Last weekend our family finally made it to Seneca Lake in Watkins Glen after months of saying we were going to do so, but one thing or another delaying us. We made it just at the colors are starting to come out on the leaves on the tree, which meant there was no swimming for the children at Klute Park but there were pretty views to see, as usual. There was also good food to eat at the Stonecat Cafe, overlooking the lake on the hill in Hector, N.Y.
I had a grassfed burger (didn’t eat the bun), with melted smoked cheese and bacon to top and homemade fries on the side. My husband had roasted potatoes and french toast with peach preserves spread over the top. Our daughter was supposed to have scrambled eggs and roasted potatoes, but she ate more of my fries than anything else. Our son had fish fingers (fried catfish) and also ate a large helping of my fries. When I asked if the fish was good, he said: “It’s okay, but it’s not as good as grandpa’s fish.” My dad bakes haddock in the oven with butter and lemon pepper from time to time. It is quite good. It’s so good, though, that I won’t even try it at home so I don’t hear the same type of comments.
Down at the lake, we walked to the end of an area of land that protrudes out and is covered with large boulders to take some photos and I ended up running into a man who was fishing, visiting the area from Bethlehem, Pa. He may, or may not, have been a little drunk and rambled on and on about his various travels and places he likes to visit and fish. I feel bad saying it but I was glad to finally pull away from him and head back with my family because his slightly tippy chattiness was making me nervous. Before I left him I did recommend another area of land along the lake near the pier and marina that might be better for fishing. He seemed to take me up on the offer as I watched him leave later, with his fishing gear in hand.
After lunch and the visit to the lake, we headed to an apple orchard, where we intended to pick apples. I don’t know if it was the weather, the big meal, the slightly chilled breeze, or the relaxing view of the lake, but none of us were interested in walking among the trees to pick apples so we took the easy way out and bought some apples, pears, peach jam and seven homemade donuts at the orchard store instead. We also bought the children a caramel apple, since I think my son has had one in his entire 13 years and my daughter has never had one.
When we got home there was a delivery from Christianbook on our porch and it was a stack of books I’d ordered during a “slightly imperfect” sale they’d had the week before. It was so fun to pull them all out and then pile them all around me and look through them while we watched The African Queen for our family movie night. Being able to hug so many books at one time was a very weird, thrilling feeling for me. I may need therapy. Among the books I bought were a couple of devotionals for children, a book of essays on writing by C.S. Lewis, a collection of essays by AW Tozer, two Christian fiction novels, a couple of children’s books for my youngest, and some educational books for her as well.
I’ve been reading books slowly lately but managed to finally finish The Runaway Pastor’s Wife by Diane Moody and start another book by her, Memphis & Me. I started another Cat Who book, but this particular book in the series was written in the first person and I could tell by the first few paragraphs I wasn’t going to like it, not because I don’t like first-person stories (Memphis & Me is written in the first person and I’m loving it) but because Braun usually writes in third person and this threw me off. I don’t enjoy when an author changes the point of view in the middle of a series, even though it’s their prerogative to do so. As a writer, I’ve also learned I’m not a huge fan of writing in first-person, even though my first novel is in the first-person and I’m continuing the sequel in the same tense. What I like about third-person is being able to switch from the perspective of different characters throughout the book. With first-person everything has to be seen through the eyes of the main character, which can make it more challenging in some ways, but that challenge can also make writing it more fun.
Books I am planning to finish or start this week:
- The Hobbit (I swear, I will finish this book!)
- Of Windmills and War by Diane Moody
- Murder at Cherry Hills by Paige Sleuth
- Memphis & Me by Diane Moody
Ramblings from the blog for the last couple of weeks included:
- Fiction Friday: He Leadeth Me
- Some Favorite Blog Posts For the Week
- The Noise of Social Media is Deafening
- Fiction Friday: The Librarian
- The Surprise Turns Five
So, how about you? What have you been up to? What good (or even bad) books are you reading? Share with me in the comments!
This post is part of the Sunday Salon. Check out more weekly posts (centered mainly around books that bloggers are reading) at Readerbuzz’s blog.
Last week I published 
I’m also still in book two of the James Herriott books and watching the BBC show All Creatures Great and Small, which Amazon just included with our Britbox subscription. I haven’t watched the show since I was a teen so it’s fun for me to watch now that I’m older, though the makers of the show definitely made the show very realistic and graphic when it came to caring for the animals. I’m going to have to Google and see if those actors actually had to stick their hands up the rear ends of cows and pigs and horses for some of those scenes. While looking for a photo to go with this post, I saw that they are rebooting the series for PBS. I don’t plan to watch it as I think the original was so true to the books, especially the actor who played Siegfried.
That day was the most relaxed I’d been all week and I was able to push through my normal aching muscles and exhaustion and almost forget about it as I picked. We ended up with 7 lbs of blueberries and I think I ate most of them myself. I’m not really a baker so my daughter didn’t get the muffins I had planned on making her, but hopefully, I’ll make that up to her if we make it to the farm for another trip soon.
As for what I’m watching: I’m on a British kick again and have pulled my husband into it. We’re now watching ‘As Time Goes By‘ to escape the depressing news these days. The show is a fairly light Britcom with Judi Dench and Geoffry Palmer. My husband, who doesn’t usually watch shows like this one, enjoys the chemistry between Judi and Geoffry and I do as well. I first watched in when it was on PBS years ago and I was living alone in my old house. It was a nice distraction from my day job at a small-town newspaper where I often covered some fairly depressing news (car accidents, fires, child abuse, murders). I’d never be able to do that job now. I compartmentalized back then. Now it all spills over and I cry over the news. Not that I didn’t cry back then. I did, but I waited until I got home.
First to be finished was a book by the woman called the queen of Christian fiction, Karen Kingsbury, who is a new author for me. I wish I had had some warning on what a gut-wrencher Where Yesterday Lives was going to be. It was the first book in a collection of three books that Amazon offered as a deal a couple of months ago. I have a children’s book by Kingsbury and had seen a presentation by her on Youtube so I thought, “why not? Let’s give it a try.”
Another series I enjoy before bed is the James Herriot books. They are usually light and don’t cause me to lay awake thinking too much after I turn off the Kindle. I’m currently reading the second of Herriot’s books (at least in the American version of the series), All Things Bright and Beautiful, and I like how each chapter is essentially broke into individual short stories, though the stories still tie together the whole book. I read a chapter or two at a time and it’s like having bit size treats and when I finish the entire book I feel a tinge of sadness. Luckily he wrote a series of them. Most people probably know that Herriot’s books are primarily about his adventures as a rural vet in England before, during and after World War II. Herriot’s real name, as I have mentioned here before was Alfred Wight.
