Sunday Bookends: Bear in the neighborhood, little girls everywhere, and a summer reading list


Welcome to Sunday Bookends where I ramble about what I’ve been reading, doing, watching, writing and listening to.

What I/we’ve been Reading

I have two or three more chapters to read of Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery and will probably finish it today.

I also hope to finish Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain later this week.

I am starting The Heat of the Mountains by Pepper Basham this week for a book tour, which isn’t until the end of July.

I hope to start the next book in the Anne series (Anne of the Island) as well.

I have a few books I would like to read during this summer including:

The sixth book in the Walt Longmire series, Junkyard Dogs;

The Hot Rock by Donald Westlake;

The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz;

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie;

 A Ted Dekker book (haven’t decided which one yet);

At least one Jane Austen book

The Edge of Belonging by Amanda Cox

The Do Over by Bethany Turner.

The Murder of Mr. Wickham by Claudia Gray

Do I think I will get through all these books? I have no idea but we will see.

The Husband is reading Hooker by Lou Thesz (a book about a wrestler, not a prostitute.).

The Boy is taking a break from reading after reading so much for school this year.

I finally got Little Miss to let me read a book other than Laura Ingalls Wilder — Anne of Green Gables. She’s letting me read one chapter of Anne one night and a chapter of The Long Winter the other night.

What’s Been Occurring

Little Miss had a very busy, exciting week. She was able to see all of her friends, including the ones still visiting the area from Texas. They had moved there last year (I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m too lazy to go back to my previous Sunday Bookend and look. *wink*). Her friends who live locally were visiting Thursday and then her friends from Texas were down the street at their great-grandmothers so they came up to visit too. For about three hours I had six crazy girls between the ages of 6 and 8 here and it was actually a lot of fun, more for Little Miss than anyone else.

I’d love to show the photos of them all together but I don’t have permission to share their photographs on the blog so I’ll just tell you that they were all crazy and had fun posing for a photograph that they could all remember when they go their separate ways.

Little Miss was able to see her friends from Texas the next day as well and then last night the neighbor’s daughter took her to our local dairy parade where she milked a cow and was able to ride on a fire truck.

On Friday we traveled 45 minutes one way and 45 minutes back to have the kid’s evaluations done with our homeschool evaluator. We didn’t visit the town where we used to live like we usually do when we go there, partially because we simply didn’t feel like and partially because they last time we went there some young men yelled nasty things at my son while he was riding his bike. The incident was a stark reminder of how much the town we lived in for about 18 years had changed, and not for the better.

With the evaluations done, we can now submit our paperwork to the district both for this past school year and for next. And that also means we are officially on summer break. No, we don’t have any concrete exciting plans for this summer. One of my plans is to start looking for curriculum for The Boy who is now a sophomore in high school (hold me!). Yes, I am a very exciting person.

In less interesting news for most people, my peonies and wild roses bloomed this week, which is just about one of the biggest highlights of the year for me. Yes, my life is that boring.

In unrelated news, I have been waiting to see a bear since we moved here and I might have seen one Monday if I had been outside my house because one visited my neighbor down the street — the great grandmother of Little Miss’ little friends. The bear was young and walked up her driveway and into her side yard (which is very small and leads to her patio doors) and visited her granddaughter’s dog and then kept going, I guess. We only found out about it when the local newspaper wrote about it. I told my neighbor to call me if a bear shows up in her yard again, but really, what am I going to do if it does? I’m certainly not going to walk down the street, but maybe I’d drive down there to check it out.

Now that I know there has been a bear on the street, I am trying to be very careful when I let the pets out and check on them while they are out there.  Bears aren’t known to kill dogs or cats in this area, but it still makes me nervous.

What We watched/are Watching

Last Sunday I started to rewatch Season 2 of The Chosen. Wow. I caught so many things I had missed when I watched it last year, especially during the episode with Jesus and John the Baptist. It is a seriously powerful show. If you have not watched it, I really encourage you to do so. Even if you aren’t a Christian. It’s very well put together and tells a wonderful story about people, in addition to God.

You can either watch it on The Chosen app, which is very easy to download on your smartphone or another device. You can cast the episodes to your TV and download the channel if you have a Roku.

I watched a couple more episodes of The Durrells, which is on Amazon, and based on a trilogy of books about a real life family called The Durrells. It’s an interesting show, with some odd moments, but nothing outlandishly inappropriate or violent.

I also watched a bunch of videos by homesteader YouTubers like Roots and Refuge Farm all week long. This gave me ideas for things I can do around my own home to create a garden or grow food without planting a full garden. I am behind on starting a garden this year (clearly) and I’ve been dragging my feet on it because it can be very time consuming and I sort of blew it last year. But these videos have inspired me to try it on a smaller scale, so I am producing at least something this year. As my neighbor said last week, this is definitely the year to be planting a garden considering how bad our economy is and how much worse it is going to get.

It is also inspiring to watch Roots and Refuge because they have built their farm and their YouTube channel up over the last several years to the point they are now making a full, supporting income from both.

The Husband and I also watched an episode (they are 90 minutes each) of Brokenwood Mysteries and on Saturday I watched the new Obi Wan Kenobi show with The Boy and then an episode of the third season of Star Trek Discovery with The Boy and The Husband.


What I’m Writing

 I worked more this week on The Shores of Mercy, which is what I’ll be calling the new book. It is called Mercy’s Shore for the blog.

I’ve decided to write one more book after this one and complete The Spencer Valley Chronicles with five books. The fifth book will be about Alex and his relationship with his father, as well as a little more about his relationship with Molly. I felt like that will bring the series full circle. Since it started with Molly, it will end with Molly.

In addition to working on the book, I also wrote several blog posts including:



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.

Our pets and their many adventures and personalities

Our family’s pets certainly are characters and keep our lives interesting.

We somehow ended up with three black and white animals.

Zooma The Wonder Dog’s most well-known features in our family are her spotted paws, even though she has white on other areas of her fur as well. When we first met Zooma and decided we wanted to adopt her, 3-year-old Little Miss told everyone we met that we were going to buy the puppy with the spotted paws. We had planned not to tell my parents right away because we thought they might not think we should get a new dog since we’d recently had a negative experience with another puppy adoption. That plan fell apart when Little Miss ran into their house first thing and announced, “We’re getting the puppy with the spotted paws!”

The breeder had actually asked us if we would like to switch puppies because someone else was interested in Zooma, but I told her we couldn’t do it.

“My daughter has already announced to everyone we meet that we are getting the puppy with the spotted paws.”

So now we have our Zooma with her spotted paws. She has taken over this blog a few times and you can find those posts if you search “Zooma” in the search bar in the right sidebar.

The first year we had Zooma.

Scout, our almost-two-year-old cat, has huge, white paws, as well as other areas of white over the bottom part of her. She is a polydactyl, so she has extra toes.

You can see a bit of her big paws here.

Pixel, our veteran cat, appears to be all black but if you are unfortunate to be stuck under her underside you will see a small streak of white fur between her legs.

All three of our animals are allowed outside now. In the past, I tried to keep Scout inside because I didn’t want her to be an outside cat. Sadly, after she saw Pixel and Zooma going out each day, her curiosity was almost overwhelming. She became so desperate to go out she would continuously slip out past us, finding any way she could to escape. Stopping her became an exhausting undertaking and she was also severely hyper when she couldn’t go out — raring all over the house and being a general nuisance all of the time. Once she was able to go outside and explore, she would come back in a lot happier and a lot cuddlier.

As a kitten, Scout loved to curl up on my chest to sleep. In a few months, though, she was too big to do that anymore, so she found other places to curl up. Every once in a while she does still try to curl up on my chest and I have to sit slumped down, my arms folded across my chest in a circle for her to lay in. We don’t last very long in that position so now she wakes me up early in the morning by trying to curl up against my neck or chest while I’m still in bed. When she cuddles she bumps her nose against mine while purring and then “kisses” (licks) my chin or cheek a couple of times. When she curls up on me on the bed she eventually decides I move too much and gets up and moves to her favorite place to sleep in the house — Little Miss’s pillow, just above Little Miss’s head. Sometimes she even curls around Little Miss’s head.

Pixel has never been a huge cuddler, but she does occasionally climb up on my chest and kneed and try to curl up there. She’s much too large to cuddle on my chest so her body drapes down my stomach or her large rear crashes into my laptop. She often picks a time for cuddling when I am trying to write instead of when I am trying to read. I would have a lot more room for her while I am reading than when I am typing, but, well, she’s a cat and cats want attention at the most inopportune times, as cat owners know.

Zooma loves to cuddle but wants to be petted most of the time during the cuddle (pawing at your hand to let you know you must keep rubbing her head or belly) and like Scout, she seems to decide somewhere during a snuggle session that she needs more room to spread out and leaves to sprawl onto the floor or couch. The Boy is the champion Zooma cuddler and hugs her like a baby, especially when he is procrastinating on doing school work or any other work.

“I can’t do that. I’m cuddling the puppy,” he’ll say and then he and Zoom will look at me with pathetic “puppy eyes.”

It seems to be an unwritten rule that you can’t move a cat once they’ve curled up in a spot on the couch or bed and you can’t break up a boy and dog cuddle session.

Zooma also likes to cuddle with Little Miss first thing in the morning while Little Miss either plays her online games or chats with her friends before schoolwork.

When we go outside, the animals go with us and often follow us as we walk down the street. Zooma is, of course, on a leash when we go for a walk because even though this is a small town, and very close to the woods, it’s still a town.

Zooma is on a lead or leash when she is outside so she doesn’t take off on us, because she will. She will chase whatever critter she sees in the yard or on the street. When we first moved here, and if we took her off the lead, she would take off over the hill behind the house after deer and rabbits. She would also chase the neighborhood cats and more than once she yanked the lead out of the ground and wrapped herself around our one neighbor’s large tree trying to get to one of them. If she sees a cat while we are walking on the leash she tries to yank the leash out of our hands and get to them. The main cat we see on our walks is our neighbor’s cat Simba.

He was here before our pets so this is his territory, but our animals don’t seem to understand that.

Simba wanders freely like Pixel and Scout do. None of them seem to go very far from their houses and don’t seem to go to other streets. Scout and Pixel do go over the bank toward the old railcar on the street below ours but I have yet to have seen them actually on that street, which is a lot busier than ours, so I hope they never do.

Simba and Scout had a run in the other day after Simba chased Scout out from under the neighbor’s cars where they all like to hang out. Simba wasn’t done with her and even hissed at her while she was laying on the sidewalk in front of our house.

The next day I caught him stalking her in our yard. I guess he’s really not a fan of Scout. I don’t know if he has been doing this for the last several months we’ve been letting her out or if he just realized she is around or what. He and Pixel aren’t really fans of each other either so I’m sure they have some battles too. I know they did when we first moved here.

Another odd thing is that when we walk down the street, the cats follow us like we are taking them on the walk with us. They usually only make it halfway down the street, though, and decide they don’t want to follow us any further. Also, when we visit our neighbors, the cats will follow us onto their porches, like they are visiting too.

Our biggest issue with letting Scout out is that she doesn’t like to come back in so there are some nights we have to chase her down to get her back inside. Pixel wanders in and out all day, jumping up for a snack of food and a drink, and then meowing to be let back out. Scout occasionally comes back in, but usually, once she is out we don’t see her for the rest of the day or if we do see her she comes up for attention and then darts away when we try to pick her up to go inside.

Many an evening the family has watched me pace anxiously when she hasn’t returned from one of her excursions, sure that this time I shouldn’t have let her out and she’s finally got herself killed. Every time she’s come sauntering back in like there was nothing to worry about and clearly clueless, or not really caring, that I was worried sick over her.

We don’t want the animals outside at night because we do live close to the woods and a rural area and that means there could be any number of animals in our backyard at night, including raccoon, skunks, opossum, foxes, and bear.

Speaking of animals, our animals have had quite a few run-ins with animals, I’m sure even more than we are aware of. The main run-ins the cats have had have ended up in the deaths of the other animals since we often open our door to find dead mice or moles on our back porch. The mice were showing up before we let Scout out a lot and then they were showing up even more. Apparently, she had learned how to hunt, or maybe Pixel had shown her. My husband sent me a photo of her with a mouse in her mouth in our backyard one day and we finally knew Pixel wasn’t the only one leaving us presents.

Pixel is quite brutal with her prey. One day The Husband and The Boy were down by the bank across the road cleaning up from a failed yard sale we had and they heard what sounded like screaming. It was, in fact, screaming. It was one of Pixel’s victims trying to get away. My son testified that Pixel came out of the brush with it, tossed it on the ground and let it run a few feet away to give it the illusion that she was going to let it live, then pounced on it again, flung it in the air and repeated the process a few more times before finally killing it. The poor little mouse screamed the entire time and The Boy said it was completely unnerving. They both seemed traumatized when they came back in the house with The Husband only saying, “She’s brutal.”

Neither of them looked at her quite the same for a couple of weeks, trying to figure out how to balance the cat who seems so sweet when she bumps up against their legs for attention and the cat who is a homicidal predator.

Scout also shocked us one day when she came around the other side of the house with a small snake in her mouth. “What did you bring us this time?” I asked. “Is that another — oh my gosh! Snake! She’s got a snake!”

My dad was here so we all walked over to investigate the wounded reptile she dropped on the sidewalk and then rolled next to, clearly very proud of herself.

We all decided the snake wasn’t poisonous (probably a garter) so it hadn’t hurt her but we were still unnerved by the entire incident. We scooped the snake up in a shovel and pitched it over the bank in front of the house. I’m not sure if it made it or not but I did see a similar snake in our backyard last week and it was slithering along quite fast.

Zooma’s last animal run in, beside the rabbits she chases out of the backyard, and the deer she barks at, was the skunk who sprayed her at the end of last summer. That happened a couple of months before we caught Covid and lost our sense of smell and we joked that it would have been nice to have been able to smell when she got sprayed. It took a couple of weeks to get the smell off her even with two or three baths.

I rarely get a photo of all three animals together, even though they are all together at times. For example, the morning I am working on this post, I woke up to find all three of them on the bed with me, which is a rarity. Pixel is still not super fond of Scout and hisses and smacks at her when she gets up to snuggle with me before Pixel does.

We call Pixel our resident witch (we try to be nice and not use the b before the itch) because sometimes she just randomly smacks anyone who walks by her, including Zooma who is simply trying to get outside and use the bathroom. Sometimes even one of us gets smacked by her for no reason at all, but sometimes she wants us to stop and pay attention to her. Usually, the smacks are claw-free. Another funny thing about Pixel is that she snores when she sleeps. It’s this small little wheeze/whistle. I am curious if this is a trait with black cats since the black cat my husband had and I adopted when I married him also had sinus issues and sort of snored. She (Squeak) also sneezed horrible large boogers out of her nose and mainly when she was laying on my chest for snuggles.

Pixel was actually adopted because she reminded me so much of Squeak. The only difference is that Squeak was always skinny where we often call Pixel The Beast or Fat Cat.  Sometimes when I call her Fat Cat she glares at me through tiny slits as if to say, “You don’t have room to talk, lady.” Other times she seems to appreciate the nickname and rubs up against me despite me insulting her weight.

Pixel is fairly laid back and doesn’t get herself into trouble, unlike Scout and Zooma.

As I’ve mentioned in past blog posts, Scout’s little tree climbing adventures have kept us hopping, including the one night she got herself so stuck the fire company had to bring its ladder the next day to get her down.

The first time she climbed a tree was also one of the first times she escaped. That climb almost killed her because she didn’t land on her feet like Dad told me she would. She landed on her side and then laid there panting and I thought she was going to die. I even prepared for the kids to say goodbye to her. She jumped up and darted away a few seconds later, though, and it was clear she wasn’t going to die after all. Since then she’s had our hearts in our throats more than once with her antics, but I guess we are adapting to them more and don’t worry as much as we once did.

So, there you go.  You’ve not learned a little bit more about our crazy pets and their antics. Do you have pets? If so, what kind, how many and what are their names? Let me know in the comments.

I’ll leave you with some random photos of the pets. I’m surprised, yet not surprised, of how many photographs I have of them, actually.

Another social media break and looking to the rest of June

Yep. Here I go again. I’ve started another social media break, hopefully a month or so long. Every time I do one of these, I make it sound like I am addicted to social media and never off of it other than these breaks. That isn’t true, but I do sometimes find myself mindlessly scrolling way more often than I should on sites like Facebook and Instagram (I don’t do Twitter so I don’t appear to be a bigger twit than normal.). I also find myself mindlessly looking at news sites and becoming more and more anxious and sick to my stomach.

The bottom line of social media is that it gives most of our brains too much information, even if some of that information is good. We get overloaded and overwhelmed because our brains were never intended to process so much information at one time.

As Pastor Steven Furtick once said, “We were not meant to carry the entire world on our butt bone.” He was talking about our phones being in our back pockets and being constantly connected to the world through news sites and social media and other people.

God didn’t make us to process everything all at once. We were built to slow down, to contemplate, and to have times of rest and relaxation. Were meant for times of peace, not for constant chaos and voices in our minds, and not for being bombarded with ideas and opinions.

So, for the last week, I have been spending my days focusing on things other than social media and I hope I can start my days with a devotional this next week instead of picking up my phone to try to wake up. Since I have removed all apps that will tempt me to stumble down depression-inducing paths, I end up just checking my email, but it would still be better if I started with a verse, so I am trying to remember to open the YouVersion Bible app instead. I usually like to be a little more awake when I do a full devotional but I can at least read a verse or two.

Little Miss’s little friend visiting last week helped keep me away from social media because I mainly only had time to keep an eye on them and walk with them while they played on their scooters. This week we have a few homeschool lessons to finish and I also have to put together their portfolios to present to the homeschool evaluator so that will give me something to occupy my time.

June will be a month where I don’t have any school events planned, but I do hope to do some in July. What I will be doing in June is researching homeschool curriculum, as I do every year.

During June, I also hope to work more on Mercy’s Shore, finish Anne of Avonlea, decide if I am going to do a small garden or not, take photos of the peonies I expect to bloom this week (since it is my brother’s birthday and they usually bloom around or on his birthday), and maybe I’ll actually do some housework since I completely stink at that.

At the end of the month, The Husband is off work for a week and we are looking at the possibility of visiting a beach in New Jersey or taking a train ride on one of the trains near us. We will see how much the rising gas prices affect our plans. If worse comes to worse we will simply splash around in the little pool our neighbors gave us (and we still have to put up), read on the back porch and have a couple of cookouts at my parents to fill up his vacation week.

How about you? What are your plans for June? Is a social media break in there somewhere? If not, think about it, rest your mind, which in turn will help rest your soul.