Randomly Thinking: More crazy book descriptions and premarital handholding

Lisa R. Howeler10 Comments

Welcome to my weekly Randomly Thinking post where I share random thoughts that pop into my head throughout the week. Enter at your own risk.

I imagine most of you in the US are having some sort of Thanksgiving celebration today. So first, Happy Thanksgiving!

***

Nothing like looking up at the clock in the living room and realizing it is 20 minutes fast. Wonder how long it’s been like that? And what did I do very early in the day that I didn’t need to? This same clock was 40 minutes fast the next day even after we changed the battery. We decided it was time for the clock to be retired.

***

My son is 14 now so some of his friends are starting to “date”. A sort-of friend of his texted him the other day to tell him he had a GF (girlfriend). My son rolled his eyes. I said “It’s probably one of those girls from the Christian school he goes to.” The Boy says, “Yeah, one of those girls that doesn’t believe in premarital hand holding.”

I snorted out a laugh.

“And they don’t even look each other in the eye because that’s too much too,” The Boy continued. “Like she accidentally looks him in the eye and goes ‘oh my gosh! We’re moving a little fast here, aren’t we?'”

I said, “Well, that’s why a lot of the kids from that school get married immediately after they graduate.”

“Why?” asked The Boy. “So they can finally make eye contact? ‘Oh! I always knew your eyes were hazel!'”

I said, “Um, no not so they can make eye contact.”

The Boy’s response: “Oh.” And he went back to school work because I’m pretty sure he didn’t want to think about that.

Plus, he knew I’d remind him that I don’t believe in premarital handholding either! At least not until he’s 25 or so *wink*

***

An elderly woman at the local little supermarket was the only bright spot of my day one day last week when she offered to let me go in front of her and I told she could go ahead, I was in no rush. She said ‘thank you’ because her husband was waiting for her in the truck outside and he “might get into trouble if she didn’t hurry up.” The way she said it with a little wink just cracked me up.

***

Pretty sure a lot of women would kill for a husband like mine who randomly says after dinner, “You just go sit and rest. I’ll wash the dishes.”

***

Do you have a family of ad-libers like I do? People who watch movies or shows and occassionally sermons, and ad-lib one-liners, additional quotes, or new plot lines? If you do, you have my sympathy. It can be funny at times but when they are rewriting the entire script as the movie plays it can also be aggravating. I blame Mystery Science 3000, a show known for the way its hosts mock horribly bad movies. After The Boy and The Hubby watch their episodes, they suddenly think they can do the same thing. (Honestly, their ad-libs are funny, so don’t take my suggestion that it is annoying seriously.)

***

I wanted to update the tagline for the Kindle book ad I saw and mentioned last week. The actual tag line was “Accidentally wed to a screaming hot stranger.” Again, how do you accidentally marry someone?! My son said maybe they stumbled between the bride and groom right when the pastor said “I now pronounce you man and wife!” Even if that was possible, there is all that marriage license needing to be signed thing.

***

Have you ever looked at some of the books on Kindle Unlimited? I’ve found some good ones but I’ve also seen more than I care to of “billionaire romances.” Seriously, how many single, eligible billionaires can there be in the world? To see all these romances you would think there are thousands of them, all men, and all sexy and living alone on their sprawling 200 acre ranch, pining away for a woman. And the women — well, they are always poor and in need of rescuing but they are also always suspicious of the rich man who can rescue them because he couldn’t possibly be rich and good looking, right?

***

Our kids were playing Minecraft the other day and Little Miss told her brother she needed him to get the creepers out of the McDonalds she built (which was odd since we never go to McDonalds). He used an ax and Little Miss said, “I don’t want you to use an ax! I want you to use your hands like a real man!” I have no idea where she got such a thing. I’m guessing she’s heard The Boy say it.

***

We went to see a light display at a golf course about 30 minutes from us. Lights and light displays were installed all throughout the course, on trees, in the fields, etc. I took some vidoes to show family but forgot about the my family’s tendancy to offer commentary at about every event (see aforementioned ad-libing issue). At one point our daughter said “Is that Santa in an airplane?” My husband said, “Yep.” She responded, “That is so cringe.” She’s six.

***

We discovered The Goes Wrong Show a couple of months ago and it’s caused some serious laughing fits in our house. I highly recommend watching their show if you can find it. It is currently streaming on Britbox on Amazon. The premise is that a drama society acts out plays but something always goes wrong. They offered this skit up about a week ago for a charity event for the BBC. This is about the craziness that COVID has brought to us. Their other episodes will help you escape from current events so I have added a couple other clips of those, and one from the Royal Variety Show five years ago at the end of the post.

***

So those are my random thoughts for this week. How about all of you? Any random thoughts? Let me know in the comments.

randomly thinking: I want my men to be men and other random thoughts

Lisa R. Howeler14 Comments

Welcome to my weekly Randomly Thinking post where I share random thoughts that pop into my head throughout the week. Enter at your own risk.

***

I need to stop watching The Man From Snowy River. The Australian TV show version. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, it is cheesy, and second, I’ve started talking to everyone in a very bad Australian accent.

***

Our new kitten drives me crazy most days. I have to grab her when I let the dog out or when anyone goes in or out of the house or she takes off across the yard or toward the street in front of our house. On Monday we had to take her to be spayed and it was very strange not to have her in the house overnight. I had to admit that as annoyed as I get at her, I missed her stretching up her paws in the morning, meowing until I pick her up. I also missed her curling up on my chest for naps (she’s getting too long for this now). I didn’t miss her running around the house, climbing our window screens, scratching or attacking my daughter when she wants to play or running into the basement, rolling in the dirt, and bringing that dirt back up with her.

***

My dad is in self-imposed quarantine after a possible interaction with someone who had a family member who had COVID so I picked up some supplies for them at the local Dollar General. When I drove up their dirt road (we live on dirt roads here in the Boondocks) I saw something in the road, in front of their garage and hoped it was not dirt and their cat lying dead in the road. When I drove closer I could see it wasn’t their cat Molly (no I didn’t name my Molly in The Farmer’s Daughter after their cat), but an opossum. I looked down at it from the car and hoped it was simply “playing possum” and not actually dead, but alas, it did appear dead. I sent this text message to my husband later: “Dead possum in my parents’ road. Thought it was their cat, Molly. On a totally ‘unrelated note’: tacos for dinner!”

***

Note to cat owners, or those owned by cats rather: do not buy the cheap cat litter to save money. Just trust me. Especially do not do this if your adult cat thinks she can pee in your kitten’s cat litter, adding a much larger volume of urine to the cat pan each week.

***

My parents have horrible internet and a horrible internet provider. Their internet is out and they were told it will take three weeks for someone to come out and see why it’s not working. This means my mom is unable to download books to her Kindle and my dad is now unable to go on Facebook or look up information online. They are also in quarantine and it’s cold out, which means my dad won’t be outside working around the house to distract himself from the lack of internet. This combination of Mom without reading material and dad without a venting outlet (he actually connects with friends from high school on there as well) seemed like a bad idea to me so I drove to my parents’, picked up my mom’s Kindle, and am now downloading a ton of books into her Kindle to keep my parents from divorcing after 57 years of marriage.

***

I get the weirdest ads on the front of my Kindle these days. They are almost always for some weird romance book that makes me roll my eyes. One of the most hilarious taglines was something about a woman accidentally marrying a “hot assassin”. The Boy and I kept trying to figure out how a person “accidentally” marries someone. We were like, “what did she say? ‘Oops, it appears I tripped and fell into this wedding ceremony at the exact moment the pastor pronounced us man and wife.'”?

***

Here is another winning description on a Kindle romance book ad: “The powerful, terrifyingly seductive leader of Earth’s invaders wants to make her his.” That’s a lot of adjectives. And I’m guessing he’s an alien?

***

And another: “What happens when you fall in love with your fake fiancé?” And all I can think is “Why do you have a fake fiancé in the first place?”

***

Harry Styles, the kid who used to sing with One Direction, posed for Vogue recently wearing a variety of dresses. Most of the “dresses” Harry wore aren’t anything a person in the real world would wear. They looked like he simply wrapped some fabric around himself and called it “a dress.” Celebrities. Sheesh. When is someone going to tell them they’re not grounded in reality? Oh, right. They like it that way. It’s how they make their living after all. I’d love to see him wear one of those “dresses” on stage while trying one of those fancy dance moves he’s famous for. I bet he breaks a leg, or at least an ankle when his foot gets caught on the hem or up in the fabric.

***

It seems to be a popular theme in our society these days that a man can dress or act like a woman and a heterosexual woman will still find that man attractive. I didn’t find Harry attractive even when he wasn’t wearing a dress. I’m old enough to be his mother (if I’d had him at 17 anyhow). I, definitely, though, don’t find any man wearing a dress attractive (this does not include sexy Scottish men in kilts. Those are kilts, not dresses and with the right pair of manly legs, they are sexy.). I want my men to be scruffy, dirty, and all-the-way masculine. And I want them to be wearing pants. Well, not all the time, but if not pants, then shorts or boxers or nothing (gasp!); just not a dress. And okay I don’t really want them dirty either because well — ew. Dirty and sweaty? Gross! But you know what I mean.

***

I should probably mention that my husband is not scruffy or dirty. He doesn’t hunt, own a gun, ride a motorcycle, play a sport, knows nothing about cars, and he is a total Comic Book, Sci-Fi Geek. BUT he doesn’t wear dresses or paint his fingernails or put on lipstick so that makes him manly to me.

***

Those are a few of my random thoughts today. What are yours? Drop one in the comments and maybe I’ll share it in my next Randomly Thinking installment.

Randomly thinking: What makes people tell me their life stories?

Lisa R. Howeler16 Comments

I have no idea what it is about me that makes people tell me their dark secrets or life stories.
Last week I was at the local dollar store and made some comment to the cashier about needing to be more careful about what I spend since Christmas is coming up.
“I know,” she said. “I’m overdoing it this year because my daughters’ father died this year and I just want Christmas to be special for them.”
Not only was I sad to hear about the passing of their dad, but it struck me how we never know what people are going through in their lives. It also struck me that I had no idea why she was sharing this with me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m guessing you two weren’t together anymore?”
“No, but it’s still hard. Actually, it was harder than I thought it would be.”
“Well, just because people divorce or split up, there can still be good memories attached to that person,” I told her.
She agreed, I paid for my things and told her I’d be praying for her and her daughters this Christmas.

Three or four days later I’m at the local, tiny playground with my daughter. It has been unseasonably warm and on this day it was about 70 out. We’ve lived here for about eight months and have visited the playground several Jim times but I’ve never seen this many children there. There are only a small playground set, teeter-totters and a two-person swing set, and a basketball court (there is also a Little League field that isn’t being used). There were 15 children at this place and I was wigging out a little bit, grabbing for the hand sanitizer. Anyhow, there were two girls there about 10-years old and one of them kept watching us. I had a feeling she wanted to talk and I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk. She wasn’t wearing shoes and her face and clothes were somewhat dirty.
She leaned against the swing set and watched me push my daughter.
“Hello,” I said. “How are you?”
“Good. I’ve been down here since 11 (It was 5). My dad doesn’t care what I do. All he does is talk to his girlfriend on the phone and tell me to ‘shut up’.”
Well. Alright.
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Do you live with him?”
“Yep. I didn’t used to, but I do now.”
“Oh. You don’t live with your mom?”
“No. My mom’s dead.”
When she said her mom was dead, she flinched a little. Maybe the part about her mom was a lie or maybe it was something her dad had told her to keep the truth from her. I don’t know.
Before I knew it, I was learning that she used to live with her aunt, her dad was around my age, and she had half-siblings and another one on the way with the new girlfriend.
I have no idea why she felt the need to tell me all about her life, but there I was with all kinds of anxiety inside me about this girl’s safety and future when all I’d wanted to do was get my daughter some fresh air on an unseasonably warm day.
I watched the two girls walk home, drove past where they said they lived, hoping they got there okay, and then prayed for them on the way home.

Edited to add: I don’t live far from this girl’s apartment house so I will drive by to check on her. I do think she was probably okay but for some reason wanted to share with me and may have been talked some things up a bit, so to speak. I’m not sure.

***

The next week Little Miss and I were down the street talking to our neighbor and her granddaughters. The one neighbor on the street we haven’t met came out and I said ‘hello.’ We struck up a conversation as we walked up the street (a little less than six feet apart but not much less) and by the time we reached his house, a few yards away, I had learned where he was originally from, he had a daughter who lived three hours away, his wife is a photographer and an accountant, who used to live in his house, who used to live in each house up the street, that a compressor is in the big white building behind his house, that he used to have six cats, but now he only has four and he used to own two Akita dogs. Oh, and I learned about the new owner of one of the houses on the street and what that man does for a living.
I texted this all to my husband who asked, “What did you do? Get his whole life story?”
“I don’t get it,” I said to my husband later that night. “Why do people tell me everything about themselves? I mean I don’t mind, but it’s weird. What about me says ‘Tell her all my secrets and life story.’?”
“You have a motherly feeling about you,” my husband said.
I think that might translate to “You’re plump and harmless looking and they know you couldn’t chase them down like some crazy person because you’d run out of air in six steps.”

Randomly Thinking: Vengeful deer, I’m addicted to maple syrup, ‘drug deals’ in church, and other odd thoughts

Lisa R. Howeler13 Comments

Welcome to my weekly Randomly Thinking post where I share random thoughts that pop into my head throughout the week. Enter at your own risk.

  • Sometimes I get up in the morning and I straight up drink out of the maple syrup bottle like I’m kicking back some whiskey (which I don’t drink). I’m not going to apologize for that. It makes me feel very Canadian. And fat. It makes me feel fat. But I’m okay with that. It’s worth it for the taste of maple syrup.

I’m having the worst run of luck with books and movies lately. They start out well but crash and burn either in the middle or right at the end, making me feel like I’ve wasted my time. It’s made me a little gun shy to try anything new, but if I don’t try new books and movies, I could miss out on a good one. It’s a catch 22.

  • I’m watching a show about the dead letter office in the post office. Part of the time the letters can’t be delivered because the address of the addressee is smudged and sometimes it is because the post office messed it up. It’s odd to see a show admit that the post office can mess things up in a day and age where we are being told the post office could never lose anything. Ahem. Moving on…One of the biggest things that bothers me about the show is how they essentially ruin lives and shrug it off for the most part. Sometimes they have guilt and I understand they are trying to get the letters or packages back to the owners to make up for the errors but in the last one I watched, a man’s son died and he never even had a chance to talk to him because the post office lost a letter his son sent to him. Had he got the letter, he could have seen his son before he died. I still like the show, however. That’s my only complaint and concern, which I can overlook for the sake of the story, but less so if it was real life.
  • As a woman who is getting older, I recognize when I have a “hormone shift” by how fast I cry over things other people probably wouldn’t cry over. My cycle is irregular these days, thanks to getting older, so the calendar isn’t always a good judge of when “Aunt Flow” is coming. What is a good judge is if I cry when my husband says things like “This year will probably be his (our son’s) last year to go trick-or-treating. He’s a teenager now.” Without warning I ended up sobbing while trying to peel and apple for our daughter. Good grief.
  • My husband is pretty sure the area deer are out to get him after he hit that doe with his car last week. We don’t know if the deer made it or not. My husband said she hit the front of the car, rolled up onto the windshield and the roof, and kept going. Somehow the roof wasn’t damaged. He had to drive our van to an assignment later that week and on the way back he looked to his right at an intersection (a middle-of-the-nowhere intersection) and saw a group of doe just watching him. Last night he was on his way back from the store and our neighborhood deer (these are the does who walk through our backyard a couple times a week) were standing in the street, one of them just watching him as he paused to let her cross. Another one had darted out in front of him on the way home earlier in the day, after he got his car back (with the new windshield). He’s definitely feeling like he is in the crosshairs of the local deer. He said it made him feel like this clip. (I do not condone the language in the clip, or the show itself, of course. I’m sure anyone whose been reading this blog knows Family Guy is not my type of show, but if it is yours, that’s okay.).
  • I use a certain season salt from Redmond Sea Salts that I just love but a couple of months ago I couldn’t buy it on Amazon anymore. It felt like the toilet paper crisis all over again. I even went to their site. The salt was out of stock there. I couldn’t imagine there had been a rush on salt during lockdown but since people are cooking more at home, maybe there had been. Anyhow, last week the company had the salt in again so I ordered a couple of canisters to make sure I can have it for awhile. Now that that issue has been resolved we have to figure out why we can’t find paper plates anywhere anymore. I told my husband to load up on the toilet paper just in case. By the way, I am purposely not telling you which season salt it is. I want to be sure I can get it when I want it again. *wink*
  • All the leaves are almost off all of our trees and I don’t like it. I don’t like naked trees. I prefer they put their clothes on. That’s right. I’m that big of a prude. Plus I know it means snow is right around the corner.
  • Is the actor on Murdock Mysteries wearing eyeliner? I believe he is.
  • When Erin at Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs mentiond she was watching Sherlock, it reminded that I think Benedict Cumberbatch is the best television Sherlock. The best television movie series (from the 1980s) Sherlock is Jeremy Brett. Both portrayals of him explored his darker side and his opium addiction and were acted by superb, high quality actors.
  • Due to a variety of factors, my family and I haven’t been in a real church in a pretty long time. My son’s impression of the service we attended a couple of weeks ago went like this: “First you had the guy who kept repeating himself to get the service to last until noon (he didn’t), then you had you and Grandma doing a drug deal with her trying to give you money (it was for a book that a member of the church had bought), and you trying to give me whatever snakeoil you had in your purse (it was essential oil and I was trying to help him wake up by sniffing it.).”

These are my random thoughts for the week. What are some of your random thoughts? Let me know in the comments.

Randomly Thinking: Pets are trying to kill us and are cats inherhently evil? I say, yes.

Lisa R. Howeler11 Comments

Welcome to my weekly Randomly Thinking post where I share random thoughts that pop into my head throughout the week. Enter at your own risk

  • You know what’s great about adopting an extra cat? Instead of having two animals who want to kill me, I now have three. Seriously, why do they always walk in front of me while I am trying to walk? On Sunday my son was running with our dog when she took his legs right out from under him. She looked delighted when his face bounced off the leaf-covered ground.
  • In my Sunday Bookends post, which I posted on Monday this week, I wrote George Elliott’s run-on sentences reminded me of George Steinbeck. Of course I know his name is John Steinbeck and I have corrected that in the post. Must be George was on my mind because I’ve been slogging through Silas Marner. Seriously, as I am getting into it, it’s not actually that bad. I feel bad for making fun of it Sunday. It helps that I’ve found an Irish man reading it on Youtube and it’s somehow making it more entertaining for me because he does all the voices and offers inflections that I wouldn’t have added myself while reading it.
  • I have a friend whose dad has been dead for 18 years and she received an application for a ballot for him in the mail. The creepy thing is, she and her mom have moved since he died. I don’t even know how the election office figured out where to mail it. This election is going to be a mess, we all know that. I’m stocking up on extra supplies now. I made my husband buy extra toilet paper the other day because I told him there is going to be a rush on it again. We already can’t find paper plates. He went into Wal-mart the other day to buy some for us and the shelf was completely empty. It looked like the toilet paper shelves in March and April.
  • I picked up a book I had reserved at the library last week, excited to get a book for free to read, then remembered how nervous library books make me because I’m always afraid I’ll get something on the book or damage it somehow. Now I carry the book around in the bag the library gave me, only taking it out to read and then shoving it right back in the bag.
  • I was so glad to hear last week that so many people also mistake random yard displays or other items outside their windows as a person and have a near panic attack. My favorite had to be from Heather Dawn who said she thought her dripping sewer tank was a bear rummaging outside her house and she had to run to her house from her hot tub, without her towel. Her husband was laughing at her while she ran and it sounded so much like something that would happen with my husband and I. At least (hopefully) Heather wasn’t completely naked.
  • Keith Oberman. So. Yeah. He’s lost it.
  • Sean Hannity. So. Yeah. He’s lost it.
  • I’m not a big fan of political commentators in general. Can you tell?
  • Our adult cat likes to be outside — all the time. I don’t mind, except when she runs outside in the rain and one of my children hear her crying an hour later and cry “Oh my gosh! You left her out in the rain?! The poor thing!” I’m pretty sure she knows exactly what she is doing when she ignores me while I try to get her back in the house after she has slipped out while it is raining. She knows that wet fur will later be her key to snatching the attention away from the new kitten as the children fawn over her and dry her off with towels and make sure her food dish is full. After all, their mother cruely left that poor cat out in the rain. Right? Is it any wonder I believe that cats are inherhently evil?
  • One nice thing about homeschooling my son is that I’m learning a lot about subjects I never learned in school. This week we are learning about the Hitittes, which are a group of people mentioned in the Bible and many other historical documents. According to Wikapedia, “The Hitittes are: ere an Anatolian people who played an important role in establishing an empire centered on Hattusa in north-central Anatolia around 1600 BC. This empire reached its height during the mid-14th century BC under Šuppiluliuma I, when it encompassed an area that included most of Anatolia as well as parts of the northern Levant and Upper Mesopotamia.”
  • Sometimes I ask my husband to pick me up chocolate at the store and when he brings it in the house we have to conduct an exchange that looks a lot like a drug deal. He smuggles it to me so the children don’t see it, carefully hiding it against his body and sliding it to me when they aren’t in the room or their backs are turned. If we don’t do this, the little vultures will inhale it before I get any. Once it’s safely in my posession, I stash it deep in my purse or in a cupboard, high up where my kids won’t think to look, so that I can savor it over time. The only problem with this is that I have to wait for the kids to leave the vicinity of where I hid the goods so I can sample it. Most recently I hid chocolate on a high shelf in a cupboard in the kitchen. There are two problems with this: 1) my children are always near or in the kitchen and 2) I’m very short and have to use a stool or chair to get to the shelf so I’m always afraid that while I’m climbing up I’m going to fall and break a bone and have to tell a doctor what I was doing when I broke it. I suppose there are worse thingsI could say than “I was climbing to get chocolate.” At least it won’t be “I was climbing to get to my stash of cocoaine.”
  • I am really enjoy Mama’s Empty Nest’s posts about the lighthouses she has visited with her family over the years. This week she wrote about one in Assateague near Chincoteague Island. Every since reading Misty of Chincoteague, I have wanted to visit there and see the wild horses. Maybe someday. My husband’s boss visits there every summer or autumn in his camper. Maybe one year I will smuggle myself in. I’m glad I didn’t go with them this year, however, since while they were there, the remenants of a hurricane hit the island. Luckily they survived the craziness and it provided Dave with a very entertaining column for the following week.

So, those are my random thoughts for the week. I’d love to hear some of yours in the comments.

Randomly Thinking: The school papers are multiplying like rabbits and other random tidbits that spilled out of my head this week

Lisa R. Howeler18 Comments

Welcome to my weekly Randomly Thinking post where I share random thoughts that pop into my head throughout the week. Enter at your own risk.

  • I looked at the “writers” community in Instagram earlier today. All I can say is I’m glad I never wrote a six stanza poem about my period when I was 20. Good grief and good gravy.
  • There are school papers everywhere in my house and when I pick some up to put away, I turn around and there are even more. I swear they are getting married and making new little school paper babies when I’m not looking and they’ve trained my daughter’s craft supplies to do the same.
  • Sometimes, when I see it out of the corner of my eye, I think the fall display in our side yard, made of corn stalks, is a man and I have a mini-panic attack. Does that make me weird? Sad? I know. Just don’t tell me it does.
  • Funny Bablyon Bee headline: October on Pace to Be Three Years Long. I’m sure this will be true for us Americans, thanks to election season.
  • I have discovered that some modern writers in Christian fiction are good at social media and being “out in the public eye” but they’re really not that great of a writer/author. Ouch. I hope that won’t be me as I continue to try to improve writing. A little smoke and mirrors works for these writers, though. They have a cult following. In some ways it reminds me of Stephen King.
  • After reading some of these authors, I have decided I’m going to start moving away from the strict romance genre because some of the tropes are just ridiculous and make the books predictable. I have a possible trope planned for my latest and now I’m pondering how to change it so it isn’t so Hallmark-movie-predictable-plot-gagfest. I like Hallmark movies, don’t get me wrong, but they do all have about the same plot lines.
  • My dog barks at everything. Every. Thing. A cat in the yard next door, the UPS man, the mail lady, a dog barking across town, a leaf blowing in the wind, a door closing upstairs, a door closing downstairs, a person talking on the neighbor’s porch. She’s so jumpy I’m thinking of giving her some of the CBD oil I’ve been using to calm my nerves.
  • My son is obsessed with Minecraft. I find myself writing my books in my head when he talks to me about it, but I do try very hard to focus so he knows I care about the things he cares about. I am interested. It is just the game is so detailed and has so many components to how you can create with it, it makes my head swim.
  • So many of the sitcoms of the ‘80s had seriously depressing back stories. Abandoned children, dead parents, drug-addicted parents or siblings. Dang. What’s up with that?

I’m seriously looking forward to season two of The Chosen. If you have not yet watched season one, you can find the app on Android or iOS devices under The Chosen or you can visit their site.

  • This week a woman said Trump 2020 on a video I was watching, but I thought she said Psalm 20:20 so I looked up the verse. Even though it hit me later she’d actually said Trump 2020, I thought the verse was fitting for this year.

A psalm of David. May the LORD answer you when you are in distress; may the name of the God of Jacob protect you. May he send you help from the sanctuary and grant you support from Zion. … We will shout for joy when you are victorious and will lift up our banners in the name of our God.

So those are my random thoughts for this week. What are your random thoughts? Let me know in the comments! Last week I asked this and Alicia’s random thought was: “How effective are the masks if I can still smell the old people’s “toots” when I’m cutting their hair at the nursing home?!” So…there’s that.

Randomly Thinking: The week of September 13

Lisa R. Howeler9 Comments

  • I think one of the best things about modern life is that we can go to a convenience store and buy a bag of pickles. A sealed up, little bag with pickles inside. Just this little bag you can slide in your pocket and munch on while you walk down the street. One of the greatest modern inventions ever: pickles in a bag. My son says pickles in a cup would be awesome too. I said they probably have those somewhere as well, I just haven’t seen them yet.
  • How can I simultaneously love and hate to read and write romances?
  • Edgar Allan Poe. Wow. How could so many horrible things happen to one person? My son and I needed to watch a few comedies after studying him for school this week. Also, now that I’m older and trying to read him with my teenage son, I have come to realize he may be a bit overrated. Or maybe I just can’t make heads or tales out of the old language anymore as my old mom brain cells are melting.
  • A quote from my dad: “Ignorance is not a matter of intellect.It is a matter of choice.”
  • My political party is not my identity so when I make a list of who I am, I don’t include that information. I always find it unnerving when people think they have to include their political party affiliation in their profile information on their social media accounts, if they are not actually a politician. I guess they want you to know straight up front they’ll be judging you if you’re not “one of them.” Our country is so weird anymore. The way politics has inflitrated every facet of life makes me sick to my stomach.
  • I wish someone would read bedtime stories to me like I read them to my daughter. I want to read at night but often I’m too tired. I need someone who can just read me my books while I drift off to sleep. So far my husband is not interested in doing this.
  • The weather is colder here now and as I tried to pull the comforter up around my shoulders one night this week it drove me crazy that it wouldn’t come up all the way because it was stuck on the bottom of the bed. I finally got it up around my shoulders and then I had to use the bathroom. This is a usual occurrence for me in colder weather it seems. It’s like the Murphy’s Law of trying to get warm for me.
  • When I love something — like writing or photography— I read and learn about it all I can and sometimes that is good but sometimes it just kills my love for it because I start comparing and judging myself based on the experience of others. I already did that with photography. I hope I don’t do it with writing. I started sharing stories on my blog for fun — not to become some success or make money. Why am I letting the comparison game ruin it for me?

So how about you? Have any random thoughts this week? Let me know in the comments.

Randomly Thinking: Week of September 7

Lisa R. Howeler18 Comments

This is my weekly Randomly Thinking post where I share some random thoughts from my week. I will warn you that there is one political thought this week but it is about the way people support their candidate, not a reflection of how I feel about any particular candidate or issue.

  • We need more shows like The Dick VanDyke Show these days. Funny, but not crude; entertaining but not violent or garish; and characters who are completely loveable and endearing instead of characters who make us wince.
  • Do Anjou pears ever get soft?
  • During the day I love that our house has a lot of windows with wispy white, partially see-through curtains. It lets in a lot of beautiful natural light, which I have always wanted, especially for photographs of the children. The time of day I do not love all these windows and their see-through curtains is nighttime. I don’t know that I really think that people will be looking in our windows, but I do worry about what creatures are out there looking in our windows — like bear creatures, which we still have not seen as of yet. A friend did see the bear crossing the road down from our house one day, however.

  • My husband told me the latest Robert Galbraith book will be out soon. I said, “Well, it will be if the mob doesn’t destroy her and force her publisher to drop her.” “Her?” You may ask. Robert Galbraith is the pen name of J.K. Rowlings for her mystery series. “Shamefully” she has recently dared to suggest a woman is a woman and a man is a man based on their biology (or if they’ve had sex change hormones, etc.) not on how they feel. She explains her position better herself on her website but that’s the gist of it. I don’t agree with a lot of what J.K. has kicked out there over the years. We couldn’t be further way politically and morally on many issues, but she has the right to say what she wants and I enjoy her writing, even though I have never read … gasp! Harry Potter. I read the first in the Cormoran Strike series (The Cuckoos Calling) and it was very dense (wordy) but extremely entertaining and well written. It wasn’t my usual book (lots of hard language and some sexual discussions) but it was well done. I haven’t yet cracked into the second book because I’ve needed time to recover from the length of the first.

  • When you are the one always making contact in a friendship and then you finally stop and never hear from that person again — it’s probably a good sign the friendship is dead. I backed off being the one to keep in contact a couple of years ago and there is a list of about eight people who have never attempted to even ask how I am. That’s fine. Fewer people I have to try to keep track of now!

  • I’ve discovered I have a pet-peeve. So the idea of social media is to be social with other people, right? Of course. Then why is it so hard for people to respond to other people on Instagram. Instagram for authors is supposed to be a way to network as well as promote but so often I see authors who do not respond to people who leave comments on their posts by simply hitting “like.” Hitting “like” on a comment doesn’t tell me a thing about you and I certainly don’t feel like we are interacting in any way. If someone comments on my posts, I do the best I can to respond to them in one way or another. I’ve unfollowed a few people over the years because they had no interest in actually being social on social media. I don’t unfollow them immediately, of course, but if they repeatedly ignore me then I just figure I’m bugging them.

  • My dad and I were standing outside my house today and we heard a tree fall in the valley below us. It sounded like cracks of gunfire, which is not unusual around here where we have hunters or gun enthusiasts. My dad said the ash trees are going to be an issue on windy days because Pennsylvania’s ash trees are all dead. Our hills this summer were full of brown trees spread across the usual green because the ash boar has been slowly killing the ash species for the last few years and this year it finally claimed them.
  • I’m finally catching up on the Corner Gas animated series. I feel so Canadian.

  • I love that the Catholic Church in our town (yes, the town is so small we have only one Catholic Church. We also have a Methodist and Baptist.) rings it’s bell every day at 9 a.m., noon, 6 p.m., and 9 p.m. If I hear it while I’m cooking supper I know that I am running late. If I hear it at 9 and I’m still upstairs in bed, I know I’ve overslept. When I hear it at noon, I often marvel at how fast the day is going by.
  • You know you live in a rural area when you’re standing in your parents’ garden and count 12 ATVs drive by on their dirt road. They were Labor Day weekend visitors from “down south” (either southern PA or New Jersey.) I didn’t take a photo but I wish I had.

The political signs in our area are getting creative:

I don’t have one against Trump because I haven’t seen one locally yet, but if I do, I will be sure to share it so I’m politically neutral here on the blog. Our area is a highly-Republican area but there are a few democrats. Unfortunately, their signs are just the boring traditional Biden signs for now. I’m sure they will get more creative in their political advertising in the next couple of months. Two weeks from now we will be in a very liberal area of New York State so I’m sure we will see some fun slams against The Donald. I don’t discriminate in creative political advertising. If it’s a good slam I giggle at it no matter who I support.

So how about you? Any random thoughts this week? Share them in the comments or in your one post and leave the link here.

Random Thoughts: Week of August 29

Lisa R. Howeler8 Comments

Welcome to Random Thoughts for the Week, where I share . . . well, random thoughts or events from throughout the week. Feel free to share your own random thoughts in the comments!

  • I was so proud of the header I shared on my first Random Thoughts last week because I put the clip art together in my own design. My bubble was burst when I showed my son yesterday and he said “That brain is backwards. The brain stem is coming out of the mouth. How did you not notice that?”
AAAAARRRRRGH!

Public school is looking like a better option more and more lately (that being said, homeschool sessions start Wednesday here). Also, I redesigned my header, obviously, and now the brain stem isn’t coming out of the head’s mouth.

  • From my son: “We’re all born dumb, stupid and frail. In other words, we’re born a politician.”

  • Here are a couple phrases or words I will be glad to never hear or read again my entire life: social distancing, quarantine, face masks, or Fauci.
  • I was watching a movie on Netflix with Blythe Danner and Sam Elliott. No spoilers, but they kissed and my children walked in at that moment and screamed “Old people are kissing!!!!” while pointing at the screen. Next weekend at Sunday dinner I’m asking my parents to kiss so they will be traumatized even more.
  • I’ve always had a crush on Lou Diamond Phillips. I don’t know if this is a random thought or a confession.
  • Our kitten only likes to lay on my chest when I’m wearing a bra because the bra makes my chest more like a shelf. That’s all I’m going to say about being a woman and getting old.
  • My son, while playing Amish Paradise by Weird Al Yankovic asked “Whatever happened to all the Amish around here?” He had a good point. I haven’t seen any Amish in our area in years and we used to. We at least saw some Menonnites. Readers, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to research what happened to all the Amish in northern Pennsylvania. Let me know and I’ll include it in my random thoughts next week. (This is just a joke. I really can look that up myself.)
  • I won’t be surprised if all this COVID craziness reveals a few things for people, including the fact that colleges are over priced and many students can get the same education online for much less. Also that we need to focus more on skilled labor training.

  • I spent part of my Sunday Googling the phrase: “How did my cat get so fat?” How did I get to this point in my life?
  • I’ve been jokingly calling our cat Fatty and Fatso but stopped this week when she gave me one of those “I Will Kill You In Your Sleep” expressions. I had a feeling she was thinking: “I don’t call you fatty, lady, and I could, so back off.”

  • My mom recently told me that my dad told my grandfather, her dad: “I want to ask permission to marry her but if you say ‘no’ we are going to get married anyhow.” If you knew my dad and my grandfather you would know why this is a pretty surprising statement by my dad. To explain a little: picture one of those stereotypical stern Southern fathers in any movie or book and that was my grandfather. Picture the fairly polite, quiet, shy Pennsylvania farm boy and you have my dad. I guess he really wanted to marry my mom.
  • — Looking through and old journal app again I found another winner from my daughter.

Me to Little Miss : “I don’t want to cook dinner … I’m tired.”

Little Miss: “Well, then what are we supposed to eat? Air? Um… no… there is just oxygen in the air.”

That’s about the time I decided I needed to stop letting her watch any educational shows. She was almost five when she said this. Jesus, please help me prepare now for her teenage years.

So, how about you? What are your random thoughts for this week? Let me know in the comments.