Saturday Afternoon Chat returns: small illness, school update, and very, very cold temperatures

January 11, 2025January 11, 2025 / Lisa R. Howeler / 9 Comments

I miss my Saturday Afternoon Chat with my bloggy friends.

I tried to combine this post with my Sunday Bookends, but I don’t find I enjoy it as much because I don’t want to ramble in that post since it is mainly about books and what I’m watching and part of a link up.

On Saturdays I can ramble a bit and it feels more like I am chatting with my friends. Not that people who read my Sunday posts aren’t friends….yep. there I go again. Digging a hole. Ha! I have a talent at that.

Well, hopefully my regular readers understand me and how much I just miss chatting with you like old times.

It isn’t that I have a ton to chat about right now — or at least anything exciting.

Little Miss has had a light cough and a fever, but not a lot else, for the last three days. Her illness started on Thursday and messed up plans she had to go visit her friends today, but, hopefully, we can reschedule.

She had us a bit nervous Friday night as her temp jumped to 103 and then 103.4 Saturday morning but she was otherwise acting fine. Her nose wasn’t even running. She was somewhat tired, had no appetite, and that annoying dry cough, but it didn’t hit her as hard as some other illnesses have.

The plan before she became sick was for The Husband and I to hang out alone in the afternoon — at least after the Crafternoon Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I hosted (more on that further down in this post). The Boy was going to go with her too so he could see his friend, who is the brother of Little Miss’s friend.

We’re a little baffled how Little Miss caught anything since we’ve been out of the house only once this past week. Her symptoms developed 12 hours after that one quick outing and we think that was much too quick, but, of course, it is possible. Our other theory is that one of the boys brought it in and passed it on to Little Miss (and probably me in a couple of days) but didn’t get any symptoms. The Boy is especially good at being a bug carrier, not getting sick, and then passing it on. We tease him about it sometimes.

It’s been too cold to leave the house and do much.

Some days the temps have been 14 to 17 degrees with windchills of -5 to 3.

I am not a fan of the severe cold we often experience in January and February in our state. We often have more cold than snow. I was looking through some videos from last winter yesterday, though, and it looks like we had some warmer days in February because I have videos of Little Miss and her friend playing at the playground in shorts and sweatshirts.

Circling back to the Crafternoon event — it was so much fun! Erin and I joined four other women and a junk journal group to do crafts and chit chat via Zoom. It is such an amazing thing to me that we can all see each other almost in person, via our phones and laptops, and connect in a different way than blogging, maybe even a deeper way. Being able to actually see faces and chat back and forth is a wonderful way to get to know people, hear different perspectives and make friends from all over the world.

We had a citizen of the UK, someone from Germany, and a handful of Americans all on the same call sharing about their lives and showing their crafts and simply having fun on a chilly winter afternoon.

We are going to host another one of these in two weeks so if you are interested please email me at lisahoweler@gmail.com or Erin at crackercrumblife@gmail.com and we will add you to the email list and send you the Zoom link.

Since I’m not sure if I can pass anything on to my parents, we are probably staying home Sunday (tomorrow) instead of visiting them like we usually do on Sundays.

That will give us another day to recover and relax.

Next week Little Miss and I will be back into the swing of school which has been including studying early American History, including the Revolutionary War. We just finished a historical fiction book called Johnny Tremain that focused on the early days of our country, right before the Revolutionary War started. Next up we are reading The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare.

In Science we are studying Marine Biology and I think I might be having more fun with that than Little Miss some days. She knows a lot about life in the ocean so she sometimes fills me in on whatever the curriculum didn’t.

One thing I learned that totally shocked me — sand dollars are alive.

Yes, I might be a bit of a moron. I made it this far in life without knowing that. I think I was probably taught this at some point but just forgot because, seriously, how can we remember everything we learn in school or life? It’s just not possible.

This information sent me down a YouTube rabbit hole of watching sand dollars move on the ocean floor.

Here is one of the videos I watched with Little Miss.

In math we are studying division. Little Miss hates math but once she catches on, she does very well.

In English we are reading books and studying a variety of subjects — singular and plural nouns, how to write addresses, and how to write book reviews, which I thought was interesting.

The Boy is still attending a technical school in the mornings. He learns about a variety of subjects, including masonery, which is their current area of study.

A couple of weeks before Christmas he dropped a large concrete block on his finger and I received a call from the school. The shock of the pain caused him to faint and his finger was also very sore for a few weeks. The nail did get dark but it did not fall off like the school nurse thought it might.

For English, he and I are making our way through some British literature and poets. We finished The Hound of the Baskerville’s by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and are now planning to start Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

Before the end of the year, I hope to study some poets, Shakespeare, and finish off the year with an Agatha Christie book.

My son is a senior this year and I’m struggling with accepting that I will not have to plan for his school year next year. Usually, I am choosing curriculum for the kids in early summer but this year I will only be choosing curriculum for Little Miss and that is a bit . . . I’m not sure what word I want to use here. Disconcerting? Depressing? Heartbreaking?

I’m excited for The Boy who will be moving on to his next chapter in life, but I’m also worried about him. Life is so crazy for a young person when they are first starting out and — well, that’s another topic for another day, I suppose. I could fall down a rabbit hole of worry with that topic.

It’s no surprise that the Bible verses that speak the most to me these days are focused on worrying about the future.

One of the things I am worrying about is a sore knee that is clearly a pull of some sort but one I hope will heal and not require a doctor’s visit or surgery of some sort. I’ve ordered a knee brace and am occasionally using a cane to keep weight off of it while I work on healing it. I am a horrible patient because I do not do well just sitting and propping my leg up to wait for it to heal.

I’m not a very athletic person but I do get up to do dishes, cook, let the dog and cat in and various other things. Sitting in one spot and asking others to do it for me is not easy for me to do.

So that’s a little of what has been going on with us.

How are all of you doing?

About the two canes….and how they made my personalities change

Saturday Afternoon Chat December 2: A hodgepodge of thoughts about my week and the week to come

December 2, 2023 / Lisa R. Howeler / 11 Comments

Dry skin. That’s what I’ve got right now.

Horrible dry skin from the dry air in our house.

Don’t worry – it just feels dry. I won’t describe how it looks because it doesn’t look bad. It just looks — pale and dry.

We don’t have a humidifier downstairs but I think we are going to have to get one because when I get dry skin it causes my entire body to feel inflamed with itchiness. It’s a horrible feeling and sometimes I have to practically bathe myself in lotion to get relief.

I have a soap I use from Cetaphil that is moisturizing and helps immensely.

I find it fairly cheap on Amazon and at Walmart (no, this is not a sponsored post. I promise.) but I’m sure you can find it in other places as well.

Cetaphil used to make an amazing lotion too, but they changed the ingredients earlier this year and I don’t think it works as well.

My mom keeps telling me to put lotion or coconut oil on right after a shower to help my skin absorb the moisture but I always forget and pay for it later.

What do you, dear readers, use to help your dry skin if you have it? My curious mind wants to know.

An uneventful week where we almost died . . .

This past week was a rather uneventful week.

The only day I had something to do was yesterday when I drove 30 minutes down and back to pick up our groceries. On our way there some driver decided he’d try to pass a truck and a car on a stretch of road right on a corner, where there were double lines, and in a spot on the highway near my parents where there have been a number of fatalities over the years. When I saw him in my lane I couldn’t believe it.

I laid on the horn and luckily, he yanked back into his lane but it was certainly a frightening experience.

I’m not sure what was so important that this person needed to risk everyone’s life but I have a feeling he needed a beer.

I’m kidding.

Sort of.

Tonight The Husband, Little Miss, and I are headed to a Christmas parade in a tiny town half an hour away. He has to attend the event for work and I decided Little Miss needs to get out of the house and see her friends because she’s so bored that she’s started asking The Husband and I to play Hide and Seek or Red Light, Green Light with her.

She’s really gotten desperate for entertainment apparently. We are not really the most fun and we are easily distractable.

A question for my readers . . .

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend recently. I said Little Miss wanted me to play dolls and stuffies with her and she said she was always impressed with how I played with my daughter because most parents she knows don’t do that.

I have a variety of ages reading my blog so my question to all of you is if you play(ed) with your children when they were young or if you did what my mom did which was essentially tell me to go find a way to entertain myself. She wasn’t rude at all. She just had work to do in the house and couldn’t sit and play all afternoon so she’d gently suggest I go draw or play with my dolls on my own if I asked.

I don’t even remember asking, actually. I was used to drawing or playing on my own a lot. I was sort of a lonely kid with only a handful of friends my entire childhood. In fact, I was a lot like Little Miss is now and only had two close friends (sisters) until junior high.

She also has two sisters as her friends.

Her other two friends moved to Texas in the summer but are returning for a visit around Christmas.

As a follow-up to the question of if you played with your children, did your parents play with you? I mean, I know most parents at least throw a ball with their kids or play some board games, but did you really sit down and play with the dolls and their stuffed animals?

I like to do that some with Little Miss because I think it helps to develop her imaginative play and I know how important play is to the development of a child. I can’t, however, do it all day like she wants me to.

Moving on . . .

Right now I am listening to Cozy Cafe Ambience – Relaxing Smooth Jazz Music with Rain & Thunder Sounds at Night on YouTube. I’m trying to drown out the noise of my house. We don’t have a lot of people in our house but it is very noisy.

Little Miss seems to think she has to have the TV on at all times, even while talking to her friends on a chat app while they play online games.

She’s not watching anything bad – it’s often a show on YouTube about reptiles that she likes. I don’t allow her to have YouTube on her phone anymore because she was watching all those Shorts and they were kicking out some very inappropriate stuff at her.

Even though the shows she watches aren’t bad, it’s constant noise.

I find it hard to focus on what I am writing with the constant chatter and interruptions. (How many times should a dog need to go out in an hour? Asking for a “friend.”) Sometimes I’m amazed I get any books or blog posts written but I do so by making myself get up early, before all the chatter starts, and also by going into the kitchen and sitting at the kitchen table where I’m a little bit more removed from the noise.

Oh and sometimes I just tell Little Miss to turn it all off! That helps too.

Today I goofed off this morning when Little Miss and others were sleeping so that’s my own fault for having to deal with the noise and activity.

We are having a slightly warmer day with rain forecasted for later on.

Then we will be dropping back into the 30s tomorrow. I know I was wishing for the cooler weather so I could cozy up under a blanket with a good book but on days like this when it isn’t exactly cold enough to light the fire but we don’t really want to turn the heat up too much and use up our heating oil, I find I don’t enjoy cuddling under a blanket as much as I hoped I would.

We do tend to romanticize the whole idea of a warm blanket, a cup of tea, and a good book, don’t we? We never factor in our cold nose or fingers, the cat that wants to warm up with us so she lays on our chest (right under our chin), or the way the tea gets really cold in the chilly air so we have to keep getting up to warm it up.

Or at least I don’t always think of all those negatives.

But, I think I’ll still continue to romanticize my life a little. Finding those little moments of magic are important, even if they aren’t as perfect as we had imagined. Plus, I have the option to turn the heat up, I have a roof over my head and a nice house, my family around me to make me laugh and smile (even if I sometimes have to tell them to be quiet so I can think.), I have food in my cupboards and fridge, and I have the luxury of being able to choose when I want to read or right – most of the time.

I’m very lucky and even though I grumble a bit from time to time (usually in jest, not a real grumble) I recognize that and I am grateful for it all.