Saturday Afternoon Chat: I finally saw a black bear — right on my back porch!

On July 26, 2025July 26, 2025 By Lisa R. HowelerIn Saturday Afternoon Tea29 Comments

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.

(I want to say that the bear was as big as the one on the left, but it was actually probably more like the one on the right.)

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).

This week we lost three celebrities. I’m not a huge celebrity follower but these three were connected to my childhood. When the second one passed away I told my son there would be a third and on Thursday there was.

First, we lost Malcom-Jamal Warner who used to be on The Cosby Show. He sadly died in a drowning while on vacation and his 8-year-old daughter witnessed it. That made me flat out cry. That poor child. I can’t imagine the trauma she experienced and will experience from here on out. My heart goes out to her and his family.

I have positive memories of Malcom on The Cosby Show. I know a lot of people today want to forget anything that Bill Cosby was involved with because of what he was convicted of but I can’t toss the baby out with the bathwater on that one. That show was part of my formative years and helped shape a view of black people for me that fought against the ideas that many TV shows and books focused on at the time that said that black people were only “former slaves” and “lived in poor neighborhoods” or were “members of gangs.”

The Cosby Show starred (clockwise from top left) Tempestt Bledsoe as Vanessa Huxtable, Malcolm-Jamal Warner as Theodore “Theo” Huxtable, Lisa Bonet as Denise Huxtable, Phylicia Rashad as Clair Huxtable, Keshia Knight Pulliam as Rudy Huxtable, and Bill Cosby as Dr. Heathcliff “Cliff” Huxtable. (Credit AP)

I didn’t even know about these stereotypes until I was much older because my parents never spoke about other races based on stereotypes, and because I watched shows like The Cosby Show. Bill was a doctor and Claire was a lawyer and they lived in a very nice house in the city and their kids were smart, pretty, and fun. That’s all I know about black families before my teen years, when others I met tried to suggest black people were inferior. I knew they weren’t because my parents taught me they weren’t and because I’d seen shows like The Cosby Show. They weren’t any different than me other than the color of their skin and the fact the Huxtables were rich and I wasn’t. I sometimes got a bit jealous of all they had but one thing I had that they had was a loving family.

I absolutely loved that about the show. There was so much love in that family. Unconditional love too.

I know Malcom was an actor but to me, he was part of my family, in some ways, back in the 1980s. It was so hard to hear of his passing, even though I hadn’t kept up with him a lot over the years. He seemed so sweet and nice when I saw interviews with him. It must have been so hard for him and the other actors to lose parts of their past because of what Bill Cosby did. The show was taken off the air and it was as if it was blacklisted in a way because of one man’s actions. Plus, finding out much of your childhood was a lie because the man you worked with was living a double life has to be very traumatic too.

In 2023, he told People magazine, “”Regardless of how some people may feel about the show now, I’m still proud of the legacy and having been a part of such an iconic show that had such a profound impact on — first and foremost, Black culture — but also American culture.”

The second celebrity death was Ozzy Osbourne. I’ve never been a huge Black Sabbath or Ozzy fan, persay, but I did watch The Osbournes off and on when I was younger. Despite all his drug issues and his effort to be “the prince of darkness”, Ozzy was a softy. He cared about people. He loved his family. My heart breaks that he was never able to come to know God and his love for him, as far as I know. There was a lot of trusting in self for him and his family, and that has to be a very hard way to live life. Only God knows his heart, though.

I won’t lie that I cried some looking back on videos of him and his family. I wish they all could have had more time with him.

Thursday afternoon my husband texted me to let me know that the wrestler Hulk Hogan had died. My husband has a lot more of a connection to Hulk Hogan than I do. He grew up watching him when he was a kid. I grew up seeing his toys and gear and even a match or two, but I really didn’t know much about him. I was playing with Barbie and My Little Ponies.

My husband sent me a few matches from his past to watch on YouTube last night to honor him, so I will be doing that today.

He seems like a complex person with faults, but one who a lot of people also cared about despite those faults.

The rest of my week was fairly mundane. Today I am supposed to go to my parents to take Little Miss swimming, and tomorrow we are going clothes shopping for the kids. They truly need new clothes, especially Little Miss who is growing so fast.

Next week we will be starting school a little more, easing into it, but otherwise it is another fairly mundane week planned.

How was your week last week?

This week’s encouraging verse:

“May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble; May the name of the God of Jacob defend you; May He send you help from the sanctuary, And strengthen you out of Zion; May He remember all your offerings, And accept your burnt sacrifice. May He grant you according to your heart’s desire, And fulfill all your purpose. We will rejoice in your salvation, And in the name of our God we will set up our banners! May the Lord fulfill all your petitions.”

Psalm 20: 1-5

Murder, She Wrote and Jesus

On July 20, 2025July 20, 2025 By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends, Sunday Salon19 Comments

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.

My blood pressure was high this week. It’s been an on and off issue for a few years now but seems to get better when I relax and take my time to take the reading the correct way.

It doesn’t want to go down at all when I am anxious, however, no matter what I do.

I’ve been anxious a lot lately, for a variety of reasons, one being the fact I needed to go to the doctor this week.

Long story short, I canceled the appointment when I found out a doctor I’ve heard very good things about actually takes my insurance. I’ll probably end up on medicine but at least I’ll feel like I can talk to this doctor about it unlike the other doctor I had the appointment with.

That appointment is a couple of weeks away, so I plan to monitor my blood pressure until then and do all I can do reduce stress (that might not be possible with a couple of situations going on but I’ll see). I started monitoring it off and on in June.

This week I couldn’t get it to an acceptable level until Thursday night after I’d been praying about it and after I sat down to watch Murder, She Wrote.

That’s right, readers.

I am crediting the significant drop in my blood pressure Thursday night (more than 15 points on top!) to Murder, She Wrote and Jesus.

I was so wrapped up in the mystery I didn’t focus on my worry about my blood pressure. It’s almost as if Jesus reminded me that I hadn’t watched Murder, She Wrote in a few days simply so I would finally stop worrying about everything all of the time and finally relax.

That’s my tip for any of you with high blood pressure: Pray to Jesus and watch Murder, She Wrote. (*Disclaimer: I am not a doctor. I only play one on my blog. Do not actually consider this medical advice. Please consult your actual doctor. *wink*)

I just finished Spill the Jackpot by Erle Stanley Gardner. It was a Cool and Lam Mystery and I didn’t like it as much as the first book in the series I read a couple of years ago. Getting it through it was a bit of a slog actually. I will try another book in the series, but this one was not a favorite of mine.

I’m reading Murder She Wrote: Killer in the Kitchen by Donald Blain, The 100-Year-Old man Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson, and Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis.

The 100-Year-Old man Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared is . . . uh . . . weird, but I have to find out what happens.

I hope to finish Dave Berry Is Not Taking This Sitting Down at some point, but I like reading a chapter here and there and I haven’t read it in a while because I’ve been wrapped up in mysteries.

Books I want to read soon include My Man Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse, A Penny Parker Mystery: Whispering Walls by Mildred A. Wirt (Benson), and another Nancy Drew book but I haven’t decided which one.

Little Miss is reading The Clue in the Diary by Carolyn Keene (A Nancy Drew Mystery).

This past week I watched Please Murder Me with Angela Lansbury and Raymond Burr. I also watched three very good Murder, She Wrote episodes, a movie with William Powell called The Canary Murder, and an episode of Scarecrow and Mrs. King. I never watched Scarecrow and Mrs. King when I was younger so it’s fun to discover the show, even though I’ve heard of it and seen parts of episodes in the past.

I’m actually progressing on Gladwynn Grant’s fourth book. It’s a miracle. I know.

This week on the blog I shared:

I am listening to The Unlikely Yarn of the Dragon Lady by Sharon J. Mondragon on Audible.

I have also been listening to a lot of Harry Connick Jr. songs, including this one:

The piano solo that starts at 1:50 is absolutely brilliant.

Now It’s Your Turn

What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.

This post is linked up with The Sunday Post at Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer, The Sunday Salon with Deb at Readerbuzz, and Book Date: It’s Monday! What are you reading hosted by Kathyrn at The Book Date. Stacking the Shelves is hosted by Reading Reality.

Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.

You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find her on Instagram and YouTube.

Little, used bookstores are the best and an anniversary outing

On July 13, 2025July 13, 2025 By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends, Sunday Salon20 Comments

Today is my husband’s and my 23rd wedding anniversary, and we went to a used bookstore near us because we are both serious nerds.

Then we visited a small café across the street for lunch.

Dinner and a book. That’s us, although it wasn’t always me. I read some but not as much, or as much variety, as I do now.

My husband has always been a big reader — sometimes a book a day or 3 to 5 a week.

I’m a much slower reader.

At the bookstore, I found three new (to me) Nancy Drew books, three Murder She Wrote books, and a cozy mystery by an author I am not familiar with — Betty Rowlands.

The Nancy Drew books I brought home were Mystery of the Tolling Bell, Mystery of the Brass-Bound Trunk, and The Clue of the Broken Locket.

The Murder She Wrote books are Killer in the Kitchen, Murder in Red, and The Murder of Twelve. I have a feeling they might be awful and I’m here for it. I started Murder in Red to see what I thought, though, and the first few pages was good.

The other cozy mystery was A Melissa Craig Mystery: A Little Gentle Sleuthing by Betty Rowlands.

There are so many variety of books there. I could have stayed there an hour but The Husband, alas, was hungry so we had to head out for some food which was odd because I am usually the one who needs to leave places for food.

After the bookstore and the dinner we headed home and watched a Frank Sinatra/Gene Kelly movie called Take Me Out to the Ballgame.

Yesterday I shared a bit about our week last week on my Saturday Evening Chat post.

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.

Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are still holding Drop-In Crafternoons once or twice a month.

We will be holding another one Saturday, July 19 at 1 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.

I finished The Imitable Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse this past week and really enjoyed it. It was so much fun and exactly what I needed right now.

I started The 100-year-old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared and I don’t know if I am exactly enjoying it but it’s different. I’ll see what I think.

I also started Spill the Jackpot by Erle Stanley Gardner. It’s a Cool and Lamb Mystery. I am not enjoying this one much at all so I’ll see if I finish it. There were three pages of a guy describing how to use slot machines! Why??? Ugh! The first in the series was so much better. This is number four.

I started Memory Lane by Becky Wade to see what I thought because I have wanted to read a light romance but have not enjoyed the two I tried by Courtney Walsh. I just think she isn’t my cup of tea but I’ve read Becky’s before and have enjoyed her so I thought I’d try this one and … I liked the beginning so I am going to read that when I need a light read.

Before bed I am enjoying Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis.

I plan to read one of the Murder She Wrote I picked up soon.

Last week I watched The Scarlet Pimpernel (1982), The Pirates of Penzance, and A Hole in the Head.

I don’t recommend A Hole in the Head. It’s a Frank Sinatra/Edward G. Robinson film and it has some cute and fun moments but fell apart hard toward the end and didn’t resolve well at all. It’s like they just ran out of time and said “welp, that’s it! We’re done!”

I also watched an episode of The Dick VanDyke Show and The Husband and I watched Take Me Out to the Ballgame and the Canary Murder Case, a Philo Vance Mystery from the 1930s.

Last week on the blog I shared:

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.

Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.

You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find her on Instagram and YouTube.

Saturday Evening Chat: A little pool, a little busy, and some photos to look back on

On July 12, 2025 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Saturday Afternoon Tea11 Comments

I’m the type of person who has never liked summer unless I can spend most of it in a pool. This year, though, we don’t have the pool we had before at my parents. Maintaining it has become too much for my dad with all his mounting health issues and it’s hard for us to maintain it the way he would like.

The decision to take it down was made a couple of weeks ago and it’s been very sad to walk out back and not see it. This past week my dad and son put up a small pool that our neighbors gave us a couple of years ago but it is a ton smaller than the last one.

It will at least be something that we can sit in, almost like a hot tub, when it is super hot out at least. Of course, I have to get myself in the pool without injuring myself. I am short and round so climbing in and out of a pool without a ladder, even when it is a shorter pool, can be a challenge. I did manage to get in the pool while it was filling on Thursday. It was nice to sit in it and watch Little Miss play and splash around. It was less fun trying to get back out again, especially since I needed to use the little girl’s room.

It was only comical after the fact, of course.

We are looking for a small ladder or step stool that will make getting in and out easier for all of us.

Last week was very busy for us, compared to our usual schedule in the summer.

Little Miss and I went to a library event and her 4-H Wildlife Club on Monday. On Tuesday we went to VBS but had a not-so-great experience there so on Wednesday we went to my parents to help clean. We went back on Thursday.

Yesterday and today, we stayed home and watched movies and TV, read books, ate watermelon, cooked dinner, bathed the dog, and tried our best to just relax.

Tomorrow The Husband and I are celebrating 23 years of marriage, so we are going out to dinner and to a used bookstore. Yes, we are that exciting. We both love books, though, and the little village where the bookstore is located is very picturesque so it should be a nice day.

Next week The Husband is on vacation and we have a few day trips planned but nothing very exciting. He and the kids are most excited about seeing the new Superman movie, but I’m really not that excited so I might sit this one out.

While typing this blog post up, Microsoft’s One Drive suggested I look at some photos from this same date five years ago.

Here are those photos:

These are from a trip we took a friend’s farm for me to take some photos for them and to sell for stock photography. I don’t know why but my dad took me out with the kids and on the way home he took the long way back and we ended up with a flat tire. Luckily, he knows how to change tires, but we had to wait a bit while he did that. While we waited there was a wonderful sunset for us to watch.

It was fun to visit the friend and see all her cows and the creamery she had opened. Sadly, life circumstances led to the creamery being closed and the cows being moved but her sons are still involved in farming and in showing cows for 4H.

In closing, I’ll leave us all with a quick reminder of how we need some breaks from all the hard stuff in the news. I read a couple of reminders this week that we as humans are not meant to consume all this information about the tragedies in the world all at once. Our minds are not infinite enough to handle all the grief, all the horror, all the fear on our own.

My advice to myself and to you is to take breaks from it all.

Don’t take it all in at once.

Just because we can know everything that is going on these days, doesn’t mean we need to.

Read a book. Watch a nice movie. Take a walk outside. Play with your kids and grandkids. Pet your dog and/or cat.

Sing some hymns.

We can’t ignore all the bad news, of course, but in the end we have to leave it in the hands of the only one who can carry it all.

How was your week last week? I hope it went well and I hope you have a good week this week.

The day Thriftbooks sent me a book I did not order, and it turned out to be a collectible

On July 6, 2025July 12, 2025 By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends, Sunday Salon30 Comments

Thursday I received a package from Thriftbooks and inside was supposed to be a copy of Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis (check), a copy of The Nancy Drew Scrapbook by Karen Plunket-Powel (check), and a Murder She Wrote Mystery (no check). Instead of the Murder She Wrote mystery, I found a very old book with a crumbling dust jacket and more dust than this mild-asthmatic with allergies was comfortable with. I barely looked at the book but I thought the title looked French.

Later that night after sending off an annoyed email to Thriftbooks to tell them they sent me the wrong book, I decided to take a closer look at the book, to at least find out the name.

I had never heard of the book, but it was called Murder A La Stroganoff by Caryl Brahms and SJ Snow. Inside the cover, it had a stamp that said it was from the Newberry Library, had been retired from their shelves, and was part of the Barzel Dance Collection. I searched a little more online and these books are fairly rare because it is a first edition from 1938 and the book is no longer in print. They did issue a paperback copy in 1985, but there are not a ton of the hardcovers published by The Crime Club, Doubleday & Co, New York out there.

Sadly, the book isn’t necessarily worth a ton without the dust jacket, which crumbled in my hands when I opened the package, but I couldn’t find one online being sold for less than $20 so, hey, if I ever do decide to sell it, I could make at least $20 off something I was shipped for free. With the dust jacket it could be worth up to $150. Apparently there aren’t a ton of these first editions out there and it’s a bit of a cult classic among mystery readers.

Thriftbooks did get back to me, by the way, and didn’t get the point that they sent the wrong book. Instead, they said they were sorry the book didn’t show up the way I wanted it to and that they didn’t have any other books with that title (they still think it is the Murder She Wrote book I first ordered) so to just keep the book and do what it with I wanted. They then issued me a refund for the book.

The book is a mystery and crime book with some satire mixed in about the ballet industry and is the second book in a series. I can not find a description of the book line but I think I actually want to read it so I might get a copy of the paperback instead of trying to read this older book which might bother my allergies.

I will be writing a blog post in the future about the book and its authors, though, because I fell down a rabbit hole researching what the book might be worth. I suppose that in the end getting the wrong book wasn’t such a bad thing.

Last week I finished The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie and The Clue in the Diary by Carolyn Keene (A Nancy Drew Mystery).

I’ll have reviews of both of them soon but I did enjoy them both. The Pale Horse was obviously more adult — I mean, not like “adult-adult” but more mature themes. But not like … mature-mature. *wink*

I’ve been enjoying some leisurely reading of P.G. Wodehouse’s The Imitable Jeeves.

The book is so funny and witty. It’s been a very nice escape. The Jeeves books are comedic books about Bertie Wooster, a British gentleman from London, who is always getting into somewhat weird situations where he has to be bailed out or helped by his valet Jeeves.

This book is exactly what I have needed this week.

I think I’m going to have to give up on The Happy Life of Isadora Bentley by Courtney Walsh before I even really get too far in it. I pushed through the first chapter wondering why the author was giving me so much information at once and when she was going to get to an actual story. The first chapter is entirely Isadora standing in a supermarket, thinking about her life with very little interaction with anyone else or action. It looks to me like the whole book is mainly her thinking about things and dumping a lot of info on the reader all in one go. I just can’t get into it, in other words.

I might try again this week, but otherwise I am going to move on to Prince Caspian and then But First Murder by Bee Littlefield.

This week I watched Gaslight (1944) as part of my Summer of Angela movie watching event and really enjoyed it. It isn’t a movie I’d watch over and over because it is pretty dark in some ways, but I did enjoy it. I also watched The Rains Came, a 1939 movie with Myrna Loy and Tyrone Powers and Abbott and Costello in The Jack and The Beanstalk.
This morning I watched church with Lisa Harper as the guest pastor and followed it up with a couple episodes of Just A Few Acres Farm.

I’m working on Gladwynn Grant Goes Back to School and wrote a little more this past week. I hope to have more time to write this week since Little Miss is going to VBS and I’ll probably wait at the church for her to save gas.

On the blog I shared:

Saturday Evening Chat: Fourth of July and prayers, not blaming, for Texas

Summer of Angela: Gaslight (1944)

Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot July 4th!

A Good Book And A Cup of Tea Link Up for July

Top Ten Tuesday: The Ten Most Recent Books I’ve Read

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.

Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.

You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find her on Instagram and YouTube.

Saturday Evening Chat: Fourth of July and prayers, not blaming, for Texas

On July 5, 2025July 5, 2025 By Lisa R. HowelerIn Saturday Afternoon Tea, Sunday Bookends19 Comments

I hope everyone in the U.S. had a very nice Fourth of July. My family did and partly thanks to cooler temperatures in our area.

It wasn’t too cold or too warm for our afternoon cookout and an early evening waving of sparklers in the backyard at my parents’ house.

Today we stayed inside from the warming temps and watched movies and relaxed while our son went to visit a friend.

Last night some neighbors were shooting off fireworks, which always freaks out Zooma the Wonder Dog.

She hates gunfire (which does happen here occasionally), thunder, and fireworks and lately when she hears any of those she has been getting so nervous she just paces back and forth and goes to each of the family members and paws at us. She was doing this last night. We tried to let her out to see if she needed to use the bathroom, gave her an extra treat, and do other things we thought she might want but finally decided it was indeed the fireworks upsetting her.

So last night I finally got a clue – after looking online and after an hour of her pawing and pacing and refusing to settle. I closed all the windows and turned on the fan and air conditioner for some white noise. Then I wrapped a blanket around her (thankfully yesterday was a cool day) and rubbed her temples and she started to close her eyes and finally flopped over on the couch next to me and fell asleep.

The poor thing had had a long day at my parents, running all over their property, and I knew she had to be exhausted. She laid next to me asleep under that blanket for a good hour.

I think the blanket is a comfort to her because in the winter our daughter covers her up like she is a baby and they fall asleep together that way.

She is a bit of a spoiled dog and she pretty much knows it.

Tonight I also I want to offer up prayers for the people of Kerrville, Texas and the surrounding area. I’m sure many of you know about the flooding there so I won’t go into detail. I’ve been struggling with the news of this since last night. My 10-year-old daughter has gotten a lot of hugs and kisses since I first heard yesterday. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about those girls and their families and the other victims.

I know that it seems to be common these days for people to try to politicize absolutely everything, but in this case, I wish people just wouldn’t.

The fingers of blame have been shot out at everyone from the current administration, the past administration, meteorologists, camp leaders, media, and everyone in between.

The fact is that sometimes some people might be to blame for a response to a weather event, but sometimes weather is going to do what weather is going to do. That doesn’t make the aftermath any easier or less horrifying, of course.

In 2011, when I lived 45 minutes north of where I live now, we were told by the National Weather Service we would get heavy rain from the remnants of Tropical Storm Sandy. There might even be flooding, we were told. It could be significant flooding, especially since our town was along two rivers that converged right at the end of town. We were not told the whole town might flood, though. That hadn’t happened since the remnants of Hurricane Agnes in 1972.

What we were not told until the middle of the night, mainly because forecasters didn’t know this was going to happen, was that the storm system had stalled over our area. That meant that rain kept falling and falling and falling. Hours earlier, business owners in our town’s business district were told they would get some damage, but their businesses should be fine. Homeowners were told to get to higher ground, but they should be okay.

By 2 or 3 a.m., though, it was clear those assurances were absolutely wrong. One business owner recalled to my husband that when they got the middle-of-the-night call from the fire department, they were told, “We were wrong. The weather people were wrong. The river is coming over its banks. You’re going to lose everything. You can’t come into town, though because there is water over the bridge and it’s not safe.”

The business district was destroyed. The next day, people were in boats on main street, just like in the photos I had seen from 1972. It was completely surreal.

People who hadn’t left their houses were trapped on their roofs. A few houses floated downstream, just like the photos we are seeing in Texas. As far as I know, the owners were not in the houses at the time. We did not have the high number of fatalities like they have in Texas.

I’m sure a lot of blame flew around after that flood, but most people understood what really happened was that nature did what nature does — acted in an unexpected way for us, but an expected way for it.

No one, or at least very few people, could have predicted that storm system would stall and dump more than 10 inches of rain on the area overnight and even more the next day.

From what I am reading about Texas, a similar situation occurred, but even worse because dams overflowed. I watched a video of how fast it all happened and yes, people knew there would be flooding, but flooding that wiped out entire towns? No. They didn’t predict that because the area had been a drought about two months ago. A lot of news channels are choosing not to share that because they want to stir up controversy.

While some responses might have been lacking (I have no idea yet), most people were completely caught off guard — even officials. This area isn’t like a city or even a well traveled rural area, from what I understand. This is true wilderness without not a ton of communication and that’s how people want it. These are campgrounds. They did have cellphones in some areas but even then they were keeping an eye on the water, but had no idea it was about to break loose further upstream.

I just wish the hyper-political people in our country (those who see life through political lenses only) would keep their mouths shut until we can at least bury the dead.

I should also add that there are still people missing in North Carolina from the flooding last autumn which surprisingly people have stopped talking about. That entire area is still devastated, and people are living in temporary housing, and others are still waiting to bury their dead.

There is too much tragedy in the world for us all to keep up on it, so I don’t blame people for not knowing about what is happening in N.C. still. I can’t take it all in most days. I disassociate myself by watching movies, reading books, and then writing blog posts about it all.

I simply wish we didn’t all have to start dividing each other even more during these tragedies. Screaming that this or that party is to blame for this or that natural disaster isn’t going to help these families through their grief. I hesitate and hate to say this, but I think in this situation, no amount of warning was going to help stop some of this from happening.

Even if they had known the rivers would rise fast, I don’t see how they could have known it would rise up to 20 feet in less than an hour. That’s just not something that normally happens….which brings me to another topic that I probably won’t write about on this blog ever because I usually try to keep posts here as happy as I can.

All this being said, I’ll be back to happier topics tomorrow in my Sunday Bookends when I write about Thriftbooks sending me the wrong book but it turned out to be a possible collectible.

Next week Little Miss and I will be going to VBS, helping my parents, and dealing with some heat again. Maybe we will even find some time for swimming.

What have you been doing and what do you have going on next week?

Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.

You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find her on Instagram and YouTube.

Sunday Bookends: Hot weather and a pretty Little Women book plus what I’m reading

On June 29, 2025June 29, 2025 By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends, Sunday Salon18 Comments

The heat this past week was awful. Just awful. We couldn’t get out house to cool down part of the time. But we survived and are experiencing much nicer and cooler temperatures now.

I haven’t been adding a lot of books to my shelf lately, but I thought I’d share this lovely Little Women book I recently bought from an online used bookshop.

It is an illustrated copy from the 1970s and I absolutely love the feel of the book overall, the illustrations inside, and the beautiful outside of the book, under the outside cover.

I know I will be rereading Little Women this year and other years. I might not read it all the way through again, but there are favorite sections I will definitely read over and over after I finally read it for the first time last year.

When I posted about this edition on my Instagram, several people commented that they had the exact same copy. Do any of you have a copy like this too?

I am still reading The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie but will have it done later this week. I’m not sure what I think of this one, but will probably go for a Miss Marple book for my next Agatha read.

I am also reading The Clue in the Diary by Carolyn Keene. It is a Nancy Drew mystery and it is the first book where she meets Ned Nickerson, who readers of Nancy Drew will know is her boyfriend throughout the series.

I am reading The Imitable Mr. Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse off and on.

I just started The Happy Life of Isadora Bentley by Courtney Walsh. It is too soon for me to decide if I will like it or not.

Up next I hope to read Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis.

Little Miss and I are listening to Prince Caspian at night but she can hear it better because the phone is closer to her and I am closer to the air conditioner, which means I really can’t follow the story at all. That’s why I am glad I am going to be reading it soon.

The Husband is reading Glitz by Elmore Leonard.

The Boy is listening to Perturabo by Guy Haley. It’s a Warhammer book.

Little Miss just started the fourth book in The Harry Potter series, Harry Potter And The Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling.

I rewatched The Manchurian Candidate with The Boy last night. I picked up even more than I did when I watched it. Earlier in the week I watched Bedknobs and Broomsticks and an episode of Ludwig. This week I hope to watch Agatha and Me With David Suchet, more Ludwig, and Gaslight with Angela Lansbury for my Summer of Angela.

This week on the blog I shared:

Newsletter for June: Gladwynn books on sale and a update on book four

Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot June 27 (In memory of Patrick Weseman)

Hodge Podge: What is adventure?

Episode Recap: The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, The Mystery of the Fallen Angel

I’ve been listening to old Jack Benny radio programs before bed.

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.

Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.

You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find her on Instagram and YouTube.

Sunday Bookends: Link parties, finished two books, & watching Angela movies

On June 22, 2025June 22, 2025 By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends, Sunday Salon15 Comments

I shared what I did last week in my Saturday Afternoon Chat yesterday. It was actually my Saturday Evening Chat because I got it up so late.

After I posted that, The Husband took Little Miss and her friend swimming at the local YMCA, which we had never visited before. Now that we know the pool exists we will probably visit it more this summer.

Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are still holding Drop-In Crafternoons once or twice a month.

We will be holding another one Saturday, July 19 at 1 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. There is one woman who creates with beads, another who colors, I sometimes draw or color, and Erin does a variety of art, including embroidery. We are calling them drop-in crafternoons because you can drop in and out during the time we are on. 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.

If you are looking for a link party to participate in, I co-host one with three lovely blogger ladies that goes live on Thursday nights. The Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot goes live about 9:30 p.m. each Thursday and if you scroll on my right-hand sidebar you should find the link to the latest one.

I also have added a link to parties I participate in at the top of my page.

I am going to leave up my monthly link-up for all things book-related. You can find a link to the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea link party at the top of my page or click here https://lisahoweler.com/2025/06/08/a-good-book-a-cup-of-tea-june-2025-party/

What I am reading – I finally finished All Things Wise and Wonderful the week before last and really loved it – especially a story at the end of the book involving Tristan, the date he tossed into the rose bushes, and a missing dog.

I also finished A Midnight Dance by Joanna Davidson Politano. I would give it about a 3.5. I didn’t like how the mystery part wrapped up or how the main character had this huge secret she dropped at the very end but never really resolved. Politano’s writing is very good, though, and I am sure I will read another one by her at some point in the future.

Right now I am reading The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie and switching off with The Inimitable Jeeves by P.G. Woodhouse.

I plan to start The Happy Life of Isadora Bentley by Courtney Walsh sometime this week.

I hope to start Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis soon as well.

The Husband is reading A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

Little Miss is finishing up the third Harry Potter book after a long break, and she and I are reading Magical Melons by Carol Ryrie Brink together and listening to The Moffats at night.

I didn’t add any new books to my shelves recently, other than a couple I found on Project Gutenberg and will be sending to my Kindle to read.

Last week I watched National Velvet for my Summer of Angela. I also rewatched The Sound of Music for a comfort watch and a few episodes of Travels with Agatha Christie & Sir David Suchet.

Last week on the blog:

Summer of Angela: National Velvet (1944)

Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot June 20

Top Ten Tuesday: 10 Books I want to read this summer Summer of Angela: The Manchurian Candidate

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.

Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.

You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find her on Instagram and YouTube.

Saturday Evening Chat: Meeting fellow bloggers, no link party here, and flowers are blooming

On June 21, 2025June 21, 2025 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Saturday Afternoon Tea18 Comments

Hello! Good Saturday evening. This was supposed to go up this afternoon, but life got busy so it got delayed.

Sit down and have some tea and a snack with me. My sister-in-law sent a whole bunch of tea with my brother when he visited last week so I have a variety for you to choose from. A honey ginger tea, green tea with lemon, Earl Gray, one for relaxation (I may ten cups of that tonight!), and a couple of others. And, of course, I have my go-to, plain peppermint.

First, a bit of housekeeping:

This post will no longer be a link party. Why? Because there are so many link parties out there already that I am a part of or participate in and they are great. And because I like my Saturday posts just to be a chat post with my blog followers.

If you are looking for a link party to participate in, I co-host one with three lovely blogger ladies that goes live on Thursday nights. The Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot goes live about 9:30 p.m. each Thursday (unless I’m late like this week. Whoops!) and if you scroll on my right-hand sidebar you should find the link to the latest one.

I also have added a link to parties I participate in at the top of my page.

I am going to leave up my monthly link-up for all things book-related. You can find a link to the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea link party at the top of my page.

With all of that out of the way, on to today’s post which will be about pretty much nothing. Ha!

No, it will be about something. I did actually do a few things this past week.

One very exciting something I did this past week was meet the blogger at Mama’s Empty Nest this past week. I don’t know if she shares her first name on her blog or not, since I’ve never seen her do it, so I won’t share it here. I’ll just call her C.

Over the years, I have loved reading C’s stories about her various trips across our country or into Canada. I have also been blessed and encouraged by the posts she shares about her faith. She’s hit a bit of a snag with her blog lately because WordPress says she is almost out of storage space and is trying to force her to upgrade. She likes to share photos from her various travels, so this has created quite the conundrum for her. and I am about in the same boat. The snag has led to her taking a bit of a break from her blog while she tries to reduce what’s in her storage. It’s also led to her and I both feeling like Wordress stinks a bit as a blog host.

C and her husband are trying to travel to each county in the state of Pennsylvania in the next few years. They are from the western part of Pennsylvania and I am in the East so they were able to mark a few more counties off their list this week, including mine.

C was also able to mark off seeing yet another covered bridge, which is another goal of hers. We have a beautiful covered bridge about 20 minutes from us that is located next to one of our favorite restaurants, so I suggested that as our meeting place. It let C check off two of her goals in a row — visiting another county and seeing a covered bridge.

Of course, they actually did see our county on their way through to visit Williamsport in Lycoming County. They were even able to see our county’s one stoplight in the middle of the town I live in. How terribly exciting for them. Ha!

The Husband had a later-than-planned day of work that day and The Boy wasn’t feeling well, so in the end it was just Little Miss and I who met with them. We were excited to introduce them to our local Philadelphia cheesesteak place. The restaurant is owned by someone who is originally from south Philadelphia. There are a variety of different ways to make a cheesesteak in Philadelphia and Big Mike (the restaurant owners) offers it a few different ways. C and her husband had never tried a cheesesteak with cheese whiz so they were excited to try one.

We had a nice dinner of cheesesteaks and chicken salads, sweet potato fries, and fried pickle chips, sitting on the picnic tables by the restaurant, overlooking the Loyalsock Creek and the Forksville Covered Bridge.

Little Miss is very shy around her peers and tends to open up more to adults at times. She usually opens up more when she gets to know a person, but for some reaso,n she connected immediately with C and her lovely husband.

C said later, maybe it is because they gave off “cool grandparent vibes” and Little Miss had to agree.

C and her husband have four grandchildren, one of them Little Miss’s age, and from what I have read on her blog, they really are the cool grandparents.

Little Miss loved sharing all kinds of stories with them and showing them photos of a range of pets and people from her life. She also enjoyed feeding the birds and a chipmunk hopping around the outside tables.

After filling our bellies and chatting, C and her lovely husband were back on the road again, with plans to leave the next day for home. Before leaving C gifted me with a box of Amish Inn Mysteries books after she read on my blog that I have been reading them. I’d take a photo of them to post here but they are in the back of my car, which isn’t here at the moment since my husband is using it to pick up a friend of Little Miss’s for a playdate.

I am not including photos of myself here, even though we took a photo together, because I don’t enjoy photos of myself, but here is a lovely photo of the covered bridge.

C and I met on Wednesday. On Thursday I went to my parents to help clean and ended up chatting the afternoon away with the wife of a man who came to purchase some old collector bottles from my dad.

My grandmother collected bottles for years and also won awards for her collection. Those bottles are still at my parents but with them getting older and me not having room for the collection my dad is beginning to sell them off.

It will be hard to let them go but there simply isn’t any way to keep everything.

On Friday, the kids and I had to stop at two government offices for various reasons and pick up groceries. It was a frustrating day in many ways and that really isn’t a surprise since the previous sentence included the words, “government offices.”

I believe frustration is the main feeling you end up with after dealing with government offices. That and anger. Sometimes even rage — especially when those offices have new rules every time you walk in the door.

One week they allowed us to use certain documentation to obtain a replacement social security card for our son and two weeks later they denied us the ability to do the same for our daughter. I truly feel that government employees either don’t actually know the rules, don’t care about the rules, or change the rules every time a new person comes in just to make their own, mundane life more exciting.

We did come home with what The Boy needed from his government office visit, but not what Little Miss needed.

After we came home, I tripped over a shovel in our garage and fell hard on my hands and needs on the concrete floor. I landed on both knees but more so the knee which had only just healed up from a fall on our sidewalk last summer.

There are many reasons I hate summer, and I can add falling on my face at least once during the season to that list now, apparently.

I actually didn’t fall right on my face, but close to it.

I bent my glasses, possibly cracked my phone (I found that crack later in the evening), and was left with a very bruised knee. Despite all that, I feel very lucky. Usually, a fall like that leaves me very, very sore the next day and could have left me with a broken bone, but I’m doing fairly well today. The knee isn’t feeling too great, but it isn’t as painful as it was last year when I twisted it.

While I was sitting and trying to recover from my fall, my mom called and said my dad was having chest pains that were radiating to his back so The Husband ran out the door and drove him to the ER. Dad refused an ambulance.

Because my mom has been having falls lately (luckily ones that have just left her on her bottom and not seriously injured), I headed over to stay with her, limping into the house. I left there at midnight after Dad had a clean-bill of health from the ER. They determined he had gas and a severe muscle pull.

This afternoon I had a Crafternoon with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and others. I am also not leaving my house for the next several days for my mental and physical health.

We are scheduled to have dangerous heat for the next four or five days and my nerves are a bit shot from yesterday. We already have a heat advisory in place. Humidity is supposed to be very high on top of temperatures in the low to mid-90s.

Heat and I don’t mix well together. It bothers my asthma and other issues.

The roses outside my house bloomed in full force this week but are quickly falling off and will be gone by the end of the week most likely. I will miss them as they seem to be one of the few highlights for me in summer.

The rest of summer is a muggy, hot, yucky mess that leaves me not feeling good. This year we won’t have a pool at my parents because it has become too much for my dad and us to maintain. This is disheartening to both me and Little Miss because we enjoyed it so much.

So there has been a mix of sadness and happiness going on in my neck of the woods lately.

How about you? How was your week last week?

I’d love to hear about it in the comments, or you can leave me a link if you have a weekly round up post of some kind.

Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.