It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
Can you even believe it is the last day of June? Because I absolutely cannot. June has gone by so fast my head is spinning!
I rambled about my week last week in yesterday’s post where I wrote about swimming and summer and the rain we had all day Saturday
What I/we’ve been Reading
The Women of Wynton’s by Donna Mumma
The Sentence is Death: A Hawthorne & Horowitz Mystery by Anthony Horowitz
The Real James Herriot: A Memoir of My Father by Jim Wight (I have to be honest that this one is a bit boring to me right now so I am not reading it every day)
Return to Gone Away Lake by Elizabeth Enright (a read aloud with Little Miss)
Lord Edgware Dies: A Hercule Poirot Mystery by Agatha Christie
Tracking Tilly by Janice Thompson
The Gardener’s Plot by Deborah J. Benoit
The Clue of the Whistling Bagpipes: A Nancy Drew Mystery by Carolyn Keene
The Husband is reading Making It So: A Memoir by Patrick Stewart (he found it on Libby)
The Boy is listening to Soul Hunter by Aaron Dembski-Bowden
What We watched/are Watching
I am making my way through the old Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys show from the 1970s. Why? Yeah…I have no idea but they aren’t as bad as I thought they’d be. I’m even getting to hear some good tunes from Shaun Cassidy. *wink*
Lovejoy. This old show from the 1990s is scratching an itch and I have no idea why. I guess I’m craving old stuff these days.
This video from Under A Tin Roof:
Videos from Just A Few Acres Farm on YouTube.
What I’m Writing
Still working on Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree and I hope to have it released in the fall. Right now the first two books are on sale on Amazon for $1.99 (ebooks).
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
Today it rained all day. Life moved slow and I was okay with that.
“Don’t forget to take the Marsh Road to avoid the road construction,” my husband texted me Friday morning. I did as he said, avoiding the main highway, and taking the more scenic route via a back road, on my way to pick up groceries.
I came to the end of that road and found myself here:
In the middle of said road construction. This made me decide to take a right here:
Which would take me down the hill and after the bridge at the end of the road, to the left and up past my parents’ house, and then around some winding dirt roads back to the main highway again.
When I got further onto that road, however, there was a township tractor or whatever it was, doing some dirt or stone (or something) spreading so I had to pass that once he waved at me to do so.
From there it was fairly straightforward to the highway and Aldi for my grocery pickup.
On the way back I decided I would take a different detour to my parents to drop off a few groceries I picked up for them so I had another tour of the back roads of the township my parents live in. That road features a lot of one-lane roads, which inspired me to make a silly video for Erin at Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs because I like to joke we live in the middle of nowhere since we do actually have to drive 20 minutes one-way to get to our grocery store and a Walmart is 40 minutes either direction. We also have one stop light in our entire county so…yeah…we do live in the middle of nowhere.
The views of fields, farmland, woods, and ponds are very nice on those small roads, though, so I like taking this detour once in a while. Never at night, however.
The drive on the way back took me by the house of a distant cousin where we have a family reunion every autumn and also the house of the widow of a former co-worker of mine. He had cancer and was not very old when he passed away so it’s sad to drive by there.
The road also takes me past the family-owned greenhouse that is open about a month and a half out of the year and then closes its doors for the rest of the year. The wife of the couple who opened it is in her 80s now and her husband passed away a few years ago.
Once I dropped off the groceries and left my parents I took another detour to get back to my house. Little Miss wanted to pick up her favorite popsicles at the local Dollar General so we took yet one more middle-of-nowhere detour/shortcut to bypass the road construction to get to the Dollar General.
That’s one thing about our little town – we now have only one supermarket left but we have two dollar stores – a Dollar General and a Family Dollar – and we have two gas stations next to the one stoplight in the whole county.
I should add, by the way, that my parents actually live in the next county over but only about five miles from us.
For some reason that makes me think of a story my dad used to tell me about a man who talked really slow. He ran a store, I believe, in our little tiny village where I grew up and my parents still live. A man stopped and asked him for directions. This was probably in the late 40s or early 50s. Anyhow, the man who needed directions asked the man at the store for directions but the man at the store spoke very slowly so he started, “Well, you go up here about five miles and you take a left…”
The man who asked for directions was in a very big hurry so he said, “Thanks” and left.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t let the man at the store finish so he got lost and had to come back.
“I thought you said to go up five miles and make a left!” he said to the storekeeper.
The storekeeper, still speaking very slowly, said, “I wasn’t finished before you left. I was going to say that after you take the left, you go about two more miles and take a right….”
That story could be a good life lesson – reminding us all we need to slow down and listen to our elders, our family, and our God, or we are bound to get lost.
On Wednesday and Thursday of this week, Little Miss had a friend over to go swimming with us at my parents. Bad storms were coming through that night so we ended up having an impromptu sleepover.
I slept with them downstairs and slept on the couch, something I will not do again. I am old and that couch was not comfortable so at 5:30 I left them in the living room and hobbled upstairs for a couple more hours of sleep.
The girls had a lot of fun swimming and Little Miss even started to learn how to go underwater, something she has not yet been comfortable doing.
Even The Boy jumped in, something he rarely does these days as a “mature teenager.”
Little Miss and her friend had a water balloon fight on Thursday, even though the temps were a little cool for summer.
Today it is raining outside and we are under both a flash flood and a tornado watch. We are hoping that neither of those things happen. Before the rain started to fall, the kids and I visited the cemetery near my parents to place flowers at the graves of my infant sister (she died when she was two days old about five years before I was born), my great-grandparents, great-aunt and great-great-grandparents.
Tomorrow we will most likely have lunch with my parents and maybe swim if the weather is warm enough.
How was your week last week? Did you do anything fun or exciting or anything relaxing? I’d love to know!
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
As I wrote in my post yesterday, we have been in the middle of the heat wave like a lot of our country. Yesterday we visited my parents and found out Dad had been able to work on the pool and we could go for a swim.
So, Little Miss and I jumped in for a couple of hours, during which time I was reminded how out of shape I am and that my knee I smashed up three weeks ago is not completely healed yet. It is, however, much, much better.
On our way home a storm started to move in and this time, unlike Friday, the storm was an actual storm and dropped some rain on us and dropped the temps down into normal range for summer in Pennsylvania. It looks like we will have nicer temps this week. I never thought I’d be glad to see highs of 81 in the forecast.
High temps make me very sick so I hide inside a lot in the summer. Usually even seeing a high of 80 makes me antsy but the horrible heat showed me that 80 isn’t that bad after all.
What I/we’ve been Reading
Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor
The Sentence Is Death by Anthony Horowitz
The Real James Herriot: A Memoir of My Father by Jim Wight
Return To Gone Away Lake by Elizabeth Enright (reading with Little Miss)
I set Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery aside for now but will get back to it.
Lord Edgware Dies: A Hercule Poirot Mystery by Agatha Christie
Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
I listened to the majority of this on Audible and really enjoyed it. I really wanted to know the ending, though, so before bed last night I opened the book on my kindle since I can read faster that the narrator could read. I think I will go back and listen to the ending on Audible simply because I liked the narrator (David Colacci) so much.
The Clue of the Whistling Bagpipesby Carolyn Keene
Ever Faithfulby Karen Barnett
Dandelion Cottageby Carol Watson Rankin
The Blue Castleby L.M. Montgomery
What We watched/are Watching
I’ve been watching the old 1970s Nancy Drew/Hard Boys show on YouTube, but I think it is also streaming on the Roku Channel.
The Husband made me watch a rerun of Jake And The Fat Man. I’m slightly scarred from it, but also the person who uploaded it to YouTube didn’t finish the episode, so I am traumatized and victimized because I don’t know how the episode ended – though they pretty much had their man already.
I made The Husband watch a movie of Diagnosis Murder that we found on YouTube after I saw a clip of the show earlier this week. I never watched it when it was on the air and I think I know why. The show stars Dick VanDyke and his son Barry and it’s okay but there are some seriously ridiculous elements to it. It is more of a cozy mystery show than anything hard hitting so I guess it is okay to have some ridiculousness.
I’m not sure I will watch more episodes.
I also watched a lot of Just A Few Acres Farm this past week and really enjoyed it. It was so wonderfully relaxing.
What I’m Writing
Gladwynn Grant Shakes The Family Tree – the third book in my cozy mystery series, which will release in autumn. If you’re not signed up for my newsletter, you might want to do so because I will be offering sneak peeks and actual chapters of the book later this summer.
I am also getting ready to release a Christian fiction romance in August – Cassie, which is part of the Apron Strings Book series .. written by 11 different authors. You can pre-order here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D1VW9TVK
I just finished listening to Around the World in 80 Days on audio, as I mentioned above, and really enjoyed it.
I am also listening to Matthew West because I have been anxious and his music calms me down. In the beginning of June, I drove my son somewhere and said to myself on the way back that I really wanted to listen to Matthew. I said it to myself. I didn’t get the songs ready to play before I pulled out yet.
My mind was just swirling with worries. I had my phone in my hand but hadn’t found the album yet in my music library. Suddenly music started playing and when I looked at my phone it was Matthew West. It was a crazy moment and I think God was like, “you need this, and I can’t wait around for you to do it.”
Now it’s your turn
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
This whole week was me trying to decompress and stay cool inside the house. The temps for us, as they were for many of you if you are in the U.S. (especially the Northeast), were very, very high. We are not used to those high temps so many of us hid inside our house with the AC.
Our house doesn’t have windows that open up (they roll out) so we have to use portable AC units that usually cool the house down in summer but really struggled with a heat index that hit 103 to 110 for three days in a row.
We have two units – one for upstairs and one for down. The upstairs one is not doing much at all because we have to put it at the top of our stairs since these units need a hose that goes out through a window and that is the most centralized place to put it to try to cool the entire upstairs.
We are considering another, smaller unit in case we have more high temps like this later in the summer. For now, we will deal with what we have.
I hope you are all managing okay in the heat.
During the heatwave Little Miss had a couple of friends visit briefly. Sadly, neither of the sisters seemed to know how to play anymore because they had been allowed to go on TikTok – for what reason, I have no idea. The children are 9 and almost 11 and do not live locally year round so my daughter only sees them once a year now.
They couldn’t put their phones down and ended up only being here an hour before they had to leave for other things.
The first day the one sister left because Little Miss had a bit of a sinus thing/possible cold going on. The second day, the other sister left to see a relative she doesn’t see much since the girls now live in another state.
Even before, that, though, she sat on the floor and scrolled on her phone instead of playing with my daughter. The next sister to visit a couple of days later also couldn’t put her phone down and it was clear she didn’t know how to stop scrolling. I told her TikTok wasn’t allowed in my house so she did put the phone down but proceeded to have a dazed look the next 15 minutes she was here as well as deciding to play a game on her phone less than two minutes after I told her to get off TikTok instead of interacting with my daughter.
It was more than disgusting for me to see those kids so hooked on their phones that they couldn’t even look up from them – it was frightening.
We are losing our kids to devices and social media and I think a lot of us don’t know what to do because we are just as addicted. I have been addicted myself so I know that this epidemic of cellphone use and social media scrolling is not limited to children.
The problem is that children are way more susceptible to becoming addicted to sites/apps like TikTok because the frontal lobe of their brains are not yet developed and that part of the brain that controls addiction is very fresh and alive, ready to be manipulated.
It has been hard for me even at my age to stop scrolling or reaching for my phone to check Instagram. Any time I want to procrastinate, I am on that phone. I’m getting better but it is a true struggle some days when I am very down. Instead of doing things that could really lift me up or make me feel better – such as reading the Bible or a book or praying or writing or drawing – I go to that phone and zone out.
So if it is a struggle for an adult – yet we have a brain developed enough to know we need to stop – then it is really a struggle for young children/teens.
Sorry for going heavy on what is normally a light post but that really upset me this week.
Because Little Miss’s friends didn’t want to actually play, I ended up in the slip n’ slide with her and reinjured my knee a bit – not by sliding because I am dumb, but not that dumb. I literally said to myself, “Don’t kneel down on your knee when you get down to put your butt on the slide and scootch (word? I don’t know) down, and what did I do? Immediately, I knealt on my knee.
Luckily the pain didn’t last long and I was able to find other ways to play with Little Miss in the water and also cool myself off. I do not have any photographs from that experience and you wouldn’t want to see them anyhow. I am sure I looked quite ridiculous sitting on that slide with the water running around me. Sort of like a hog wallowing in mud.
Here are a couple photos from a few weeks ago of Little Miss with a friend doing the same thing. They are way more photogenic.
The Husband came home and immediately grabbed the house and soaked himself down, not even bothering to change out of his work clothes. That was how hot it’s been all week.
I stayed inside as much as I could because I, sadly, have legit health issues when I go into extreme heat. I spent my time watching the 1970s Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys show and giggling over it and planning to write a blog post about at least one episode.
On Friday we headed up to a town 20 minutes away to get our groceries and it was fun (not really) watching the car thermometer go from 85 to 88 to 95 when we drove into the town with all it’s concrete, asphalt, and brick buildings. I’m so glad it was just a quick pickup.
On the way back, rain started to fall and I watched the temp go down 20 points. It was amazing but by the time we made it back to our house, the temps had gone back up again. I thought the rain was following us and was very excited but then the clouds came over, dropped a few sprinkles, and moved on. Very sad.
(Look at those Pennsylvania roads — aren’t they just lovely. Yeah…..anyhow…)
Later that evening the dark clouds came in and there was lightning and thunder and we got excited again – hoping that would mean we would get a cooling rain.
Nothing happened. There was a crack of thunder, a flash of lightning, and then…nothing.
Today it is supposed to be more of the same – high temps and little relief with rain.
Tomorrow … yep, the same. By Monday the temps are supposed to be lower. About 80 and I’ll take that since our heat indexes have been in the 100s all week.
I hope all of you have been able to stay cool if you are in an area that was dealing with high temps this week. I also hope you remember to stay hydrated and not only with water but also with drinks that have electrolytes.
I sound like an old lady, now, I know.
“Make sure you’re staying hydrated!”
I just know the dangers of it since two weeks ago I was in the ER with what felt like a skipping heartbeat and they loaded me up with fluids and think that might have had something to do with how I was feeling. I think now the skipping feeling is actually related to something with my stomach, but they were right that I had not been drinking much that day.
Here is hoping that all of our upcoming weeks get better and we can enjoy summer instead of sweating through it!
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
I wrote about our semi-busy week last week in my blog post yesterday. After that busy week, I had to spend most of yesterday with my leg propped up to try to get the swelling in my injured knee to go down.
I am currently reading four books – but let me explain. I’m reading some in one book and switching to another on another day and then whatever book I start to get into more than the other ones takes precedence until I finish it. That’s sort of how I roll some months.
So the book I am reading the most right now is Lord Edgware Dies: A Hercule Poirot Mystery by Agatha Christie. The Poirot books are usually quick reads so I’ll probably finish it this week.
I also started The Sentence is Death (A Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery) by Anthony Horowitz.
In between those two I am reading, The Real James Herriot: A Memoir of My Father by James Wight and Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery. I’m reading Rilla because I felt like I need something fairly light or old fashioned in between the murder mysteries.
Just Finished:
A Death At A Scottish Christmas by Lucy Connelly. This was a bit of a disappointment. Well written in some ways and ridiculous in others and a fairly predictable ending. Predictable isn’t always bad but I was a bit disappointed with this one.
Soon to be read:
Joanna by Donna Stone.
Nancy Drew: The Clue of the Whistling Bagpipers by Carolyn Keene
What We watched/are Watching
Last week I watched a couple episodes of Lovejoy, two or three episodes of Lark Rise to Candleford, and with the kids I watched Onward and Mulan.
My daughter said she liked Onward but said she never wants to watch it again. I forgot part of the movie and we ended up sobbing through part of it. The Husband was at work so the kids couldn’t hug them like they wanted to. The Boy was very emotional the last two times he saw the movie so he bowed out.
We tried to watch Chicken Run but Little Miss said she found it boring so we didn’t finish it and instead watched Mulan.
The Boy and I have seen Chicken Run a few times and he said, “kids today need to get an attention span,” which cracked us both up since he was on his phone while watching the movie.
What I’m Writing
This week as I was thinking about where I want to sell my books, I thought about how a lot of readers don’t know how the subscription services at larger retailers work.
They save readers money but really take money from the authors.
One thing I don’t know if readers know is that if an author’s book is in Kindle Unlimited they are only paid .004 (less than a cent then) per page read and it’s Amazon that decides what constitutes a page. They don’t tell anyone what their formula for deciding what constitutes a page either – especially the authors. In addition, the ebook can’t be sold or shared anywhere else (including with a library) in ebook form while it is listed in Kindle Unlimited if the author is publishing the book on their own. If they are traditionally published the same rules don’t apply. Traditionally published books (by big publishing houses) can have their ebooks in Kindle Unlimited and still sell them on other retailers. So they get to make money in a variety of ways.
Most authors will make more when you buy the book (say if it is $3.99) than if you read it in KU.
This is not necessarily a negative thing to share – just letting readers know how things work. Sometimes KU helps authors and sometimes it doesn’t. In my case, it has helped me some months and hasn’t helped me others, but even if it helps me, I feel good that I’ve pulled my books out of KU so I can share them wherever I want.
People may not read them as much but at least I know what fee Amazon is taking from my sale versus not knowing what they decide is a page when it comes to paying me for what is read if my book is in KU.
I am almost done with Around the World in 80 Days so that’s what I’ve been listening to.
Photos from Last Week
Now it’s your turn
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
A temperature in the mid to high 60s is perfect for sitting under a blanket and reading a book and that is where our temps were most of this week despite it being summer. I have absolutely loved it.
It’s made me want to jump up and down, but I can’t since my knee is still healing. I have, instead, been doing some dancing in place while grabbing my grandma’s blanket and running to the couch with my Kindle.
If you didn’t read my Sunday Bookends, post, you might not know that I fell on my sidewalk last week while trying to take groceries into the house. My foot caught on the curb, I went flying, and my left knee took the full brunt of the impact. When my knee made contact, I had a horrible feeling that this was not going to be one of those falls you shake off and move on from.
So far it hasn’t been. I’ve been stiff and sore all week. My entire body reacted to that fall, and I’ve been a bit of a sore mess all week. Not a big of enough mess that I couldn’t have a fairly good week, though.
No ER visits this week despite that fall so that’s one good thing.
There were other good things about the week, though.
Little Miss attended an art class all week with the local 4-H group. Well, Tuesday through Friday.
On Monday, the kids and I drove 45 minutes north to visit with our homeschool evaluator and family friend. She learned about our school year and interviewed the kids and then wrote evaluations for both children for me to hand in to our school district to show they had a good education this past year.
On Tuesday we started the art class which was for four hours a day.
It was only a week long but there will be other 4-H events throughout the summer, including the horse and pony club which meets a couple of times a month, and a baking club which will be meeting every Monday in July. I also found out yesterday that there will be another art class like this one in August.
The building the classes were held in is an old shoe factory that built in the 1940s. It now houses a state representative office and offices for various community or county organizations.
My grandmother once worked at the shoe factory. She’s been gone since 2003 and was two weeks shy of 94 when she passed, so that gives you an idea how old the building is.
The building has, obviously, been remodeled and I love the mural that is on the walls when you first walk in.
The mural was painted by Kat Badger, who paints murals all over the world, but was thrilled, according to an interview with the local TV station (WNEP) to paint a mural in her own hometown. The mural features all the different aspects and features of Sullivan County – the waterfalls in the state park near here, the covered bridge in a tiny town near us, the people who worked in the shoe factory.
It’s truly beautiful.
The building is only about eight minutes from our house and all the other parents left their children there, but I was somehow asked to pick up the lunches each day, so I stuck around and mainly sat in the car and read books or worked on my book. In other words, it was relaxing in many ways, sans having to get lunches.
The plants outside the building in interesting “pots.”
On Friday I usually get our groceries, but I had to drive to the town we live in to take Little Miss to class, then back to where we live to pick up lunch. The problem was that when I got there, the business that was supposed to provide lunch never made it, saying their manager had denied the request to make a lunch for the local 4-H group. They did not, however, let the local 4-H group know this so at the last minute the local, family-owned supermarket was called and made subs for the group like the small town heroes they are.
After having to wait another half hour for that order then going back and waiting another hour and a half for the class to end, and then driving back home, I was glad I had decided to wait until today to pick up our grocery order since it is a 40-minute round trip to do that.
Next week, so far, looks to be a lot slower week. It is supposed to get very warm so we will probably be inside or in the sprinkler most of the time.
My dad has had a lot of health issues this year, so we haven’t been able to get the pool at his house going. Some things are going to have to be laid to the side this year, I think. There aren’t a lot of public pools near us but maybe we will find one to go to later in the summer.
There is a lake but Little Miss insists something touched her leg last time we went so she resists visits there. I still insist it was just some seaweed-like material and not some sort of lake monster but she doesn’t want to believe me.
I did enjoy looking at our wild roses this week. I was disappointed that some of our peonies didn’t bloom, but I think the frost at the end of May might have destroyed one of them. I missed their hot pink blooms but I was able to admire the dark pink blooms of the other peonies. Sadly, my knee issue didn’t let me get as many photos of the flowers as I wanted this week but I was able to get a few of the roses at least.
How was your week last week? Do anything interesting, exciting, or simply relaxing? I’d love to know.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays (yes I did post this on Saturday night this week), I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
Yesterday I shared in my Saturday blog post that I was in the ER on Monday. I am doing fine now and long story short is my heart felt like it was flipping/skipping for more than 12 hours but because I’ve had this feeling off and on for years (and been checked for it), I delayed going. As it has been in the past, I was told my heart was fine. I don’t know why the skipping feeling was happening and kept happening over and over again and the doctor who was there didn’t either but by Thursday it had stopped for the most part and by Friday it was all the way gone.
I am now thinking it was related to a muscle twitch in my chest caused by – well, who knows. A possible autoimmune condition and just the fact I am over weight (just started an exercise plan and a new way of eating so maybe I strained something)? Who knows.
If you want to read more about my weird and stressful week, you can catch up on that post.
Today, though, I will share that after all of that, I was carrying in groceries yesterday, tripped over a curb in our sidewalk, went flying, and injured my knee. Yesterday I spent half the day with it propped up and frozen veggies on it.
This is where I would like to announce that I will be encasing myself in bubble wrap for the foreseeable future but I really don’t know if that is practical or financially wise.
What I/we’ve been Reading
Currently:
The Real James Herriot by Jim Wight
and
Death At A Scottish Christmas
and
The Women of Wyntons by Donna Mumma (I forgot I had started this one! Whoops! It is for a book tour and it’s good so far.)
So I started the Jim Wight biography of his father Alf (James Herriott is his pen name), but decided it was a little bit dry. I still want to read it but I feel like I’ll need a bit to break up the slower pace, which is why I started Death At a Scottish Christmas by Lucy Connolly. It turns out it was just what I needed to have a little bit of a fun read in addition to more of a educational read.
Just Finished:
I finished The Fast Lane by Sharon Peterson, a fun romantic comedy last week. It comes out June 25. I am behind on reviews, but hope to have one up for this soon. It was a silly, sweet book with a few parts that started to drag but then picked right back up again. I would recommend it for romance fans. I don’t read a lot of romance books but when I do I like Sharon’s, ones by Bethany Turner, and others by Becky Wade.
Soon to be read:
A Line To Kill by Anthony Horowitz
An Assassination on the Agenda by T.E. Kinsey
The Deeds of the Deceitful by Ellery Adams and Tina Radcliff
LIttle Miss and I are reading Return to Gone Away Lake by Elizabeth Enright.
The Boy is reading a War Hammer book that I forgot the name of (he’s at a friend’s house and I don’t want to bug him and ask).
The Husband is reading With A Mind to Kill by Anthony Horowitz
What We watched/are Watching
I watched the last two episodes of the fourth season of All Creatures Great and Small on Thursday and Friday and had a good cry, which was a nice release after the week I had.
I also watched some episodes of The Dick VanDyke Show this week.
Last night The Husband and I watched The Rockford Files.
What I’m Writing
I am working on book three of the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries. I can’t wait to share it with you! I’m having fun!
What I’m Listening to
I am listening to Around the World in 80 Days on Audible. Yes, I’ve been listening to it a long time but I haven’t had a lot of time to sit and listen to it. I am really enjoying it and I would have given up and just read the book except I am really enjoying the narrator.
Photos from Last Week
Now it’s your turn
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
The fields in front of my parents’ house were sunlit and golden. Beyond them were the green of the trees and beyond them the blue hills in the distance. White, puffy clouds drifted across a brilliant blue sky.
I stood at the top of the fields and looked at it all and thought about how four days earlier I’d been on my way to the emergency room with what felt like my heart skipping and wondering if I was going home again, yet unable to accept I wouldn’t.
I’ve had my heart skip before over the years. Many times. On this day, though, the skipping wasn’t stopping and had been going on all day, almost non-stop. I can take it happening a few seconds, sure. But all day? That was weirding me out.
It started at 4:30 a.m. and kept me awake for two hours. I got some more sleep, woke up and it was still there.
Still, I hadn’t fainted. I wasn’t even dizzy. Could it really be my heart? I didn’t think so but it was the same feeling I’d had for years when my heart skipped so that must be it.
I had taken my heart rate and it was a little elevated but later it would go back down again. So I would decide again it probably wasn’t my heart but a muscle twitch or reflux or who knows what.
Around 6 at night, I took my blood pressure after we got batteries for the machine. It was way too high. I took it again. And again. Still high.
We were on our way to the emergency room.
The long and short of it is that the tests showed my heart was fine, other than racing faster than it should have been. Yes, my blood pressure was high, but not as high as my machine was saying at home (still very bad, I won’t lie).
It could not have been anxiety. I told the doctor that. I could feel my heart skipping.
The feeling in my chest was so weird – again I’ve had it before and have learned to ignore it. That day I couldn’t ignore it. It wouldn’t stop.
The doctor was kind. He didn’t tell me I was crazy. He didn’t tell me it was “just anxiety.” He told me that while he didn’t feel like I was in immediate danger at all, I should go to a cardiologist and get on some medicine for the blood pressure.
Once again it was apparently anxiety. I’m still not sure, though, since I started to notice I could almost recreate the feeling when I touched or pressed on my upper abdomen.
Now I’m wondering if I was either having stomach issues that were making my chest area feel weird or if it was a muscle twitching. I do not, however, believe it was only anxiety because for most of the day I didn’t feel very anxious, other than the feeling I was having. I tried to carry on my day like any other day and keep my mind off it. It was until we found batteries for the blood pressure machine and I checked it did I start to really get nervous.
I was diagnosed with a type of tachycardia when I was 18 so I’m used to being told to visit cardiologists and I have a couple times before – always being told my heart is okay. I’m used to my heart rate going up when I’m tired or have had too much chocolate. I also found out that being dehydrated will raise a heart rate since they poured two bags of fluids in me to try to get the heart rate to go down when my blood work showed I was slightly dehydrated. In case you are wondering — it didn’t go down until I went home.
So on Thursday, I was at my parents’ thinking about how lucky I was to be sitting there looking out at the fields with the sun pouring on it, even though the heart flipping feeling continued throughout the week.
I started connecting the feeling to when I ate, to when I was sitting hunched over and worried about situations going on with our family, and to when I was, yes, anxious. Still, it wasn’t the same feeling I get when anxious, and the muscles in that area felt tight so I added stretches to the prayers and massaged the muscle and then the real help (besides the prayers) was a CBD rub-on stick.
Sitting and looking out at the field reminded me of Tuesday morning when I’d woke up after the ER visit, looked out in my backyard and saw the wild roses blooming. I hadn’t thought they would bloom yet and there they were – almost like a message to me from God.
I’ve been waiting all year to see those roses again and God knew it.
He gave me my roses in the same way he gave me peace and energy that day I was dealing with what I thought was my heart going all haywire. I was amazingly alert and with it and had energy well into the night when we came home even.
I didn’t think I was having a heart attack. I really thought my heart had gone into an irregular heartbeat. Like Afib.
It’s hard being the person who is always told she has anxiety and then she actually does even when she was convinced she wasn’t dealing with it on a particular day.
Yes, I have legit medical issues – hypothyroidism for one – possible fibromyalgia for two. Maybe one of them went haywire and I’ll follow up with my doctor to see what her ideas are (which probably won’t be much because she is honestly so useless it’s not even funny. It’s why I am looking for a new doctor).
After all that drama on Monday, I took my parents to an orthopedic appointment for both of them on Wednesday and found out my dad has a pinched nerve in his back. That’s been causing him incredible pain and unfortunately, we found out there is not much we can do about it.
On Thursday I was at my parents to celebrate my older (much older) brother’s birthday and it was a very nice, relaxing day. The first relaxing day I’d had all week.
Yesterday was even more relaxing since I didn’t have to go anywhere. Today I had to go get groceries and drop The Boy off at his friend’s house about 40 minutes away. I might be doing that while you’re reading this.
Tomorrow I am hoping for another day to relax, but may end up taking my parents to a family reunion instead since they both need help getting around now.
So that was my week – very little time for relaxing but plenty of time for praying and trusting God to bring me through.
How was your week? I certainly hope it was better than part of mine.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
Yesterday Little Miss had a friend over and it was a somewhat busy day of running through sprinklers, jumping on trampolines, and making snacks.
Today I am taking my time deciding what to do since I didn’t have a great night of sleep. Whatever I do I am grateful to have a nice, cool, and sunny day to do it in.
In my post yesterday I mentioned that I have started a YouTube Shorts channel and a paid Substack. Today I started thinking about how much of a bad idea that was. *snort laugh*. I hate social media. What was I thinking?!
So, they are there and I do plan to post some interesting stuff on Substack, but I do not plan to get obsessed with YouTube because I just don’t have time. I waste too much time on social media as it is.
What I/we’ve been Reading
Currently:
The Secret of Shadow Ranch by Carolyn Keene
The Women of Wyntons by Donna Muma
The Real James Herriottby Jim Wight
Just Finished:
The Fast Lane by Sharon Peterson (romantic comedy)
Up next:
The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz
What We watched/are Watching
The kids have been making their way through all the Harry Potter films so I’ve been sort of watching with them even though I’m not that interested in Harry Potter. These last films are super depressing in parts with team members just dying left and right without much time to mourn them. My son says that is how the books were too.
Last night I watched Dead Reckoning with Humphrey Bogart and Lizabeth Scott with The Boy. We did not enjoy it.
Tonight The Husband and I are watching the season 4 premiere (finally) of The Chosen.
What I’m Writing
I am working on Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree and on edits for Cassie. Still. Yes.
I am still listening to Around the World in 80 Days and I would love to finish it this week.
As for music, I am really enjoying Anne Wilson’s new album. Here is a sample of it:
Photos from Last Week
Blog Posts I Enjoyed This Past Week
I am behind on collecting blog posts for this feature but I plan to work on this this summer because I have been reading some really interesting blog posts lately. Now it’s your turn
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
