summer days

Saturday Afternoon Chat: Weird day, little libraries, and I started a YouTube shorts channel

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 18 Comments

Our temps have remained mild this week which means I can still enjoy a warm cup of tea without making myself overheated. Today I am sipping peppermint tea with honey. Yes, I am a creature of habit.

Yesterday was one of the weirdest days I have had in a long time. It was one stressful thing after another and it didn’t let up all day. I won’t detail all of that stress here because some of it relates to private matters for others but I would literally hang up the phone and someone else would call with another situation. Thankfully none of it was at an emergency level and everyone is fine physically and no one is in the hospital. But, still, wow!

The other weird thing is that everyone I talked to was having a weird day too or my weirdness rubbed off on them. It was … to keep using the same word … weird.

By last night I was just sitting and staring at a type of emotional numbness from it all.

One good thing yesterday had going for it was that it was a beautiful day.

Little Miss and I traveled 20 minutes north to pick up our groceries and stopped by a couple of little libraries on the way back. Unfortunately, I only found two books and neither of them was very exciting. One is the autobiography of Michael J. Fox.

I was able to unload some of my books too, however.

The one little library is located along the Susquehanna River, on a river walk.

The other is an old British phone box and I’m really not sure where it came from but it is the makeshift library in the little town I went to school in. Their very old library was washed away in a flood several years ago. Little Miss wanted to pose in the little library so I snapped a photo of her.

Thankfully the weather is beautiful again today so hopefully I can perk up some.

Little Miss has a friend over and they have already had some fun jumping on the neighbor’s trampoline, sliding on the Slip N’ Slide, throwing water balloons, and just hanging out together.

The Boy helped my dad lift a headstone at the little cemetery down the road from Dad’s house and then helped a man who restores and cleans some headstones at another cemetery.

The Husband is, sadly, working.

Later I hope to be reading, which I tried to do a lot of this week. I didn’t even watch a lot of TV but I do hope to watch an old movie tonight because I miss old movies. I haven’t watched any in the last few months.

Thursday was our last day of homeschooling and I’m grateful for the break. I will probably start a few lessons in July but nothing too major until August.

The Boy’s technical school is out but he has a few English and History assignments to finish up for me. He will be a senior next year and Little Miss will be a fourth grader.

I haven’t yet told all of you that I’ve started a YouTube channel (just shorts for now) and a paid Substack – so I am telling you know now because I have to admit to all my regular readers that I have no idea what I am doing. I also have no specific goals for the channel or the paid Substack. You can also follow me for free on substack, which will be where I post my monthly writing update (which is free), and will soon be posting sneak peeks and other goodies for paid subscribers.

I will be sharing my main blogging here, however, because I feel like WordPress is my safe little haven where I’m just free to be weirdo me. Not that I won’t also be weird on Substack because I can’t get the weird out of me.

(Today’s post is sponsored by word weird. We’ve all been weird or known someone who is weird. If you too would like to be weird, then visit this blog often and learn more about how you too can be weird.)

One thing I don’t really like paying attention to with all these social media sites is stats. Stats are very suffocating. I just want to have fun making videos or sharing about what books I’m reading or – yes – sharing about the books I’ve written. After doing a little analyzing and looking at stats this week I was reminded again that numbers don’t mean anything if connections are not made and relationships are not formed. I was also reminded I’d rather have the connections and relationships than the numbers, which is why I’m going to post only when I feel like it and not think I have to post all the time to “build a following.”

The only one who should be followed is Jesus and he doesn’t keep track of his stats in numbers but in hearts so I think I’ll just follow him and worry less about numbers on a screen.

Now that we are out of school, I don’t know what we are doing.

Nope. I don’t know what we are doing next week at all.

The week after this upcoming week we will be going to meet with the kid’s homeschool evaluator and then the rest of that week there is an art class being held by the local 4-H. There will be a horse and pony club meeting that Friday night as well.

So that week will be fairly busy.

I’m a hermit in the summer sometimes because I don’t handle the hot temps well. Or my body doesn’t at least.

I lock myself up in air conditioning as much as possible to avoid, well, fainting. Ha.

I do hope we can get to a couple outside events this summer – including a pool or two and maybe an aquarium that Little Miss has been asking to go to.

How was your week last week?

Are the temps warm or cool where you are?

What are you drinking these days? Warm or cool drinks or a mix of both like me?

Let me know in the comments.

Saturday Afternoon (Evening) Chat: Another busy week before a hopefully less busy week

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 6 Comments

Good afternoon! Oh, right. By the time I got this done, it was evening.

Sit! Let me make you a cup of something – well, probably not warm for most of us because it has been ridiculously hot out there for most of us.

Yuck!

So let me pour you a glass of lemonade instead. Or iced tea. Or a cold soda. Anything to cool you off.

After another long week, I am very excited to announce that next week we do not have any activities scheduled. I am so excited I can’t stand it!

Summer finally hit us for a few days this past week and it can go away for all I care. I am not a summer fan at all. The heat and humidity make me feel zoned out and sick.

I would have preferred to sit inside all day long in front of the air conditioner, but there were a few activities we had to attend and a few errands to run this week.

On Monday we were supposed to go to a day camp but ran out of energy from our busy week and pool visits the week before. We went to the day camp the next day instead. It was being held every day last week but it was a half an hour from our house and during the hottest week of the summer and we had other responsibilities or plans on the other days so we only attended the camp one day.

It was a Christian camp and Little Miss loved it. It was a camp for her age group so The Boy stayed home and then worked the next day with my dad at his house.

Wednesday sent us to the last day of the summer reading program where Little Miss picked out a book of her own but didn’t realize until that night that it was her book to keep.

“This is my first novel!” she cried. “And it’s mine! Now I can read it and shove it under my pillow and not feel guilty if I bend a page.”

Poor child. She’s inherited my fear of damaging a library book, which is a fear I’ve mentioned on here before.

After summer reading we took The Boy to work with his grandfather and then I headed to the local high school to fill out paperwork for The Boy to attend a career center this school year. He will attend the career center in the mornings and have homeschool lessons in the afternoon. It starts in two weeks and he is not really ready for it at all. I’m not sure I am either. He’s growing up so fast and I really need a brake lever to pull and slow it all down.

A couple of weeks ago we had to buy him a new phone because his was dying. We bought a refurbished one, actually. For the last five or six years his phone has been connected to my AppleID and my phone. His photos and memes, music, etc., all showed up in my phone and vice versa.

We both decided it would be easier on both of us if he got his own AppleID with this new phone. That way he doesn’t have to swipe past all my memes and ads for my books and I don’t have to swipe by his Gen Z humor-based memes and weird photographs. I also don’t have to weed through his heavy metal to get to my Christian music and jazz.

Once we made that move, though, we both agreed it felt weird for us to have our own phones.

In fact, he said it felt “lonely.”


He was right. It felt lonely not to see the photographs he takes of frogs he finds when weed whacking at the pond at my parents or the weird photos he takes of his one friend crossing his eyes at the camera or the random photos of what he’s cooking in the middle of the night. He also takes some really nice photographs of storms or scenery, such as these two last week when a nasty storm was headed our way:


Speaking of him cooking in the middle of the night, last night he was cooking garlic to add to his pasta and the smell upstairs was overwhelming. I texted him to tell him the smell was so overwhelming that it woke me up. He insisted the smell wasn’t that strong. I’m very sensitive to smells, sometimes to the point it triggers anxiety for me if I can’t get the smell out of my nose. After I complained to him I could smell an air freshener that The Husband picked up about a month ago and that bothered me too.

He texted that there was no way I could smell the air freshener as he had barely sprayed it by the stove downstairs.

I texted back a realization.

I could smell the garlic and it smelled like garlic. For almost two years I have not been able to smell garlic correctly. My smell has been distorted since I had a severe case of Covid in late November 2021. Garlic, onions, peppers, and several other things had a very distinct smell that I could only describe as “the Covid smell.” It was like a cross between burnt rubber and sweaty feet. I don’t know how to describe it at all.

Garlic, onions, and peppers also tasted horrid and for the most part still do.

My smell has also been reduced since even before Covid so the fact that I could smell that garlic so distinctly was actually a good thing in some ways. Smelling that much at one time wasn’t really fun, however.

Thursday was a lighter day last week. At least for me. The Husband had a lot going on and then he took Little Miss to gymnastics so he could sit in the parent area and read a book.

On Friday, Little Miss had two friends over for swimming at my parents’ pool.

She and her one friend proceeded to argue almost the entire time and I was ready to ground them both before their time together was over. They both have very strong, determined personalities and neither likes to back down when they want their way. They argue constantly yet still call each other their best friends. It’s a bit strange.

In some ways it was good that we didn’t have a ton of time for swimming because of the arguing. Little Miss and I had a talk about her behavior specifically later in the day. She is learning how to communicate with others and, like adults, she sometimes slips up. I hope her bullheadedness and tendency to be rude when she doesn’t get her way is something we can continue to work on and improve as she grows.

We didn’t have a lot of time for swimming because I had to ride with The Husband 45 minutes South to pick up our – okay, his – new-to-him truck. The truck is a 2004 Chevy Avalanche and is much bigger than any other vehicle we’ve owned before. It will be nice for The Husband to have this winter when he has to come home on very slippery, narrow roads to get home from work.

The whole family took a ride in the truck earlier today and it is nice, even though it is louder than our other cars, other than the van when the exhaust system needed to be replaced.

I truly hope this next week is a bit less crazy. We don’t have any events scheduled.

I have taken a job with a company that I will talk about in a later post, but it is a work-from-home job for 15 or so hours a week and doesn’t being until August 7 or later.

As I mentioned above, school starts August 24 and we will be home a lot more after that.

How about you?

Have you been having busy summer days or nice and relaxed ones?