*This was supposed to publish this afternoon, but I forgot to hit…yes…publish. Hahaha!
Winter is coming early to Pennsylvania, it seems.
Temps have dropped into the mid-to-high 30’s at night and aren’t reaching much above 55 most days.
We have been inside a lot, bundled up under blankets and sweaters, with The Husband determined not to turn the main heat on until November 1.
I, however, have been turning our electric heat on in the hallway upstairs at night to try to chase away some of the chill. Shhhh.. we will keep that our little secret.
I am a fan of curling up under blankets and tossing a warmed-up rice pack at my feet so I don’t mind keeping it cozy in the house but having it just a touch warmer on some nights would be nice.
This past week was fairly non-eventful. The Boy visited his grandparents most days, helping them with various household chores and projects.
On Thursday, Little Miss and I visited them and helped around the house.
Yesterday we stayed home and did some school and housework of our own. Tonight, I will be taking the kids downtown for a trunk-or-treat and then trick-or-treating around town if they want to do that.
I don’t usually walk around, but instead sit in the car, sipping hot cocoa and reading a book. I am hoping The Boy will go with us and walk around with his little sister and her friend so I don’t have to. I am not a huge fan of trick-or-treating or walking around a small town in the dark with a knee that sometimes gives out.
I think we will probably have lunch at my parents tomorrow and Monday night The Husband and I have to drive . . . can you guess how long of a drive to pick our car up from the mechanic?
If you guessed 45-minutes, you were right.
I swear everything is 45-minutes away from us now.
This is a mechanic we used when we lived up that way and was able to fix something on our poor, war-torn car that mechanics in our area couldn’t. The Husband hit a deer — again — with this car two weeks ago. We have now hit a deer with it every fall for the last three years. The last time, Little Miss and I were with him. Each time the deer has smashed in the hood and kept going. I’m not sure if they made it any of those times, but they weren’t along the road afterward. Those creatures are a lot more solid than they look out in our yard or fields. They are all muscle and that makes even more of an impact when you are going along at 40 miles per hour, which is about how fast he was going the last two times. Not sure about that first time.
On Tuesday, The Husband and I might go to a theater to see Pyscho on the big screen. Guess again how far away the theater is….
This past week I received some used books in the mail from Thriftbooks which I will talk about more tomorrow in my Sunday Bookends post, but I also received some book and reading related stickers.
I am such a nerd — I couldn’t wait to open them up and look through them and then decide where to put them. I placed them in my reading journal which is much messier than I intended for it to be. I always think I’m going to keep my journals neat but instead they become a bit of a free for all of all my notes about books and movies and blog post ideas.
I was also excited to receive some magnetic bookmarks earlier in the week.
Yes, my life is very, very exciting. You should be jealous.
This upcoming week promises to be just as “exciting”
The Husband ordered a special book for me that came today too. I was so excited to see a hardcover copy of My Beloved by Jan Karon. It will probably be the last Mitford book so I am excited to have it in my hands. I don’t even care if it is awful, though I doubt it will be. To read more of Tim and Cynthia’s story is just so exciting for me. And an update on Dooley and Lace too? Squeal! I can’t wait.
So how was your week last week? Do anything exciting? Let me know in the comments!
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.
This past week was fairly busy with vet appointments and sitting with my mom who is a fall risk. I went alone on Tuesday and on Wednesday Little Miss and I went together. She and I had fun spending time with Mom and then taking a ride on the golf cart on Wednesday after my dad arrived home. It was fun to watch little Zooma the Wonder Dog sprint next to us as we rode. She likes to race us but also likes to take a quick break by jumping on the cart with us. I had to hold her tight when we rode up to the neighbors because they raise labradors and although they are in kennels, I didn’t want her to stir them up.
Little Miss had four online classes as part of her homeschooling this week, which also kept us busy.
Thursday and Friday were days for relaxing, though, luckily. I was also so happy this week to see the hostages from Israel released and hope to see peace come to Israel and to the Gazans with the hopeful removal of Hamas’s power.
I am not sure what is coming up for this week other than homeschooling and an extra class for Little Miss on Outschool. I know it will be cold, though, because cool autumn air is definitely here with some of our nights dropping into the thirties already!
Don’t forget that Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are hosting the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea Monthly Link up for all book related posts. You can find that link here:
This past week I finished A Fatal Harvest by Rachael O. Phillips and Come, Tell Me Where You Live by Agatha Christie Mallowen.
A Fatal Harvest was a cozy mystery and I will have a review of it up on the blog tomorrow.
Come, Tell Me Where You Live was non-fiction. It was a type of memoir by Agatha of her time in Syria with her archaeologist husband.
Now I am reading Trick and Treachery by Donald Bain. It’s a Murder, She Wrote Mystery.
I am also going to start A Damsel in Distress by P.G. Wodehouse this week.
I am supposed to receive a copy of Rebecca by Daphne DeMauier this week and I hope to start that soon as well.
Last night I rewatched the Anne of Green Gables movie from 1985 with Little Miss. Earlier in the week I watched The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Meet Dracula to prepare for writing about the two-parter later this week.
I’m working on Gladwynn Grant Goes Back to School for a February release.
I didn’t take this particular photo, but I saw it yesterday while looking at other photos and was just struck by its composition and beauty. It is obviously an Associated Press photo, so they get the credit.
Here are some photos I did take:
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 in my new link party if you also write a weekly update like this.
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.
This past week I had a sciatica issue. I didn’t think it was my sciatica because the tightness and pain was in my calf muscle. Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs told me that she’d had sciatica and it went all the way down her leg though so I decided to look for stretches for sciatica, which I’ve had to do in the past, even though the pain had never been this bad. I found a couple of stretches and they helped a little but I was still in a ton of pain.
I saw one stretch that I thought looked stupid so I refused to do it. The guy was saying something about leaning against a wall and pushing on your hip. I thought that sounded like the dumbest, useless thing ever.
I saw it again two days later, though, when I was still in pain. It was a “shorts” video on YouTube.
This time I really listened to the guy (a physical therapist) and actually tried it. Within five minutes the pain was gone. Later in the day it was like I’d never had the injury at all.
I have reinjured it a couple of times since then but so far, the stretch has worked each time.
I’m leaving the link here for anyone who might need the stretch in the future:
I hope the pain stays away this week — I have things I need to do, including driving 45 minutes one way to get Zooma the Wonder Dog a check up and her nails trimmed.
I’m still reading A Fatal Harvest by Rachael O. Phillips because I lost the book for two days. I’m also reading Come, Tell Me How You Live by Agatha Christie. My week last week seemed to be full of less reading time than I hoped but I actually think I will have these books read this week.
After these two I’ll be diving into Murder, She Wrote: Trick or Treachery.
Coming up later will be Hours We Regret by Chelsea Michelle and Damsel in Distress by P.G. Wodehouse.
Little Miss and I will be finishing The Good Master this week.
Last week I watched It Happened One Night with Clark Cable and What’s One More with Cary Grant. Last night I watched Pennies from Heaven with Bing Crosby.
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.
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.
We’ve been celebrating Little Miss’s birthday for the last couple of days and today is the last activity we are participating in. She had a special breakfast out and a special lunch with her grandparents on her birthday, an outing and dinner at a restaurant Friday and a sleep over with a friend last night. Today she is going to see reptiles with her friend at a reptile zoo because she is a huge fan of reptiles. They have other animals as well, but mostly reptiles.
I wrote more about our week last week in yesterday’s post if you want to catch up there.
Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are still hosting crafternoons. We will be announcing a date for October later on. If you are wondering what Crafternoons are it is a monthly Zoom meet up where we get together with other bloggers/crafters and do a craft while we chat about life and books and all kinds of other things.
If you are interested in the crafternoon, you can find more information here.
Erin and I are also hosting a monthly bookish link party called A Good Book and A Cup of Tea. You can find that link up for this month here.
Last week I finished The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis. I did not think I was going to like it at first but it was very good. I don’t know if I ever read this one when I was younger and I didn’t think I was going to like it but I got more into it as it went on. I am looking forward to reading the rest of the series before the end of the year.
I’m still reading Come, Tell Me Where You Live by Agatha Christie Mallowen. This is a non-fiction book/memoir written about Agatha’s travels with her archeologist husband Max Mallowen to Syria from 1935 to 1937. Max was her second husband and she remained married to him until his death.
Her stories about their travels are candid, very funny, and full of her natural wit.
I’ve been reading other books in between this one. It’s taken me a little longer to read it because it isn’t really a novel and because the print is very small and the lines are close together. Somehow that makes it feel more difficult to read and like I’ll never finish it but, honestly, it does move along quite nicely and is very interesting. I am learning a lot about that part of the world and how archeological digs worked in the old days. I’ll have it finished this week.
For fun I am reading A Fatal Harvest, an Amish Inn Mystery, by Rachael Phillips. Liz Ekhardt runs an Amish Inn in ….um…Iowa I think. She has a group of friends and a “friendship” with the town mayor, Jackson. She also has a pet bulldog named Beans. He came with the inn when she purchased it.
In this installment, Liz and her friend Naomi have discovered the body of one of Liz’s guests under the haybales on the hayride. Liz is always stumbling into a mystery and this time she wants to find out if her guest had a local connection that could have led to his death.
After that I’ll probably dive into Murder, She Wrote: Trick or Treachery.
Little Miss and I will be finishing The Good Master this week.
This past week I watched a crazy old movie called Autumn Harvest. It was a wild ride involving a shell shocked World War I vet who loses his memory, falls in love, and then regains his memory but forget his wife. Oh man, it was crazy, but the ending was nice at least.
I also watched a movie with Cary Grant called. It was about a couple who kept adopting children that no one else wanted. It was really beautiful and had me weepy. I’d never even heard of this one. It was a comedy drama with a very beautiful message about taking in children who don’t seem to be wanted.
I am still slowly working on Gladwynn Grant Goes Back to School. It will be out in February. If you would like to read the other three books, though, you can find them on Kindle Unlimited on Amazon and you can find paperbacks on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
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.
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.
This past week was rainy and muggy but our leaves are changing and at least our nights are cooler.
The feel of autumn is in the air for sure on those cooler nights. The apple fritter scented candle my husband picked up this weekend is helping that mood even more.
Yesterday the kids and I took advantage of the “nicer” weather we had after a week of rain and headed to a playground about twenty minutes from us. It was a gloomy and muggy day, but the kids still had fun playing on the zipline and in the creek. Little Miss made a new friend she might never meet again but they had fun at least.
I capped off my night with a Cary Grant movie, The Talk of the Town. It was a bit of a quirky film that was supposed to be a comedy but bordered on a drama at times.
This week I am going to work on being less overwhelmed with the world. To do that I am going to try to go on a media fast of sorts. Very limited scrolling and almost no news. My nervous system is overstimulated, overworked, over…something.
I have a lot going on with my parents’ health right now and some other things in life so I can’t take on the hurts and pains of the world too.
And I do take them on. When I see people hurting and then see people who do not care about that hurt because they have become desensitized to the pain of others with the 24/7 news cycle I start to realize that people around me are also probably thinking these horrible things that people are writing online too. It feels like people care less these days unless it is some political cause they are behind and while they are promoting that political cause they are tearing down others and yelling that is actually the other people tearing them down.
It’s exhausting and I’ve heard this over and over and over recently —that our brains were not built for all this news and 24/7 stimulation from social media. As a pastor I listen to once said, “We were not meant to be walking around with the entire world accessible via our butt bone.”
Of course he was talking about people who slide their phones in their back pockets and can slide it out at any time and at any time see the horrors of the world unfolding in real time. We can see good things too but we all know that the worst of the worst that is happening is what sells news and makes people stop scrolling.
More of us need to put our phones down and actually interact with people. As an introvert this is hard for me to say. I don’t like people. Ha. I know there are good people out there, though, and we need to find those people and interact with them more and the grumpy mouthy people on the internet less.
It’s a goal anyhow and I want to work more toward it.
Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are still hosting crafternoons but completely blanked on setting up a date on September. We both started homeschooling and had other events and all of the sudden September was over. It’s crazy to me how fast it went by!
We will be announcing a date for October later on, probably next week.
If you are wondering what Crafternoons are it is a monthly Zoom meet up where we get together with other bloggers/crafters and do a craft while we chat about life and books and all kinds of other things. We do our best not to focus on religion or politics so we don’t depress ourselves.
If you are interested in the crafternoon, you can find more information here.
Erin and I are also hosting a monthly bookish link party called A Good Book and A Cup of Tea. It is almost over for September but you can still get your bookish links in. They do not have to be recent posts, just related to books in some way. I’ll have a new link party up on Wednesday.
I am finishing up the Nancy Drew book The Clue of the Broken Locket and will probably take a bit of a Nancy break.
These books were written for the youth of the day back in the 1930s and then rewritten a bit in the 1950s, so I get that there is some unrealistic stuff in there, but did they not know about concussions back then? I suppose they didn’t but these characters are always taking headshots waking up, getting a cold cloth on their head and a drink of water and then continuing on their day. Like in this book, a huge rock was thrown through a front door, supposedly hit the couch, and knocked two people forward where they hit their heads on the hearth and were both knocked unconscious at the same time.
Hmm….oookay….let’s go on and believe that could happen but then let’s also believe that no one thought they should take both of these people to a hospital to have them checked out???
So the Nancy Drew books can be silly at times, but they aren’t written for adults, and the mysteries themselves are actually very interesting and sometimes even give me ideas for my own book. I suppose that is why I keep reading them off and on. All that being said, it is time for a little break and to read something more mature.
That’s why I’m reading The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis. Hahahaha! Really I just have a goal to reread The Chronicles of Narnia so I am reading another children’s book but it’s less annoying than the Nancy Drew books can be.
I am actually reading an adult book by Agatha Christie called Come, Tell Me How You Live but I put it down somewhere in the house and could not find it all week. I found it yesterday finally!
So I shall be reading an adult book this week!
I am also starting one of my fall books, A Fatal Harvest by Rachael O. Phillips, this week since I will finish Nancy Drew today and probably will finish the Narnia book later in the week.
I might start Death of a Gossip by M.C. Beaton this week too, depending on my mood. It’s the first book in the Hamish MacBeth Mystery series. And Emma Lion. I totally forgot I want to start that this week! That might come before Death of a Gossip.
Little Miss and I are going to finish up The Good Master this week. We did not read it last week for some reason.
I’m not sure what The Husband is reading at the moment because I forgot to ask him before he went upstairs for a nap before work and I’m going to publish this before he gets up.
The Boy isn’t reading a book right now but he’s getting ready to read a book based on the Halo games.
This past week I watched less TV than normal but I did watch one of the worst Murder, She Wrote episodes I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen a couple of stinkers and this one was…well, weird and creepy. Jessica essentially had a college guy stalking her. A college guy who looked about 30, I might add. Either way he was obsessed with her and all older women. It was …. Ew.
The Husband and I later watched another one that wasn’t very good either. That’s how it is with series, though, there are good and bad ones. Can’t be helped when a series runs for 12 years!
I stared a movie called The Talk of the Town with Cary Grant last night but didn’t finish it yet. It’s weird. That’s all I can say. It’s also funny. Cary is accused of burning down a building with a person trapped inside but escapes from jail and Jean Arthur decides to let him stay at her rental house even though a law professor is renting out the house at the same time. Cary must prove his innocence to the professor played by Ronald Colman.
It’s a bit crazy, in other words, but I really had an itch to watch an old movie.
I also enjoyed this video about comforting reads from a new-to-me vlogger:
Last week I worked a bit on Gladwynn Grant Goes Back to School.
I also pulled my books out of Kindle Unlimited on Amazon because I feel like Amazon takes advantage and rips of indie authors. My ebooks and paperbacks are still for sale there but they will not be exclusive there anymore. I also introduced new book covers for the Gladwynn books.
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. Link up below if you want to:
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.
Friday was my birthday, so I wrote about visiting a very nice restaurant with my husband in my Saturday Afternoon Chat post yesterday if you want to catch up with all that there. I’ll share some photos below of our experience.
A reminder that I — and now my new co-host Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs — host a monthly bookish link party. It’s called A Good Book and a Cup of Tea but I’ve changed the link name at the top of the page to “Bookish Link Party” so it makes more sense. It’s a link-up for any post related to reading or books and you can post throughout the month.
Another reminder that Erin and I will be hosting a Comfy, Cozy movie-watching marathon again this year, and we already have our list of movies. This week we are watching Benny and Joon with Mary Stuart Masterson, Johnny Depp, Aiden Quinn, and Julianne Moore.
Erin made this cool graphic for it:
Also, Erin and I host a monthly Crafternoon meet up where we get together on Zoom with other bloggers/crafters and do a craft while we chat about life and books and all kinds of other things. We do our best not to focus on religion or politics so we don’t depress ourselves.
If you are interested in the crafternoon, you can find more information here.
I just finished An Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder by C.L. Miller, which as a buddy read with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs. We are both sharing a review of it tomorrow.
You can read the review tomorrow to know what I thought of it.
Right now, I am still reading Gin and Daggers, a Murder, She Wrote book by Donald Bain. I will most likely have it done tonight or tomorrow.
I am also reading The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis.
My slow read is still Come, Tell Me How You Live by Agatha Christie Mallowen, a non-fiction book by Agatha that is about her and her husband traveling to Syria for an archaeological dig. It’s good so far but a bit wordy and slow in some places so I’m not as interested to read it as I am my murder mysteries.
Up next I will be reading Nancy Drew: The Clue of the Broken Locket.
Tuesday I’ll be sharing my list of hopeful reads for autumn. I know for a fact I won’t get through all of them, but it will be fun trying anyhow.
Little Miss and I are reading The Good Master by Kate Seredy together.
The Husband is reading Gray Day by Walter Mosley.
This past week I watched Murder, She Wrote (of course. I am making my way through the show since I didn’t watch them when I was younger.), Poirot, Just A Few Acres Farm, Dick VanDyke, and Supernatural.
It was my first time watching Supernatural and I liked it, sort of. I’m not big on scary or horror-type stuff and though this is tamer than actual horror films, it still unsettled me. I watched it with my son and told him I might do it again but I’m not sure. I’ll have to watch a lot of All Creatures Great and Small to get it out of my system. Ha!
I actually am working on Gladwynn Grant Goes Back to School, but very slowly. It looks like I won’t have it out until winter.
I’m going to start listening to Come Rain, or Come Shine by Jan Karon this upcoming week (because I didn’t last week!) as I get ready for Jan’s new book to come out in October!
I’ve also been listening to the True Drew Podcast, which is a podcast about all things Nancy Drew. You can find it on Apple Podcasts.
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.
Glad you stopped by for a chat and thanks to my sister-in-law’s gift of some new teas, I can offer you some different varieties.
She even brought them in a very cute little basket that Little Miss had fun rearranging yesterday. She plopped my jar of honey right in the middle of the teas.
I have never tried the cold tea brews before so I am excited to do that later this week.
The Boy has already tried the pumpkin spice one and has loved it.
Yesterday was my birthday and The Husband took me to a very fancy restaurant in our area that he’s been saying he wanted to take me to for a long time.
Every time we would drive by it on our way to cities southeast of us, he would say, “I’m going to take you there for our anniversary one day.”
Well, he didn’t for our anniversary, which was totally fine with me, but he did for my birthday, and it absolutely lived up to the hype.
We sat out on the patio overlooking a creek and a tiki torch, as well as the walking trails. The weather was absolutely perfect, even if the trees had not changed as fast as the ones near us are changing.
The food was much fancier than what we would normally eat and absolutely incredible. I’ve never tasted steak like that. It was like butter in my mouth it was so tender. I mean, it tasted like steak not butter, but I think you get what I mean.
I gave my daughter a sample when I got home and she said she had no idea what I meant by the butter comment and sort of looked annoyed at me, but for me it was amazing.
The Husband had chicken marsala.
We both had potatoes with a fancy name, which the waitress explained was simply mashed red potatoes with the skin on. Ha! Fancy name or not, the potatoes were insanely good.
It was very relaxing to sit there and look out over the small creek that runs on the property. They have a botanical garden somewhere but we didn’t find it. They also have a garden on the property where they grow food for the restaurant. So, it is essentially farm to table.
The restaurant is also an inn and it’s a gem in the middle of nowhere really. It’s not in a bigger city near us — it’s a little bit away from a small “city” near us but there really isn’t anything else around it. I will say I felt a little out of place there, since I would say most of the clientele is in a different financial bracket than my me and my husband. I ignored those feelings, though, and made up stories in my head about the people around us as I waited for our food.
I decided the man sitting behind my husband, who did look a bit tired and unshaven, though well dressed, was a businessman who hadn’t yet told his wife that things were falling apart. He was also a closet gambler and alcoholic.
The young waiter who looked about 16 but was probably older, was a rich kid made to work there after his family kicked him out because he was an entitled brat who felt he didn’t have to do anything to contribute to his family, alone society. (Of course I didn’t really think this about the kid, despite the weird side eye he gave me on the way by — these are just stories I made up!)
Then there was the group of friends all in their 50s or 60s who were sitting in chairs along the creek, sipping their various alcoholic drinks.
I definitely knew they could be the basis of a murder mystery and tried to choose which one might get knocked off first. I chose the one man in white shorts and blue polo holding his cocktail, looking annoyed as everyone else pulled chairs up to sit next to him. I also imagined he used the word “insufferable” a lot in every day conversation, especially when referring to some of the women around him.
Most of the men and women in the group were wearing blue tops and white pants. I don’t know if that is a rich person thing or just a style choice. Either way, they all looked lovely and like they were having a good, yet slightly annoying time. By “slightly annoying” I mean none of them were really smiling much. They seemed somewhat annoyed at each other. Gosh, looking back, maybe they had come from a funeral or something. Like the funeral of their murdered friend….
Okay, yes, I need to stop reading and watching so many murder mysteries.
The man behind us was in the middle of an interview for a job at State Farm with a guy who made a lot of dad jokes, so I don’t think he needed a made up story. He just needed an escape. I didn’t hear the first comment, but I did hear when the older man said, “Because we’re always there. Get it? Like State Farm is there…”
There was some nervous laughter that trickled around the table and then the sales pitch to join the team started after that.
After dinner, we headed to where all birthday girls around here go — Walmart. Ha! Actually, The Husband ran in to grab some bottled water my parents. We made a quick stop after that and picked up a treat for the kids.
At home I watched a couple episodes of Supernatural with The Boy, but don’t know if I will do that again. I enjoyed them to a point, but they were also quite disturbing in parts.
It was hard to see Jared Padalecki as anyone but Dean on Gilmore Girls and it was confusing that his name was Sam in this show, but his brother was Dean. I kept getting confused.
Speaking of The Boy — he got his driver’s permit yesterday and we were so happy for him. He was a little nervous about the test but it turned out to be much easier than he thought. Though he has waited a bit to get his permit, he has been driving grandpa’s tractors and truck around his property for a couple of years now, so he knows what he is doing.
Right after he passed the test my dad actually took him driving around some backroads for a couple of hours.
We are definitely having fall weather and fall vibes in our neck of the woods right now. The trees are changing fast and falling down on the ground. It seems like we got our color much quicker than I thought we would and I am trying to enjoy it as much as I can before our trees are bare.
When even more of the trees have changed we plan to go leaf peeping and admire the views.
I hope to post some photos for all of you of the leaves on here but I am having an issue with WordPress,, who says my storage is almost full and they want me to pay even more than what I do so I can add more storage.
I’m rejected the idea of paying more by backing up some old posts, deleting them from this blog, and moving them to a backup blog. These are posts from seven or eight years ago, not recent ones.
I’ve also been combining photos on collages I’ve made in Canva to help cut down on how much storage space I am using.
Another blogger friend of mine, Mama’s Empty Nest, has been struggling with this for months now. She’s also been struggling with a lot more as her husband had to undergo an emergency surgery and her daughter was admitted to the hospital after going into labor way too early. I don’t know if she has mentioned this on her blog yet, but the baby did not make it and I just ask that you pray for that family right now. This would have been her daughter’s second child, as she has an older daughter. The little girl is around the same age as Little Miss and was really looking forward to a sibling. Just please pray for their healing and comfort at this time.
Luckily, Mr. Empty Nest is doing fairly well after his surgery, but I just can’t imagine how hard it was for him and his wife with him recovering and their daughter suffering as she lost her little one in the hospital.
I would say that I am ending my post with some sadness, but there is also joy in the story. This little one has gone back to Jesus where her family will meet her again one day and her grandpa is getting healthier by the day and will be able to spend more time with her older sister. There is some joy in the midst of heartache, thankfully.
This upcoming week isn’t yet a busy one for us, but we will see how that goes.
Do you have anything interesting planned for next week?
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.
We had some family time this last week with my brother and sister-in-law and my parents to discuss the future, I guess you would say. It wasn’t easy but it was necessary as my parents are both 81 now.
It was nice to have that family time together even though it was short. Luckily, my brother and his wife don’t live too far away, and we hope to visit them when the leaves change color, since they live in one of the prettiest parts of the state.
Nadda.
The Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder by C.L. Miller, Gin and Daggers (A Murder She Wrote book) by “Jessica Fletcher” and Donald Bain, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis, and Come, Tell Me How You Live by Agatha Christie Mallowan.
The Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder is very good and fairly fast-moving so far. It’s sort of a cozy mystery at this point. Clean. I’m reading it as part of a buddy read with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.
Gin and Daggers is very good and well-written. I don’t think I expected it to be, even though another one out of the series I read was good as well. This is the first in the Murder, She Wrote series.
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is obviously good.
Come, Tell Me How You Live is my slow read with a chapter or two a week (the chapters are very long).
Nancy Drew: The Clue of the Broken Locket by Carolyn Keene.
Little Miss and I are reading The Good Master by Kate Seredy and are enjoying it. She is reading a chapter a night before bed, and then I read the chapters the next morning.
I am behind. Oops! Ha! She’s enjoying what’s ahead of me now.
The Husband is reading Walkin’ the Dog by Walter Mosley.
I’ve been watching The Dick VanDyke Show, The Monkees (which I could only find a couple of episodes of), Rockford Files, Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, Murder, She Wrote, The Chosen and other nostalgic shows that bring me comfort.
The week before last I watched the first couple episodes of season two of the Marlow Mystery Club.
I read the first two books in the series and the second one pretty much made me decide to take a break from the series. I did not enjoy it very much. I’ll see if the season based on it is even better.
Yesterday I wrote about watching an episode of The Monkees that I found on YouTUbe (couldn’t find it streaming anywhere else) and then last night I watched a concert with them from 2001 and it was actually very good. Great music, funny, and just flat out entertaining. Watching it was the most relaxed since Wednesday afternoon. You can find it HERE.
I’m going to start listening to Come Rain, or Come Shine by Jan Karon this upcoming week as I get ready for Jan’s new book to come out in October!
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.
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 what’s been going on in my Saturday Afternoon Chat yesterday if you want to catch up there.
I will add that it is very chilly right now where I live. Yesterday morning it was 33 degrees in the morning for a little bit in a town near us that is located in one of the highest elevations. I know I said I wanted cooler weather but that’s ridiculous for August.
A reminder that I — and now my new co-host Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs — host a monthly bookish link party. It’s called A Good Book and a Cup of Tea but I’ve changed the link name at the top of the page to “Bookish Link Party” so it makes more sense. It’s a link up for any post related to reading or books and you can post throughout the month. The new link up for September will go up tomorrow morning .
Another reminder that Erin and I will be hosting a Comfy, Cozy movie watching marathon again this year, and we already have our list of movies.
Erin made this cool graphic for it:
Also, Erin and I host a monthly Crafternoon meet up where we get together on Zoom with other bloggers/crafters and do a craft while we chat about life and books and all kinds of other things. We do our best not to focus on religion or politics so we don’t depress ourselves.
If you are interested in the crafternoon, you can find more information here:
This past week I finished a Nancy Drew Mystery: Password to Larkspur Lane by Carolyn Keene and A Betti Bryant Mystery: But First, Murder by Bee Littlefield
I’ll have reviews up for them both soon, but did share quick ratings on Storygraph.
I enjoyed both, even though Nancy Drew always has some weird things in it with her being almost kidnapped and her or her dad not calling the police! Oy! Those old juvenile mysteries. I swear! Ha!
But First, Murder was a lot of fun and the perfect follow-up to the first book, Clueless at the Coffee Station. I don’t usually like books written in first-person present tense, so it shows you how good the book must have been for me to continue despite that.
I really enjoy Bee’s writing style.
Finishing Bee’s book brought my total books read for the summer to 15, even though I had figured I might only read 10 because I am also writing my own book and have a lot going on personally.
I was going to take a little break on starting another book while I write reviews for the ones I’ve just finished this summer, but then I remembered my husband had bought me a Murder, She Wrote book on Kindle so I started Gin and Daggers by Donald Bain last night. It takes place in England so I’m looking forward to it.
I’ve also started, Come, Tell Me How You Live by Agatha Christie. It’s a type of memoir about her travels with her second husband. I’m only a few pages in but I am enjoying it.
I hope to start The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 1 by Beth Brower soon because a bunch of people on Instagram keep mentioning this series.
I also have The Crime at Black Dudley by Margery Allingham on my radar and have for a while so Emma Lion might get pushed aside for that one first. I’ll see what my mood is since I am a mood reader
Little Miss and I are still reading The Good Master by Kate Seredy. We are also listening to The Moffats by Eleanor Estes at night.
Little Miss and I tried to watch our first Korean Drama yesterday – Bon Appetit, Your Majesty. We did not end up finishing it. It was not very good.
We watched K-Pop Demon Hunters a couple of times last week because of Little Miss. We are watching it again tonight because she wants her dad to see it. I would like the song Golden to please leave my head now. Thank you. I probably will not watch it again with them for this very reason. It’s a good song, but….enough is enough already.
I watched The Celtic Riddle, a Murder, She Wrote movie for my last Summer of Angela movie and will be posting about that tomorrow.
I also watched my farmer on YouTube – Just A Few Acres Farm and another YouTuber, Under A Tin Roof.
And of course a couple regular episodes of Murder, She Wrote.
And I watched Nonnas on Netflix. What a sweet film. If you have Netflix it is a good one.
I’m not very cool. I don’t watch a lot of modern TV, which is weird since I am not even 50 yet. *snort*
Last week I figured out an issue with the fourth book in the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries and once that was addressed I felt I could move forward with finishing the book. It will still be a bit but I’m on my way to get it done at least.
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.
