Welcome to Sunday Bookends where I ramble about what I’ve been reading, doing, watching, writing, and listening to.

What I’m Reading

This week I finished The Rhise of Hope by Max Sternberg (a Christian fantasy book) and Still the One by Susan May Warren and Rachel D. Russell (a romance).

Next up is to finish the fifth book in the Longmire Series, The Dark Horse by Craig Johnson.

I’ve also started The Reckoning Trees: A Seth Browne Novel, Book One by Alicia Gilliam and will finish it after I finish The Dark House because my husband told me last week after he read my blog, “One book at a time, honey! One book at a time.” Sigh. He reads one book at a time and then another and another and another until he’s read like 100 in a year. I’m a much slower reader who often gets distracted by other books.

Little Miss and I finished Freedom Crossing this week for her history/literature and I will be sharing a review of it here on the blog later this week. We also finished Emily’s Runaway Imagination by Beverly Cleary and started The Mouse and the Motorcycle also by Beverly Cleary.

The Boy is still reading A Long Walk to Water.

What’s Been Occurring

This past week provided even more cold weather. I can’t remember a winter this cold in a long time. I didn’t want to leave the house at all but on Friday Little Miss and I had a hair appointment. I woke up to surprise snow, which annoyed me to no end. I hoped it was only a dusting and the plow trucks would come through before I had to leave in the afternoon but apparently they were just as surprised because the roads were not clear when I prepared to leave.

I often have to rely on others to get me places, either because I’m nervous about driving or have some weird health thing going on. I was determined, though, to do this on my own so I backed our van down our very steep driveway, onto the snow-covered street, and hoped the road I was going to be driving on to would be better.

It was not.

Not at all.

It was covered in snow and a thin layer of what looked like sleet. I carried on, hoping the road would get better.

It did not.

My dad had offered to take me and Little Miss in his truck, but he’d already had a busy morning and, like I said above, I wanted to do this on my own and not bother others. There comes a point though when trying to be brave becomes succeeding in being stupid and that point came when I hit the county line and saw the road was even worse the further I went. I finally pulled off and found enough cell service to call the salon and apologize because I knew the roads where they weren’t as bad.

You see, where I live is like a whole different world than the next county over. You can drive three miles south and the roads are only wet, while the roads in my town are covered in a couple inches of snow. You can be at my parents’ house and they have a dusting of snow and drive to my house and we have a foot. Okay, no, it’s not usually that extreme, but still — it’s a little weird.  

The woman who answered my call at the salon said she lived near me, so she totally understood the circumstances. One minute the road can be clear, the next covered in snow or ice.

So, I turned around and headed back home. We drove the half-mile and then it was time for me to go up our street so I could pull our van up the driveway. I usually go around to the other end of our street so I can pull the car in at a straight angle.

I forgot, however, how steep that end is so as I headed up, my van decided it would stop at the top of the hill of it and then slide back down. I shifted the van into low gear and hit the accelerator before it could slide very far and inched the car up to the flat part of the street.

That took about thirty seconds and when we hit that flat spot, I knew we were fine to make it the rest of the way down the street. The next task was the driveway, and I floored it but didn’t make it.

For reference, here is our driveway looking down, pictured last winter:

It’s a challenge even without snow

The car started sliding backward toward the street. Little Miss decided she didn’t want to be in the van when I tried it again so she requested (demanded) to be released so she could walk up the driveway to the house.

After two more tries and lot of accelerator pushing, (during which I hoped I didn’t destroy my engine), I managed to pull the van back into the garage, where it will sit until the driveway is free of snow and ice.

So, I didn’t accomplish getting to the hairdresser on my own, but I did accomplish getting the van back into the driveway despite the snow and ice. It was a small victory, but I took it.

What I’m Watching

My husband and I watched the last episodes of Lovejoy and to say I was disappointed in the last episode is an understatement. I can’t remember my exact words when it ended but it was something like, “Are you serious?! That’s it! Six seasons and that’s how they end it?”

Suffice it to say, I was not impressed and felt like the ending was a total cop-out. My husband reminded me that we can always go back and rewatch the beginning but somehow it doesn’t feel the same knowing that ended in such a depressing way. I would still recommend the series since it was very entertaining, but it did not end the way I hoped it would.

What I’m Writing

I have been participating in writing sprints with the writers at Novel Academy (a writing school of sorts) for the last two weeks. We meet in a “room” on Facebook, chat for ten minutes, share what we are going to work on and then go and write for 50 minutes. We return at the end and report how we did and then we do it again, up to four times if the host is able to and if we want to continue our writing for the day.

Thanks to these sprints I have marched on toward the end of A New Chapter’s first draft and I hope to finish it by the end of this week, or next at the latest. After that I will go back and edit and fix plot holes or errors or maybe even rewrite entire scenes or chapters. We will see.

At this point, my release date has been set for April 26. I’m excited for my readers to read the story in its entirety with all the changes or additions made (and there are going to be at least two new scenes that were not shared in the chapters I shared here). I have also narrowed the choices down for the book cover and think I will go with this one:

Last week on the blog:

 I shared a review of the book Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour;

Shared my random thoughts;

And shared a new chapter of A New Chapter (ha!)

What I’m Listening to

This week I enjoyed relaxing and writing while listening to a Jack White concert:

and then his new song:

Then I slipped into some White Stripes,

Mumford and Sons,

And then The Lumineers:

I know. Quite different for me. Don’t worry, I still love my Christian artists and worship music, and, of course, Needtobreathe.

Mac Powell, the lead singer from Third Day has a new album coming out so I’ll probably be listening to that this week.

Now it’s your turn

So that’s my week in review. How was yours? What are you reading, watching, doing, listening to, writing and all that jazz? Let me know in the comments.

Welcome to Sunday Bookends where I ramble about what I’ve been reading, doing, watching, writing and listening to.

What’s Been Occurring

I did very little again this week thanks to the ridiculously cold temperatures. On Saturday morning our weather app said the temperature was negative 15 at 5 a.m. By 8 a.m. it had warmed all the way up to negative nine. Similar cold temperatures are expected this week as well. I don’t have plans to run around anywhere because we missed two days of school last week. One day we drove to get my son’s hair cut (finally!!! After a year of him refusing to get his hair cut) and another day my daughter spent a day with her friends. Those were the two days I left the house. The second coldest day of the week was when I took my daughter to meet her friends. The roads I travel to get there are very narrow for most of the drive.

The main road I take doesn’t have yellow lines and has me gripping the steering wheel and tensing my buttock cheeks almost the entire way. Driving it during the day is stressful, but at night it is even worse because the lights from the oncoming cars are blinding and there is no room to move over to give the other car space and get away from those lights. After the trip in the dark where I worried I was going to have a head-on collision, I told my husband he can do the night pick-ups from now on. He’s used to the road because he drives it every day, twice a day, for work.

To top it off, when I hit the bottom of a hill and parked at my old high school to meet my friend to pick up my daughter, the heat stopped working in our van. The thermometer read 12 degrees and we had no heat for the drive home. That’s what I thought anyhow but with a little fiddling, the heat came back on, thank God. We made it home and I promptly announced I was not leaving the house until March.

Of course, that won’t hold, I’ll have to visit my parents, but beyond that — I am not leaving my house until March. *wink*.

What I’m Reading

I’m enjoying Still The One by Susan May Warren and Rachel D. Russell and might finish it this week. I plan to finish The Rhise of Hope, this week and share a review at the end of the week.

I had put The Dark Horse by Craig Johnson on hold to finish Max’s book, but I’d love to get back to that book before the end of the week. I love Johnson’s writing style.

I also hope to start Cape Refuge by Terri Blackstock next week, but first I have a Carrie Stuart Parks book I really want to finish, that I just remembered this week I had put aside because of some heavy subject matter. I wasn’t feeling heavy that particular week.

Little Miss and I are reading Emily’s Runaway Imagination by Beverly Cleary before bed and Freedom Crossing a few times during the week for school.

The Boy is reading A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park for school.

The husband is reading Dark Matter by Blake Crouch.

What I’m Watching

This week we watched reruns of The Jeffersons and Night Court.  We watched another episode of Lovejoy and are three episodes away from the end.

I reluctantly watched Spaceballs with my son and hate to even admit that.

I’d never seen it before and now I’m wishing I could still say that.

I also watched a couple of episodes of The Cleaner, a BBC show about a crime scene cleaner. It’s a mix of funny, sad, and touching with a bit of gore tossed in once in a while.

What I’m Writing

I’m in serious first draft mode for A New Chapter and hope to finish it by early or mid-February so I can start the second draft and then send it out to my critique group. I always say “second draft” but really I edit as I go in my books at times, so it’s probably more like a third or fourth draft. I have not gone back and reworked this book as much as past books and that’s because I lost a month from being sick and because I’m determined to get the draft done and then start gutting it. I tentatively have set up April 26^th as the release date for the book.

I didn’t share much on the blog last week because I didn’t have any ideas. I have a couple of ideas for this week, so I’ll probably share a little more.

I did share another chapter of A New Chapter for Fiction Friday. If you’re waiting until the entire book is done to read it, that’s totally fine. I mainly post the chapters for the couple of readers who are following around, with the caveat that the story could change by the time I publish it.

What I’m Listening To

This week I listened a lot to the soundtrack of The Greatest Showman, especially at the end of the week when I had to do a lot of driving. On the way home from dropping Little Miss off at her friends I became a Broadway singer – even attempting to act out the scenes, but finally decided that was a bad idea considering the twists and turns of the road I was on.

Now It’s Your Turn

So that’s my week in review, how about you? What have you been reading, listening to, watching, or doing lately? Let me know in the comments. I’d love to know. Definitely share any good books you are reading.

Welcome to my Sunday Bookends where I look back at the previous week and share what I’ve been reading, watching, writing, and listening to.

What’s Been Occurring

It has been very, very cold here in Pennsylvania so we did not leave our house much at all this past week.

In other words, I have very little to report and nothing exciting to write about as far as what’s been going on.

The cold weather will continue this week with a snowstorm tonight into tomorrow. We’ve heard every amount from four to 18 inches so I don’t know what we will get in the end.

One thing that did happen this week isn’t something I really want to write about. My brother and sister-in-law said goodbye to their 15-year-old cat Seamus because his health had deteriorated to the point he was suffering. It placed a cloud of sadness over the whole family because Seamus really was a part of our family.

We will miss him very much. He was such a character. He snuggled with my sister-in-law every morning and also climbed up for naps with both of them. He could be a little stinker when he wanted his treats, smacking at my brother’s ankles or feet, or knocking things over to get attention, but most of the time he was a sweetheart (plus I found it funny that he harassed my brother).

What I’m Reading

I am setting Anne of Avonlea aside for a bit, but will probably read a couple of chapters a day. It’s a very simple, everyday story and I just like to escape inside its pages as a little bit of a respite.

I’m still reading the fifth book in the Longmire series and finished a novella by Jenn Knipfer called Holly’s Homecoming.

Upcoming are a couple of romance books as I try to figure out if I should write a couple of romances for Kindle Vella to try to earn some extra money.

I wish I had more time to read, honestly. My mom keeps borrowing really good books from Kindle Unlimited (which by the way, you can now borrow 20 books at a time) but she breezes through them before I even finish one.

What We’re Watching

Because of the cold weather, we’ve been watching a lot more TV.

My husband and I have been watching The Café, a sweet, quirky British show on BritBox (Amazon) in the last couple of weeks. It’s about a woman who owns a café, her daughter who is trying to make it as a writer and all the quirky characters that surround them.

It has been a nice escape.

We also started Brokenwood Mysteries, which we really liked.

We tried one episode of The Cleaner, which was super weird but somehow endearing. It’s about a man who cleans up crime scenes. I’m hoping we can watch more but we also have to finish up Lovejoy, which we are on the last (sixth) season of.

I also watched a couple episodes of Know Your Roots on the PBS Living Channel on Amazon. It’s a show where they follow the roots of famous people because, you know, we need to know even more about famous people. I watched an episode with Rosanne Cash and Clint Black and another one with George R.R. Martin and Andy Samberg. They were both very interesting.

I think this was the most TV I’ve watched in a long time. It’s supposed to be cold again all this week, but I hopefully will be reading and writing more than watching TV.

What I’m Writing

I’ve been writing blog posts and working on A New Chapter, which I hope to release in late April/early May.

On the blog I shared:

Faithfully Thinking: The need for us all to show more grace and less judgment

Randomly Thinking: Honest homeschoolers, friendly only in winter, overused book tropes

God Is My Hiding Place. Book review and giveaway with JustRead Book Tours

Fiction Friday: A New Chapter Chapter 16

Educationally Speaking

So that’s my week in review. What have all of you been up to, reading or watching? Let me know in the comments.

Welcome to my weekly post where I share what I’ve been doing, reading, watching, listening to and writing.

What’s Been Occurring

I looked back at my posts from last year in search of my “one word” for 2021, but apparently, I had no interest in a “word of the year” last year. Instead, I said I planned to “just survive.” I’d say that fit perfectly for my 2021 and that became even more clear in November when I caught COVID and ended up in the hospital. My year ended with a bang I guess you would say.

I haven’t picked a word for 2022 either and I think I might leave it that way and just see what happens. As I wrote last year:

Here we are in a new year and — yeah.

That’s all I got. No big goals for me this year.

No big plans.

My goal is simply to survive, while also having some fun.

If that sounds like I’m depressed, don’t worry. I’m not. I’m simply going to take it day by day this year, which is something positive that 2020 taught me.

And something that 2021 taught me too. I think I’ll do the same thing for 2022. Just take it day by day.

We had a very laid back, boring week last week in some ways.

My husband and I went out to dinner, which was my first outing since having Covid. It was a very nice time at a local restaurant we had never been to before. We had planned to travel about an hour from our house to visit a local bar and grill, but thick fog turned us around. We were glad to have found a little treasure of a bar and grill half an hour from us instead.

Earlier in the week, we ended up having an impromptu sleepover with three teenage boys when The Boy had a couple of friends over Tuesday and then we ended up with an ice storm and couldn’t drive the boys home.

That was an interesting experience which mainly involved them sitting on the couch with their phones, sharing bizarre memes, and punching each other. I’ve known all the boys since they were very young so it is a little surreal to see how much they’ve grown with the oldest now being 16.

On New Year’s Eve, we had another impromptu sleepover with one of Little Miss’s friends. It was the first sleepover for both of them, which may be why Little Miss’s friend woke up at 3 a.m. crying for mommy and would take no one else. My friend ended up driving over to meet my husband at 3:15 a.m. at our local high school so the little girl could go home.

 I wish I could have thought of an idea to help her work through her fear so she could stay until morning but it’s been eight years since my son had sleepovers (besides the teenage ones where the boys don’t normally cry for mom) so I’m rusty on all the tricks to help make little ones feel comfortable.

Tomorrow we start school again, which I am sure neither child is looking forward to. I’m somewhat looking forward to it, though, because it means we will be getting back into a routine.

What I’m Reading

I am currently reading Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery, part of the Anne of Green Gables series. I guess that will be my first book of the new year. I could read the book on my Kindle, but somehow I feel these books need to be read as an actual book I can hold.

At night in my Kindle, I am reading the fifth book in the Walt Longmire series by Craig Johnson, The Dark Horse.

Little Miss and I are reading the last book in the Little House on the Prairie series at night before she falls asleep.

The Boy is reading a Terry Pratchett book.

What I’m Watching

This past week I watched a lot of Would I Lie To You, a hilarious game show in the UK, where the contestants read a statement and the other team has to guess if the statement is a lie or not. It has been a fun distraction.

I also watched some of The Durrells in Corfu and my husband and I watched a lot of Lovejoy. We are now on the last season of Lovejoy. *sniff*

What I’m writing

I actually haven’t been writing but I hope to write more this week. I have so many issues with this latest book and pretty much want to toss it but I am trying to push through and at least finish the first draft.

What I’m Listening To

I haven’t been just sitting and listening to anything but I hope to this week because my husband bought me an awesome record player that is also a CD player, radio, cassette player, and has Bluetooth. He also brought all of our CDs down from the attic and we were shocked to see how many we had when they filled an entire bookcase.

So that’s my week in review, how about you? What are you reading, watching, or doing? Let me know in the comments.