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

What I/we’ve been Reading

I finished Call Me A Cab by Donald Westlake this week and really enjoyed it. It was more of a romance than anything else, without the ridiculous tropes that some romances offer.

I did have a mistake last week when I said the book was released in February of 2021. It was actually released this February.

A couple of different versions of the book were found after Westlake died and an editor who had worked with him in the past combined them to create the final draft of the previously unpublished work. A portion of the story had been published in Redbook Magazine in the 70s, but not the entire novel.

This week I will be continuing Miss Julia Rocks the Cradle by Ann B. Ross, which is moving slower than molasses in January at this point. The previous book I read from this series moved much faster and while I like quirky characters, this book features chapters full of blow-by-blow descriptions of fairly mundane events. Hopefully, it will pick up soon, but even if it doesn’t, I’ll probably still read it because I love the characters.

I also need to read at least some of a book I agreed to read for a book tour later in April this week. It is a non-fiction book called Anything But Simple by Lucinda Miller and is about a woman who grew up in the Mennonite community. It is the fifth book in as. I have a series about members of the Mennonite and Amish communities. I started it a couple of weeks ago and I am enjoying it, but got distracted by a couple of other books after starting it. Plus, I knew I had most of March to read it. Oops. March is gone, isn’t it? So yesterday I read more of it and realized Lucinda and I are very similar. I am looking forward to offering a review of this book the week after next.

Here is a small description of the book:

Like her grandmother, Lucinda J. Miller wears long dresses and a prayer covering. But she uses a cellphone and posts status updates on Facebook, too. Anything but Simple is the riveting memoir of a young woman’s rich church tradition, lively family life, and longings for a meaningful future within her Mennonite faith. With a roving curiosity and a sometimes saucy tongue, Miller ushers us into her busy life as a young schoolteacher.

Book 5 in the Plainspoken series. Hear straight from Amish and Mennonite people themselves as they write about their daily lives and deeply rooted faith in the Plainspoken series from Herald Press. Each book includes “A Day in the Life of the Author” and the author’s answers to FAQs about the Amish and Mennonites.

What’s Been Occurring

Not a lot has been occurring recently. It’s been pretty routine around here. Our adventure last week was a trip 45 minutes to a new doctor for my son to ask him about the smell and taste distortions my son and I have been dealing with since we had the dreaded virus in November. Bottom line? The doctor can’t do anything and pretty much no one can. The general consensus seems to be, “Wait it out.” So, we are waiting it out and hope it will get better. Some days the situation is better, and we hope we don’t have the issue as long as some of this doctor’s patients have had it.

After our doctor’s visit, we stopped at the house of a butcher to pick up a quarter of a cow my dad had ordered. That was an interesting situation — at face value anyhow. This was a very simple home with a simple sign of the butcher’s name and business out front at the end of the driveway near some cow head skeletons. I couldn’t see where I was supposed to go to tell the gentleman I was there, but my dad had said there was a door under a meat hook at the end of a ramp. I thought he meant the ramp led to the house, but alas, the ramp led to the basement of the home. This sent some alarms off for The Boy who announced it was starting to feel like the start of a horror movie.

He waited in the car while I made my way to the basement, knocked on the door and heard a voice invite me inside. I had nothing to worry about because the basement had been converted into a very professional, clean, and modern butcher space. Even though I had nothing to worry about, it did make me a little nervous when he asked me to close the door behind me. Again, though, I had nothing to worry about as he is a very kind man who butchered a cow for a friend of us. She sold it to our family for $3 a pound and his butcher fees.

By the end of the day, we had a freezer full of meat, which made up for not having any answers from the doctor.

Later that day our area was nailed with crazy storms, which luckily didn’t bring the flooding they thought it would bring.

I thought the storms might mean a break to the cold weather that has been gripping our area and maybe bring some actual spring weather. Sadly, the temperatures are apparently going to be below 60 again this upcoming week. Yeah. That “yeah” was very unenthusiastic, by the way.

Yesterday the temperatures were only in the 40s but we still enjoyed some time outside with Little Miss and her friends and, of course, the youngest cat who is still slipping out:

What We watched/are Watching

I hate to sound like a broken record but we watched more Brokenwood Mysteries this week.

Then I watched a bunch of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which someone put up on YouTube. I hadn’t watched the show before because I always thought I’d think of Mary as Laura from The Dick VanDyke Show, but I didn’t. She’s definitely a different character on her own show and so far I love it. I’m going to watch as many seasons as I can on YouTube because I really don’t want to add another streaming service to our list.

What I’m Writing

Last week I worked a bit on Mercy’s Shore but shared on Friday why I am struggling with writing fiction at the moment.

• Fiction Friday: Why I’ve been struggling to write fiction lately

Other posts I shared this week included:

• I like movies and books about quirky smalltown characters
• Five uplifting, sing-along worship songs you need to listen to today

What I’m Listening To

I’ve been listening to Matthew West a lot this week. I’ve needed his uplifting music. Some of my medical issues have reared their ugly heads and I’m tired. I’m tired and I don’t know if it is my medical issues or left over from the dreaded virus. Either way, I’m drained from it all.

Now it’s your turn

Now it is your turn. What have you been doing this week? Watching, reading, listening to?

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

What’s Been Occurring

Last Sunday we visited my parents, and my dad actually watched a movie with us, after he took the kids to their frozen pond to do some ice skating. Dad doesn’t usually sit in one place for a movie but he really enjoyed The Finest Hours with Chris Pine and Casey Affleck, which I mentioned I had watched last week. He barely moved from the spot on the couch. I had a feeling he might like this one based on his service in the Air Force, and while this movie didn’t deal with men in the Air Force, it did focus on men working together in a sort of branch of the military (the Coast Guard).

We will not be visiting my parents today because Little Miss and I caught a cold late last week. Friday and Saturday was spent blowing noses, drinking tea and her crying because her throat hurt so bad. I cried because I had a horrendous burning in my nose that results in my eye and nose pouring liquid. Lots of fun.

Before anyone asks, no, I don’t believe we have been re-infected with the dreaded virus. This definitely feels more cold-like and less bioweapon-like.

I figure we picked it up when I took Little Miss to her first gymnastics class on Monday. We had not left the house much before that, other than her weekly Awana class. Part of the reason we didn’t leave was the continuing weird Pennsylvania weather. It’s been cold and snowy and then rainy and warm. I’m waiting for it all to settle a little bit before we plan any major outings.

During the week we did schoolwork and I finished editing on Beauty From Ashes, then realized that I had not finished the final chapter. Sigh. So, while battling a burning nose that felt like it might explode, I worked on that on Saturday, so I can send the book out to my critique group and to a couple of editors this week to get it ready for the April 26 release date.

If you are interested in serving on the launch team for the Beauty From Ashes team, you can apply HERE. There isn’t a lot of commitment to this, other than agreeing to share about the book on your social media sites. Anyone on the launch team will receive an advanced copy of the book in digital form (via Bookfunnel).

In addition to writing and blowing my nose, I also watched what was unfolding in Ukraine with deep sadness. Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs, wrote a beautiful post that sums up what I am sure many of us are feeling about this conflict.

What I/we’ve been Reading

I finished Miss Julia Renews Her Vows by Ann B. Ross yesterday. I will be reading more of the Miss Julia series. I really enjoyed the book. It was a type of cozy mystery.

Here is a description:

Everyone loves the irrepressible Miss Julia. Her latest triumph is getting Hazel Marie and J. D. Pickens to the altar before it becomes too obvious that they’re expecting twins! But why has Sam agreed that he and Julia will attend the odious Dr. Fowler’s marital enrichment sessions? Could Sam feel their flames need fanning? Meanwhile, this lady of a certain age must spring Etta Mae from jail when she’s wrongly accused of attacking Francie Pitts. With a fragrant felon to be caught- plus a wedding, babies, and a heaping dose of mischief-it’s fortunate for all that Miss Julia’s on the case.

This is the eleventh book in the series, so I plan to go find the first book in the series so I can start reading them in order.

My husband picked this and three others in the series up for me at a local library book sale.

I am in the middle of Every Star in the Sky by Sara Davison, which releases this week. Here is a description for that book:

She is willing to testify against her trafficker.
If she can stay alive that long.

“You’re safe here, Starr.”
How many times has Detective Cole Blacksky said that to her since helping her escape the life she’d been forced into eight years earlier?
Starr desperately wants to believe him, but she knows Brady Erickson, her former captor, too well. Although Cole has promised her protective custody on his family’s remote ranch, no place on earth is safe enough. Brady will stop at nothing to permanently silence her before she ever reaches the witness stand.
And he is powerful enough to do it.
If Starr wants to help the other women, she has no choice but to put herself in God’s hands. And Cole’s. But the longer she and Cole stay hidden, the more her life is at risk.
And her heart.

I finished His Road to Redemption by Lisa Jordan last night and hope to finish Sara’s book this week.

Once I finish her book, I will be delving further into Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz, which I opened to see if I would like it. I definitely like it and am anxious to get into it more.

Here is the description, but I am sure any Sherlock Holmes fans have an idea what it might be about:

Internationally bestselling author Anthony Horowitz’s nail-biting new novel plunges us back into the dark and complex world of detective Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty—dubbed the Napoleon of crime” by Holmes—in the aftermath of their fateful struggle at the Reichenbach Falls.

Days after the encounter at the Swiss waterfall, Pinkerton detective agent Frederick Chase arrives in Europe from New York. Moriarty’s death has left an immediate, poisonous vacuum in the criminal underworld, and there is no shortage of candidates to take his place—including one particularly fiendish criminal mastermind.

Chase and Scotland Yard Inspector Athelney Jones, a devoted student of Holmes’s methods of investigation and deduction originally introduced by Conan Doyle in “The Sign of Four”, must forge a path through the darkest corners of England’s capital—from the elegant squares of Mayfair to the shadowy wharfs and alleyways of the London Docks—in pursuit of this sinister figure, a man much feared but seldom seen, who is determined to stake his claim as Moriarty’s successor.

A riveting, deeply atmospheric tale of murder and menace from one of the only writers to earn the seal of approval from Conan Doyle’s estate, Moriarty breathes life into Holmes’s dark and fascinating world.

The Boy started Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson this week and Little Miss and I are reading Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder (again).

What We watched/are Watching

I watched another episode of Brokenwood and really enjoyed it. It is a crime/mystery show set in New Zealand. The episodes are all about 90 minutes long, so it takes an investment each time we watch one.

I don’t really remember watching much else this past week. I tried to focus on reading and finishing the book instead. However, this next week I hope to lose myself in some stories, including The Sister Boniface Mysteries, which is a spin-off The Father Brown Mysteries on Britbox.

We did watch one episode of the latest season of Death in Paradise and it was okay, but that show has lost some of its appeal for me since they are on their fourth DI (detective inspector) and this is a tiny island but has one of the highest crime records I have ever seen.

What I’m Writing

As I mentioned above, I am finishing up all the edits for Beauty From Ashes.

After I send the book out to the critique group and editors, I will be taking a break and then I will start plotting book four and another novella I have an idea for.

I did not write any other posts on the blog this week because of working on the book and because of the cold.

I do have some ideas for blog posts this week and I hope to tackle them and actually getting them written. I should have more time for blog posts with the book finally finished.

What I’m Listening To

This week the husband turned me on to a new-to-me worship artist, Brooke, Ligertwood, who released her new album this past week. I have been listening to her and also to Mel Parsons from New Zealand who I found while watching Brokenwood. Watching the show and listening to her helpe me continue the New Zealand theme.

Now it’s your turn

So that is my week in review. How about you? What are you reading, writing, doing, listening to, yadda, yadda? Let me know in the comments and leave a link if you already do a post similar to this one.

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

What I/we’ve Been Reading

This week I read a book for a writer friend that she is releasing later this year. It is a second-chance romance and I enjoyed it. I’ll be sure to mention it again when it officially releases. The author is Milla Holt.

I’ve also been reading Miss Julia Renews Her Vows by Ann B. Goss and I am enjoying the light (very light) mystery and humor.

At night on the Kindle, I am reading His Road to Redemption by Lisa Jordan, who I am in a writing group with. She publishes through Harlequin’s Love Inspired books.

I might finish those books this week (doubt it) and if I do, I will be starting a romance by another author I’m in a writing group with and finishing a book for a book tour. That’s the plan anyhow, but like I told some writer/reader people this week, I have book ADD sometimes. I pick up a book to see if I like the first couple of paragraphs, get hooked, and forget about the other books I was reading.

Off and on, for a while anyhow, I will also be reading from The Mitford Bedside Companion by Jan Karon, which was a gift from the husband for Valentine’s Day.

The Hubby is reading Wolf Pack by CJ Box as I write this but will probably be done with it by the time it goes on the blog. Oh and he is done before I even finish the post so he is currently in between books.

The Boy finished A Long Walk to Water last week and will start Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson this week for literature.

Little Miss and I are reading Little House on the Prairie again. Sigh. Hopefully, she will let me move on to another book soon.

What’s Been Occurring

Pennsylvania went all Whatever Happened to Baby Jane on us this week by throwing in warm weather, arctic weather, rain, snow squalls, high winds, flooding, ice jams, and a small amount of sun. The fun will continue this week as the rumor is that we are going to be hit with another ice storm at the end of the week.

The snow that had been on the ground for the past two months or so melted all in one day, rushing to the rivers and creeks, but those rivers and creeks were full of ice, which broke up and jammed along the banks.

This photo was taken by my husband who texted it to me along with this photo:

with the caption, “the things I do for my job.”

Apparently, he walked across the ice jam to get this photo, which is just great and something I’m glad I didn’t know until after the fact or I would have been freaking out.

Little Miss and I spent Monday night at my parents, at the request of Little Miss, who wanted to spend the night but didn’t want to stay alone. We ate dinner, played a game called aggravation, and then Little Miss and her grandpa made pancakes together the next morning. It was a nice start to the week.

Saturday stuck the area in a holding pattern as snow squalls decided to slide in and out of the area, bringing spontaneous periods of white-out conditions for anyone out on the roads that would quickly be replaced with blue skies and bright sunshine.

The rest of the week after that was sort of all over the place due to the weather but also taking our dog to a vet appointment for her vaccinations and an unexpected dentist appointment for Little Miss that got moved up from March because they had an opening. I kept waiting for a day where I didn’t feel like my brain was being pulled several different directions but that didn’t seem to happen, especially after Tuesday when I learned a friend I had not had contact with in a while (for the reason that sometimes people drift apart and just don’t make contact as often as they used to) died in a house fire.

The friend would have been 80 this year. His wife died in 2018 and I thought he had moved to live closer to his daughter and grandson. Apparently, he had moved back to our area, and I didn’t even realize it. How awful is that? Not that he had ever contacted me either, but I still feel guilty. Seeing an old photo of him along with what remained of his home on the front of my husband’s paper was hard to see Thursday and I ended up falling into a deep depression for the rest of the week. I’m still there if I am going to be honest. It’s been a hard couple of months with losing friends and dealing with other hard things. Most of the time I was able to shove the sadness down, but Thursday I couldn’t seem to anymore and spent much of the evening breaking into sobbing fits for no reason.

Yesterday (or today as I am writing this) my husband and I planned to go out to dinner at a café near us and then visit the local library, which has a bookstore in the back, but my husband realized he’s been driving non-stop for work all week and was simply too mentally spent to go. Instead, we ordered food from one of the only restaurants in town, stayed home, and watched movies while the wind raged outside. We are hoping to take our trip out of town when spring comes.

A little update on the parosmia (this is when a person’s smell and taste is distorted from a virus, such as the nasty one we’ve been dealing with in the world the last two years, sometimes making food smell and taste rotten or like sewage) issue I asked for prayer for last week, or the week before: The smell remains for me on many days, but not all. Some foods are still off limit for me, including garlic, onion, (and any seasoning with those in it), and peanut butter (dear, Lord, the smell and taste of that for me is absolutely repulsive and it is the same for The Boy!). I can’t use my favorite Italian salad dressing on my salads because it has the same indescribable taste and smell and sometimes even meat has the taste and smell, though much milder than it did about two weeks ago. Last week was fairly good but today (or yesterday as you read this) was a bad day as a lot of the food I ate had that nasty flavor.

Thank you for the prayers and please pray for others also dealing with this, many of them with worse issues, to the point they can’t eat without throwing up from the stench and taste. This condition can also be caused by any virus, chemotherapy, and polyps, just for a little extra information (that you probably didn’t care about but may need to know in the future, though I hope not).

What We watched/Are Watching

It often takes me a couple of days to finish a movie if I am watching it on my own because I keep getting interrupted, which was the case with The Finest Hours, which I watched Thursday AND Friday of this past week. I watched it at the suggestion of Susan May Warren, an author who teaches for Novel Academy or My Book Therapy, a writing site I am a part of. If any of you read Christian fiction, especially Christian romance, then you have heard of Susie, as everyone who knows her calls her. I don’t know her that well so I just call her Susan. *wink*

Anyhow, I thought The Finest Hours was pretty good. It wasn’t the best but also wasn’t the worst. For the record, I enjoyed watching Casey Afleck more than I did Chris Pine. Never been a fan of Chris Pine’s bushy eyebrows. I know. So shallow of me. Seriously, though, Chris Pine really did well in this movie.

I watch most of my shows with my husband and he was very busy this week so we didn’t have time to sit and watch much of anything. We did watch an episode of the old show The Saint, with Roger Moore, and that was interesting since I had never seen the show before.

What I’m Writing

Thanks to the aforementioned Novel Academy, I finished the rough draft of Beauty From Ashes and am now working on edits. I say thanks to Novel Academy because the women from the group are now holding writing sprints each weekday morning and that encourages me to get moving and keep moving, on my writing projects.

Last week I also wrote a devotional for the group that is scheduled for February 28.

I didn’t write a lot here on the blog because I was working so much on editing the book and also tried to read more.

I did share a Faithfully Thinking and a Randomly Thinking post and two chapters from Beauty From Ashes (which is still called A New Chapter for the sake of the blog).

What I’m Listening To

This past week I didn’t listen to a lot of music, but I did listen to some Matthew West, who incidentally has a new song out.

Now it’s your turn

So that’s my week in review. How about you? What have you been watching, reading, doing, or listening to? 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 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.