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.
The Cat Who Went Into The Closet by Lilian Jackson Braun
Hell is Empty by Craig Johnson
Do The New You by Steven Furtick
Recently Finished:
Sisterchicks Do the Hula by Robin Jones Gunn
This book wasn’t horrible but there wasn’t really an actual plot and that annoyed me. I kept waiting for something to happen – like a mystery or a trial they had to overcome or .. well, anything really. Like a plot maybe. Once I decided and accepted that was never going to happen it was much easier to skim ahead and just see what happened at the end and move on to the next book.
Update: I went back and read some of the parts I had skimmed and decided the book is actually very sweet. A bit slow but sweet and relaxing. I think I’m going to try the first book in the series, which I heard was better, and other books in the series as well. I was excited to see that they are now on Kindle Unlimited and it looks like the author updated some terms, etc. for now.
Up Next or Soon:
Hidden Figuresby Margot Lee Shetterly
Bury Your Deadby Louise Penny
Bats Fly At Duskby Erle Stanley Gardner
This week Little Miss and I finished The Cabin Faced West by Jean Fritz. I hope to finish The Borrowers with her this week but she’s been reading Fortunatly the Milk by Neil Gaiman to me.
What We watched/are Watching
This past week I watched Miss Austen Regrets and wrote about it on the blog. I really enjoyed it. The rest of the week I watched Lark Rise to Candleford and Miss Scarlet and the Duke. What I’m Writing
I’m plugging away on Cassie and hope to have it finished at the end of this month so I can start the third book in the Gladwynn Grant series.
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.
I rambled about last week in yesterday’s Saturday AfternoonChat post if you would like to catch up there. I will mention that today our weather doesn’t know what it wants to do as it is snowing and raining and switching back and forth. The weather has been warm this week so the ground isn’t as cold as it could be. It remains to see how much of the stuff will actually stick
What I/we’ve been Reading
Currently Reading:
Little Women by Louisa Mae Alcott and Sisterchicks Do The Hula by Robin Jones Gunn
Little Women is relaxing and enjoyable and I will have it done this week. I’ve been reading it very, very slow and only a chapter or two a day, in case you’re wondering why I keep saying I’m STILL reading it. (Since the end of November! Ha!). This week I’m just going to read it through and finish it up so I can move to another classic – which one I don’t know yet.
The Sisterchicks book is just a light, fun read that is a very nice distraction from life. I’m reading through it quickly so I will probably have it done this week as well.
Recently Finished:
Dysfunction Junction by Robin W. Pearson
Up Next or Soon:
The Cat Who Went Into The Closet by Lilian Jackson Braun
Hell is Empty by Craig Johnson
The Bungalow Mystery (A Nancy Drew Mystery) by Carolyn Keene
Little Miss and I are reading: The Borrowers by Mary Norton and The Cabin Faced West by Jean Fritz
The Boy is reading: Lost Names: Stories from a Korean Boyhood by Richard Kim
The Husband is reading: Fury by Salaman Rushdie
What We watched/are Watching
Yesterday I started Agatha Christie’s Marple, the BBC show that ran from 2004 to 2013 and was based on the Miss Marple books by Agatha Christie. I have never wanted to watch anyone as Miss Marple other than Joan Hickson but after someone mentioned the show to me on Instagram, I decided to give it a try since The Husband had to work and the kids were doing other things.
There were so many actors in Season 1 Episode 3 who I recognized from other shows. The episodes, like the episodes from the Miss Marple series, were like mini-movies at 90 minutes each. Episode 3 was called What Mrs. McGillicuddy Sawbut was based on the novel 4.50 from Paddington.
The one actress I was most surprised to see in his episode was Amanda Holden who I’ve only seen as a judge on Britain’s Got Talent. I always wondered what the woman actually did to land her on that show as a judge. I had no idea she was an actual actress. I thought she was a talking head on a news show in addition to being a judge.
She wasn’t too bad of an actress but I kept waiting for her to say, “That was lovely. Good job.” And push the golden buzzer.
I also recognized Michale Landes who played an American in the British sitcom Miranda. When I saw him in that show, I thought he was British doing a horrible American accent. I looked him up while watching this because he was playing an American again and it turns out he has a horrible American accent despite being an American.
He has been acting since the late 1980s and has been on several shows, often as secondary or one-off characters.
He was really the weak link in this episode.
After I watched Marple, I watched a couple episodes of Lark Rise To Candleford. I had started to watch this show years ago but only made it to season three, I’m not sure why. I think there was some cast change I didn’t like. I don’t remember a lot of it so I am rewatching it and plan to go through all four seasons.
It’s a very nice distraction from life.
This upcoming week I will be watching Miss Austen Regrets for our last movie for Jane Austen January. The link up for Jane Austen January will still be up until Saturday if you want to add a post.
What I’m Writing
This week I worked on Cassie, which comes out in August of 2024. On the blog I shared:
I love it when Joy writes about the real-life places you can visit in the Jane Austen movies.
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 fire is still burning away today in our woodstove, orange and yellow merging together in a cacophony of raging warmth to chase away the insanely bitter cold outside. All week the family has been stuck inside because of the fall in the thermometer and the additional lower temperature brought by the windchill.
The fun of playing in fallen snow by the youngest was stolen by the cold. She lasted about ten minutes outside before she announced she couldn’t feel her face, her fingers, or her toes, even with all her thick winter gear on.
Zooma the Wonder Dog was quite depressed that the ground was white with snow but she and her favorite playmate weren’t out, rolling in it, tossing it in the air, and catching snowballs.
Instead, we had to find inside activities to do. I tried to read and work on my book. Little Miss was able to talk to her friends on the phone and play online games with them. The cats slept almost all day every day, especially when the fire was roaring. The Boy played some video games, did some homework and helped bring in wood to keep the fire going.
He also walked to the neighbor’s house one day and helped clean the snow off her steps and car. He only had one day of school again this week. He attends the morning session of a vocational school and if the local school district calls for a two-hour delay then the morning session is canceled.
He has been enjoying his time off and is a bit disappointed that the weather looks better next week and he’ll have to go back. We encouraged him to take a building and construction course at the local trade school as part of his education but so far it is not his favorite thing to do. He might change his course next year or try something else, but at least he has some experience and knows more what he doesn’t want to do when he gets out of school.
I’ve been missing going to my parents but either our driveway was slippery or it was super cold outside. I mentioned in the Sunday Bookends last week that I had tried to go to my parents on Sunday afternoon but there were tree branches in the road and ice forming as the temperatures dropped as we tried to drive there so I turned around. It will still be cold this Saturday but it shouldn’t be slippery or windy so we will be heading there for lunch and maybe a movie and a game of cards.
A couple of days this week I forced myself to sit down in front of our woodstove with a book to feel the warmth and enjoy some quiet time. I don’t sit down and just read like I want to very often so I have to say to myself, “No. You’re not going to pick up the room. You’re not going to wash dishes. You’re not going to work on your book or scroll through Instagram. You’re going to sit on this floor and read this book and lose yourself in it.”
It’s like I feel like it is wrong to just be sitting and reading but really, there are times we need to do that. We need to sit and take even 15 minutes to ourselves to settle our brains and calm our souls. We can either read a book we like, read the Bible, read a verse, listen to an encouraging sermon, worship music, or journal but we need to take that time for ourselves more than most of us do.
I don’t know why we don’t take the time we should for ourselves but I say this year work to feel less guilt when you sit in some quiet for yourself. I know that’s a goal for me.
I had to laugh the one night because both of my kids kept talking to me as I tried to read, as if I wasn’t sitting there, on the floor, with a physical book opened, clearly reading.
“Oh. You’re trying to read, aren’t you?” asked my son.
“No. No. I’m just holding this book to make myself look smarter,” is what I could have said, but what I really said was, “Yes, but it is okay. I like to talk to you.”
And I do like to talk to him because soon he will be grown up and out of the house and I won’t have as many opportunities to talk to him. He and I are both night owls who open up at night. I am not as much of a night owl as I used to be because I am old and start to fade by 11. If I get a second wind, though, I’m often up until 1 a.m. reading. After 11 is the only quiet time I get to read unless I wake up early to do so instead.
The Boy might not talk to me all day but when midnight hits that’s when he wants to talk so that’s when we talk. I’m fine with it unless I’m fading and feel guilty because I am not really listening.
How was the weather where you were this week? I know most of the United States was thrown into an arctic freeze and I think most of us will be out of it next week.
Have you been trying any new teas?
This week I drank my regular tea and some hot cocoa. I have tried a new probiotic tea and that was okay. What I hope to get some more of soon is some elderberry tea.
Let me know how you’ve been in the comments and I’ll see you again tomorrow for Sunday Bookends.
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 talked a little bit about what’s been occurring yesterday in my Saturday Afternoon Chat. Mainly we’ve been dealing with weird weather of snow and rain and ice and high winds. Today our temps dropped very fast so we will be dealing with arctic temperatures for the whole week. I will be inside the whole week, other than picking our son up at the bus stop (which is our local convenience store) because I don’t want him to have to walk up the hills to our house in the frigid temps.
I also woke up this morning to find out we have a wind advisory again so now it feels like 16 instead of 28. I was on my way to my parents this afternoon (they’re about eight minutes from our house) but when we saw a tree being removed from the bottom of our street and then another one hanging on a line, across the road and almost to the height of our car, I decided we would pick up my son and head back home to wait for the wind advisory to expire before we try again tomorrow.
We might have been fine but looking around seeing trees smashed along the road, limbs broken in the road and evidence of trees having been chainsawed to clear the roadway, we decided to err on the side of caution.
The Husband dropped some homemade soup I was taking off at my parents so they could at least have lunch.
Tomorrow’s temperatures will be frigid but at least we won’t have to be concerned about trees falling on us while battling the cold.
We have a lot of dead ash trees around us so those are ripe for falling down and causing issues. In the summer my daughter and I were at my parents’ swimming in the pool and one fell down behind my parents’ house in the woods. It wasn’t even windy that day. It just fell over. If it can happen without wind then it can definitely happen in 25 to 45 mph wind gusts.
What I’m/We’re Reading
I’m still reading Little Women and Dysfunction Junction. I am enjoying both and like to switch off between them. I will probably finish Dysfunction Junction (by Robin W. Pearson) this week.
After that, I’ll be reading The Cat Who Went Into A Closet and The Bungalow Mystery – a Nancy Drew Mystery.
I am also reading Do The New You By Steven Furtick as a Netgalley read which was perfect timing since our online Bible study is going to be reading it in February.
At night Little Miss and I are reading The Borrowers.
What We watched/are Watching
I watched Northern Exposure over 20 years ago (probably) and started watching it again this week. I don’t remember much of anything about it so it’s like watching it for the first time.
It really was well written and holds up pretty well actually.
I also watched Sense and Sensibilityand Pride and Prejudicefor the Jane Austen January feature I’m doing with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs. If you want to join in our link-up to discuss all things Jane (including the books) you can find the link up above.
I watched Miss Scarlet and the Duke last week and will probably watch more today and this week since I will be hiding in the house until the weather gets better.
The Husband and I watched the 1978 version of Death on the Nile. It held up pretty well despite Bette Davis looking like she’d come out of a crypt.
What I’m Writing
I am working on Cassie, which releases in August. I hope to have it finished by February. If you are curious what the book will be about, here is a very loose description:
It’s 1995 and 32-year-old Cassie Mason is an actress who made it big on a sitcom in the mid-1980s but hasn’t been able to find a job since the show ended five years ago.
After being fired by her talent agency, Cassie takes her sister Bridget up on her offer for Cassie to come back to their hometown for an extended visit to unwind and regroup.
While there Cassie finds out her younger sister – the one with the handsome husband and three kids and running a farm – is going to open a café and farm store in the small town they grew up near. Cassie decides to stay long enough to help with the grand opening, though she isn’t sure what she can do since she doesn’t know a thing about cooking like her mom and sister and isn’t great at organizing either.
In fact, Cassie isn’t sure what’s she is good at other than acting. Bridget hasn’t been able to help out at the Berrysville Community center like she’d like to with all that has to be done to open the business so she asks Cassie to fill in for a couple of volunteer opportunities. That’s when Cassie finds out that her sister’s neighbor, Alec, isn’t only a small farmer – he’s also someone who knows how to cook and showcases those talents in a weekly cooking class at the community center.
During her visit home, Cassie struggles to figure out not only where she fits in and feels most at home but also to figure out if acting is all she is meant to do with her life or if there is another way God wants to use her talents.
And God? There’s someone else she needs to learn more about on this break from the career she thought she’d always have.
This week I have been listening to James Herriot’s Treasury for Children but this upcoming week I will be back to listening to A Tale of Two Cities.
Next week I hope to return to sharing blog posts from other bloggers that I enjoyed from the week. I haven’t been reading as many blogs as I would like to and I’m really looking forward to getting back to that this year.
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.
I read on Instagram that today is National Drink Hot Tea Day. There is always a national something or other day and I sometimes wonder who even keeps track of them all so people on social media can use it as content to talk about.
Anyhow, I’m drinking some peppermint tea with honey later today, not because I don’t have any other tea, but because I had some other types of tea earlier in the week and I wanted my old standby today.
Also later today I will be lighting a fire because our temps are going to plummet very fast this afternoon into this evening until they are in the 20s tomorrow and then the single digits at night and in the mornings starting Monday.
We are also under a high wind advisory today and when you live in a semi-rural area surrounded by trees (including a really old, really tall one in front of my house), you tend to get very nervous about high wind advisories. You also expect to lose power at some point, which makes me a little nervous since today it will be just me and Little Miss at home. The Husband is working and The Boy is going to a friend’s house.
I don’t do well health-wise in either very hot temperatures or very cold ones so I am not looking forward to the cold weather. I will not be leaving my house much at all during the cold weather snap because it irritates my asthma. I will be going out enough to pick up my son from the bus stop because I don’t want him to have to walk up our hill in such cold weather.
I am supposed to go visit my parents for lunch tomorrow when it is only supposed to be about 26 but I’ll see if I still want to do that or not. I practically have to be dragged outside kicking and screaming when it is super cold or when it is super hot.
The weather has been very odd here lately but that is somewhat normal for Pennsylvania this time of year.
Last weekend we had a snowstorm that lasted two days. By Tuesday it was rain and wind and the threat of flooding. Then off and on during the week snow and hail came and last night there was a burst of snow that covered the ground right before freezing rain came in and left the entire yard in a sheen of ice. To say winter has decided to show up this month is an understatement.
This past week I stayed inside every day and was a slug part of the time because of the weather. I read books, worked on my novel, wrote some blog posts, made some social media posts, enjoyed the fire, sipped tea and cocoa, cooked dinner, did the dishes a couple of times, ignored piles of books and papers I don’t know what to do with, and overall just enjoyed being a hermit and not having to go anywhere.
Yesterday I had to go pick up groceries but I really can’t complain because one, I had to drive there and they put them in the car, and two, my husband had to go out in this awful weather all week for work so he’s got the real cruddy end of the bargain here.
No one went with me to pick up groceries this time so it was just me in the car, listening to James Herriot’s Treasury for Children on Audible. I was going to listen to a Jane Austen collection but my phone claimed it wasn’t downloaded and it turned out better to listen to the one from James Herriot anyhow because it is so relaxing and my day really wasn’t relaxing for a variety of reasons – mainly family stuff and a lot of things on my mind about said family.
Today I hope to relax some but Little Miss wants me to play a video game with her and watch a movie. I honestly do not understand why my children always want me to play video games with them. I do not enjoy video games but they are just so excited to show Mom how to play it and then laugh at her when she can’t figure it out. My son wanted me to play Skyrim one time and I ran the guy into the wall over and over for like ten minutes.
It’s now a running joke in our house. My son will say something like, “Look, I’m Mom playing Skyrim,” and then just run into a wall several times while looking over his shoulder saying, “Don’t worry, Havar. I’m coming! I swear! If I can figure out this controller, I’m coming to help you.”
Of course, by then Havar was dead because I was still running into a wall.
This upcoming week I really need to work more on my book, Cassie. It’s been hard to get going on it but I hope to have it done in February so I can start work on my next Gladwynn book.
This week my dad left me a comment on my Facebook cover where I was promoting the second book and it really meant a lot because my dad is not a reader. He’s really never had time to read and if he did, he chose non-fiction books, such as theology books.
Mom told me he read my first book in the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries, though, reading a chapter or so a night before bed. When he was done, he told me it felt weird not having the book to read so I was glad that it wasn’t long after that when I realized the second book.
Now he is in the middle of the second book so I really need to start writing book three for him.
This is the message he left on the photograph for the book on my page: am not much of a reader at all and very seldom read fiction and I watch very few movies.
Like who wants to read about something that is not? Lol. Evidently a lot of people.
Anyway, I got into the first Gladwyn Mystery and found it intriguing, and starting this one I find it more so.
Sometimes I think wow, I never knew that lol. You see Gladwynn Grant, a mixture of intelligent, ditzy curious, and almost cunning, was my mother’s name.
Okay off to store a few more clues and along the way to the hometown theater find out what happened to Samantha.“”
Dad hasn’t always been super supportive of me writing fiction (“You have to actually go places to write books and you don’t go anywhere or have a lot of experience,” he told me once. Sigh. Dads.) so the fact he’s enjoyed these Gladwynn books has meant a lot to me.
Well, I am off to watch the 2005 version of Pride and Prejudice, which I am watching as part of Erin (Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) and my Jane Austen January Feature. I will warn you that this version is not my favorite and I am actually finding it a bit annoying at this point. I promise to try my best to be polite about it when I write about it on Thursday.
I will be back tomorrow with Sunday Bookends, where I will ramble about what I’ve been reading and what I hope to read and all that jazz.
How was your week last week? Did you do anything exciting? And what’s your tea of choice these days?
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 we were hit by a snowstorm that wasn’t as bad as we thought it was going to be but still brought about five inches of snow and cold. It was our first bigger snowstorm. Little Miss had a wonderful time sledding down the hill behind the house even after it got dark. We are grateful for a very bright light in our backyard.
We are also grateful for a bright streetlight because the kids decided to slide down our driveway and across our street around 10 at night. They had a blast.
It was too dark for photos but Zooma the Wonder Dog also had a blast. As I have mentioned before on my blog, she loves to jump up and catch snowballs that are thrown for her.
The snowstorm is set to continue today so we are hunkering down. I don’t know if we will get much more snow but the roads are supposed to be fairly messy and it is very, very cold out there right now.
Little Miss enjoyed playing in the snow much of yesterday and again today with her dad before he has to go to a second, part-time, job he recently started.
What I’ve Been Reading
This past week I finished two books – a Christian romance, Southern Snow by B.R. Goodwin, and a non-Christian mystery called How to Solve Your Own Murder by Kristen Perrin.
If you like squeaky-clean books with a Christian message and romance you will like Southern Snow.
If you don’t mind some language and a very good mystery (like could not put the book down good) then you want How To Solve Your Own Murder but that one doesn’t come out until March 26 so go pre-order it.
You could also be like me and like both of them. Southern Snow is out now and on Kindle Unlimited if you have a membership to that.
This week I will be continuing Little Women, Dysfunction Junction by Robin W. Pearson, and listening to A Tall of Two Cities on Audible.
Dysfunction Junction will be out on February 6. Here is a description:
When three women receive an unexpected phone call that leaves them reeling, they have no other choice but to reckon with a lifetime of memories they’ve long tried to bury. Only in facing the past will they find their path forward.
Frances Mae Livingston’s firm grip of her family’s destructive history makes her hold her husband and four children even closer. But she’s losing bits of herself while proving to everybody and her mama that she’s enough. There’s no way she’ll repeat her mama’s mistakes, even if it kills her.
Annabelle McMillan didn’t have trouble kicking the Eastern North Carolina dust off her feet. The tough part was replanting herself in familiar soil. Now she’s blending her old life with her new husband, stepson, and unborn child. And battling old memories of abandonment and new fears of rejection.
Dr. Charlotte Winters has built a career around helping others sort through their emotional baggage. She’s also spent a lifetime refusing to unpack her own. So what if Charlotte doesn’t recall all that her mama did to her and what her daddy didn’t do for her? Her only mission is to help others help themselves…until the women from her past and the man in her future undo her well-sewn life.
At the junction of healed and hurting, broken and whole, and past and present, three women wrestle with their inability to forgive and forget in this riveting Southern family drama about sisterhood from award-winning author Robin W. Pearson.
I am also putting together a list of books I want to read this winter – including a collection of stories by Agatha Christie that I planned to read last winter but never got to. I hope to share that tomorrow or another day on the blog. It won’t be a big list because I am a slow reader. The Husband is reading John Connolly books.
The Boy and I have set A Tale of Two Cities aside for right now as we start a non-fiction book for history called Lost Names by Richard Kim, which I have started and have been swept up in. I also decided I wanted to read/listen to A Tale of Two Cities first so I can guide him when he reads it.
What We watched/are Watching
This past week I watched a lot of cozy mysteries – Poirot (with David Suchet) and Miss Scarlet and The Duke (which I am pretty much binge watching now).
What I’m Writing
If you’re new here you might not know that I write fiction books. Yes, I am an indie author and some readers do not read indie authors. That doesn’t offend me. I get it. I don’t even read a lot of indie authors.
There are a lot of not very good indie authors out there and a handful of good ones. That’s my honest opinion, even though I am an indie author.
Am I a good indie author? I’m a decent one, maybe, but recently questioned it when I put out a book that I had somehow switched two chapters on and then published the stinking book.
Oh my word I was so humiliated when I discovered it two weeks later. How did I do it? Well, it has to do with my new formatting software and how it’s very easy to move things around. So easy that two chapters were transposed without me even realizing I did it. I did not second check things before I uploaded it to Amazon because I had uploaded it before and it was fine. This time I had only made a minor change with a typo I somehow missed correcting after my editors gave it back so I didn’t think I needed to check it. Well, I learned my lesson the hard way.
Anyhow, this week I am working on a new book called Cassie that will be part of a multi-author project. It doesn’t come out until August so I have plenty of time but writing this one has been a struggle. I will admit that I now wish I had not joined a project that had so many rules with it that were provided by someone else and not myself. I will not be doing another project like this ever, but I feel this one is pushing me creatively and that’s a good thing.
I hope to have Cassie complete by the end of February, the beginning of March. After that, I hope to start a new Gladwynn Mysteries book and I think this time around I will share it here on the blog more than I did with the last book. I plan to move my books out of Kindle Unlimited so I can share and sell them anywhere I want. I will be doing that in the spring.
If you want to learn more about my books and what they are about, you can click HERE.
What I’m Listening To
Right now I am listening to A Tale of Two Cities on Audible.
Photos from Last Week
Here are some photos from our snowstorm:
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.
Welcome to my last Sunday Bookends for 2023. Crazy, isn’t it? Tomorrow it will be 2024.
2023 flew by for us in some ways and dragged in others.
This past week we ended the year with a lot of family time.
It was Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at my parents and two family days and a lot of relaxing together and watching movies.
Today and tomorrow will be more relaxing and then it will be back to school for the kids and I on Tuesday.
I wrote a bit about our last week in my post yesterday if you would like to catch up.
I was watching a video by Darling Desi on YouTube yesterday and she talked about how many years ago in our country we used to celebrate the Christmas season until January 6 and that we should give ourselves permission to do that if we want to. So this week I’m giving myself permission to continue celebrating Christmas with Christmas movies and books that I didn’t get to in the month of December.
I started watching It’s A Wonderful Life last night so I can watch some of my favorite scenes and before bed I read from a vintage Christmas book.
What I’m/We’re Reading
I didn’t read a ton on my break but I did read some. I finished Christmas in Abasorka Countyby Craig Johnson and made progress on Southern Snow by B.R. Goodwin.
The one by Craig Johnson is a small collection of short stories featuring Sheriff Walt Longmire from his Longmire Mysteries series.
I should have Southern Snow finished this week. I am not taking so long to read it because it is bad. I just stopped reading it to read some other Christmassy-themed books like the collection of vintage Christmas stories, the Johnson one, and a few chapters of Little Women, which I am making my way through slowly. Southern Snow does feature Christmas but I believe it can be read any time of the year.
Early last week I started an ARC by Kristen Perrin called How To Solve Your Own Murder and I was hooked and am blazing through it.
For those who like clean reads – this is clean so far but I’m only on chapter 10. There has been one swear word and it could get worse as things get intense, but I’m not sure. In other words, if you usually read Christian or clean fiction like me – just be warned that this is not listed in those categories.
I’ve also started Dysfunction Junction by Robin W. Pearson, which is another ARC read. The book releases February 6.
In January I’m focusing on cozy like I did in December so I hope to read some more cozy mysteries, including The Cat Who Went Into The Closet which my husband ordered for me and a couple of Nancy Drew books.
I’m also reading A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens with The Boy for English.
Little Miss and I have been listening to The Best Christmas Pageant Ever but I’m trying to get her to let me read her The Borrowers at night before bed.
We will be back to reading a history-related book for school on Tuesday, but I’m not sure which one yet.
The Husband is reading John Connolly books because Connolly has just put up his entire catalog on Kindle Unlimited. If that isn’t a sign of things to come in the publishing industry I don’t know what is. That means his ebooks are exclusively only on Amazon and he’s a NY Times Best Seller. They cannot be purchased anywhere else for 90 days. Interesting.
Also interesting is that the book we downloaded, The Furries: A Charlie Park Book begins in the town my husband and I lived in for 20 years for me and more than 20 for him. It is the town he now drives through to go to his second job because the towns up there all run together. The Furries is actually two books in one and the first one that mentions the town is The Sisters Strange.
It’s so bizarre to see the town in the book because it is truly a tiny little area essentially in the middle of nowhere. There are about 3,200 people in the town he’s talking about and maybe 13,000 altogether in the three towns that run together. I may be off on that number – I didn’t check the census but it is definitely under 30,000 these days.
I’m very curious now to know how Connolly knew about it or his connection to the area. He even writes about the flood we went through there in 2011. Thankfully it did not hit our home since we were at a higher elevation but it did flood the historic and business district of the town. I was working for the newspaper at the time and took photographs of the destruction but almost forgot to take them because I was just standing on the hill looking down into the rest of the flooded town in shock.
I’d also love to know if any of his characters are based on any real-life residents. I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if they were. I don’t know that Connolly’s books are my cup of tea but after reading the first chapter I am hooked and if he goes back to Athens in this book, I know I will be trying to see which characters might be based on people I know from there.
In an interview with a Maine television station, Connolly said he wrote this mainly in lockdown during the pandemic so he was mainly in Ireland at the time (which is where he is originally from). This makes the book partly taking place in Athens that much more interesting to me. He also released the book in chapters like I have done on my blog. Maybe Mr. Connolly saw my blog and copied me. *wink* Ha. Ha.
What We watched/are Watching
I watched a ton of Christmas-themed shows and movies since I last posted a Sunday Bookends.
A Christmas Carol from 1938
White Christmas
Elf (for the second time)
Trading Christmas
A Biltmore Christmas
A Christmas Story
A half of The Man Invented Christmas (need to get back to it)
Half of Blithe Spirit (need to finish it when The Husband is home from work)
The Christmas special from last year of All Creatures Great and Small
The Little House on the Prairie Christmas special
A Christmas episode from M.A.S.H.
We also watched a couple other episodes of M.A.S.H., a couple episodes of Miss Scarlet and The Duke, the first episode of C.B. Strike (based on the books by Robert Gailbraith. I read the first one and enjoyed it even though it was dark and full of obscenities – just a warning for anyone who might try it), a lot of Newhart, Forgotten Way Farms, Darling Desi, Doctor Quinn Medicine Women, and The Pioneer Woman.
I probably watched some other things as well but it has been two weeks so I’m not sure.
What I’m Writing
I’m working on my book Cassie and blathered on about a bunch of movies and other stuff here on the blog.
Next week I will be writing about the movie Persuasion to kick off Jane Austen January. Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I will be starting buddy watches of movie adaptations of Jane movies January 11. We have started a link up that you can access through the menu at the top of my page.
I listened to Shepherd’s Abiding by Jan Karon before and during Christmas week.
I have also been listening to a collection of audio productions of Jane Austen’s books on Audible and plan to start Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry on audible at some point, but probably not until February because I’ll be listening to the Jane Austen for Jane Austen January.
Photos from this week
Christmas:
Local light display:
Fun outing:
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.
I hope you had a wonderful Christmas or holiday and are ready to celebrate the New Year.
We had a really fun, but relaxing Christmas Eve and Christmas.
We spent both days with my parents.
Christmas Eve we bought pizza and wings and watched the movie Elf with them and on Christmas Day we went there for a gift exchange and dinner. We watched White Christmas after all the gifts were open.
Every year before we open gifts we read the Christmas story from Luke. Either Dad or Mom or my brother usually reads it but my brother couldn’t be there this year so Little Miss and The Husband volunteered to read. It was very nice to have them read it.
There were a couple of very nice surprise gifts for me, including a new Kindle from my husband. I always joke how he rarely buys me books for Christmas, even though that’s what I want most of the time (he really just wants me to choose what I want on my own so he isn’t being a jerk) so this year he put me in my place and bought me a device where I can read hundreds of books.
It was a total shock.
I like the Kindle Paperwhite I have and it was working okay but earlier in the year I thought the battery wasn’t holding a charge as well. It turns out my case wasn’t closing right and failing to put it into sleep mode.
Regardless, The Husband got it in his head that I needed a new Kindle so he kindly used a portion of his bonus to buy one of the newest generations. He wanted me to have one that I could adjust the warmth setting on so I can use it more at night before bed without it messing with my melatonin. It also features a larger screen.
I certainly appreciated the thought and while I first thought it was a bit clunky compared to my older and lighter paperwhite, after a couple of days of using it (it came on Wednesday), I love it. I even hug it when I close the cover. I know. I’m weird. I also hug books after I smell them. Ahem. I’ve heard of weirder habits by people so I’m not worried about my mental status. At least for that reason.
Another surprise for me was a six-month membership to Ancestry.com so I could finish researching our family.
I already had an entire family tree put together but had to take a break because of expenses. Now I have to start a new account and redo some of my research but I can hopefully draw from my old account and quickly add some of it. After I am done, I will make sure to print it all out and save all the documents I want to save in a place I can find it this time.
Among my favorite gifts was a huge three-pound jar of local honey. The Husband joked it should last me a week and after looking at how much I’ve used already he might be right – though it will probably be at least a month.
Little Miss was surprised with two music boxes from my parents among some other gifts. The Husband was given a clock that used to belong to my paternal grandmother.
I bought my son a sword for Christmas. Yes, a real sword. Okay, not really that real but a little real.
It’s fairly solid and it’s something he has wanted, though he later told me it was a bit of a joke. Joke or not, he now has a sword to go with his helmet.
He also received two hammers from his grandfather and I’m not sure if he knew what to think of them but he did say they would be nice to have for personal projects or for his building and construction class. When he was little he used to hand his superhero figures to me and ask me to put them in my purse but on Monday he asked me to put his hammers in my purse. In the end, they were too heavy to be put in there and had to be carried out to go home in a box.
My dad received a gift from his neighbor of a piece of ash wood that had the pattern from the ash bore in its bark and was carved by his neighbor into the shape of a tree.
We have been using this wood in our woodstove and I thought the patterns in the bark were from the wood laying in the dirt and worms making the patterns.
(Speaking of our woodstove – we haven’t had to use it all week but will have to light it tonight as the temperatures drop back down into the 30s.)
My dad always does a beautiful job at wrapping the presents and this year was no exception.
As an aside, Dad will be 80 this Friday. He still likes to try to trick us at Christmas and wrap our gifts in a way we can’t really tell what it is until we open it. This year he wrapped each of us special gifts (like my Ancestry membership) around a can of sardines. We all guessed that was what it was but weren’t sure if they were real sardines or just the cans.
It turned out they were real sardines but money or notes about items that were ordered for us were wrapped around them. Both Little Miss and the Boy tried the sardines. The Boy liked his since they had a Louisiana hot sauce on them. He was disappointed he left them at their house when we left that evening.
Gifting The Boy underwear became a theme for a few years so one year my dad wrapped his underwear in a box of nails which made The Boy think he was receiving a Lego set.
The day after Christmas we all headed to a festival of lights – or Christmas light display about 45 minutes south of us.
Usually we attend this site the day after Thanksgiving, or at least before Christmas, and there aren’t as many people but this year there was a huge line of cars traveling through the lights with us. The lights are set up on a golf course and each display is very impressive, especially for our small area.
This year they enlarged the display and also added a tribute to the victims of 9-11, which was very impressive to us all.
On the way to the display we picked up two friends of Little Miss’s and they regaled us with Christmas carols as we rode because The Husband still hasn’t figured out how to operate the radio in his new-to-him truck so he didn’t know how to turn to the radio station they tell you to play while going through the display.
I tried to play Michael Buble’s Christmas album for everyone but they weren’t that interested.
The rest of the week was spent relaxing for most of us (The Boy has enjoyed staying up late and sleeping in on his break) and some work for The Husband but luckily not all week.
Today The Husband is taking us somewhere for dinner and shopping. Tomorrow we will either relax at home or my parents for New Year’s Eve while The Boy has a friend over for a sleepover. I hope to make Aunt Dianne’s famous sausage balls for either Sunday or Monday.
How was your Christmas or holidays?
Did you receive any special gifts or just have some special family time?
I’d love to know.
I’ll be back tomorrow for Sunday Bookends to discuss what I’ve been reading and watching.
I am so glad you came for a visit. Come sit. Don’t mind the cat sitting on the top of my bookcase. She’s weird.
Here we are, two days before Christmas.
Would you like a cup of cocoa, tea, or coffee? How about some homemade chocolate chip cookies?
My parents, daughter, and son made them the other day.
Last we spoke I was dealing with Covid but then I suddenly wasn’t.
It was a short bout, thank God (literally). I couldn’t help worrying that it would be worse, though, since I’d had such a bad case in 2021.
None of us had very serious lingering issues from it, just a bit of congestion for a few days afterward. It was honestly such a quick illness it felt more like allergies. If it hadn’t been for the insane burning in my nose and eyes and the fever darted up so high and then down again, I would have suspected it was just allergies.
The rest of the week was spent doing schoolwork, baking cookies with my parents, watching Christmas movies, and procrastinating on housework.
The cookie baking was funny because there was a lot of debate among my parents and Little Miss on how to make the cookies.
“That’s too much sugar.”
“That’s what the recipe calls for.”
“But the flour into the egg mixture not the egg mixture into the flour.”
“Is that too much butter?”
“No, just use the spoon and put the dollops on. Don’t roll them into balls.”
In the end, they came out fine but were very small and very, very sweet. They were so sweet, I made myself sick after only three.
Today I need to finish some dishes and vacuum the floors in my living room, kitchen (don’t ask why it has carpet in there), and Little Miss’s room. Yes, I am procrastinating again, why do you ask?
Tomorrow we are going to visit my parents for Christmas Eve. We plan to have pizza and wings and watch a couple of movies (White Christmas and Elf).
We will be back there again on Monday for Christmas Day.
I plan to take a break from things like Instagram and Facebook this upcoming week and maybe even longer. It’s very much grating on my nerves. Threads, for example, is horribly annoying even though I deleted the app and do my best to ignore it. I really want Instagram to stop putting it in my feed to try to capture me with the drama everyone vomits on there.
I do very well ignoring it but once in a while a sentence catches my attention and I go over and look, but it’s almost always someone writing something extremely controversial and then writing afterward: “but I don’t want to debate this.”
You don’t want to debate this.
Ah. Okay. Then what was your point of putting it out there in public? You just wanted everyone to pat you on the back and praise you? You expected all love and no pushback on a site becoming known for its intolerance and vitriol?
I couldn’t even share one drop about anything about my faith without getting at least one or two nasty comments when I was on it very briefly. I left as fast as I could when I saw all the biting sarcasm, snarkiness, and just out and out rudeness.
I just don’t have time for all that hatred balled up in one place.
Lately being on social media has felt like a kid that’s had too much candy to me. You eat just enough to satisfy your desire to connect with people and then you eat a little more but as you continue to eat you feel sick and then sicker and then you’re throwing up and that’s finally when you decide you’ve had enough and you need some real food.
And by “you” I mean “me”, of course, because most of my readers have been smarter than me and have stayed clear of social media altogether. God bless you.
So today I am doing my best to spend as much time as I can off social media. T least a little.
I am posting here or there but not scrolling much and for most of today I’ll be watching old movies, a Christmas movie or two, and reading a book. I would be off social media completely if I didn’t need to promote my books a little.
The Husband is working today so I’m sad he’s not here to watch movies with us but he will be at my parents tomorrow and with us on Monday and most of the rest of the week.
We will not be having a white Christmas this year since all we have had is rain and gloom for the last several days and are set to have the same for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
Our last semi-significant snow was on December 11 and Little Miss had a blast playing in it with Zooma The Wonder Dog.
Tonight as I finish this post, I am sitting by the fire and looking out at my neighbor’s beautiful Christmas lights.
I’m watching While You Were Sleeping and I was contemplating what to make for dinner but the kids have all decided they want something different and are going to make it themselves so I am on my own for dinner and that’s fine with me. As an aside – what is with While You Were Sleeping? It’s such a weird movie. Why have I now watched it three times? The woman should have told them the truth from the start. It’s just so weird and then they’re all fine with it at the end of the movie. Gah. It’s weird, people! Weird!
Anyhow, the lights are on the Christmas tree and I’m enjoying it while I can because The Husband starts taking it down the day after Christmas. I’m going to try to drag it out until at least January 1 this year. I’ll jump on his back and yell “Noooo! Leave it alone, you big bully!”
I don’t think I’ll really do that. I’ll just ask him to leave it up and he’ll say, “Okay.”
I won’t be back for a Sunday Bookends post tomorrow so I will chat with you all again sometime next week. Bring your tea or I’ll make you whatever I have here. How was your week last week?
Boondock Ramblings 