Tag: Randomly Thinking

Randomly Thinking: A few random thoughts about spoons and other things

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Randomly Thinking7 Comments

I have no idea why it has taken me so long to write a Randomly Thinking post but here I am, finally compiling my random thoughts and happenings into a blog post.

Enjoy the randomness.

A few months ago, my mom called to tell me that one of the women at physical therapy had noticed something black in my dad’s ear and felt he needed to get it checked for cancer.

My dad set up an appointment because he has had skin cancer removed in the past.

As he was getting ready to go, he took a shower and was trying his face and ears off when he noticed black on his towel. That’s when it hit him. He didn’t have some sort of new growth in his ear. It was the charcoal soap he’d been using to wash with but it apparently didn’t come off very well.

Crisis averted.

***

Sometimes I mumble my starting word count over and over when I am using a writing sprint program in Discord so I can remember it when I write it down. Later I put in how many words I have when I finish writing and it tallies how many words I wrote in a certain amount of time.

When The Boy hears me mumbling my word count, my teenage son asks if I am whispering my activation code for the chip in my head.

***

Little Miss and I were watching Mary Berry one night and she was cooking duck. The Husband said he wanted to know where we could get duck locally and decided to Google it. He didn’t find a local provider but he found a bucket of duck fat for an insane amount of money.

In response to our shock, Little Miss said, “Well, yeah…it’s a delicacy.”

I have no idea where she learned that word but probably from Mary Berry. I think we’ve watched too much Mary, honestly. My child is picking up her lingo.

***

One day I mentioned the book/story “I Once Knew A Woman Who Swallowed a Fly” and Little Miss called out, “No! I don’t like that book! I don’t like the perspective of being in her stomach. It’s gross.”

Again – is this a normal 8-year-old thing?

***

I told Little Miss one day that I didn’t know how she was still awake after staying up late the night before and getting up early that day.

She widened her eyes, pressed her fingers together and wiggled them.

“I’ve been stimulating my brain all day to stay awake,” she said in a silly, high-pitched voice.”

***

One day The Boy was explaining something to Little Miss and I, then realized we already knew what he was talking about.

 “Sorry,” he said. “I know I don’t need to explain that to you guys. You’re not dumb.”

Little Miss tipped her head sidewise toward me and said, “Well, I’m not. I don’t know about her.”

I said, “excuse me? I’m not dumb.”

“You do dumb things sometimes,” she said.

“Well, we all do that,” I said. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You swear and that shows you’re not very smart.”

Ouch.

I mean. …. She’s right but … ouch.

***

My kids have very big vocabularies and people have told me that they sound like little adults. I’m never sure if that’s meant as a compliment or not. Here is the thing, though, my husband is well-read – much more so than me (I feel dumb around him) and we never talked baby talk to our kids (which isn’t a bad thing). We just talked to them in regular adult speech (within reason) and they just picked up those words and meanings and went from there.

It can backfire, though. One time around 6 years old my son had a friend over and he was talking about Venom from Spider-Man and said that Venom was a symbiote. The little friend scrunched up his face and said, “What’s that?” My son said, “It means he needs another living creature to live off of. Geesh, you really need to broaden your vocabulary.”  

***

The Boy has a job now and has been thinking a lot about his future and about what he will do after he graduates. One night I had to calm him down because he thought next year was his last year of school. I had to tell him he has two years of school left, not one.

This calmed him some and then he said, “I don’t have to have a life goal. I’m 16. Right?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m 45 and I still don’t have a life goal. My goal is just to survive I guess.”

***

Every once in a while my teenage son will have himself a rant about how my mom, and me, tell him to use the regular, everyday spoons when he sets the table and not the soup spoons.

“There is no difference! They are just spoons!”

I reminded him that every day spoons are smaller than the soup spoon.

His response was, “The larger spoon should be the default spoon for all spoons! If you want a fancy spoon for your fancy dinner then make it the same size but less bent!”

I was like, “Honey, one is a one is a teaspoon and one is a tablespoon.”

“They are just spoons!” he screamed. “When our ancestors were carving the spoons from wood they didn’t say this is a soup spoon and this is a regular spoon. They said this is a spoon! An all-purpose tool for putting food in my mouth! There is a smaller spoon and a big spoon. That’s a giant spoon even better for shoveling more food in your mouth!”

He literally ranted for four straight minutes about the spoon drama.

I decided not to mention that there are also serving spoons.

***

The Boy and his friend were recently watching a video that showcased the top one songs through the decades. They were into it, all the way up to the 2000s when my my son says “Aw man it sucks. Those generations got that cool music and we got Cardi B.”

I can’t help but agree.

Here is a random photo of my cat:

And one of my dog:



So there are a few random thoughts.

Tell me one random fact about yourself today.

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

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Randomly Thinking7 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: I couldn’t be a 911 dispatcher, my tea needs more honey, and tomato soup cake

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Randomly Thinking8 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: My quipping 15-year old, my 7-year old is sending me texts, and purses.

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Randomly Thinking, Randon Thoughts15 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

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Randomly Thinking6 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: I am socially awkward. Surprised? Yeah, me either.

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Randomly Thinking9 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.

Randomly Thinking: The Scarewoman, mouthy first-graders, and creepy Christmas music

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Randomly Thinking13 Comments

Welcome to my Randomly Thinking post where I share random thoughts from my week or the past two weeks. Read at your own risk.

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I’m still posting consecutive days on the blog, for now, mainly using posts I already had almost fully written or ideas I’d had for posts for a while. As of yesterday, I had posted 13 days in a row. I have no why idea I’ve decided this is my summer challenge but I want to see how many days in a row I can post, simply for the fun of it. I am guessing I will hit a certain number and do one of three things: decide to stop posting because it’s weird (and possibly annoying to people who follow me to keep receiving notifications of my posts), forget to post, or simply run out of ideas. We will see which comes first.

***

My email host has apparently stopped filtering messages into my spam because at least once a week for the past month or so I receive emails from colleges and other places directed to someone named Ismael. Like, Call me Ismael, which is actually Ishmael and I hear was a horrible movie.

Anyhow, I hope Ismael gets a good college education, better virus protection for his computer, and a free trip to Europe, but his emails need to stop coming to me.

***

Sunday my dad sent Dorothy the Scarewoman home with us. He’d been storing her in a shed on his property. That sounds creepier than it’s supposed to.

This is Dorothy:

  Dorothy was something my husband was given after a community fundraiser about 17 years ago. She was dressed to look like Dorothy from Wizard of Oz. I don’t know why she was part of this fundraiser or why she was given to him or why she was shoved in our garage and not thrown out.

I’m also trying to figure out why she was loaded up when we moved last year. She’s creepy and weird and we don’t have a purpose for her, or well, we didn’t until Dad suggested we put her in our garden to frighten the deer away, even though we do have a fence installed around it.

I shoved her in our van and brought our home, grateful the neighbors were outside doing yard work so I could warn them that there was a “scarewoman” vs a scarecrow in our garden. I hated the idea they might walk out their back door and have a near heart attack, thinking some woman was standing in our garden.

For the first day, it was me who was frightened, though, jumping every time I looked out the kitchen window and saw her there.

My son hates her with a passion and has asked if he might ax her to pieces soon. He’s really not as violent as he sounds.

I haven’t decided officially yet, but I may let him do it.

***

My neighbors have built a small enclosure for their new Shih Tzu puppies and invited my daughter and our dog Zooma over to play with them the same night we warned them about Scary Dorothy. Their puppies haven’t been fixed yet so the one was trying to get to know Zooma a little too well, to put it nicely. I didn’t say anything about it to Little Miss, even when the neighbors scolded her puppies. Later that night, though, Little Miss said to me, “They really need to get their dog spayed.”

She’s watched too many shows about animals, especially that goat show where they openly talk about breeding goats. I did let her know the term is “fixed” for male dogs so I’m hoping she doesn’t march up to our neighbors soon and ask, “Has Louie been fixed yet?”

***

Little Miss and I had a couple of tough days this week. She’s a very stubborn child and she knows it but swears it’s not her fault. I had to inform her a few times this week that she needed to watch her attitude.

That attitude especially comes out when I ask for her to give me my phone back while she’s playing Minecraft on it. So, one day this week I took the phone away and told her she needed to start watching herself and stop answering me with such an attitude. She has been responding with, “Just go make me a sandwich” when I ask her for my phone, which isn’t something we say, so I’m not sure where she’s getting it.

She cried a while, telling me I had hurt her heart by yelling at her, refusing to admit she had been very snotty with me.

Finally, she cracked and pulled a line out of my arsenal, “I don’t even know what tone I’m using sometimes. It comes out sharp, but I don’t mean it too.” (I say this sometimes when the kids think I’m mad but I’m not). “I mean I just say something and something in my brain flips this switch and attitude comes out.”

I suggested she work harder to flip the switch back before she opened her mouth. We hugged it out, had some lunch, (she was on a hunger strike for three hours until I apologized to her for scolding her for giving me attitude, which I was not about to do because I am also stubborn.), moved on, and so far she’s doing much better with her “attitude issues.” I feel lucky these little battle of the wills with her are a rare thing.

***

Little Miss is in a lot of my stories this week, but, well, she’s a character. We had to go to a doctor’s appointment yesterday for my son (nothing major) and she noticed a spider crawling in a clear holder for papers. She pointed it out, concerned for its safety. She’s been on a love affair with bugs again, randomly picking them up outside and saying, “Well, this is a neat-looking bug. I wonder what it is.”

As for the spider at the doctor’s office, she let the doctor know that she never touches spiders. “I’m never sure which one could be a venomous species.”

She’s 6, going on 16, I swear.

***

I have dry skin issues. My back can itch the worst sometimes. Our bathroom has a stucco wall and I find myself scratching my back on the corner of the wall that sticks out next to the tub. It feels amazing, but, yes, it is weird. I feel like a bear in the woods scratching its back on a tree.

***

In closing, I’d like to leave you with this creepy Christmas song, because who doesn’t need a creepy Christmas song to perk up your day?

Those are my random thoughts for the week. What are yours?

Randomly Thinking: Medieval helmets, cats, new beds

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Randomly Thinking4 Comments

One day this week, one of Little Miss’s friends called early in the morning to play an online game with her. Little Miss was still asleep but when she woke up, very bleary-eyed I might add, I let her know the friend had called.  

“Oh! I need to call her!”

 I said, “Why don’t you wake up some first?”

My child bounced her head off her pillow, face first, like she was headbanging, three times, lifted her head, blew her hair out of her face, and said, “Okay. I’m ready.”

I wish I had known that was going to happen because I would have recorded it. It was the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time.

***

Little Miss likes to sit on one of my husband’s shoulders, cross her legs, fold her hands together in a prayer pose and declare: “I’m your shoulder angel.”

If you have no idea what that means, I invite you to watch these two YouTube skits.

***

We bought The Boy a new mattress last week. In related news, he joked with me last week that it’s my job to get him up in the morning because I’m the parent. I told him he’s going to be in high school next year so he needs to take responsibility and start waking up on his own. However, I decided to test his theory this week by barging into his room at 9:30 and telling him to get up.

“I don’t wanna..” he whined.

I reminded him of his challenge, and he said, “You bought me this mattress for a reason. I intend to use it to its fullest.”

He did wake up, but it took me another hour or so to actually convince him to leave the bed. 

For those who might be new here, we homeschool, which is why he is still home at 9:30 a.m. He often wakes up, rolls over, and starts his work without even leaving his bed. 

I wish I had a bladder the size of his because the first thing I have to do every morning is go to the bathroom. 

***

Welcome to the unsolicitated advice portion of my post. I don’t care if you vaccinate or don’t vaccinate, but neither of those decisions makes you better than anyone else. Bragging about it, either way, is juvenile. Period. No, I have not seen anyone I know personally or in my blog world do this in either direction so I’m not “preaching” to anyone I know in real life or in the blog world. It’s based on comments I’ve seen on news stories or social media posts (though I’m only on Instagram and MeWe now so those comments are luckily rare). We all need to be more mature about things and respect people in their decisions. 

We all have our reasons for choosing how we take care of ourselves medically and I urge people not to assume someone is an “anti-vaxxer” if they decline a vaccine or that someone is a “pro-vaccine freak” if they get it. I’ve been guilty of these types of judgments in the past and even recently but I’m working on changing myself. I have a long way to go. Pray for me and I’ll pray for you about our tendency to judge others about a variety of issues. If you don’t judge, then simply pray for me! *wink*

***

My son has been asking for a knight helmet for a while now. He placed one in the Amazon cart, but I noticed it didn’t have very good reviews, so I suggested he look for one with better reviews. I found one for him and the first review out of 900 was Deus Vult written over and over, so he knew it was the helmet for him. My son has been crying Deus Vult for a while now since his interest in medieval armor started to develop a year or so ago. If you don’t know what it means, it is Latin for God Wills It and it was chanted during the Crusades. 

Many of the reviews were quite creative, including a few that eluded to Monty Python, The Search for the Holy Grail, such as this one: 

“This magnificent helm saved my life.

 Alas, I was a wandering knight cast out by my cruel lord. I embarked on a quest for a spiritual goblet but disaster soon struck. My helm was stolen in the night as I stayed at a local inn. Soon after my squire forsook me and took the coconuts with him. “How now shall I traverse?” I thought. It’s not like coconuts grow on trees. I had already had the good fortune of having a pair of swallows drop one next to me. I’m not sure how it arrived but I’m guessing that they had a strand of tree bark that they fashioned into a….. never mind. I digress. The important thing is that I beckoned to the mighty Amazon and forthwith a new helm came and I defeated the French. I made THEIR fathers smell of elderberries!”

Then there was this one: Perfect for reconquering the middle east and reinstating the kingdom of Jerusalem.

Or this one: Seriously best thing I’ve ever bought. I now see the fear in heretics eyes as I retake the holy land. Deus Vult brothers and sisters of the crusade.

Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be searching Amazon for medieval helmets with my 14-year-old son, but there I sat reading the most bizarre reviews, at least by my standards, and trying to pick out a helmet he would like. Not a football helmet, but a medieval knight helmet. Yes, he’s definitely our child.

***

When you have cats, you don’t even ask they there is a small red potato in the middle of your living room floor. You also don’t ask why there are socks on the steps or in the foyer or kitchen. Not anymore anyhow. Not after you came back after a showing of your house a year ago and found a pair of socks neatly laid in the center of your living room floor, as if you had placed them there, but you knew you hadn’t and didn’t make the sale. Then, in the weeks that followed, you woke up to more socks in the middle of the floor of the living room, dining room, or kitchen. In those weeks, incidentally, we didn’t have a kitten, so we know exactly who is the weird sock-obsessed cat.

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 I’m enjoying a fiction story that E. McD is sharing on Pen Wending is sharing. If you would like to follow this pirate short story, you can find the first chapter HERE.

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The Boy talking to me about video games: “Okay, so you have this comic based in Korea, and they’re going from earth two to earth one and they bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz .. zombie virus …. bzzzzzzz parcor bzzzzzz…… so yeah. That’s pretty insane, right?”

Me: uhhhh…yeah. Totally.

***

Well, those are my random thoughts of the week. What are yours? Let me know in the comments.

Randomly Thinking: Fancy Cat Litter, Weird Wildlife Shows, Funny Dads, and Other Random Thoughts

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Randomly Thinking10 Comments

Welcome to my random thoughts post. Continue at your own risk.

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My husband, son, and I were talking about TV shows and how when people get hit in the head or beat up, they’re rarely taken to the hospital. I was mentioning how Agatha Raisin has been hit in the head numerous times and they rarely took her to a hospital, if ever. Instead, James poured her a glass of whiskey and told her to lay down. So, then my husband theorized that the subsequent episodes after that initial one where she was hit were all a dream she was having while she was in the hospital. My son said, “Yeah. In real life, she’s actually in the hospital with part of her skull caved in.” 

Ah, teenagers. They’re nothing if not talented at graphic descriptions.

***

My son will sometimes say to me, “Someone looks like they need a hug,” and he’ll hug me. He’s a teenager but he’s not afraid to say, “I need a hug,” and come get one. Now Little Miss is saying “someone looks like they need a hug,” and she will offer hugs, mainly to me and the dog. 

The other day when Little Miss said to Zooma the Wonder Dog, “Ah, Zooma, do you need a hug?”, The Boy said, “I need a hug.” 

Little Miss looked at him with a very bored expression and responded, deadpan, “Go get a hug from Mom.”

***

My son pointed out this week that the Swedish Chef’s hands are real while the rest of him is a puppet. Neither of us were comfortable with this discovery.

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Little Miss gets very excited about new clothes, even underwear and socks so this week she got a pack of new underwear and decided to open them to check them out. She was having a hard time since they had taped each pair closed. 

“What?! What is this?! There is,” flinging tape off her fingers. “So much tape here! Whoever wrapped this is an overachiever!”

She’s definitely been hanging around her brother too much lately.

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I just had to share this gem that Erin at Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs left on my last Randomly Thinking post. “My week has been weird but because I am a weirdo. I have been updating my friends about our experiences with Pretty Litter everyday – per their request — I am not just randomly sending them updates on my cat’s using the litter box. Lol. However, the litter gives me anxiety because it is supposed to show if your cat has health issues so I find myself looking at them often to check.”

I just — well, I had no idea what to say about that but it certainly made me giggle because it sounded like something I would buy and then obsess over.

Luckily, if you want to know more about this litter, Erin has written a blog post all about it for you.

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My husband and I were talking at dinner one night and something (I can’t remember what now) triggered a memory for me of a call a college friend received from her dad. To explain, her dad was a somewhat serious, solemn fellow who had a very dry sense of humor. We came into the dorm one day from lunch and I went to my dorm room and Rebecca went to hers. A few moments later I heard laughter filtering down the hallway (neither of us had closed our doors yet). She comes to my room and says, “Lisa, you have to come hear this.”

She pressed the button on her answering machine, which was sitting on the floor of her sparsely decorated room, and the monotone voice of her father came through.

“Um, Rebecca, this is your father. I just wanted to remind you that, um, in order to spend money from your bank account there has to actually be money in your bank account. The bank called me today and I’ve put more money in there but you can’t keep spending money from your bank account if you don’t have money in there.”

It’s hard to describe when you can’t hear her dad’s voice, but if you can imagine a man speaking very serious with a deep voice, sounding completely unamused, then you have her father. 

My memory of him makes me think of the British comedian Jack Whitehall’s father, who I’ve seen clips of in the past and now they have a travel show on Netflix, for those of you who have Netflix.

(Please be aware that there is a swear word in this clip.)

Rebecca’s father was a little bit like Jack’s dad, but without the dirty language. 

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My daughter is now obsessed with this wildlife show on Youtube hosted by a guy called Coyote Pearson. So, yeah, this is my fault. We watched one video as part of our desert unit and it got out of control. Now she wants to watch it all the time, so I have to watch this slightly weird American travel to different countries and get bit by creatures he’s not supposed to be bit by. He’s a bit like the redneck version of Steve Irwin, without the southern accent. To continue with the above about Rebecca’s dad, he also doesn’t use dirt language. He’s completely clean but I have this awful feeling that one day we will hear about him dying doing something very stupid trying to “get the shot.”

I said to my daughter, as he reached for a sea urchin on one episode, “He’s not very bright is he?”

He got stung once.

She shook her head. “No. He’s not very bright. He’s been bitten by everything.”

He was bitten again by holding it in his palm.

“Nope,” she said. “Not very bright.”

***

I’m sure you’ve never wondered what it is like inside my mind, but in case you ever have, this is it:


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