I really enjoy our Saturday Afternoon Chats. I feel like I am talking to my friends – even if I can’t see most of you.’

I had considered dropping this weekly feature and rolling it into my Sunday Bookends but that would make that post very long and rambling so I’ve decided to ramble here on Saturdays instead. Ha.

The fire is not burning in my woodstove this weekend as we are in a warm-up after the horrible cold we experienced last week (the week before this past week I mean) and last weekend.

Yesterday it was 60 degrees in the little village I was visiting a friend in and our kids were outside playing barefoot in her yard..

Almost eight days of arctic and bitter cold are behind us for now and we can finally go about our business without worrying about our fingers and noses being frozen and asthma attacks being triggered.

We do, however, have snow and ice coming tomorrow so winter is not done with us yet.

Still, those nice warm temps and the sunshine were very welcome yesterday as Little Miss and I drove 40 minutes South to hang out with our friends.

The family has three cats and three dogs and the youngest dog is just a couple of months old, tiny, and very cute.

The youngest cat is also pregnant.

So in between cats and dogs running in and out of the house, there were also children running in and out of the house and onto the trampoline behind their house, an activity Little Miss hasn’t been able to do for a few months now. In other words, it was a very nice and fun day.

While we were chatting my friend and I spoke about parents who like their children to remain clean and not play in the mud and dirt too much. That concept is very foreign to us. Our children love to get messy, run in the mud and climb trees or play in creeks, or even wrestle at times.

The idea that they couldn’t do those things because we don’t want their clothes to get messy is weird to us.

That’s why I buy used or cheaper clothes – because I know my kid is going to roll down a hill or play in a pile of mud – okay, well, maybe not the mud. She’s always been a bit resistant to getting herself too muddy, but she was still running barefoot through our friends’ yard yesterday and I didn’t even think twice about it.

The drive back to our house was a little stressful because we have the headlight to replace the headlight that was damaged in October when we hit a deer but haven’t had time to set up an appointment with a mechanic to have it replaced.  I tried to leave our friends’ house before it got dark but that didn’t happen so I drove with my hands tightly gripping the steering wheel and trying to see the road in front of me with a busted headlight that was pointing up toward the top of the trees and the other one trying to light the road on its little own.

I already have horrid night vision so this added to the stress of night driving for me. There was a deer along the road at one point and I put the brakes on to see what she was going to do. She just stared at me with her buddies in the woods behind her so I laid on the horn and she and her friends took off, away from the road.

I was so grateful when we made it home. It felt like a much longer drive than it would have been if it had been light out. I made myself some dinner (The Boy had already eaten and Little Miss was snacking on these little cans of tuna fish salad that she likes), grabbed a blanket, curled up under it and just relaxed the rest of the night, with the plan not to leave my house again until at least Sunday.

Today I am watching Agatha Christie’s Marple, the series based on the Miss Marple books by Agatha Christie, that ran from 2004 to 2013. I will talk about that more in tomorrow’s Sunday Bookends post.

I have that blanket over my lap again and I’m sipping hot peppermint tea and munching on French fries cooked in the air fryer.

I could have cooked the fries in my oven, though, since my husband fixed it last week after a year of our oven not working. We had an idea of what was wrong with it but it would have cost $200 to have the repairman come so we kept putting off getting it fixed. We have an air fryer, a stove, and an Instapot that we can use to cook anyhow so we didn’t miss it too much. I use the stove and Instapot more than the oven anyhow. It turned out that the part for it was only $30 but neither of us are very mechanical and didn’t want to bother my dad to help us.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the episode of Little House on the Prairie where Pa is trying to buy a new glass window for the cabin, but in the episode the modern glass windowpane repeatedly gets broken and he has to keep going back to the store for a new one. It’s a running gag throughout the whole episode. I don’t remember all the ways he breaks it but I think one time he drops it and another time Laura is upset and climbs into the back of the wagon and steps on it. I think someone in town runs into it or hits it with a broom handle too.

In the end, Pa gives up and just puts up the old-fashioned glass paned window.

I thought that might be like what would happen with us after The Husband ordered the part, showed it to me so I could see how fragile the part (an ignitor) was, returned to the kitchen, sat it on the tabletop, and then it rolled off and broke. He had to order a replacement and start all over again. Luckily the second time was the charm and he didn’t break it. He replaced it on Monday night and was very proud of himself since he isn’t someone who often does house repairs.

Tuesday night I made some breaded chicken in the oven, made waffles in our new waffle maker, and tried chicken and waffles.

The Boy had started suggesting we try to make chicken and waffles since The Husband picked up the waffle maker in December.

My recipe didn’t come out exactly like real chicken and waffles, but everyone said it was pretty good. I’m trying to cut out gluten so I just ate the chicken with some peas (honestly because I had already had gluten earlier in the day. I’m not doing great at the no-gluten thing in other words.).

I’m looking forward to relearning recipes that I can cook in the oven.

We usually visit my parents on Sunday afternoons but we might have to skip it tomorrow since we are supposed to get a snow and ice mixture.

If we stay home, The Husband and I hope to try out the mystery show Vera and maybe some more Marple. We haven’t had a lot of time to watch things together because he has been working a lot lately.

The rest of today will be me watching more Marple, maybe some more Lark Rise to Candleford, reading and hopefully finishing Little Women (after leisurely reading it for a couple of months I now hope to finish it and move on to some other classics. I’ve been enjoying it). I will be drawing some with Little Miss too. She already has the sketch paper and markers all set up.

I want to sit down at least once a week for an hour with her from now on and just draw with her and talk about art.

She really loves art and has since she was a toddler. Her current sketching obsession is dragons. I haven’t really sketched in years so I try to draw people when we sit down to draw and then I notice that the proportions are off and crumple it up and throw it away.

It’s nice to take some time, though, even an hour or so, to step away from social media and my computer and use my brain for something other than trying to figure out how to promote my books or write them in the first place.

I think this week we will draw and listen to an audiobook or a story from Adventures in Odyssey and completely remove ourselves from the rest of the world, so to speak. What’s nice is that our art time can count toward our homeschool lessons for the week.

How was your week last week? Do anything fun or exciting or just relaxing? I’d love to know.