random thoughts

Randomly Thinking: Pot photos, horses in the street, and other craziness

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 7 Comments

When your husband works for a newspaper, it is not unusual to receive photographs or texts others might consider unusual. For example, a month or so ago I looked at my phone and there was a photo of pot (marijuana) in jars waiting for me.   Under it was a photo of bills of various amounts and a handgun spread out on a large table. No explanation was offered for either of them.

This was around the same time we were dealing with some financial strains so I shot back a text to my husband telling him the financial situation would work out, he didn’t need to turn to a life of crime.

Of course, I had a feeling there was something more to these photos, and indeed there was. They were from a press conference my husband was attending in his capacity as a reporter/editor where the police were talking about a group of college students who had been busted for running an illegal pot manufacturing business, as well as possibly some other illegal drugs.

After that press conference, he called me to assure me he had not turned to crime (although all that money spread out on the table was a bit tempting, he told me as a joke). We chatted for a bit because he was stuck in traffic. He thought traffic might be moving slowly because of an accident, but instead, he said to me, “What in the world are all these horses doing in the road?”

I can’t see what is going on obviously so I’m asking, “What’s going on? What do you mean?”

He tells me he’s going to hang up and let me know later and while I’m waiting my mind races through all the weird scenarios which could have occurred. There was an accident with a horse trailer and the horses escaped. There were a bunch of rednecks at a bar whose licenses had been taken away so they had to ride the horses home. I didn’t know.

Turns out the reason for horses riding down the road was much nicer. A local horse farrier had recently passed away and the horses were part of a funeral procession to escort his body to the cemetery. That photograph was much nicer than the one of the illicit drugs and weapons.

****

I was pouring honey into my tea the other day and the kids were watching.

“That’s too much honey,” my son informed me.

I looked at him in confusion. “I don’t know what those words mean. ‘Too much honey.’ I’m confused.”

I then poured some more honey in.  

***

My mom called on a Saturday night and asked if we wanted chicken for lunch the next day (we usually go over there on Sunday afternoons). I said chicken would be fine and she asked if we wanted, chicken breast, drumsticks, or thighs.

I told her any was fine but that our family liked chicken breast.

“We’re breast people,” I said with a mischievous snicker.

Mom holds the phone away from her mouth and says to my dad. “She says her family are breast people.”

She comes back on the phone and says, “Your dad says he’s a thigh man himself,” and then sighs.

Poor Mom. She has to put up with our weird humor.

***

One morning two weeks ago all three of our animals were crowded by the back door, waiting to be let out into the sunshine. I decided to take a photo of them all together so I made them wait. Bad idea because that’s when the older cat reached over and smacked the younger cat.

This resulted in me posting the photos to Instagram stories with some funny captions.

***

Our kitten (who isn’t technically a kitten anymore) has been a killing machine lately. She’s been carrying dead mice and moles to us for a while now. Last week she killed three moles but the week before that she came running up the sidewalk with something in her mouth and at first I thought it was a bird. As she got closer I realized it was a baby snake and about passed out.

She dropped the snake on the pavement and my dad scooped it up and laid it under the pine tree by our driveway to let it die in peace since it didn’t seem to be in very good shape.

I guess Scout wasn’t done with it because she wandered over there a few minutes later to try to finish it off. This resulted in my husband grabbing a shovel, scooping up the snake again (which was hard for him since he hates snakes so much), and tossing it over the bank across the road.

I also took a photo of the snake so we could decide if it was poisonous or not, even though we assumed it was a garter snake, which we have a lot of in this area. As far as we could tell it was a garter snake, thankfully.


***

I felt really nerved up the other day and my husband said, “Shut your laptop. Get off social media and I’m putting Dick VanDyke on for you.”

He knows what helps to calm me.

***

My dad was trying to be deep the other day at dinner and asked me who could hear a tear fall.

I said, “Hank Williams can hear a tear fall in his beer. That’s what he said in that song anyhow.”

Dad sighed. “I was going to say that only God can hear a tear fall but thanks for that.”

Oh. Oops.

***

The Boy and I were recently talking about how much we actually like the cooler weather and are not really looking forward to warmer weather. He likes being able to wear sweatshirts and I like being able to huddle under a blanket while reading a book or watching a good show. Of course I wanted some warmer weather and some green trees but I’m not a fan of sweltering temperatures and muggy days.

He decided that spring is his favorite time of the year while I decided that my favorite seasons are both spring and fall because they aren’t too cold or too hot.

***

So about you? Any random thoughts or events happening in your life? Let me know in the comments.

Randomly Thinking: Talking to cats, losing my mind, memories of Christian music festival

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 14 Comments

Welcome to my Randomly Thinking post where I ramble about, well, whatever.

***

Recently my daughter was reveling in the fact that she has soft, lovely, young skin. This was after I was lamenting about my old, dry, scaly skin.

“My skin is soft, isn’t it?” she said with a thoughtful expression.

She sighed and rubbed her hands against her cheeks, then said, “Do you know what calms me? Rubbing my hands across the baby-smooth skin of my face.”

Yeah, yeah. Rub it in, kid. Also — enjoy it while you can.

***

Anyone who reads Erin’s blog at Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs probably knows she listens to true crime podcasts, but maybe you don’t know she actually listens to them while falling asleep. I was laughing about this a few weeks ago and she told me, “The people’s voices are so soothing as they say the worst things.”

It totally cracked me up, but my son said he totally understood what she meant because sometimes he listens to similar podcasts, though not quite as dark as what we adults listen to at times.



***

A recent post from The Babylon Bee referencing an old song by the Veggie Tales reminded me of the time I was at a Christian music festival and over 80,000 people (some estimates had it at 100,000) sang Where Is My Hairbrush at the top of their lungs. In case you aren’t familiar with this song, I am leaving a clip of it below.

All of those people singing this child song at the same time was surreal.

There was a guy in front of us who sang it as if he was in an opera, with an amazing voice and all the gestures to go along with it.

Up until that point, I had never even heard of Veggie Tales, let alone the song.

The video was played while we all waited for Amy Grant to come out on the stage. This was shortly after the success of her song Baby, Baby, which by the way I never liked that much.

During her concert, the power actually went out. Eventually, they were able to get the sound back, but not the lights, so she ended up singing by flashlight and candlelight for part of her performance.

***

I went to this music festival, Creation, a few times over my life and always seemed to have a story to bring back with me. One year I ended up with a bladder infection and almost passed out from the heat. I was in pain all the way back home (about three hours) and we had to find a doctor immediately to get me on antibiotics.

 Another year we took a friend and she passed out and she was taken to the first aid tent but then by ambulance because she was extremely disoriented. She was extremely dehydrated and may have had some other health issues because years later she was involved in a horrible accident and could never remember what happened. She suffered massive head injuries, but we do wonder if she might have blacked out before the accident like the day at the festival. She’s doing very well now, by the way. She’s a miracle, quite frankly.

The first year we ever went I lost my first Teddy Bear somehow. I was in the back of a pick up which my dad had stretched a tarp canopy over (it was the 80s, peeps), Dad pulled over to adjust something, and when we got to our campsite (yes, you camped at this festival), my bear was gone. There is a long story after that about meeting my aunt somewhere to conduct a type of drug deal so my grandmother didn’t find out I had lost this expensive bear, but I’ve either told that story here before or I’ll tell it again another time.

One other time I was at the festival with my brother and sister-in-law and their friend, Chris. My sister-in-law disappeared for a brief time and Chris, my brother, and I stood in one place and looked around for her. We couldn’t see her for a long time until Chris said, “I don’t know. Maybe she’s down there somewhere, getting a cold cup of iced tea, fresh brewed, with just a squeeze of lemon and the perfect amount of sugar, wearing a —”  Yeah, Chris has found her and was using a creative way to tell us. That was Chris though, funny, smart, and a jokester. He’s a blog post in himself, but not by me, by my brother who knew him best. Hint, hint, brother.

***

A couple of weeks ago I was in the kitchen when my podcast stopped playing while I was cooking dinner. I looked at the phone and it said our Wifi was out. I went to the living room to investigate. Soon my children were standing next to me as we all stared at the modem, which was dark.

We were like lost little puppies without our internet. It was very sad, actually.

There is usually at least a power button blinking on the modem. Not this time. The modem looked dead.

We pondered this predicament for a few moments and then I looked at the power strip behind the TV. It was also dark. It usually has a glowing red light.

I pointed this out to my son who turned it back on and just as I started to wonder how it had been turned off, I looked up to see Pixel, who I also call Fat Cat, watching us from the windowsill. I knew then how the power strip had been turned off. She had apparently put her foot there when she jumped up into the front window.

Our investigation seemed to entertain her and sometimes I wonder if she does this stuff on purpose.

***

A friend of Little Miss’s, who is a year older, says the most interesting things sometimes. For one, she loves to be outside, loves to have fun, and is full of a confident spirit that matches Little Miss’s, which either strengthens their friendship or creates friction between them.

I told the little girl we had a playground near us, but it wasn’t very exciting. It’s very small without many things to play on.

“I don’t care what kind of playground it is,” she told me. “It doesn’t have to have a lot of fun things. I’ll make it fun.”

I wish more of us adults had her attitude.

***

I have been forgetting things lately, mainly because I am distracted when I am doing them. Or maybe I still have Covid-brain. I don’t know. Anyhow, one day my husband placed the ibuprofen on the counter in front of me but a few minutes later I went to the medicine cabinet to retrieve it. He told me it was in my purse, where I had tossed it. I didn’t even remember doing that. Well, I vaguely did, but I was also talking at the same time and thinking about the fact I had to get our daughter to gymnastics on time. It was also PMS time (I know. Too Much Information.)

Later that night my daughter asked me to open a water bottle. Apparently, I did and handed it back to her but five minutes later I told her to get a water bottle so I could open it for her. She reminded me I already had.

Two nights later I reached for my toothbrush, brushed my teeth, and went into my daughter’s room to read to her. The Boy came in a few minutes later and asked me why his toothbrush was wet.

“Did you use my toothbrush?” he asked.

I told him I used mine but when I went in to look, he was right, his toothbrush was wet and mine was dry. By this time, I was starting to freak out a little. Was I losing my mind?

I’m still not sure and it is possible. I do have hormone and thyroid issues. For all of the incidents, though, I was pretty distracted at the same time I was completing the task.

I told my husband about the toothbrush incident and said I was talking to Pixel, who likes to jump up on the sink and drink out of it before bed, at the time.

“She must have distracted me,” I said.

I said I was asking her if she was going to take a drink or not because I needed to get to bed and while I was talking to her, I was reaching for my toothbrush. I must have simply grabbed the wrong one. This made me feel better because then I could be assured I wasn’t losing my mind. That was until my husband looked at me in confusion.

“You have conversations with the cat?” My husband asked. “I never talk to our cats.”

I shrugged. “That’s why they like me better than you.”

And it’s true — I do have conversations with our cats. Very often, in fact.

They also seem to communicate back with me, even if it is a leg rub or a nose bump or a good, long, hard stare.

Then again, I have been having brain fog issues. Maybe I just think they’re communicating with me.

***

When my son shows me a gaming-related meme, I am torn between telling him I have no idea what the meme means and just smiling and nodding. If I smile and nod at the Gen Z humor, then he laughs and moves on. If I tell him I have no idea what that is referring to, I may be trapped for 20 minutes while he explains to me what the meme means. I usually just smile and nod.

***

Earlier this week, I told my son I thought I might try my hand at meatloaf again for dinner. I’ve only tried to cook it once before — three years ago — and apparently the experience was so traumatizing to my son he couldn’t bring himself to admit to me how bad it was until now.

He said it was a hunk of meat with crushed bread inside and no flavor. It was so awful he couldn’t eat it, so he took the plate upstairs and hid it under his bed for two days until I left the house and then dumped it in the trashcan. I asked him why he didn’t just tell me, and he said it was because he didn’t want to hurt my feelings.

He honestly looked quite pained telling me this story. He had backed himself against the wall and was rubbing his face, as if the memory of the wretched meatloaf had left him scarred for life. I was waiting for him to hug himself while rocking back and forth.

“Okay, then,” I said, turning to go back down the stairs. “Tonight we’re having tacos.”

***

My son decided he would have stuffed rabbit for Easter dinner this year:

***

I forgot about this hilarious moment from the Fall but found it in some notes this week:

One of Little Miss’s friends tried to call her early one morning, but Little Miss was barely awake. She reached for the phone anyhow. I told Little Miss she needed to be awake before she could talk to her friend, so to take some time to wake up and then answer the call.  Little Miss looked at me for a second, slammed her head off her pillow, face-first, twice, looked back up and me and said, “Okay. I’m ready now. Hand me the phone.

***

Those are my random thoughts and events for the week. How about you? What random events have happened to you recently? Let me know in the comments and maybe I’ll share it in my next post. 😊

Randomly Thinking: I couldn’t be a 911 dispatcher, my tea needs more honey, and tomato soup cake

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 8 Comments

I don’t know about you but I certainly need some silly or funny this week. It’s been a brutal one for me emotionally. Loss and heartache. It took a lot for me to even push through and post this, but sometimes we just have to push through to survive, right? (I know. I’m such a downer this week!)

Anyhow, regular readers know the drill. These are my random thoughts for the month (or two weeks or whenever I get around to writing them). Read on at your own risk, but don’t worry, I tried to keep it cheerful.




A friend recently decided she wanted to go for training to be a 911-dispatcher. She told me she’s good in emergencies, just cries afterward. I said I used to be calm about emergencies — I covered fires and car accidents during my reporting career, and it didn’t phase me most of the time. Now since seeing my kid in an ambulance and my stay in the hospital I am a basket case. I told her the patients would be trying to comfort me while I cried into the phone.

The people who need help would be like, “It’s okay, lady. It’s just a bullet wound. I’m sure I’ll be fine. You can stop crying now.”

***

When I make tea, I think of that SNL skit with Christopher Walken (back when the show was funny) where he says, “It needs more cowbell.”

 I look into my tea and say, “It needs more honey,” in Walken’s voice.

***

I recently told my son that he has the attention span of a gnat and can’t handle watching anything more than 30 seconds because of all the TikTok-like videos he watches. (He hates TikTok so doesn’t actually watch that.)

He countered by showing me this video about how to make a tomato soup cake and told me he’d watched the entire nine minutes and thirty-five-second clip. I said, “fine, your attention span is longer than a —”

And I was hooked and watched the whole thing too.

Seriously, though, did you know there was such a thing as tomato soup cake? Ew.

***

The other night my dad was looking for a quote from General Jim Mattis.

My mom recited it to him: ‘Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.’

Then she let him know she had that one written down a couple of places.

I’m sure she didn’t mean it as threatening as it sounded, but it was still pretty funny.

***

Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs, sent me this hilarious story about a man who rescued a cat out of a tree and went viral, not because of his good deed, but his good looks.

Here is a sample:



https://filterfreeparents.com/man-rescues-cat-from-tree-and-the-pics-go-viral-but-not-because-of-the-cat/

***

Here is a fun photo my husband recently had to take for his job.

Photo credit: Warren Howeler, The Rocket-Courier

9-year old Lillian and her rooster (Ron Weasly), a one-year-old English Gamer Bantam, recently took second place in the youth division at the Pennsylvania Farm Show.

Lillian lives near us and I don’t know why I love this photo so much. I guess because it just represents our area and our love of our farm animals well.

***

Thanks to that nasty virus, peanut butter, onions, and garlic smell and taste like a mix of chemicals and something that died. That means anything that has those ingredients in it tastes and smells the same.

Last weekend, though, a former classmate made a peanut butter cake for a memorial service I attended and the peanut butter frosting actually tasted normal, but that could be because it was mixed with a ton of sugar and milk.

Hopefully, that is a symptom that will gradually get better.

***

My brother suggested this guitar player named Luca Stricagnoli  and now I can’t stop watching him

***

I’ve also been watching The Dead South cover The Doors. For those who didn’t like their rendition of You Are My Sunshine, you probably won’t like this one either.

***

So there are a few random thoughts for this week. How about you? Has anything weird, unusual, or fun happened to you recently? Share in the comments and if it is okay, I’d like to share it in a future Randomly Thinking to cheer us all up.

Randomly Thinking: Honest homeschoolers, friendly only in winter, overused book tropes

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 9 Comments

Welcome to my random thoughts. Read on at your own risk.

***

As many of you know,  I am a homeschooler and shortly after becoming one, I figured out there is an entire homeschooling community, a good portion of it on social media. Many of those on social media, sharing their journey, are simply sharing their journey to connect with other homeschoolers so they can learn from each other. There is another segment, however, that has made a business out of homeschooling. They are homeschool influencers, I guess you would say, many of them posting photos on Instagram of pristine areas of the home where they conduct their learning, homemade school desks carved from wood by their father/grandfather/amazingly talented uncle; elaborate field trips, children wearing perfectly matched clothes, perfectly organized shelves, and large, almost mansion-like homes.

I was telling a friend this week that I’d love to see some more honest posts from these types of homeschoolers. Something like kids with their hair uncombed and their faces dirty. Photos of children in cute little matching outfits covered in mud, chocolate, or poop while the mother — her hair sticking out in all different directions  — drags them to their cute, little homemade desk. Maybe a photo of Mom trying to teach the 15-year-old math while in the background the 7-year-old spills a container of Legos all over the original hardwood floor and the 3-year-old drags a screaming cat by its tail across the kitchen linoleum.

***

My 7-year olds favorite word right now is “ineffective” and I don’t know where she heard it. Last week she told me that my tricks to get her to take her allergy medicine would be ineffective on her.

No idea.

I don’t use that word often and I don’t even know where she heard it. I’m glad she’s reading and learning more words, but I do wish she’d stop using them correctly and against me.

***

Here is a character attribute I am tired of seeing in books: A female main character who absolutely loves to read and spends three paragraphs telling the reader of the book she is in why she loves to read. Yes, I get it, writers like to read so they think their characters should too. Yes, I did this in my first book, but no, I don’t want to keep reading about main characters who love to read and hide themselves in corners to read and ignore other people so they can read.

It’s cliché and completely over done and I will most likely do it myself in a future book. Also, I like to read, but I don’t fall in love with the characters to the point I am completely out of touch with reality so if the author is trying to help me relate to his/her characters, it’s not going to work.

***

Our older cat Pixel is very aloof in the warmer months. She comes in from outside for a pet, eats some food, and heads back outside to hunt then repeats the process every couple of hours. In the winter, she goes outside for a much shorter time and when she returns, she often crawls up on my lap for a pet and a brief kneading session on my chest. Then she curls up in a chair the rest of the day and at night she’s back on my chest for a cuddle. It is for this reason that I sometimes favor winter more than the warmer months.

Our kitten (Scout), on the other hand, is affectionate at the most inopportune times, like at 5 in the morning when she walks up onto my chest and lays down under my chin, cutting off my air.

The kitten has also spent much of the last couple of weeks finding the best sprawl pose near our woodstove.

***

The other night my husband turned on Knight Rider for old time’s sake. I have to admit that I watched it very little as a kid and hadn’t seen it in years but it brought back a memory for me of a poster of David Hasselhoff I saw at a yard sale near our house and bought after begging my mom for it.

My mom finally agreed with a big eye roll, asking me, “Are you sure you want that?”

When I insisted I did, she let me buy it, and then there he was — David Hasselhoff with his shirt unbuttoned several buttons, wearing a leather jacket and leaning on Kit. I hung him on the wall right next to my bed. The poster looked a little like this:



My brother says he doesn’t remember this at all, but I swear he came into my room after it was hung and said, “What the heck?! Why do you have a poster of a grown man on your wall? MOM! WHY DOES LISA HAVE A POSTER OF A GROWN MAN ON HER WALL?!”

My brother says this never happened, but he is getting old so he probably forgot. *wink*



***

A former friend once bragged about how much better Australia was than the U.S. Lately I wonder if she thinks the same thing now that they have no freedom left to speak of.

***

Last Sunday an ice storm moved into our area so we decided not to drive the five miles to my parents for lunch like we usually do on Sundays. I didn’t want my mom to think we didn’t want to come, but I wanted us to be safe so I called her and she said if we did come she’d be worried about us driving back in the dark.

We finally agreed we would stay home. She said, “okay, good. I just didn’t want you to think I was rejecting you.” Then I said, “I didn’t want you to think I was rejecting you.”

And that’s when I realized, yet again actually, that this family needs to see a therapist. We worry way too much about offending each other and other people.



***

I thought I’d share a couple of humorous memes I came across recently. I find them humorous but my son says they are “so 2016.”

***

So those are my random thoughts. How about you? Share your random thoughts in the comments.

Randomly Thinking: My quipping 15-year old, my 7-year old is sending me texts, and purses.

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 15 Comments

I’ve been trying to finish one of these for a couple of months now. Something always seems to interrupt or distract me, though. So this might not be the most exciting randomly thinking ever, but at least I’m finally getting one done.

Recently my son and I have been watching videos for science and he likes to let me know subtly that they aren’t the best produced things every by pausing them and adlibbing.

“Look at that lion. He looks so depressed. He looks like his wife just left him.”

The women on the video then asked if the lion had a backbone so they could discuss what category the lion would be placed into.  

“No,” my son responded. “He doesn’t have a backbone. That’s probably why his wife left him.”

“That word sounds like a disease. Is it a disease?”

“Yes, he’s slimy he left the Denny’s without giving them a tip.”

Finally, he said, “I have to stop doing this or we’re never going to finish this video.”

Exactly. He was simply dragging his lesson out even more, so he finally stopped.

***

One night my son and I were watching a documentary about the various palaces the British monarchy live in. The first part of the series was about Buckingham Palace and among the many features the woman was talking about was a statue of a naked Mars and Venus. Before we knew it she was touching the bare right buttock and upper thigh of Venus and telling us how supple and soft it looks and how smooth it feels. She then pointed out a small space between the two statues and called that space a “erotic space.”

Needless to say, that documentary took a very weird turn.

At one point The Boy used his adlibbing again and said, while speaking like the female host, “When the queen sits on the throne, she just sucks the life force out of us. That’s how she stays alive and why I look so old. I’m actually 20.”

***

The other night my son said, “You know people who were born in the 90s are in their 30s now? That’s totally crazy.”

“Um…thanks for that reminder,” I said, my voice full of sarcasm. “Most of them are actually in their 20s, but okay. And I was born in the 70s you know.”

My daughter looked at me in horror. “You were born in the 70s?!!”

My son. “Yes, she is old.”

So, anyhow, if you want to be humbled, have children.

***

Have you ever thought maybe you should see what the other “theys” in the world think before you tell everyone you’re doing something because “they said I had to”? And maybe you should ask why some “theys” are censored and no longer experts while other “theys” are the only experts you’re allowed to listen to. How different the world might be right now if more people did that.

***

I’ve had to cut back on milk to try to lose some weight and I reminded my son of this as I had him pour me half a cup the other night.

He deepened his voice and added a gravelly rasp to it.

“I had to cut the milk. After that guy came after me and told me he wanted the money I’d taken off him and I didn’t remember it because you know — the milk – it messed with my mind.”

Then he had me in a milk anonymous meeting saying, in the same low voice, “My name is Lisa and I’m addicted to milk. It’s destroyed my life. Don’t start drinking it. It’s a slippery slope.”

***

At the end of last school year, I was worried Little Miss wasn’t going to learn to read. Now I get messages like this on my phone from her:

***

Little Miss and I are reading a book called Freedom Crossing for school. It is about the Underground Railroad. In the first chapter, the main character, a 15-year old girl, is hiding and listening while her brother and another young man talk about her. She finally steps out and tells the boys she has heard every word.

Little Miss and I agreed to continue the story the next day and then she announced, “Yeah, she’s probably going to kick them in their weak spot because all boys have a weak spot.” She grinned at me. “Right between the legs. That’s what I’d do. I would kick them because I’m feisty. I wouldn’t let anyone talk about me and what they think I’m going to do.”

Yes, we did have to have a little conversation about violence after that, especially since she has tried this tactic on her brother and now I know she’s doing it on purpose more times than she admits.

***

Run, don’t walk, to get a copy of all the books of the Rembrandt Stone series. I just finished the last book in the series and oh gosh. Wow. Blown away by the whole series. Cried like a baby while reading the final book not once, not twice, but three times. And I mean outright sobbed. I’m sure that had nothing to do with the fact I had a 102-degree fever and was completely exhausted. Okay, it might have had a little to do with that, but mainly it was because the ending hit all the spots a time travel/romantic suspense book should. I felt empty when I finished it. Lost even. How could I read anything else that captivated me the way those books did? I don’t know, but I’m sure I’ll eventually find something.

The books are by David James Warren.

***

I posted this on my Instagram earlier this week and thought I’d share it here too so my blog readers can’t let me know what they think too.

Ladies, tell me about your purses. I should probably explain that I am not really a “girly girl” so shoes and purses are not my usual thing to talk about but recently I purchased a purse that was small and cute and I thought I would love it. I haaaated it! I couldn’t fit all my stuff in it. Where was the space for my planner and my Kindle and maybe a paperback book? Not to mention my essential oils, bottle of ibuprofen for the days Aunt Flo shows up out of the blue, and a pocket for snacks for the kids because they didn’t eat their breakfast when I told them to and now we’re out somewhere and they are “hangry”. In other words, I didn’t need a purse I needed a bag. Yes, a big bag to apparently put everything but the kitchen sink in and carry around on my shoulder so that I pinch that nerve in my neck yet again and have to find a chiropractor, yet again.

How about you?

Do you like small, cute purses that are unassuming and you can carry to your dinner date without knocking ten people out on the way to your seat? Or do you need a “bag” that you can fit everything important in? Or do you have more than one purse that you switch back and forth? Maybe you’re much fancier when it comes to purses than I am. 😉

***

Well, those are my random thoughts for this time around. Do you have anything random that happened to you or a random thought? Let me know in the comments.

Randomly Thinking: Florida men stories, murder case obsessions, behind on blog reading and other random thoughts

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 6 Comments


You just know it’s going to be a weird day when the tabs of your computer are opened up to “Man Found Naked In Chicken Coup After Manhunt”, a search bar for “what are the names of those round people toys, and a tab with the headline “Sean Connery’s James Bond was Basically A Rapist, New 007 Director Says.”

***

A couple of weeks ago my family picked up some Chinese food at the local Weis. It included spring rolls, but my husband said they were mini egg rolls. I informed him that they were indeed spring rolls, but I couldn’t explain the difference so when we got home, I searched for the difference online. I thought I’d share that information here in case any of you need to win a pointless argument as well in the future.

The differences between spring rolls and egg rolls:

Wrapper. Spring rolls are wrapped in thin flour wrappers or rice wrappers, while egg rolls are wrapped in a thicker, noticeably crispier wrapper that’s been dipped in egg for richness.

Preparation. Egg rolls are fried, which accounts for their bubbly, crispy exteriors. Meanwhile, spring rolls may be baked or fried, and are sometimes not cooked at all apart from the filling.

Filling. Spring rolls are usually filled with a fresh vegetables, whereas egg rolls are filled with a combination of savory meat and vegetables.

If you would like even more information on this two different Chinese foods, you can click over to the article HERE.

***

I don’t know about any of you, but I have been both horrified and enraptured with this terrible case of the missing and then found murdered girl, Gabby Petito. My son has called me obsessed, but I promise I have done more than poor over the internet for more information on the case this week, opening up my internet browser every morning and hoping they have caught her boyfriend, who I suspect killed her. I have. Truly. I have written several hundred words in book four of the Spencer Valley Chronicles, taught homeschool lessons, finished a book, continued to read on two more, cooked meals, and let a dog and a cat in and out a few times a day.

Unlike many following this case, I do not see myself as an internet sleuth of any kind. I’m simply curious of the final outcome. That’s why I joined a discussion group about the case on Facebook. The case itself is very serious, heartbreaking, and solemn, but some of the posts in the group have kept me laughing while also making me question the sanity of a great deal of people in this country.

I was glad to see there are many in the group who can laugh at themselves for thinking they know more than the FBI, which is investigating the case, and that there are others who can laugh at the sad state of their lives where they have found themselves with way too much time on their hands.

I thought I’d share a few of the funnier screenshots I took from the group, as well as some hilarious comments that I could relate to, as well as my own responses to some of the comments.

Comment: I think all of the 23 year-old, semi-bald guys with brown hair, flip flops, and a backpack probably better just stay home for the next few weeks.

Comment: Now I know why Brian Laundrie looks familiar. He looks like just about every other average guy in this country.

Comment: Anybody else in this group discover a new toxic trait about themselves during this case that has manifested itself in the form of a pretentious pseudo-investigator? I find that when friends and family, that are just casually following the case, send me some piece of information that I dissected 3 days ago I can’t help but scoff and hurriedly explain to them why it is irrelevant so I can get back to business. Sometimes I have to be brought back to reality and remember while I did major in social media sleuthing my cheating exes, I am not in fact, lead detective on this case. 😩

My response to her: Yeah, but come on — I have watched sooooo many mystery and cop shows and I’m on the fourth book of the Walt Longmire mystery series so I am totally an expert. That’s all the training I need, right?!

Showing how some in the group really do feel like they are all working together:

There have also been several posts in the group about bodies being found or people barricading themselves in apartments or hotel rooms. This made a lot of us in the group realize that all those Florida man memes are totally true. Surely you have heard of them. Florida man . .. followed by something crazy that a Florida man did. Let me explain this in my next random thought.

***


A couple of years ago my son was showing me memes and told me about all these crazy news stories that have the headline: “Florida man . . .” followed by something crazy a man from Florida did.

There are also Florida woman stories, I should add.

It didn’t take me long to realize he was right. I started seeing all these crazy stories and every time it would be someone from Florida that something crazy.

Then one day I came across this headline: Man Found Naked In Chicken Coop After Manhunt.

I snorted a laugh and said to my son, “Oh my gosh. Sounds like something that would happen in our area, or would involve a Florida man.”

I proceeded to read the story and it turns out it involved both a Florida man and our area. The man was being sought because he had been driving the wrong way on a local interstate. After he crashed his car, which he drove all the way from Florida, he jumped on the back of pickup (while on the highway) and rode a mile before jumping off and running into the woods.

Police searched for this guy for seven hours, only to find him after he was found naked in a chicken cop by the coop’s owner. It was apparently not the first chicken coop he had run into while naked and on the run. He also threatened the one homeowner with an ax.

He killed a dog and injured two chickens during his run. The article doesn’t say it, but I suspect he was found to be under the influence of a controlled substance — most likely  meth.

By the way, I went to search for this story again to confirm the headline and there was actually another similar story in Lousiana. I guess there is something that happens to meth heads when they get high that makes them want to run naked into chicken coops.



***

Earlier this week I decided I had better catch up on posts from my favorite bloggers. I am very behind due to school starting (and the aforementioned obsession I’ve developed). I logged on to the WordPress reader and clicked over to my friend Erin’s blog (link) and gasped. There was a huge list of posts from her that I had missed. I immediately sent her a private message, telling her the thoughts that rushed thro ugh my mind at this discovery, because obviously she needs to know every thought that rushes through my mind on a daily basis.

What I wrote to her, word for word, (sadly): I was like: “Where did all these posts come from!??? I can’t be this far behind?? What am I doing with my life? where have my days gone? What hours have I wasted doing things when I could have been reading Erin’s posts???!”

Anyhow, after my obvious failure at being a good blog follower, I read and commented on many of Erin’s posts and then jumped over to some of other favorite bloggers to read and leave comments and likes there. I’m still weeding through the list, though, so don’t feel left out if I haven’t stopped at your blog yet.

***

Little Miss and I were coming home from an Awana meeting the other night (it’s a church group for kids) and I was telling her why we say The Pledge of Allegiance.

“It’s to remember the freedom we have in this country,” I told her.

“What freedom? I don’t have freedom,” she told me.

“You don’t?”

“No. You keep me in the house and tell me what to do all the time.”

“You mean like when I make you do schoolwork?”

“Yeah. I don’t have freedom to whatever I want.”

“Really? How long did you talk to your friends the other day compared to how long I made you do schoolwork?”

“Yeah, well —”

“When you want a snack you get it, right?”

“Yeah, but —”

“When you want a toy we often get it, don’t we?”

“Yeah, but —”

“And the mere fact you are allowed to have an education when little girls in other countries aren’t even allowed to learn or expand their education simply because they are women shows what freedom you have. You may not think so now, but the fact you are being educated is a gift to you. A gift other young girls your age don’t have.”

The rest of the ride home (all four minutes of it) was pretty quiet after that, though I’m still not sure she agreed with me.

***

I’m starting to wonder why I even bother teaching my daughter science. Most of the time she teaches me. Yesterday we were doing a lesson on the different layers of the ocean (Sunlight, Twilight and Midnight) and while she didn’t know about those layers, she could tell me a bunch of stuff about the creatures who live in each of them. I figure I should just record her and sell the classes for some extra money at this point.

***

Earlier today my husband was like, “I want to take you to the new James Bond movie” and I was like, “No. No. Don’t make me stare at Daniel Craig for two hours. How cruel.” Ha. Ha.

Honestly, though, I always think he looks like a pretentious jerk with the way his lips are always pursed like that and his jaw is all tight. I also don’t understand the phone prop. Who is he calling? Someone in 1986?


***

A couple of memes that hit the nail on the head for me recently:

(My husband recently remarked on how long it is taking to build the Aldi’s in the town near us and suggested they hire the people who build all the Dollar General’s around here to do it. Seriously, every time I turn around there is another one in a town I’m driving through where there wasnt one before. Also, we live near Seneca Lake so this pretty funny.)

***

Those are my random thoughts for this time around. How about you? What random thoughts or events do you have to share? Share them with me in the comments.

Randomly Thinking: My sleep sheep keep talking to me, creepy creatures, and lucid dreaming

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 4 Comments

I have had this Randomly Thinking file started for two weeks but have not had enough material or enough time to put it together. Since I don’t have anything for Fiction Friday today, I figured it would be a good day to post it, though I usually post it on Wednesday or Thursday. 

So, without further ado, my random thoughts from the last few weeks.

***

My husband posted on Facebook a couple of weeks ago that he had been having trouble sleeping so he had decided to count sheep. I told him I couldn’t count sheep because when I do they just repeat all my worries and problems back to me as they jump.

 “Did you look at your bank account today? baa…”

“What in the world is going on in Israel now? baaaa….”

“You don’t have an ending for your next book and that book on writing you read said you have to have a beginning and an ending planned before you even start writing. Baaaa…”

“What’s with Donald Trump’s hair anyhow? Baaaaa…”

So, I just don’t count sheep anymore. Noisy little things anyhow.

***

I make oatmeal every other morning and I always try to put only the smallest amount in, so I don’t end up with too much. I am very bad at this measuring by the eye thing, I guess because every single time I still end up with a huge bowl of it. No matter what. 

“It expands, Lisa!” I yell at myself every time.

I mix it with peanut butter and a few (hundred) drops of maple syrup so it is sort of like a no-bake cookie.

***

About two weeks ago small grasshoppers and katydids started showing up in our backyard and Little Miss decided she needed to capture them and keep them in small containers so she could look at them or something. I don’t really know why she wanted to keep them. All I know was that my living room soon had four plastic canisters full of little hopping insects and that those containers didn’t keep them contained very well. 

I had planned to release them after Little Miss went to bed or the next morning but before I got that far, I spotted the kitten in the kitchen with one cornered ready to eat it. Neither the kitten nor the child seemed able to catch it, until the next morning when the kitten ate it in front of The Boy while he was waiting for his grandpa to pick him up for work.

Luckily, the grasshoppers and katydids have hopped off to somewhere else for now. If they show back up, I’m letting Little Miss that if she wants to look at them outside, that’s fine, but no more bringing them into the house where they can escape and possibly crawl on me at night.

***

Speaking of creepy creatures in our home, one night last week I thought I saw something fly in front of me while I was sitting in our living room. I have eye floaters, so for a moment, I thought maybe it was something like that. Or I was having a stroke. Instead, the dark streak I saw in my vision was a bat.

Yep. A bat.

It had somehow got into our house and was flapping around the living room, trying to figure out how to get back out.

I wish I could say I was calm about it all, but I was not. Not at all. 

When that thing kept flapping toward me, where I was sitting on the couch, I kept picturing its little face and then imagining it gripping my hair in a panic, getting stuck there and flapping around like a crazy person.

Little Miss knows all about animals, of course, so she was delighted by it all and kept running around, giggling and telling us facts about bats and how they fly by sonar. I didn’t care what they fly by. I just didn’t want that thing in my hair. She was very excited when the bat landed at one point and she got to have a good look at him with “his cute little ears.”

I called my parents in the middle of it all to ask how Dad had gotten the one that had been in my room one time and my mom suggested I put a blanket over my head, so I did. I placed a pill and blanket over my head and screamed anytime it came near me while my dad scoffed on the other end of the phone.

I don’t think the fact we had watched The Birds, the Alfred Hitchcock horror movie, a couple of weeks before, had helped. 

I was legit terrified and finally ran to the downstairs bathroom while my husband and son opened the doors and eventually convinced it to fly out our back door.

I spent the next week thinking I could hear bats crawling in the wall or squeaking, but so far, no more have shown up.

***

My children aren’t excited by this next piece of news, but I am. I ordered a large chunk of their curriculum two weeks ago and it arrived last week. I was so excited to open the boxes and check it all out. I wanted everyone else in the house to be excited too, but they weren’t. The Boy rolled his eyes. Little Miss grunted and the husband said, “Cool. Have fun.”

Oh, I will. I will.

I honestly can’t wait for September 1 to get here.

*** 

I was chatting with someone online about the ability to imagine scenes, people, or events in vivid detail, which made me think about vivid and lucid dreaming.

Lucid dreaming is when you recognize that you are dreaming and then you change your dream while it is happening.

I have been able to do this a time or two. The one time it stands out the most for me is when I had a dream about an elderly friend and his wife who passed away 13 years ago.

My friend, Rev. Reynolds is in the dream with a dark background and a bench in front of him and he says “Oooh, Leeesa (as he always pronounced my name this way in his thick Northern Irish accent), I’m so happy to see you. Come and give me a hug.” He gestured with his arm toward the bench after I hugged him. “Let me get Maud for you. You’ll want to see Maud.” Then he turned slightly like he always did in life when summoning his wife, “Maaaaud! Maud! Come see, Lisa!”

Usually when he gestured, though, he was suggesting Maud make me some tea.

In the dream, I suddenly realized I didn’t want to see Maud. Maud was dead. Maud might look like a zombie. I didn’t want to remember Maud as a zombie. 

Then, before I could stop it, there was Maud on the bench and her face was normal at first, then it began to slowly deteriorate into blackness on one side, decomposing before my eyes. I held up my hand and turned away. “No! This dream is going where I don’t want to go.” 

In a room that was more like a cave in front of me were “people” or figures sort of golden on the edges, staggering against each other and moaning but I was already turning away and saying, “No. I don’t want this dream. I’m going to wake up because this is not how I want to remember my friends.”

And I woke up and ending the dream.

What about you? Are you able to change your dreams? 

***

Every once in a while, as we will be eating steak at my dad’s and he’ll say, “It’s not too bad. For being bought off the back of a truck.”

 Either that or “Grabbed this up on super sale. It was probably about to expire.”

We never know exactly what to say. 

***

Little Miss attended a church camp last week. She and her little friend were the only children at the camp but had a lot of fun.

Some of her comments during the Bible lessons were hilarious, but also a little nerve-wracking for me. At one point the young lady leading the group was talking about the story of Joseph and asked, “What would you think if you had eleven older brothers?” 

Little Miss responded, “Oh man. That would be so annoying.” She then proceeded to explain how annoying her older brother could be at times and how there are times she just has to punch or kick him. Sigh.

The young lady then told the story of Joseph being throw into the well and Little Miss said, “I might punch my brother or something, but I wouldn’t throw him in a well. That’s crazy.”

Later the young man told a story and he said something about a golden scarf. Little Miss, however, thought he said golden skull so when the young man asked what the girls thought of the story she said, “Well, I think that’s creepy.”

“What do you mean?” the young man said.

“That man pulled out a golden skull . . .” Little Miss said.

I laughed and let her know that he had said “golden scarf” not “skull.”

“Oh good,” Little Miss said. “That’s much better.”

***

Those are my random thoughts for this week. I actually had another random story/thought but I decided to break that one off for a separate, future blog post, so next week keep your eyes open for the blog post about my son and dad finding the cat I had as a child more than a decade after he died.

How about you? Any random thoughts? Let me know in the comments.

Randomly Thinking: Hot weather, outhouse races, and The Birds!

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 8 Comments

I have been writing down little tidbits for Randomly Thinking but have not had much inclination to finalize them. It’s either been too hot or too rainy or I’ve been too tired. But this week I needed some cheering up and figured others might too.

***

I read a short romance this past week and in the book the main character gets dumped and not just dumped anywhere. He gets dumped at church.

I sent a note to the author on Instagram.

“I’m not done with the book yet but Cynthia dumped Joe at church. At church. Girl is brutal.”

I told my husband about this dumping scene, and he asked if I planned to dump him during the upcoming weekend when he got baptized. I told him, “Absolutely.”

I was like, “Yep. As soon as they bring you back up out of that water, I’m going to stand up and pump my fists and say, ‘Yes! Glad you got Jesus because you ain’t got me! I’m out looooser!”

We’ll be married 19 years in five more days. I’m lucky he still appreciates my odd sense of humor.

***

Smalltown life is interesting. In a good way. Mostly.

A couple of weeks ago we attended the town dairy festival, because we live in a town where they still celebrate dairy (even as our dairy farms are being forced to shut down).

It poured the entire parade. The local high school band couldn’t perform so the parade was mainly fire trucks, a few floats that focused on dairy consumption, a herd of Jersey cows from a friend of mine being led through town, and the color guard. When the fire trucks came through we figured that was the end because that’s usually what is at the end of a parade around here — a ton of fire trucks from all over the area, blowing their horns and sounding their sirens. This time, though, the parade restarted. Like the color guard came around again as if we were in a time loop.

My son called out, “Oh no! They’re stuck in a time loop! You have to try to get out! Try do something you didn’t do the first time around!”

It was hilarious. To me and my family anyhow. I’m so sure those around us were that amused, but who knows. A lot of people have lost their sense of humor these days.

What I’m really looking forward to is the outhouse races in August. They are held during Founder’s Days. I’ve always heard about the races but never been privy to them. Privy. Get it? Privy . . . Yeah. I know. That was bad. But anyhow, I’m looking forward to the day and will be sure to take some photos of it for all of you.

They don’t race to the outhouse, by the way. They build outhouses and people carry them while one person sits inside and they literally race them down the street. I’ve lived in this area my whole life and have never seen an outhouse race. But now we live right here in town so it’s my chance. What a disappointment last year, our first year here, when the event was canceled due to You Know What.

There is also a contest where someone is crowned the winner of the toilet seat cover painting contest. The paintings are very professional, so don’t let the name fool you. They hang the winners up in the local diner. The one with the stuffed six-foot black bear that overlooks diners.

***

It’s been hot the last several days. Hot and muggy mixed with afternoon thunderstorms. Little Miss and I snuck off to my parents to enjoy the above ground pool by dad installed many years ago, originally for my son. We like to take Zooma the Wonderdog with us but it’s hard to keep an eye on her while we are in the pool. She likes to run across the small dirt road, into the field by the pond, which wouldn’t be bad if cars didn’t fly up and down the road extremely fast. I’m always worried she will get hurt.

I had an extra lead to keep her tied to the pool so she would be close to us but it turned out to be very short. I finally gave up and let her roam but then called for her every five minutes to make sure she hadn’t gone into the road.

She was hilarious because she would sit by the pool, panting, looking innocent, for the longest time and then I would go back to swimming with Little Miss, pop up a few minutes later and she was gone. She’d wander back when I called her though, always looking innocent, wagging her tail. I feel like she’s saying to me, “What? I’ve been here the whole time. Why are you looking at me that way?”



***

Speaking of heat, I told my husband the other day that he shouldn’t mow the lawn around 3 because it was the hottest time of the day.

“No. Noon is the hottest time of the day,” he informed me, very confident.

“No. Around 2 or 3 is the hottest time,” I informed him.

I looked it up online and found this answer from The Farmer’s Almanac: “The hottest time of the day is around 3 p.m. Heat continues building up after noon, when the sun is highest in the sky, as long as more heat is arriving at the earth than leaving. By 3 p.m. or so, the sun is low enough in the sky for outgoing heat to be greater than incoming. Sometimes the hottest time is earlier because a weather system moves in with cool air early in the day.”

It was nice to finally be write about something scientific for once.

***

We watched a couple classic movies this past week. One of them was The Birds. This was a movie I avoided watching for my entire life based on something that happened in my childhood. My mom was outside mowing the lawn one day when I heard the lawn mower shut off and she came running inside.

“The birds!” she cried. “The birds are attacking!”

She was swiping at her hair with her arms over her head and shaking her head.

“It was just like that Alfred Hitchcock movie! It was crazy!”

It turns out some barn swallows were swooping down on her while she was on the riding mower just like, yes, The Birds. She believes they were trying to protect their nests. Whatever was happening, her declaration forever solidified in my mind that The Birds was a movie not to be watched.

But I finally did watch it and despite the fact the birds were super fake, it was pretty traumatizing to see and did leave me very leery of any birds gathering. One day, several years ago, at our old house I walked out to the back door and the entire back yard, our neighbors’ roof, and their backyard was full of birds. Had I seen this movie before then, I would have been even more freaked out than I was that day.

***

We had our first real thunderstorm experience on the hill in our new house last Tuesday night. The storm raged for three hours. Lightening lit up the sky from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. and thunder rattled the house. It was absolutely crazy. We lived in a literal Valley before we moved here, so we were somewhat shielded from storms there. When we did get them, they were fairly quick and mild. We rarely heard loud cracks of thunder there.

The worst storm I remembered there involved insane wind and a tornado touching down a few miles away. Two hundred foot, hundred-year-old trees were ripped out of the ground in our town and scattered like matchsticks. Then there was the year it rained for a week.

The entire downtown flooded and destroyed homes and businesses. It was surreal. There used to be marks on the walls that marked where Hurricane Agnes hit in 1972. Those records were obliterated by Hurricane Sandy, something I thought I’d never see in my lifetime.

***

As I was preparing this post last night, we had a power outage, something that also happens more often where we live now. It’s sort of odd, though. We will have power outages after you would think you would have them. In the winter we had one after the major snowstorms moved through. Last week we had weird storms all week long and no power outage, other than a few seconds. This power outage came in the middle of a very hot day and wiped out power for most of our county (which is about 6,000 people. Yes. That is how small our county is) for about eight hours.

***

I made a mistake recently of asking someone I don’t know to review my book. Monday she messaged me cheerfully on Instagram that she had reviewed the book. She acted like it was something to be excited about. I have been trying not to look at reviews but I did, against my better judgement, and saw she had left me a two star review and proceeded to shred my book, inferring things that weren’t even there. I was a bit in shock that she had made it a point to tell me to go look at the review (essentially). I suppose she wanted me to know how bad and evil she thought my book was and I doubt she was prepared for the message she got back from me, asking her if she was so worried about me being a “bad Christian” how did she think she was being a good one by making sure I saw a mean review. The power outage was welcome because I was obsessing over this girl and what had made her think she was so above everyone else and was really considering messaging her again. It wouldn’t have helped anything anyhow. She felt how she felt and it can’t be helped. The outage made me take a breather and pray for forgiveness instead of figuring out how to blast her again.

***

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

Randomly Thinking: I am socially awkward. Surprised? Yeah, me either.

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 9 Comments

Welcome to my random thoughts and events for the week. Enter at your own risk.

Well, it looks like I might make it to 25 days consecutive posting on this blog by Monday, but I’m not doing it on purpose now. I simply had these future posts ready to go. Next week I don’t care if I post consecutively or not. I have a lot of reading to catch up on, blogs and books both.

When I talk to my neighbors, I feel the need to apologize repeatedly for my social awkwardness, which simply makes me even more socially awkward. Someone help me. I need someone with a taser down the street who just zaps me when they see me talking to a neighbor, so I don’t any more of an idiot out of myself. Actually, the taser zapping me wouldn’t help that situation, would it? Never mind.

My 14-year-old son and I were talking about the differences between men and women in the bathroom. Men do not talk to each other in the bathroom under any circumstance. Women? Yeah, we often do. Or, I should say we used to. These days women don’t talk to each other out of the stalls or the bathroom. Since last year I’ve found most women to be very paranoid and unfriendly. But, back in the day, as we old folk say, women would chat right along with the women next to them in the stall, especially if they knew each other.

A conversation between women in the bathroom might go something like this:

Woman Number One: “I love those shoes. Sorry, I just couldn’t help noticing them.”
Woman Number Two: “Thank you so much. I got them at JC Penny years ago.”
Woman Number One, coming out of stall: “It’s so awful how JC Penny is going out of business.”
Woman Number Two: “I know. I used to love to shop there.”
Woman Number One: “Me too. I got the best perfume there.”
Woman Number Two comes out of the stall: “I did too! I have it right here! Let me wash my hands and then you have to smell it!”
Woman Number One: “Oh my gosh! That smells amazing! I used to have one like that. An ex-boyfriend gave it to me, and I didn’t want to ask him where he got it because then that would mean I’d have to talk to him.”
Woman Number Two: “Yikes. I hear you. There are some men I dated that I wouldn’t go near if they offered me a million dollars.”
Woman Number One: “Seriously. Did you get that purse at JC Penny too?”
Woman Number Two: “Ha. No. Speaking of exes, this came from my ex-husband. He probably spent a mint on it, but not as much as I make him spend in child support.”

And then they laugh and the conversation keeps snowballing from there.

My husband and son say that men get in and get out and they can’t figure out why we’d want to talk to anyone in a bathroom.

I took my mom to a doctor’s appointment recently and while there she ran into a young woman who works there and whose mom used to rent from my parents. The girl immediately kneeled next to my mom, who was sitting in a chair, and asked her how she was doing. In the next few moments, my mom transformed into one of those slightly nosey elderly ladies right before my eyes.
“I hear you have a new special someone in your life,” my mom said to the young woman.
“Why, yes, I do,” the young woman said.
“My husband was showing me the photos on Facebook.”
“Oh, I have some more here,” the young woman said and pulled out her phone.
The conversation switched to the young woman’s sister’s children and then my mom showed she wasn’t done grilling the young woman about her “special someone” by saying, “So, are you and this young man serious?”
I finally butted in. “Mom! You can’t ask that stuff!”
The young woman laughed and said, “It’s okay. We’ve been dating for about five years.”
My mom’s eyebrows shot up. “Ooh. I see.”
I knew what Mom was thinking. “So, you’ve been dating five years and he hasn’t proposed yet?”
Thankfully the young woman in question was called off to help a co-worker so Mom couldn’t ask the question.
A few minutes after the woman left my mom leaned over to me and said, “Well, I could have asked her if she was living with him unmarried, but I didn’t so . . .”
So, I guess I was supposed to be proud of her for holding her tongue this time.

The woman who took my mom back to her appointment that day, by the way, was a Victoria’s Secret model on the side, I swear. Tall, blond, and I couldn’t see her face because of the facemask but I guarantee she was gorgeous under there. I’d never felt more short, fat, and troll-like in all my life. Well, at least in a few years.

A bloggy friend had her own random thought-moment this week and had me snorting with laughter when she told me about it. First, she woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t find her husband, so she texted him but the text back was blurry so she thought she was going blind. Oh gosh, if she only knew that this is my life story. I worry about my eyesight all the time, especially after experiencing ocular migraines once or twice a year for the last few years. I’m always sure I’m a second away from going blind.
Anyhow, after she found the husband (who had to deal with some work issues remotely), she laid awake thinking about Taming of the Shrew and “as I was falling back asleep I realized that the title Taming of The Shrew had the same cadence and rhyme as Ten Things I hate About You, that Heath Ledger movie based on Taming of The Shrew.”
It’s scary how similar her and my brain works. No, really, it is scary.

I have a serious problem. I am obsessed with watching this YouTube channel I originally started watching for research for my book. It’s about dairy farming in Pennsylvania. I am fascinated by it. I can’t stop watching it. Help me.

The young son (about 24) runs the channel and sometimes he makes his dad talk too. Dad always looks a little nervous at first but then shares about whatever the son wants him to share.
Mainly the kid shows what he’s doing day in and day out on the farm.
I will say I have been able to glean a lot of information about dairy farming, some that I have incorporated into my story.

In addition to the YouTube channel, I’ve also been obsessed with trying to design my own book covers. I have known how to use Photoshop for years, but mainly on the basics. Now I’m trying to learn more than the basics and honestly, it’s making my head hurt. I won’t lie, I’ve also cried more than once. Yes, in the end, I may break down and pay someone to design my book covers, but I’m not some successful Indie author who can afford that right now, so I doubt that will be an option at this time.

You ever see those Indie authors who say they put one book up on Amazon and they immediately made tons of sales? Yeah, I’m convinced they are full of it. I have four books up on Amazon and so far, even with begging people to read it and buy it, I’ve made about $8 a month. It’s not as lucrative as some claim, but it is still fun because I’ve met some super cool people on this writing journey. At this point, I will take that over the money any day.

So those are my random thoughts for the week. Share some of yours with me in the comments, or send me private messages like my other bloggy friend does because random events and thoughts crack me up and I often need that during the week.