This is part of Readerbuzz’s Sunday Salon.
I tried to distract myself from the stress of life this week by choosing a documentary to watch, but I’m not sure my stress was relieved watching a farming couple almost crumble under stress. Truthfully, the documentary, The Biggest Little Farm, which I found on Hulu this time (see, it’s not always Amazon), has both bitter and sweet moments and was nicely put together.
The documentary follows the journey of a couple who starts a diverse farm in a fairly deserted area of California. Under the guidance of a consultant, they not only plant diverse crops but also begin raising various livestock, including sheep and chickens and one fat, pregnant pig. The couple started the farm to give their rescue dog a place to roam and soon learn their family dream will cost them a lot of pain, emotionally, physically and financially. There is a lot of bad (coyotes come to visit; there are other unexpected challenges) but there is also a lot of good (a booming egg business for one).
The documentary is also beautifully photographed, probably because one of the subjects of it started out as a wildlife videographer. After wiping my tears over that one (both from a little sadness and a lot of sweetness), I turned to comfort reading via one of The Cat Who books by Lillian Jackson Braun. I load one of Braun’s books into my Kindle anytime the outside world or my world gets too overwhelming (which seems to be often lately, honestly).
Right now I am reading The Cat Who Lived High. According to the description on Good Reads: “The colorful Casablanca apartment building is in danger of demolition–but not if Jim Qwilleran can help it. He’s determined to restore the building to its original grandeur. So he moves in with Koko and Yum Yum–and discovers that the Casablanca is steeped in history…and mystery. In Qwill’s very apartment, a glamorous art dealer met an untimely fate, and the veteran journalist and his crime-solving cats are about to reach new heights in detection as the evidence builds up…and the Casablanca threatens to crumble down around them!”
I like the predictability of the Cat Who books. I don’t always know who committed the crime but I know what the pattern will be to solve it. Qwill’s mustache is going to quiver and hum, alerting him to something that has gone amiss, but he’s still going to walk himself right into something questionable and his cat KoKo is going to help solve the crime with his uncanny ability to feel (and signal Qwill) when something is off. Also, a few women will fall all over the retired crime reporter and he will return some of that affection but he’s going to back away from the woman, choosing instead the comfort of the reserved librarian Polly Duncan from the small town of Pickax.
Some readers may find this routine stale after a few books, but in a world where the news and life is unpredictable, I welcome that familiar routine. There are two things that don’t change in my world: God and the plot devices of Lillian Jackson Braun’s The Cat Who books and I like it that way.
Other news in the book world is that my mom, who I share a Kindle account with, has recommended I read a new-to-is author, Chris Fabry, so I plan to start one of his this week. I’ll probably start with Looking Into You, which Mom said is a good one and is available through Kindle Unlimited. Fabry, according to his site, has written 81 books, mainly in the Christian fiction drama. I’m looking forward to seeing what he has to offer in capturing my attention.
In other news, it is no secret that we are way beyond ready to sell our current house and get out of Dodge, so to speak. This week house showings slowed down, which was a welcome respite, partially because I’m burned out on holding showings and getting no one to buy and partially because our son came down with a cold this week and was fairly miserable.
On top of his cold, he choked on steak this weekend and almost died. My husband says I’m being dramatic but when one hears “oh my, God,” and runs into the dining room to see their husband giving their son the Heimlich maneuver, and then their son throws up the steak caught in his throat, one feels they can say their husband saved their son’s life.
My husband was cool as a cucumber and I was a blubbering mess after it was all over, which was actually in less than a minute but felt like forever. I guess it just hit me what could have happened and it shook me up pretty bad. I didn’t bug my son to eat his veggies for dinner like I usually do that night.
We are enjoying some warmer weather this weekend and expect to have it through part of this week before the temps crash again. The cold temperatures really wreak havoc on my muscles, dry skin, and ears/sinuses so this respite has been very welcome. We were so excited to have temperatures in the 50s we flung our windows open and simply put on a sweater if we felt chilly.
The warmer weather also helped my son’s sinuses issues from the cold, another reason we were happy to have it.
So how about you? How is the weather where you are? What are you reading or watching or up to? Let me know in the comments.
I’m not sure if I’ll continue with books 2-4 of the Cormoran Strike series, though my husband said he especially enjoyed book four (and strongly disliked book three). I enjoy crime fiction but sometimes the gritty stories filled with ridiculous uses of swear words (especially the f-word), are not my cup of tea (pun totally intended since this book was based in London).
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.
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.
