Tag: week in review

Sunday Chat: Last week was a disappointing week in many ways.

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends18 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.

Last week was a disappointing week in many ways.

I am not going to go into a ton of details on my blog but we had a bad experience with a staff member of our local library and have decided that we can no longer attend the place I fell in love with reading.

It was heartbreaking and hurtful and a bit shocking, so I spent the second half of the week and this weekend in a deep depression over it all. I’m still very, very down today. It was so surreal and it’s still hard to wrap my mind around how my daughter and I were treated. This is one of those times I did not read into what happened or misunderstood. Not at all.

My daughter was also very hurt, and it breaks my heart she will not have the same experience I did with this little town library that I did when I was growing up.

Maybe this week things will be better. We are looking for a new library to patronize and new places to participate in activities.

It will be colder than last week it looks like, and that isn’t going to be fun but we will take it one day at a time.

I am so down this weekend I barely had the mental energy to write this post today at first.

I will say that we had a crafternoon link up on Zoom yesterday and that did lift my spirits. There were three of us and we had fun discussing crafts, books, libraries, and all things in between. Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I hope to hold our crafternoons once or twice a month and will be changing them to “drop-in crafternoons” so even if a person wants to drop in for a half hour to chat and do some crafts they can. Email me at a lisahoweler@gmail.com or Erin at crackercrumblife@gmail.com if you want to get on our list for the Zoom link!

These chats and opportunities to just relax and craft have been so nice and needed. I know that sometimes I don’t take the time to do things that relax me and take my mind off of the stresses of life. The virtual meetups are a way I “force” myself to slow down and take some time for me. I am so grateful to Erin for having this idea. It’s been such a boost to my mental health.

Last week I finished The Case of the Clueless Kitten by Erle Stanley Gardner. It is not about kittens (not really) and it is a Perry Mason mystery.

I really enjoyed it and plan to share a review of it. I love Gardner’s writing.

This week I am reading:

Chocolate Chip Cookie Murders by Joanne Fluke (am I the only one who has never heard of putting egg shells in coffee grounds before brewing them!?)

Whose Body by Dorothy Sayers (not sure why I abandoned this before. I must have been tired and not tracking. I am enjoying it so far.0

And before bed some nights I am reading All Things Wise and Wonderful by James Herriot. This one seems to be a retelling of some stories mixed in with stories of his time in the RAF.

My “long” read (or the read I am taking my time on) is The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien and I am really enjoying it.

Little Miss and I finished Miracle on Maple Hill, which we listened to on Hoopla.

We will be starting  The Littlest Voyageur by Margi Preus  tomorrow for school and for fun.

The Husband is reading When One Man Dies by Dave White.   

The Husband and I are making our way through Castle.

I started A Touch of Mink. I didn’t finish it yet but not really sure what I think of it…Not my favorite Cary Grant, even though it is somewhat funny.

I also watched Just A Few Acres Farm on YouTube to try to relax from the stressful week.

Next week I will be getting ready for Springtime in Paris, the next movie event with Erin.

We will be watching movies that take place in Paris. Erin and I watch the movie one week and then share our thoughts about the movie on a Thursday on our blog. So the dates listed on the graphic are the dates we will share our thoughts on our blogs.

Then we offer a link for other bloggers to share their thoughts on the same movie. You do not have to watch the movies at the same time as us or even put your link up for a particular movie on the week we watch it. Just drop a link whenever you watch whichever movie. And you absolutely do not have to watch every movie to participate.

Here is our schedule:

Last week on the blog I shared:

I am listening to the podcast True Drew Podcast about all things Nancy Drew and will be listening to Sabotage at Cedar Creek by Janice Thompson on Hoopla later this week.

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.

In addition to my blog, I write fiction, and you can learn more about my books here: https://lisahoweler.com/my-books-2/

I also have a Substack where I share about my writing journey or books.

Sunday Bookends: Warmer weather and my socially introverted family

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends20 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.

I took Little Miss to the little playground in our little town twice this week thanks to higher temperatures. They were high for us anyhow after coming out of a very arctic winter.

The first day it was close to 60 degrees Fahrenheit and the second day it was about 55 degrees. Friday it was over 60 degrees. Yesterday it was about 55 but still sunny and we took another trip to the playground with a friend of Little Miss’s.

Today it is pouring rain, and we are supposed to get some nasty storms.

I do like when it is warmer and sunny but still miss chilly days where I have an excuse to stay home. What I like most about the warmer weather, though, is being able to sit outside and not feel chilled to the bone.

That first day we went to the playground she made me smile by being brave and approaching a little girl she didn’t know and asking her if they could play together. She was nervous to approach the little girl because she said she is used to texting people not talking, which was weird for me to hear but also understandable in this modern age.

Some people think that homeschooled children are shy because they don’t interact with other children. My child does interact with other children through local homeschool activities, library activities, the local 4-H, a Bible program at a church near us, her friends, and Vacation Bible School. She’s still shy.

I attended public school all the way from Kindergarten to twelfth grade. I was shy all the way through and still am.

I know that public school can afford more opportunities to interact with peers but it isn’t always a positive interaction. I was able to interact with my peers and I hated it. I was an introvert through and through. Not a recluse but an introvert. Little Miss has a similar personality. She likes to socialize but when her meter is filled, which sometimes can happen fairly fast, she prefers to go off on her own and participate in quiet activities. My son is the same.

It cracks me up when we come back from an event or a friend goes home and she flops in her chair and says, “Whew! That’s enough social interaction for the week. I need some alone time.”

After she introduced herself to the little girl at the playground earlier this week, and they had played for a bit, she came over to me and said, “She wanted to add me to a group chat on her Messenger Kids (which is a Facebook app monitored by parents) but I’m  not ready for that.”

As a GenXer, it is crazy for me to hear that a 10-year-old is being invited to an online group chat by an 8-year-old. We did not exchange contact information with the little girl but if we had I would have had to contact her parents on Facebook, and we would both have to give permission for our children to talk. Then I would have had to be the one to be social with strangers. I was so relieved when Little Miss said she wasn’t ready for that level of interaction. Ha!

Little Miss and I have been attending 4-H cooking classes once a week for the last two weeks. Well, Little Miss has been doing the cooking, and I have been reading a book in the hallway. She really enjoys cooking and has been enjoying attending the class with a little girl who also goes to the church program o.

We attended the first class with my 81-year-old dad who, of course, immediately found someone to talk to while we waited for her. I had been worried he would be bored but he was not at all. He enjoyed talking to a young man there about local history as they looked at a mural on the wall in the building we were at. The Mural is beautiful and showcases history of the small town and county we were/are in.

Dad always seems to find someone to talk to no matter where we go.

I finished The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis last week.



I am reading the biography of James Herriot by his son Jim Wight very slowly because it is rather dull in many parts. I have had to skim a lot of unnecessary information about his time in veterinary school. It truly was unnecessary in my mind, but some readers may enjoy it.

Most of the time this week I have been reading The Case of the Careless Kitten by Erle Stanley Gardner. It’s a Perry Mason mystery and I am really enjoying it. I love Gardner’s style of writing and the banter between Lieutenant Tagg and Perry.

I am slowly reading The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien.

I hope to start Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery this week for Middle Grade March.

After that I will be starting Between the Sound and Sea by Amanda Cox.

The Husband is between books.

The Boy is also between books.

Little Miss is reading Harry Potter: The Prisoner of Azkaban.

This week I watched more Edwardian Farm, two episodes of Castle, my farmer on YouTube, and a Booktuber who was designing her reading journal.

I also started an old movie with Cary Grant that I did not enjoy at all, so I am going to be looking for another old movie this week.

I started writing book four of the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries last week.

Last week on the blog I shared:

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.

In addition to my blog, I write fiction, and you can learn more about my books here: https://lisahoweler.com/my-books-2/

I also have a Substack where I share about my writing journey or books.

Sunday Bookends: Grandma Ruth, Middle Earth, and Middle Grade March

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends18 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.

I finished Grandma Ruth Doesn’t Go To Funerals by Sharon Mondragon last week and really enjoyed it. I could see this one being a movie. I will write a longer review later but I loved the characters and the story overall.

In case you are curious about it, here is a description:

In a small town where gossip flows like sweet tea, bedridden Mary Ruth McCready reigns supreme, doling out wisdom and meddling in everyone’s business with a fervor that would make a matchmaker blush. When her best friend, Charlotte Harrington, has her world rocked by a scandalous revelation from her dying husband P. B., Mary Ruth kicks into high gear, commandeering the help of her favorite granddaughter, Sarah Elizabeth, in tracking down the truth. Finding clues in funeral condolence cards and decades-old gossip dredged up at the Blue Moon Beauty Emporium, the two stir up trouble faster than you can say “pecan pie.”

And just when things are starting to look up, in waltzes Camilla “Millie” Holtgrew, a blast from P. B.’s past, with a grown son and an outrageous claim to Charlotte’s inheritance. But as Grandma Ruth always says when things get tough, “God is too big.” With him, nothing is impossible–even bringing long-held secrets to light. Grandma Ruth and Sarah just might have to ruffle a whole mess of feathers to do it.

 Next up I am continuing The Real James Herriot: A Memoir of My Father by Jim Wight. So far it is very dry and dull so I may toss it aside but I’d love to get to the years where he worked as a vet and some of the behind the scenes stories first. We will see how it goes.

I also started The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien, which will be my slow read for the next couple of months. I am loving it so far, even if we lost one of the team on the first page. *sniff*

I started The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis the other night for my Middle Grade March read. I also hope to read Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery for Middle Grade March. Little Miss and I are reading Miracles on Maple Hill by Virginia Sorenson for school, which is a re-read for me.

Once those are done, I hope to start Whose Body? By Dorothy L. Sayers. I’ve never read anything by her so we will see how I like her.

The Husband is on his 25th book of the year. Sigh. He reads fast but has also had some extra time to read this year so that’s cool for him. Or whatever. *wink*

He is reading Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned by Walter Mosley.

I have been watching more historical farming shows this past week and not a ton else. I actually read more than watched things.

This upcoming week I hope to watch more Murder She Wrote and a couple of old movies.

I started writing book four of the Gladwynn Grant series this past week.

On the blog I shared:

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.

In addition to my blog, I write fiction, and you can learn more about my books here: https://lisahoweler.com/my-books-2/

I also have a Substack where I share about my writing journey or books.

Sunday Bookends: Finally an outing and finished a couple of books (also finally)

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends18 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.

Saturday, the family and I got out of the house for an outing for the first time in months.

We drove about an hour south to attend a gathering at a pottery studio with the local homeschooling group.

The group leader had set up a chance for our students to visit the studio and paint pottery. It was a gloomy day to travel on, but it was still nice to get out. We didn’t stay as long at the studio as I hoped, with Little Miss declaring she was done and over it all within a half hour of arriving.

I had gone to the car to get a drink of water and The Husband and she had stayed back to finish her project, which was very small and not terribly exciting to me, and when I looked back up after a few minutes of being in the car they were walking toward me.

They were done and ready to get lunch, The Husband said.

Little Miss chose a small paw print to paint. If that’s what she wanted, that was okay, of course, and it was one of the cheaper items available so it worked out well but I still thought she’d really want to paint a larger piece of pottery.

I thought she might choose something larger which would give us longer to interact with the other children there. Unfortunately only four families showed up and there were only about six kids there, including mine, and three of them were boys and Little Miss had no interest in talking to them.

I had these grand visions of introducing Little Miss to the fellow homeschooled children casually by asking the children what they were working on and then telling them what Little Miss was working on and how old she was, etc. etc. but Little Miss has a  mind of her own and when she’s done with her art or project, she simply likes to leave.

(I am editing my original post here to make it clear that I love Little Miss has a mind of her own so this isn’t a complaint. As the comments came in I realized I hadn’t really clarified that.

It just cracks me up that I always have these plans to try to encourage her to step out of her comfort zone and she’s like, “nope. This is how it’s going to be..” and is not swayed one bit. I think it’s going to really pay off as she gets older to be that aware of what she wants and not compromise…. Though it would be nice if she stepped out just a bit so she can meet some new people but that will come organically over time.)

At lunch at a local restaurant we found online, Little Miss also said she thought my plan sounded creepy.

“Hey, little girl,” she said in a creepy voice, I guess pretending to be me. “How old are you?”

The Husband and The Boy thought her impression was pretty funny, but that is not how I was going to ask. I was going to attempt to engage them in conversation so Little Miss could also engage them in conversation. These attempts of mine pretty much fail every time. We will have other opportunities with events going on with the local 4-H and homeschool groups this spring as well.

The hamburger I ordered was the largest I have ever seen circumference-wise!

Yesterday Little Miss and The Husband went to see Paddington 3 and The Boy and I stayed at home and did our own thing. He played a video game (Skyrim) and I doodled in my reading journal, colored in some Nancy Drew illustrations, worked on blog posts (including this one), snuck a couple spoonfuls of some ice cream we’d picked up the day before, and watched some YouTubers.

This week we don’t much planned, other than me going to my parents at least once or twice to help clean.

I finished Every Living Thing by James Herriot and Nancy Drew: The Sign of the Twisted Candles by Carolyn Keene this past week.

Now I’m reading Grandma Ruth Doesn’t Go To Funerals by Sarah Mondragon and really enjoying it. I found it for free on Hoopla and I can only read it on my phone, which is terribly annoying. Hoopla doesn’t allow it to be sent to a Kindle and I don’t have a notebook to read it on. It can be read on my laptop but that isn’t very comfortable for me. I don’t want to pay full price for it until I am sure I like it and it released in February so..this is my only option at the moment.

Little Miss and I are reading Miracles on Maple Hill for school after finishing The Sign of the Beaver last week. I’ve read Miracles on Maple Hill before but wanted to read it with Little Miss this time of year (maple season in Pennsylvania) and it will fit with Middle Grade March.

I’ll also be reading The Moffats by Eleanor Estes and Violet Jenkins Saves The Day by Stacey Faubion for Middle Grade March. I may try to squeeze in Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry but that might have to wait until March.

The Husband is reading The Maltese Iguana by Tim Dorsey.

The Boy is reading Frankenstein.

This past week I watched All Creatures Great and Small’s season finale and cried through it. I also watched Edwardian Farm, which was more of a rewatch because I watched it before but missed a ton of it because I kept wandering out of the room or family members talked through it. Ha. Family. I tell ya.

I also watched The Rise of Catherine the Great as part of my Winter of Douglas Fairbanks Jr., which finishes up this week.

In April and May, Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I will be watching movies that take place in Paris. We will update you more on that and our choices when it gets closer to the start date.

I am working on making all of my ebooks of my fiction books available for purchase through my site so you can “own” the ebook (or the license to read it) and read it where you want to.

I started brainstorming more of book four of the Gladwynn Grant Mystery series as well.

Last week on the blog I shared:

|| Glimpses of February by The Farm Wife Reads ||

|| Fridays Fave Five by Stray Thoughts ||

|| Late Snack by Words From Anneli ||

|| Grief Journey Day 197 by A Little Bit of Everything With Love ||

|| Review: Pioneer Girl, The Annotated Autobiography of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Impressions in Ink ||

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.

Sunday Bookends: The Get Rid of Hiccups Trick, what I thought of the Miss Marple Short Stories, and a Paris movie marathon being planned

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends13 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.

Throughout my childhood and teenage years my family and I would visit my mom’s side of the family in Jacksonville, N.C. for Christmas at my grandmother and aunt’s house.

One day when I was about 18 or so, my parents told me we were going to drive a couple hours west to see my mom’s aunt and uncle and cousins in a little town called Farmville.

I had  never met this part of the family before so I didn’t know what to think of them. The house was full of chatter as soon as we arrived. Chatter and offers of food.

“Y’all come on in here and get yourself some food,” Cousin Joyce said from the kitchen.

Conversations began to take the path they usually do in Mom’s family — several of them being held at once all at the same time, back and forth between each other. I did my best to keep track. The conversations were mainly between my grandmother, mom, aunt Dianne, Cousin Joyce, Cousin Janet and Aunt Mattie.

Uncle Ray — full name Ashley Ray Waignwright (isn’t the quentissintial Southern name?!), a short man with very little hair, wearing a pair of small, wire-rimmed glasses, and looking a bit somber, was sitting in a little rocking chair. He was participating in some of the conversations but not much. Mainly he was observing.

 At some point I developed the  hiccups. They were painful and wouldn’t stop.

Mom suggested I drink some water. Aunt Dianne said a spoonful of sugar. Someone else suggested holding my breath.

Uncle Ray narrowed his eyes.

“Heard what you been saying about me, girl.”

I was startled. Was he looking at me? I looked behind me. There was no one there. It had to be me he was talking to.

“I—I’m sorry?”

He frowned. “You. I heard what you been saying about me.”

“I-I – know I haven’t said anything.”

Mom hadn’t mentioned her uncle Ray was going senile but this conversation was getting weirder by the moment.

“You sure did,” he said. “You know it and I know it so you just need to apologize.”

“I—I .. but…”

His grim expression didn’t crack. “Where those hiccups gone?”

“What? What do you mean?”

A small smile tipped the corner of his mouth upward. “Your hiccups. They’re gone, aren’t they?”

I dragged in a ragged breath and let it out again.

The rest of the conversations had stopped during this exchange and I heard my mom laugh.

It was beginning to hit me now.

“He got you, didn’t he?” Mom asked.

Uncle Ray was smiling more now. Yes, he’d got me, and the panic I’d felt at thinking he thought I’d said something awful about him had been enough to stop the hiccups

I am juggling a few books right now – I know that sounds weird, but I do that because I read one during the day and one at night sometimes.  

I prefer to read my mysteries during the day and more relaxing or light books before bed. I’ve found if I read mysteries before bed, I dream about people dying or chasing me. Even with cozier mysteries. Not always, but sometimes. If the mystery is too good, I still read it at night and just put up with the weird dreams.

Anyhow, I just finished The Tuesday Night Club (Miss Marple short stories) by Agatha Christie and ended up liking it more as I continued it. It is a series of short stories involving several familiar characters from Miss Marple books all gathered together discussing mysterious cases they’d heard of or investigated and asking if everyone listening could figure out what really happened.

There was a lot of subtle humor in the book that ended up making the repetitiveness of how almost each story ended with Miss Marple solving the case presented by each person and then that person, who previously said they didn’t know the solution, or someone else in the room, saying that they suddenly had remembered she was right and they had heard what had really happened.  It was a bit tedious but not every story ended that way, luckily. I mean, Miss Marple did solve it every time, but there wasn’t always a sudden realization from someone else in the room knew what really happened.

I will finish Every Living Thing by James Herriot this week, as far as I know anyhow.

I’ve already started The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman and I’m not sure what I think so far. POV’s keep changing and there is a lot more detail about a lot of characters than I think is needed so….we will see if I can make it through or not. I’ve heard good things about it, so I’m sure I will end up liking it.

I will need a slightly lighter read for nights later this week so I will be picking up Little Men again or finishing up Nancy Drew: The Sign of the Twisted Candles.

Little Miss and I have almost finished Sign of the Beaver for history.

The Boy and I are still pushing through Frankenstein. I don’t want to talk about it. I just can’t wait to graduate him this year. We are starting Romeo and Juliet in March. Lord, be with us.

He’s also listening to No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

The Husband is reading Hot Property by Mike Lupica.

This week I watched Murder She Wrote, Victorian Farm, All Creatures Great and Small, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 with the kids (let’s be honest. I didn’t pay much attention to it.), my farmer on YouTube (Just a Few Acres), and Sinbad the Sailor.

Upcoming in April: Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs, and I are planning on a Paris themed movie marathon. We will keep you updated.

I’ll be starting book four in the Gladwynn Grant series soon and have decided I’ll probably only write six books in this series and, yes, I will wrap up that “love triangle” in book four or five. Probably book four. It’s boring even for me at this point.

On the blog I wrote:

I am listening to Frankenstein on Audible and hope to continue it this week

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.

Sometimes there are issues with commenting on WordPress. If you can’t comment, but want to, please feel free to hit the contact link at the top of the page.

In addition to my blog, I write fiction, and you can learn more about my books here: https://lisahoweler.com/my-books-2/


You can also support my writing and chat about books, mysteries, old movies, vintage books, mystery shows, etc. for $3 a month at my Patreon here: https://patreon.com/LisaHoweler.

If you like my content you can subscribe to my posts for free here too.

Sunday Bookends: More cold weather and switching back and forth between books

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Sunday Bookends18 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.

The weather is so cold in our area that we are doing our best to conserve heating oil by dressing in layers, wrapping ourselves in blankets, and using microwavable rice packs to warm our feet and laps. This might sound dystopian to some, but I have actually been having fun with it and enjoying my little blanket nests and my warm rice packs. Check back after our planned arctic cold snap this week and see if I still see this all as an adventure. Of course, my attitude will also plan on whether or not I need to go out in the cold on any of the days that the weather is supposed to be so cold.

I talked a little about what else has been going on in our world in my Saturday Afternoon Chat yesterday.

I’ve been switching between The Tuesday Night Club (Miss Marple) by Agatha Christie and Every Living Thing by James Herriot.

I read Miss Marple during the day, usually, and James Herriot right before bed.

I am enjoying them both, but Herriot’s a bit better. Both are a collection of short stories with some connections, such as characters. I am not a huge fan of Christie’s writing style at times and this format, which involves people sitting around and telling each other stories, is a bit dry to me. The stories are good but it does get repetitive for every story to feature someone telling a story they supposedly don’t have an ending to, Miss Marple to solve the case, and then the person telling the story to go, “Actually, I do know what really happened. Let me tell you.”

It’s all a bit tedious but there are some humorous moments and quotes from Miss Marple so I am pushing through.

I also just started Nancy Drew: The Sign of the Twisted Candles by Carolyn Keene.

I am itching for a good novel after these two, which I will finish this week, so I am planning to start A Fatal Footnote by Margaret Loudon, which is a cozy mystery.

I am listening to Frankenstein while doing my dishes.

Little Miss and I are also reading Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare.

She is reading (here and there) Harry Potter: Prisoner of Azkaban.

The Husband is reading Starter Villain by John Scalzi.

This past week The Husband and I watched the first part of Going Postal on Peacock. I watched a lot of Victorian Farm and more All Creatures Great And Small (even going back to the beginning for fun).

I also watched Angels Over Broadway from 1940.

Last week on the blog I shared:

Now It’s Your Turn!

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

This 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.

Some commenters have been telling me there are issues with commenting on WordPress. If you can’t comment, but want to, please feel free to hit the contact link at the top of the page.

In addition to my blog, I write fiction, and you can learn more about my books here: https://lisahoweler.com/my-books-2/


You can also support my writing and chat about books, mysteries, old movies, vintage books, mystery shows, etc. for $3 a month at my Patreon here: https://patreon.com/LisaHoweler.

If you like my content you can subscribe to my posts for free here too.

Saturday Afternoon Chat: Small town newspapers and small town vets

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Saturday Afternoon Tea10 Comments

Tuesday morning, I watched my neighbor drive by my house and less than two minutes later drive back again.

He and his wife run our little county newspaper and Tuesdays are their publication day.

In a few minutes, he came back again with his white newspaper van (which we jokingly call the kidnapper van). I’m not sure if he forgot it was the day to pick up and distribute the newspapers or what, but it was somewhat funny to watch.

Their little newspaper, by the way, is not who my husband works for. Their paper is more like a community announcement paper, with little to no hard-hitting news and not even names on most of the stories. It is a beloved staple in the community because of its simple presentation and has been around for probably 100 years. My neighbor’s dad and mom owned the paper before him.  His dad, Tom “Doc” Shoemaker was also the local vet and a wonderful man, as far as I know. I based a side character in my latest book on him.

In the book I share how the vet checks over Gladwynn and Lucinda’s cat and I drew on an actual experience we had with Doc Shoemaker when I was a child. My dad and I had taken one of our cats to see Doc Shoemaker because we had noticed blood in the snow when he went to the bathroom (I think that was the incident anyhow) and Doc wasn’t exactly rough, but he wasn’t exactly soothing either. He did speak to our cat — Zorro — in a fairly soothing tone but then he abruptly and quickly yanked Zorro’s tail up and inserted an old-fashioned thermometer right where the sun don’t shine.

Another time we took our pet dog to him, and he had to pull needles from a porcupine out of her snout. Poor, pup.

I have book here that Doc’s family self published and I really want to sit down and read it this spring. I think it will be a nice follow up the James Herriot book I am currently reading.

Poor cat. It was necessary though because it helped to determine that he had a UTI and needed antibiotics. Poor Zorro had bladder problems for the rest of his life, but lived until he was around 20-years-old. Longevity must be something which occurs with black cats because The Husband and I also had a black cat and she lived until she was 19.

She was so old that when we took her in at 17 the vet (not Doc Shoemaker because we were living an hour from where he had once practiced and because he was retired) asked if we had named another cat Squeek.

 Squeek was my husband’s cat and I said, ‘no’ that this was the cat he’d brought in some 15 years before after rescuing her on the street. The vet tech was shocked. Even more shocked, I’m sure, when we had to bring her in two years later to have her put to sleep after she had a stroke and could no longer walk.

As I write this I have a cat and a dog staring at me from my bed.

They are not staring at me because they want me to go to bed. They are staring at me because they want me to give them a sample of coconut oil. I don’t know why but they both love coconut oil. The only coconut oil brand they seem to like though is Better Body Foods.

One time I picked up some organic coconut oil from Aldi and they wouldn’t even look at it. They literally walked away. This makes me wonder what the difference between the two coconut oils is.

So yesterday we went grocery shopping in the store for the first time in probably a year. We did this because I had tried to place an order with Instacart to Aldi for pick up but was told I could not have my order at the time I had chosen. Instead, I could have it at some point but they had no idea when. That didn’t work for me since I had other things I wanted to accomplish today and didn’t want to simply wait at home for them to tell me when I could come get my order. I have to drive 30-minutes to get to an Aldi, or any large store, so I needed an actual time.

This was all even more irritating because something similar happened last week when we were supposed to pick up our groceries at 5 on Friday, but two hours before they sent me an email and said my pickup time had been moved to the next day.

That wasn’t convenient for us at all but there was no way to contact anyone and even Instacart didn’t help because when I did a chat with them via text on their app, they said they would move the time and did. It was changed right back, however, by the staff at our local Aldi (I guess) so we had to get it on Saturday.

The reason we do pickup is because I have a couple of weird health issues where some days I feel well and other days I deal with a lightheaded and weak feeling when I do something like shop at a grocery store. No idea what it is, other than being overweight, having hypothyroidism, and getting a bit old. A friend would like me to be checked for POTS, as I do have some symptoms of that, but I have not yet asked a doctor about it. Hopefully in March.

Plus, pick up keeps us from buying extra things we don’t need and it is simply faster. I did find today, though, that there seemed to be more options available in the store than on the Instacart app.

I am not sure what we will do about pickup next week now that we’ve had two weeks of Instacart issues.

The nice thing about yesterday, though, was that The Boy, my 18-year-old son, offered to do the shopping for me. In addition to my weird health issue, I’ve also been dealing with a very sore knee (or muscle by the knee really). Luckily it is so much better but a lot of walking isn’t yet in the cards. In The Boy and Little Miss did the shopping and I helped some by walking around the store some, but not all the way around.

Little Miss has always loved helping to shop and has been very disappointed that we haven’t been able to do it lately.  She even likes riding with me to get the pickup. It’s our mother-daughter time and we listen to audiobooks on the way. The Husband or my dad have been picking up our orders lately because we are currently down to one vehicle. I’m grateful we’ve been able to do the pickup as long as we have and hope that we can continue to do so.

Today we are supposed to get a freezing rain/snow mix, so we don’t have plans to go anywhere. I am sipping a cup of peppermint tea with honey and hope to spend most of the day reading.

Tomorrow we will be visiting my parents for a late Valentine’s Day lunch.

The upcoming week is going to be very, very cold so we probably won’t be going out much but I would really love to get to the local library at least one day. I am hoping that maybe Dad will need to take a trip out here to our tiny town for something and can give us a ride. I would love to be able to walk downtown to the library but…the aforementioned knee issue and right now absolutely freezing cold.

How was your week this past week? Did you do anything exciting? Or did you simply have a nice, relaxing week?

Sunday Bookends: Is that a gunshot or is the wood on my porch just cracking in the cold?

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends11 Comments

Welcome to my Sunday Chat where I ramble about what’s been going on in my world, what the rest of the family and I have been reading, watching, listening to, and what I’ve been writing.

Last week our weather started to warm up after two weeks or more of nasty cold. That meant going outside didn’t feel so daunting. We still didn’t go too many places because we are currently down to one car and because – well, it is still winter and we don’t have a ton of motivation to go anywhere.

We all have some cabin fever, though, so we will need to leave the house soon.

Hopefully, we can get to the library or somewhere else for fun next week.

It still doesn’t want to warm up, though, as proven by the horribly cold temps from last night and how our back porch, once again, couldn’t handle it and popped like a gunshot. This has been happening a lot this winter. When the temps drop below —say 15 — the wood on our porch contracts and it sounds like a gunshot, making us jump inside the house.

This time, though, I was walking on the porch, last night, heading to the driveway to move our car. If I hadn’t heard this exact thing happen from inside the house all winter long I might have thought I had been shot. I took another step and it fired off again and it was crazy how loud it was. I actually messaged our  next door neighbor to let her know what had happened so she didn’t think we were next door shooting each other.  

I rambled about what went on last week in my Saturday Afternoon Chat post.


I am determined to finish Christy by Catherine Marshall this weekend, possibly today. The book is very good, but so long. I think it could have been split into two books, really. There is so much information in it and so many more stories about the people in this rural area of the Smokie Mountains of Tennessee that could have been told. This is not a complaint, by the way. I love the book, and I would have loved if there had been more stories from it.

I am still reading the oral biography of Anthony Bourdain and while it was a little uninteresting at first, it is picking up and capturing my attention, especially as we move toward when Kitchen Confidential came out and he began to become more famous. I am absolutely dreading the end of the book, of course.

This week I hope to listen to Frankenstein on audio. I keep saying I am going to start it and I truly am this week. As I mentioned before, it is being read by Dan Stevens.

I haven’t done great with the books I planned to read for this winter.  I have read five of the 17 books I had initially listed as books I would choose from December through March . I substituted some of the books on the list with other reads that caught my eye instead. For example, I was going to read World Travel by Anthony Bourdain but instead chose the oral biography of Anthony Bourdain because my husband read it and said it was good.

I would still love to finish Little Men and The Thursday Murder Club …we will see how that goes.

Little Miss is reading Harry Potter: Prisoner of Azkaban. We are also reading The Sign of the Beaver together for school.

The Husband is reading the latest book by Bob Woodward. He just finished Up Country by Nelson Demille.

Last week I watched The Young In Heart with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and loved it.

I also watched a new episode of All Creatures Great and Small and several episodes of Edwardian Farm.

As I was preparing Douglas Fairbanks Jr. gifs to use to make memes for Instagram this week, I found it funny that a Paul Newman gif popped up without me even looking for it. See, I love Paul Newman and have always called him my old-time actor crush, but lately Douglas has been replacing him. I guess Paul didn’t want me to forget him, so he popped a gif of himself in there. (Disclaimer: This is a joke. I do not actually believe Paul Newman is speaking to me from the grave.)

Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree will be out soon and I hope to start writing the fourth book in the series later this month. I’m so excited for both!

Last week on the blog I shared:

I am going to be listening to Frankenstein this week. I swear. I totally am.

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, Stacking the Shelves with Reading Reality, The Sunday Salon with Deb at Readerbuzz, and Book Date: It’s Monday! What are you reading hosted by Kathyrn at The Book Date.

Saturday Afternoon Chat: Staying warm in the winter in the 80s and an unusual cure for my knee pain

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Saturday Afternoon Tea7 Comments

Good Saturday afternoon! As I write this I am actually sipping grape juice instead of my regular morning tea, but I am going to go grab some tea in a moment. I have not tried any new tea flavors. I know. So boring. How about you? Any new tea flavors?

During our horrible cold snap last week, I was warming my rice pack and carrying it to bed with me each night, shoving it under the covers to warm the bottom of the bed up for my feet.

It reminded me of when I was a child, living in a drafty old 19th century home with a radiator that liked to conk out at the wrong times.

My parents would fill a plastic bottle with hot water, wrap it in a towel, and put it at the bottom of the bed to warm the sheets before I crawled into bed. I was also covered with several blankets, one of them a woolen one that we eventually figured out I was allergic to because I would itch terribly under it. Some nights I would be so cold I would wake up hugging the water bottle and seeing my breath in the air.

Luckily that wasn’t common — only on absolutely freezing nights and when that old radiator in my room really acted up. If it was too cold, we all slept downstairs in our living room, sheets hanging over the doorways to keep the heat in one room.

When I was in my room, I’d also pile all of my stuffed animals around me until I could barely be seen under them.

It was almost as cold as that old house in our old early 20th century home last week, but we are lucky to have both heat from our woodstove and heating oil downstairs. We have electric heat upstairs. Even with all three different types of heat we had a hard time chasing away the near zero temps.

A fellow blogger asked me last week why we have three sources of heat and my only answer is that this is how this house was built. For whatever reason.

The downstairs is heated by the furnace that runs on heating oil, but someone also installed a woodstove over the years. This allows for the thermostat to be turned down and save some of the heating oil throughout the winter. Heat from the woodstove can, and often does, travel up the stairwell and spread into the bedrooms, which means we don’t have to turn the electric heat up too much some nights.

The three sources of heat help us to spread out our costs over the winter months. Sometimes, though, like the week before last’s horrible arctic cold, the costs of all three increase.

We’ve had two firewood deliveries this year. Using a woodstove was something very new for me when we moved into the house five years ago. I’d never lit a woodstove in my life and figuring out how to burn the wood slowly and keep it going throughout the night was a challenge.

At first I wouldn’t even dare to attempt letting the fire burn all night. I was certain it would somehow catch the house on fire, which I now know is ridiculous with how the stove is set up. My dad was worried about the woodstove’s pipe, which he didn’t think was installed right. We found after he hired someone to fix it that he was right and we could have had a fire inside the wall if we hadn’t had it fixed.

I also made The Husband purchase carbon monoxide detectors to make sure we wouldn’t be gassed at night if there was ever a leak of some kind.

I didn’t even know how that all worked but I knew carbon monoxide detectors were important. We had them when we had natural gas at our old house too.

Even though we’ve learned a lot about how to conserve our wood during the coldest months of the  years, we still went through a lot this winter and still might need one more delivery to make it through the rest of the winter. We’ve been known to have snow storms in March here in Pennsylvania so we never exactly know when we will be lighting out last fire.

I find the last time we light the fire both exciting and sad. Exciting because I don’t have to clean the ash out in the mornings or work on lighting it or make sure it doesn’t die during the day and evening. Sad because I do love a cold winter night with a warm fire lit in the stove, a book open on my lap, a cat sprawled in front of the fire, another cat curled up on the ottoman and a sleeping dog on our broken recliner. Somehow the room seems much cozier and maybe even more alive with those flames flickering through the glass of the stove.

Switching gears a bit — Right after New Year’s I developed an issue with my knee and thought I might have to have an x-ray at one point. One night before bed I rubbed magnesium oil on it in addition to ibuprofen. My knee hurt the most when I lay on my side for some reason, so I figured it might be a muscle issue. I still had some pain overnight after using the magnesium oil spray, but in the morning, I used spray again and the rest of that day the knee felt much better. I was surprised by this development and decided to skip the ibuprofen or Tylenol I had been taking for weeks. The knee felt better for the next two days, and I was able to stop using a cane to get around the house.

I have had to use pain killers twice since then, but so far, so good. Apparently, the muscle around my knee simply needed to relax some and the magnesium helped facilitate that. I like to use natural remedies whenever I can but, in this case, I didn’t think a natural remedy would help. A CBD rub on stick was helping some as well, but the magnesium oil was the actual game changer.

Today I hope to go to my parents and help clean a little bit, visit with them, have some supper, and maybe play a game of intense Uno.

Tomorrow, we might visit them again.

The upcoming week is empty of any appointments or events, so far, other than Little Miss’s children’s club at a local church.

How was your week last week? Do anything exciting? How does this week look for you?

Tomorrow I’ll be back to talk about what I’ve been reading and watching, etc. with my Sunday Bookends post.