want to take the chance of them getting broken since I am quite a klutz.
The plates, by the way, were made in Baveria and were a gift of some kind to my grandfather when he used to work for Pepsi Co. That was probably 50 years ago.
The crystal glasses were gifts to my parents on their wedding day. They’ve been married 60 years.
There were also a set of glass water glasses that belonged to my paternal grandmother.
Somehow, we made it through dinner without breaking anything. My husband also made it through washing the plates without breaking anything.
After dinner we had a quick gift opening session that was quite quick this year since we were all broke. *snort* It was a nice time, though, and it was preceded by the reading from the Bible of the Christmas story, which we do every year.
Our family had a lot to celebrate this year.
My sister-in-law, who had been in the hospital for an entire month for heart issues, came home on Christmas Eve. She was/is still dealing with a Norovirus she caught while there and will have lot of new routines she’ll need to do for her condition, but she is home.
The Husband has been dealing with a health issue which could have been so much worse but has been caught and is being treated now and we are very, very thankful for that.
Money is tight right now, but we were all together and found a lot of time to watch movies and simply have fun.
It was a cold week and that was nice in some ways because it meant we had the white Christmas Little Miss had wanted.
We have electric heat upstairs and downstairs we have heating oil and a wood stove.
Thursday we didn’t light the fire because we simply didn’t get to it, and it was a reminder how well it helps to heat the rest of the house when we have it lit because I had to put four blankets on me to get warm that night. I had also taken a shower right before bed and my hair was wet so that, and the fact I’d forgotten to turn on the electric heat upstairs didn’t help at all. The fire was definitely lit Friday, but we didn’t have to light it last night because we are having a small warm up this weekend with temps in the 40s and 50s.
This weekend we have been relaxing and enjoying our time together since The Husband is off work until the week after next and The Boy doesn’t have to return to tech school until Thursday.
We hope to see the Christmas lights at a local golf course Monday if it doesn’t get rained out.
I will finish Shepherd’s Abiding by Jan Karon’s today or tomorrow and that will be my final book of the year. My first book of 2025 will be Christy by Catherine Marshall, which I have already started and am really enjoying.
It is a book based very loosely on the life of Marshall’s mother and takes place in the early 1900s.
This past week I finished Tooth and Claw by Craig Johnson – a novella part of the Walt Longmire series.
I kept trying to read Shepherd’s Abiding to keep with the Christmas spirt, but I kept going back to Tooth and Claw to see if Walt and Henry got away from the psycho polar bear.
Little Miss is very close to the end of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
The Husband is reading World Traveler by Anthony Bourdain which is also on my TBR.
I watched a lot of Christmas movies or Christmas-related shows last week including
The Christmas episode of The Dick VanDyke Show
Christmas in the Smokies
A ton of Mary Berry episodes
The Christmas episode of All Creatures Great and Small
Jingle All the Way
The Last Holiday
Then I also watched the North and South mini-series. Good grief..that was depressing in many ways. Then I watched another depressing film called Me Before You.
The Husband and I also watched Hombre – again depressing, but Paul Newman was in it so that was good.
I watched a lot of Murder She Wrote one day as well.
I will hopefully watch some more uplifting movies and shows this week.
I’m editing Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree and brainstorming ideas for the fourth Gladwynn Grant book. You can pre-order Gladwynn Shakes the Family Tree (a cozy mystery) here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0DR6BG3ZR?
I also wanted to offer a quick thank you to everyone who took part in our Comfy, Cozy Christmas link up. That was so much fun. You can still add posts or just read the ones that are already there at this link: https://lisahoweler.com/comfy-cozy-christmas-2024/
A quick reminder for January plans for this blog and Erin with Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.
Erin and I are planning some Cozy Crafternoons on Zoom in January and February to try to beat those winter blahs that happen after Christmas. The plans for now are two a month.
We will just all meet up on the date and time, and individually work on whatever we want – embroidery, coloring, knitting, crocheting, jewelry making, etc, while chatting.
Erin says she will be embroidering during the session. I might be writing, drawing, or editing photos.
If you are interested in learning more send an email either to me at lisahoweler@gmail.com or to Erin at crackercrumblife@gmail.com. That way we will have your email for the zoom link! Our first scheduled crafternoon is January 11th at 1 pm EST.
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.
