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.
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.
Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you
Isaiah 46:4 NIV
I need this verse right now. There is a lot going on in my life these days but I’ll write about that in another post someday.
For now, I’ll share that Friday was a weird day. I spent it painting rocks with my daughter in our yard and that ended when a bumble bee took off after me and I mean took off. It had it in for me. It stung me twice in the stomach after climbing down my pants (yes, my pants) and then proceeded to come after me again when I brushed it off, climbing in my shirt under my arm and stinging me again right after it crawled all over my face.
And, yes, it was a bumble bee and not a yellow jacket. It was possessed.
Surprisingly, the stings actually didn’t hurt hardly at all. They were swollen and red and I was convinced I was going to have a reaction because I’m a hypochondriac freak but in the end I was okay.
What sucked was how I was being brave and pushing aside some of my weird physical symptoms I deal with on a daily basis and playing with Little Miss in the yard and this is what happened.
That’s sort of my life story. I’ve always been afraid to fly. One day I probably will, and — well … let’s not even go there, shall we?
The thing is, that little bumblebee was actually cute. When I looked down at my waistband he was peering up over it at me all fluffy and cute. Then I started screaming and he flew off and came back at me full force. Looks can truly be deceiving.
The Unlikely Yarn of the Dragon Lady and Carry On, Jeeves.
This week I will be reading But First, Murder by Bee Littlefield and A Nancy Drew Mystery, The Password to Larkspur Lane.
Little Miss and I are reading The Good Master by Karen Seredy and at night we are listening to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis, but I’ve either been too tired or can’t hear it well, so I’ve missed the whole story. Luckily it is one of my planned fall reads.
The Husband is reading Hostage by Robert Crais.
The Boy is listening to Red Tide, a Warhammer book.
We got Netflix for a month and only a month. The price for that service is absolutely nuts to me. My daughter wanted to watch KPop Demon Hunters and my husband and I want to watch The Thursday Murder Club.
I did watch Find Me Falling, a movie with Harry Connick Jr. that I had heard about earlier this year. It was okay. It used a trope I totally hate, and there were parts that fell flat to me, but it was heartwarming and that was what I needed.
Last week, I also watched The Long Hot Summer for the Summer of Angela and then several Murder, She Wrote episodes. I was very disappointed in one, though, where Jessica let the murderer go because he was old and a friend, and the victim was a member of the mob.
I also watched another episode of Ludwig.
Tonight, we are watching the new Superman movie because The Husband and The Boy watched it and loved it. Little Miss saw it with them but wasn’t terribly impressed.
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 a tame week for the most part. Things picked up Friday when I picked up a friend of Little Miss’s and they had a sleepover before we all went to visit an old-school mall near Scranton, Pa. yesterday morning.
The mall has a small selection of stores still left but like many malls of today there are a lot of empty store spaces.
I didn’t walk as far as anyone else but one of the most exciting things for Little Miss was finding an escalator to ride up and down on.
That’s the main reason she wanted to go to a mall. She’d heard me tell stories about going on an escalator at the mall we used to go to when I was growing up and wanted to experience it herself.
Her brother and dad were able to visit the mall about two weeks ago but that was the first day of a two-week illness for her and me (which would have been over sooner if it hadn’t been for that stinking sinus drainage she got! Poor kid!). I had never visited that mall. The one we used to go to was in New York State and the other one was an hour south but has since closed.
If you’re new here, we live in a very rural area that requires us to drive about an hour in any direction to find larger stores/malls/movie theaters, etc.
We don’t have a lot of buildings with escalators or elevators near us, so it is quite a treat when we get to visit one. I can’t believe it’s taken us until Little Miss is almost 11 to take her somewhere she could ride an escalator!
Yesterday there was a mechanical horse ride at the mall, but The Husband couldn’t get the change machine to work so Little Miss simply announced she wanted to go back on the escalator again. That was just as exciting to her and her friend as a mechanical horse ride.
The escalator was in a JC Penny Store. Yes, this mall still had a JC Penny and it has two stories.
Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs knows that I don’t have much of a social life or get out much so she challenged me to go into a store and buy one thing I wouldn’t normally buy — like lipstick (she knows I don’t wear makeup so that’s probably why she suggested that. Ha!) I went into the first store I came to, which was Claire’s and grabbed a planner, some hairbands that were on sale, and tinted lip balm (when I originally wrote this I accidentally typed “tainted lip balm”. Well, that definitely would be something I don’t normally buy!). It shows how long it has been since I’ve been at a mall because when that woman with her black lipstick and black hair, wearing a Halloween costume in August, said to me, “That will be $42,” I went all old lady on her.
“I’m sorry? How much? What in the world did I buy?”
Turns out the lip gloss was $10 each and I had grabbed an extra one for Little Miss because she likes to pretend to do makeup with her friends. The planner was $15 and I do not think that they gave me the sales price on the hairbands.
Live and learn! And what I learned is I really don’t miss malls as much as I thought I d.
The kids had a lot of fun though and we even found a Barnes and Noble down the road to visit for a little while. Each girl picked out a book to read.
They also came home with a candle, a mug, a small stuffed animal, and friendship necklaces each. I loved how excited they were with those little things, but they did try for $10 little hamsters at Barnes and Noble which I turned down because we were there for books and not toys and had already gotten a couple of stuffed animals.
That’s one change from when we used to visit Barnes and Noble back in the day (20-some years ago) — there wasn’t a whole toy section, that I remember anyhow. I am sure bookstores are simply trying to diversify, but I like my bookstores to mainly carry books.
We only grabbed one book while we were there because I just ordered several books from Thriftbooks and I couldn’t think of any books I wanted that were new. The Husband picked up an Erle Stanley Gardner that we will share since we both like his books (or some of them anyhow).
I did want to look at journals, but I’ve gotten used to buying $5 dollar store journals and couldn’t bring myself to spend $18 or more on one. They had a huge 50 percent off cart of journals, but I didn’t see that until we were getting ready to leave so I left that for another day.
The mall and other stores aren’t super far away so we could definitely visit again someday soon.
I do feel like I’ve gotten old, though. The visit to B&N didn’t excite me as much as I thought it would. Maybe it was because I was having a bit of a stinky autoimmune day or maybe it’s because I’ve discovered I like little stores with used books more than I like big stores full of new books. Plus, there are so many books that I just wouldn’t read — like all those BookTok books — out in prominent places which means I would have had to hunt for any books I would really want to read.
Overall, it was a really nice trip, and I would love to go again when I am having a better health day and had had a little more sleep the night before. One of the nicest things about the trip was seeing the beautiful green hills of Pennsylvania. Summer is winding down and some trees are changing already, but for the most part green is dominating our views and I’m fine with that. I am, however, looking forward to the cooler temps of this week.
This morning as I got ready to cast my Sunday morning episode of Just A Few Acres Farm to the TV, I saw a notice that Bob from the Bob and Brad Physical Therapy YouTube Channel had passed away. It hit me very hard as I have watched this channel for years and gone there numerous times over the years to get ideas on how to help the various cricks and pains I get in my neck and muscles.
Bob was diagnosed with cerebral ataxia a few years ago, and it affected how he spoke and walked. I had no idea it would take his life, but apparently, it caused a cardiac event the week before last, and he passed suddenly. Brad and their new host (he stepped in a few years ago) and Bob’s son spoke about Brad during the episode announcing his death and I was a sobbing mess.
I was happy Bob donated his organs and saved at least three more lives, if not more, but it was so depressing for me to hear about I was glad I had not made plans to do anything today.
Right before I was about to post this today, I noticed my blog stats had gone crazy. I usually get 200-250 views a day, and yesterday I had over 5,00,0 but with no comments to match that I can see. The visitors are actually lower than I get too. And all the views are from the Netherlands. That’s all I know! Does anyone know where to find out where these views are coming from? All I can find is “Google search” and I don’t even see a ton of views on any one post. I am beginning to think something is wrong with WordPress’s stats.
I have a monthly book-related link party if you are interested. You can find the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea link party at the top of my page or here. It is for posts about books that you are reading, have read, book reviews — just anything book-related really. So even posts about book collections, authors etc. etc.
We will be holding another one next Sunday, August 24th from 1 to around 3 p.m.
The Crafternoons are events where we gather on Zoom and craft at our respective homes and chat while we work on various projects. We are calling them drop-in crafternoons because you can drop in and out during the time we are on (usually from about 1 to 3 p.m. EST US time). No need to stay the whole time if you can’t. Come late if you want or leave early.
If you want to join in, email Erin at crackcrumblife@gmail.com and she will add you to the mailing list.
This past week I finished Dave Barry Isn’t Taking This Sitting Down by Dave Barry (humor columnist for the Miami Herald). It was very funny! It was a collection of his columns from 2000.
Right now I am reading Carry On, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse and will probably finish it this week.
I am also reading But First, Murder (A Betti Bryant Mystery) by Bee Littlefield and Nancy Drew Mystery: Password to Larkspur Lane by Carolyn Keene (I’m sure I’ll finish it this week. These books are so short.).
I’ll be reading Come, Tell Me How You Live by Agatha Christie Mallowan next. This is an autobiographical book by Agatha Christie about some of her travels with her second husband, who was an archaeologist. I read the first couple of pages already, and her humor really comes through. I am looking forward to getting into it more.
Little Miss and I are reading The Good Master by Kate Seredy.
This weekend The Husband and I watched an episode of Rizzoli and Isles, a show I’d totally forgotten about. I watched a Murder, She Wrote episode and a coupe of Quantum Leap episodes. I also watched a couple episodes of my favorite farmer’s YouTube Channel — Just A Few Acres.
For my Summer of Angela feature, I watched A Life At Stake.
I made some progress on Gladwynn Grant Goes Back to School this past week and hope to make a lot more during this upcoming week. I am shooting for a November release. We will see how that goes!
I hope to finish up The Unlikely Yarn of the Dragon Lady by Sharon J. Mondagon this week. I hadn’t been listening to it consistently so it’s taken a bit for me to finish it. This week I plan to find some time during dishwashing, etc. to listen.
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 made a comment to someone in the comment section last week that the bear I saw on our back porch, and purchased a Ring camera to keep an eye on, probably would never show again.
How wrong I was.
The other night the dog was barking crazily outside. She is hooked up on a lead and I periodically walk back to check on her. Now we have a Ring camera that I can turn on and watch from my phone, but I didn’t because, well, I really didn’t think anything would happen.
The only thing that might happen is she might take off after a skunk like she did last weekend, yanking the stake to her lead out of the ground and disappearing behind our shed where she, and our son, was sprayed by a skunk.
That’s what I thought would happen anyhow but as I headed toward the back door I turned on the Ring camera from my phone and before I even looked down at it, I was at the back door looking out at Zooma face to face with a black bear, ten or twelve feet from our back door.
Zooma was barking bouncing back and forth in front of the bear, who looked quite confused honestly. I called Zooma back with a tremble in my voice, worried the bear might reach out and take out a swipe at her.
Luckily, Zooma barked a few more times but then came to me and I quickly opened the door and let her in while the bear continued to look confused.
This video does not do justice to how close the bear was to the house because of the angle of the camera. I left the audio in even though I sound like I’m crying, which I really wasn’t, but I was nervous and recovering from the virus we had so my voice sounded pretty shaky. I was just worried Zooma was going to get smacked around.
As the bear turned to leave, The Husband and I noticed he or she was limping, which was so sad to me.
I couldn’t film any longer because the bear was headed toward my neighbor’s backyard and sometimes they are out watering their garden late at night, so I wanted to warn her.
We did contact the game warden and they said they’d send someone out, but we never heard anything back. Hopefully, next week someone will update us on the condition or location of the bear.
Seeing the bear has made me very nervous but really it is a little silly to be afraid of the bear. They are black bears and aren’t really huge fans of people. They also aren’t known to attack people or, usually, pets. They simply come down looking mainly for food and our one neighbor has food out for the animals (yes, I’m pretty sure this is illegal and if not it is at least dangerous!). If you make loud noises or have a barking dog they tend to leave.
Still, I don’t relish the idea of stepping outside of my house and finding myself face to face with one.
That was the exciting part of our week. The rest of the week was spent being up weird times of the night while Little Miss coughed a lot from sinus drainage left over from the virus we had earlier in the week. We spend our days napping and trying to catch up from the weird sleep the night before.
We are still trying to recover from all of that and from the lack of sleep.
This next week I am actually going to start school for Little Miss. I wanted to do it the last couple of weeks but with being sick and recovering, that went out the window.
I have all of Little Miss’s curriculum so there is no excuse to not just get started. I’m looking forward to the upcoming year, especially art and literature, which are her and my favorite subjects.
I am still reading the same books, for the most part, but I am making progress. I finished The Scarlet Pimpernel last night. I enjoyed the book, even more so than the 1970s movie with Jane Seymour, but the ending did seem quite sudden to me. I would have liked a little more of a wrap up.
I am still reading Dave Berry Isn’t Taking This Sitting Down by Dave Barry. It is a collection of his columns for the Miami Herald and they are so funny.
I did not read any from Carry On, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse last week but I will be back into that this week. The Jeeves books are so funny.
I was very excited to receive a delivery this week from Thriftbooks that included two P.G. Wodehouse books, one of them a Jeeves book.
The books are Very Good, Jeeves and A Damsel in Distress. I am gathering that A Damsel in Distress is not a Jeeves book, based on the title and the description on the back, which is fine with me. I am interested in trying Wodehouse’s other books.
The order also included Nancy Drew books Nancy’s Mysterious Letter, The Whispering Statue, and The Triple Hoax, Remains to be Seen by Elizabeth Caldell, An Enola Holmes Mystery: The Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer, and Come, Tell Me How You Live by Agatha Christie Mallowan.
I am looking forward to reading Nancy Drew: The Triple Hoax soon but first I am going to read the Nancy Drew Mystery Password to Larkspur Lane.
Little Miss is reading The Clue of the Missing Diary by Carolyn Keene (Nancy Drew).
The Boy is reading/listening to Red Tithe by Robbie MacNiven.
The Husband is reading. That’s all I know right now because I forgot to ask which book he is reading. I know he finished Targeted: Beirut by Jack Carr about a week ago.
This week I watched Murder She Wrote, The Picture of Dorian Gray, episodes of Canal Boat Diaries, and a movie called Raffles, which ended terribly.
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.
Today is my mom’s 81st birthday. Sadly, we are probably not going there for dinner because my family is recovering from a summer virus/cold. We are almost all the way over it but we’re making sure we are still not contagious before we go. So, we will celebrate her birthday later this week.
The biggest issue with our illness this week was Little Miss’s cough at night and our being unable to stop it so she, and we, could sleep. We were happy to have some beautiful weather the second half of the week that allowed us to go outside and get some fresh air. During the first part of the week, it was simply too hot to enjoy anything outside.
Fans of Summer have been disappointed this week since we had fall-like temperatures for the last few days but I have been loving it. I would love it even more if Little Miss could kick her cough all the way. I have a feeling that will happen by tomorrow or Tuesday, however.
A couple of quick reminders:
I have a monthly book-related link party if you are interested. You can find the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea link party at the top of my page or here (https://lisahoweler.com/2025/08/02/a-good-book-a-cup-of-tea-monthly-link-party-for-august/) . It is for posts about books that you are reading, have read, book reviews — just anything book-related really. So even posts about book collections, authors etc. etc.
We will be holding another one in August, but I am not sure when yet.
The Crafternoons are events where we gather on Zoom and craft at our respective homes and chat while we work on various projects. We are calling them drop-in crafternoons because you can drop in and out during the time we are on (usually from about 1 to 3 p.m. EST US time). No need to stay the whole time if you can’t. Come late if you want or leave early.
If you want to join in, email Erin at crackcrumblife@gmail.com and she will add you to the mailing list.
This wasn’t the worst cold/virus/whatever I’ve ever had so I was able to get some reading in, mainly from Dave Barry Isn’t Taking This Sitting Down while I sat up keeping an eye on Little Miss in the middle of the night. I also read quite a bit of The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy.
I didn’t read any of the 100-Year-Old-Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson this week but I do plan to continue it and finish it. I did read some from Carry On, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse and I love it.
Soon I hope to read The Clue of the Broken Blade, a Hardy Boys Mystery, and Password to Larkspur Lane, a Nancy Drew Mystery.
The Boy is listening to Red Tithe by Robbie MacNiven, a Warhammer book.
The Husband is reading something or other but he laid down for a nap because he might be getting the virus next so I will have to ask him later.
Little Miss and I have not started anything new lately but I hope to finish Magical Melons by Carol Ryrie Brink soon. That title was later changed just to Caddie Woodlawn’s Family. I think that’s a good thing because the first title was .. a little weird in modern times.
Last week I watched The Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn, a few episodes of Murder She Wrote, an episode of As Time Goes By, a documentary of David Suchet on the Orient Express, and an episode of a new-to-me show called Canal Boat Diaries. I also watched The Court Jester as part of my Summer of Angela series. Next week I will be watching The Picture of Dorian Gray.
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 shared on my blog yesterday about my black bear incident on my back porch. I’ll copy what I wrote here:
This past week was interesting if only for one thing that happened to me — something I knew would happen one day, but luckily it wasn’t as dramatic as I worried it would be.
I don’t have any photos, but it finally happened — I went out to my back door to get my cats in, and there was a black bear on the back porch. A black bear. Yes. Maybe three feet away from me but luckily there was a glass door between us.
I thought I was seeing a reflection on my door or just a shadow, and then the shadow moved! It hopped off the porch and took off across the yard while my cat watched from the other side of the yard, apparently amused by how I gasped, slammed the door shut and locked it (because the bear was clearly going to open it again) and then tried to get Little Miss to come see it by gasping. “Bear. Bear. Little Miss. See. Come.”
It was gone before she got there, sadly.
The Husband and The Boy were both upstairs so I couldn’t call for them.
We are now investing in a ring camera so I can get a better look before any of us step out there from now on.
I did a search on Facebook in a group that focuses on bear sightings in our area to see if anyone had seen our bear and learned that bear sightings are up. One reason they are up is because the state game commission has changed the weigh-in locations for bears when they are hunted. This means hunters aren’t as interested in hunting bears. They have to drive them too far to weigh them. Since the bears aren’t being as hunted as much, there is more of them. More of them means more of them are wandering into backyards and small towns.
Hopefully, we can keep ourselves and the bears safe. In most cases bears leave as soon as they see a person and we’re lucky that black bears aren’t like their grizzly bear cousins who sometimes do attack people (but probably rarely).
A couple of quick reminders:
I have a monthly book-related link party if you are interested. You can find the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea link party at the top of my page or here. It is for posts about books that you are reading, have read, book reviews — just anything book-related.
We will be holding another one in August, but I am not sure when yet.
The Crafternoons are events where we gather on Zoom and craft at our respective homes and chat while we work on various projects. We are calling them drop-in crafternoons because you can drop in and out during the time we are on (usually from about 1 to 3 p.m. EST US time). No need to stay the whole time if you can’t. Come late if you want or leave early.
If you want to join in, email Erin at crackcrumblife@gmail.com and she will add you to the mailing list.
Last week I finished Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis and A Murder She Wrote Mystery: Killer in the Kitchen by Don Blain.
I am currently reading the 100-Year-Old-Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson and Carry On, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse.
I’m also reading a couple of chapters of Dave Barry Isn’t Taking This Sitting Down by Dave Barry a day.
I also just started The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy.
Soon I hope to read The Clue of the Broken Blade, a Hardy Boys Mystery, and Password to Larkspur Lane, a Nancy Drew Mystery.
This past week I watched several episodes of Murder She Wrote and Scarecrow and Mrs. King. I also watched an episode of The Danny Thomas Show (which I had never seen before).
I enjoyed a movie with John Wayne called Without Reservations and then watched for my Summer of Angela feature.
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.
