Tag: what i’m watching

Sunday Bookends: Zac Efron, country music, a story about chickens, and cowboy mysteries

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends13 Comments

Sunday Bookends is my week in review, so to speak. It’s where I share what I’ve been up to, what I’ve been reading, what I’ve been watching, what I’ve been listening to and what I’ve been writing. Feel free to share a link or comment about your week in review in the comments.

The best thing about taking a news and social media break (with little peeks here and there) is that there is more time to read, write, and watch documentaries about country music superstars. This week I finished a book, started three more, watched two movies, a half of another and finished a documentary about Garth Brooks.

What I’m Reading

I finished A Long Time Comin’ by Robin W. Pearson this week and really enjoyed it. I’ll have a review of it later in the week.

I’m reading The Bottle Cap Lady by John Spiers of My Life With Gracie with my daughter, who is also a Gracie (but a human one, not a chicken one.). She must be enjoying it because on our second night of reading she asked for it instead of Paddington. I know I am enjoying it and the subtle little life lessons in the stories about chickens.

The description of The Bottle Cap Lady:

The mysteriously troubled Bottle Cap Lady had proudly held the record for serving up more Deluxe Chicken Dinners than anyone else in a single evening as a waitress at The Chicken Place until she lost her job for coming to work drunk. After failing at one part-time job after another, she turns her attention towards Pearl, a small and curious white hen who resembles the chicken statue on top of The Chicken Place Restaurant. The Bottle Cap Lady does not realize there is a Christmas gift only Pearl can give her, but will The Bottle Cap Lady let her give that gift or will she turn Pearl into a Christmas dinner before she even has a chance?

“The Bottle Cap Lady” is the unillustrated version of “How To Explain Christmas To Chickens.” (The author considers this version to be a work of children’s fiction pretending to be adult fiction.) The story text is the same for both novels. Only the preface, introduction, and epilogue are slightly different.



For something completely different I am reading a Longmire novel by Craig Johnson. I was going to read The Dark Horse but my husband suggested I go back to the first book in the series, The Cold Dish. The Netflix show Longmire is based on Johnson’s series of books about Sheriff Walt Longmire in Wyoming. (Warning: These books are not Christian and not for anyone who prefers clean, romantic fiction.) It remains to be seen if I make it through this one, but so far I do like the writing style.

For nonfiction, I hope to start Jesus Among Other Gods by Ravi Zacharias this week.

What I’m Watching

My husband and I watched a two part (90 minutes each) mini-series about Garth Brooks on Netflix this past week. I think it was originally made for CMT to promote his last album. It was an interesting look at a singer we’ve both followed for almost his entire career, although my husband discovered him first because he’s been a country music fan longer than me. Still, I watched Garth when I was in high school, well before I met my husband. It was interesting to see how his career developed, to learn about his divorce from his first wife and leaving his career to raise his three girls and then his marriage to Trisha Yearwood. One thing we knew but learned even more during the documentary was that Garth is very emotional. He must have broke down ten times during this thing as he remembered his career and rise to fame. That’s not a bad thing so don’t get me wrong, it was just something we noticed.

I also watched a movie on Netflix called The Lost Husband with Josh Duhamel this past week. The movie is about a woman who is widowed, loses her house, and moves her and her children in with her great aunt until she can get back on her feet. Her great aunt runs a goat farm and expects her to work on the farm when she gets there, which is a huge culture shock for a city girl like her.

The movie is a little bit of a romance, yes, but it’s not the main focus of the story. The main focus is on the woman not only trying to rebuild her life, but deal with her grief over the loss of her husband and with the unraveling of a family secret. It’s not super dark, not overly cheesy and I enjoyed the story line.

Duhamel was perfect in his role. I liked the subtly of the story, for lack of a better description.

I didn’t mean to pick another Josh Duhamel movie, but somehow did when I watched Life As We Know It, which also stars Katherine Heigel. My husband said the movie was probably awful, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It did drag in some places and was a little too cheesy, but I have definitely seen worse.

My son and I have been watching Zac Efron’s travel show on Netflix aptly titled “Down to Earth with Zac Efron. It’s an interesting show that has shown me Zac is much more than a guy who spells his name weird, has amazing eyes, and often plays the doe eyed love interest in movies. He’s a combination of down to earth and Hollywood sheltered in this show.

The show focuses on natural ways to sustain our life, including how we eat, how we get our energy and our mental health. Efron shows that he really understands the need for a healthy life all around and it’s interesting to see him looking less like an actor and more like an every day person with his beard and chilled out personality. Apparently the internet even made fun of his “dad bod” because he didn’t work out for this show, he was just a normal guy and guess what? He looked healthy and like a normal guy enjoying himself and my husband said he’d love to have Zac’s “dad bod” any day. In other words, we live in a superficial world and the fact comments about the show were more about his looks than the substance of the show just shows how shallow our society can be. The bottom line is that the show is a combination of education and entertainment.

What I’m Writing:

I shared a chapter from Quarantined: A Novella last week and a chapter from The Farmer’s Daughter.

I also shared a post about the music of TobyMac being a soundtrack to my life and a photo featuring images from our summer so far.

What I’m Listening To

This sermon:

Favorite quotes from this one:

Sometimes we are so busy trying to figure out how to get out of them that we expend all the energy that we could have spent trying to learn what God wants us to learn through the storm.

God’s timing is not designed to give us relief. So what is it designed to give you? REVELATION.

Is it harder to give faith to the what if than it is to give FEAR to the what if?

Fear is just faith in the wrong what if.

This podcast:

Laughter for All with Comedian Nazareth

This album:

What’s Been Happening

Not much has been happening here honestly. We are gearing up for homeschooling to start the first week in September, I had some bloodwork done and had an autoimmune disease and diabetes ruled out for causing some of my health issues, which is good, and the kitten is growing fast.

Yesterday there were twin fawns in our backyard so I thought I’d share some photos from their visit in our photos from the week. These are a combination of photos I took and my husband took. The camera and lens are not the one I regularly use and I really didn’t like the quality of the shots but it was still neat to see the twins again and grab some photos of them.

I’m also sharing some photos of the kids’ swimming and the view of our “Endless Mountains” as well as some scenes from a recent political rally we went to for my husband’s job.

Photos from The Week

Sunday Bookends: Going down south, in a book that is; the new kitten is crazy; and my garden was a failure but my dad’s wasn’t

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn books and reading, everyday musings, Sunday Bookends24 Comments

Sunday Bookends is my week in review, so to speak. It’s where I share what I’ve been up to, what I’ve been reading, what I’ve been watching, what I’ve been listening to and what I’ve been writing. Feel free to share a link or comment about your week in review in the comments.

What I’m Reading

I’m savoring A Long Time Comin’ By Robin W. Pearson. The story takes place in North Carolina, which I am familiar with since my mom is originally from there. I’ve been reading from it all week but I have had to pause and have a good cry during part of it, not because it is depressing, but because much of it is touching.

I have mentioned this book before but I thought I’d share the description again:

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To hear Beatrice Agnew tell it, she entered the world with her mouth tightly shut. Just because she finds out she’s dying doesn’t mean she can’t keep it that way. If any of her children have questions about their daddy and the choices she made after he abandoned them, they’d best take it up with Jesus. There’s no room in Granny B’s house for regrets or hand-holding. Or so she thinks.

Her granddaughter, Evelyn Lester, shows up on Beatrice’s doorstep anyway, burdened with her own secret baggage. Determined to help her Granny B mend fences with her far-flung brood, Evelyn turns her grandmother’s heart and home inside out. Evelyn’s meddling uncovers a tucked-away box of old letters, forcing the two women to wrestle with their past and present pain as they confront the truth Beatrice has worked a lifetime to hide.

So far I can absolutely relate to Evelyn and somewhat to Granny B. Granny B can be a difficult character to like, in some ways, but I do like her and I am enjoying slowly learning about her, savoring a chapter or two a day. I’m also learning about her seven children, the husband who left the family, and the frayed ties that hold them all together.

Robin’s next book is due in February 2021 and it’s already on the hot new releases for Amazon. I guess that tells you a little about how much people like her first book.

Up next on my list to read:

Above the Fold by Rachel Scott McDaniel and for a complete opposite of Rachel’s book, I’m going to try a Longmire book, The Dark Horse by Craig Johnson, since I’ve watched a few episodes of the show.



What I’m Watching

I’m still watching Father Brown and I’ve also been watching reruns of Benson (the old show with Robert Guillaume), which actually holds up pretty well (other than the keep call black people “the blacks.”). Benson is available on the Roku app on the . . . well, Roku.

What’s Been Happening:

The new kitten is fitting in fairly well, though our resident adult cat still hates her. Pixel, our adult cat, is spending a lot of time outside still, but did let me start petting her again. For the first few days she wanted nothing to do with me, glaring at me from under the table most days. She still glares some, but it’s better and her tail flares less now when she sees the kitten, but she still hisses and growls at her if the kitten dares to get within a few feet of her. We did finally choose Scout for the kittens name and I guess Little Miss has accepted that the kitten will not be called Mittens.

Scout climbs on my chest anytime she wants comfort or sleep which can be very inconvenient at times, like when I need to make dinner or type or well, do anything at all. It was cute at first and it’s sweet she sees me as her comfort but the other night I had to switch her to my husband so I could finish dinner.

This past week was also stock up on stock photography week. I took a bunch of new stock photos to submit to my stock agencies, including Lightstock, a Christian-based stock agency. During that upload I had to ask a question on their chat and Scout ran across the keyboard which led to a humorous exchange with the gentleman I was chatting with, mainly me apologizing for all the extra letters on the keyboard.

You will see some of the photos for stock in my photos of the week. The photos of my son doing school work were set up that way; we haven’t started school yet. We probably won’t start until after Labor Day.

I visited my Dad’s garden this week to grab some kale (he has tons and now I have tons waiting to be cooked) and not only took some photos of the garden, but the sun pouring through the clouds overlooking the property and some of the purple cone flowers at the front of the house.

I don’t know if I will be taking too many photos this upcoming week, at least the first half of it, because it is supposed to be very hot and I hate the heat, or my body does at least. Temps are supposed to decrease later in the week so maybe I will venture out then.

What I’m Listening To

Zach Williams and Toby Mac have been on my playlist lately. For Zach I have been listening to his Chain Breaker album and for Toby I’m listening to his Lost Demos album, which is what it sounds like – demos that he wrote but then never actually made the albums. The songs are very good and of course hold some memories for Toby since a couple were written about his son, who died last year.

Photos from the week:

Sunday Bookends: You might be a book nerd if you plan to watch a documentary about . . . books

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends15 Comments


Sunday Bookends is my week in review, so to speak. It’s where I share what I’ve been up to, what I’ve been reading, what I’ve been watching, what I’ve been listening to and what I’ve been writing. Feel free to share a link or comment about your week in review in the comments.

What I’m Watching

I don’t know if I would really call myself a book nerd. I would call my husband one. He is a definite book nerd.

I like books.

I read books.

But he is obsessed with books of all kinds. Therefore it made sense to choose a documentary called The Booksellers for our weekend movie night. But then we watched Casino Royale with our son instead since he’s getting older and we wanted to introduce him to some of the movies we’ve seen and enjoyed over the years. This was the first James Bond with Daniel Craig and a reboot of the franchise. We will probably watch The Booksellers Sunday night (tonight) or Monday instead.

According to a description on YouTube, The Booksellers is about …. yes, booksellers. “Antiquarian booksellers are part scholar, part detective and part businessperson, and their personalities and knowledge are as broad as the material they handle. They also play an underappreciated yet essential role in preserving history. THE BOOKSELLERS takes viewers inside their small but fascinating world, populated by an assortment of obsessives, intellects, eccentrics and dreamers.”

I also watched Win A Date with Tad Hamilton this week but my husband said I shouldn’t mention that to anyone. That’s probably because I fast forwarded a lot of it and it was fairly cringe worthy in some ways. All I know is I would have picked Topher Grace over that other idiot any day. If you haven’t seen the movie, you’re not missing much, but the bottom line is that Tad Hamilton is a stuck-up, shallow actor and Rosealee, a young woman from Virginia who works at a Piggly Wiggly (yes, it is a real chain of supermarkets for those not from the south) wins a date with him. Tad is enchanted by how down to earth she is and falls for her but the entire time her best friend Pete is in love with her and can’t get up the courage to tell her.

I also started watching Father Brown again, the more modern version on Britbox on Amazon (there is apparently a version from the 1970s as well. This show is based on books by G.K. Chesterton). It may be available other places as well. I’m not sure. I abandoned the show in the seventh season because they got rid of a couple of characters and some of the episodes were a bit too .. er…. sexy for me? I don’t know how to put it other than there was too much focus on sex crimes in that season and it was disturbing. I can’t binge crime shows the way some people do. If they are really dark crime shows I can’t watch them at all. Father Brown isn’t usually too dark. They do show the person being killed but it’s not usually a drawn out murder scene and they don’t usually focus on the graphic aftermath for shock value like some shows.

What I’m Reading

A Cord of Three Strands by Christy Distler

I finished this this week and will have a review of the book up on the blog on Tuesday. It is historical Christian fiction.

A Long Time Comin’ by Robin Pearson I know it’s been a long time reading too but my reading was interrupted when I read a couple books/stories for some other authors and with writing this week. I have gotten back into it this week and I am really enjoying it.

What’s Been Happening

I’m trying a real legit Facebook detox for the entire month of August. Pray for me. I really need to get my nerves under control and I think a break from social media will help. It will nice to not be told what I have to be angry about or afraid of for an entire month.

I’m also dealing with some issues with my bladder (like going to the bathroom all night long) so I’d love some prayer on that as well. I think it’s related to hormones but I have an appointment with urology in a month (if I don’t call and beg them to get me in earlier). TMI ahead for any men that might read my blog (I don’t think there are any) but what is weird is that I just had a period after a month of not having one and I didn’t go to the bathroom as much during it so I have no idea what is up, other than I really believe my hormones are off.

On a happier note, I somehow agreed to adopt a kitten this past week and we picked her up on Saturday. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had a kitten in the house so this is all pretty weird and a bit exhausting coupled with the above mentioned bladder issues. The kids have been thrilled, though The Boy was less thrilled last night when he had to watch her in his room to keep her away from the other pets (who aren’t yet sure what they think of her) but hopefully things will eventually settle down and she will fit in well.

She has extra toes so my daughter wants to name her mittens. I told my son he could name her because he always complains that he doesn’t get to name our pets but when I asked him to provide a name he said “I dunno..” and slunked away like the teenager he now is. I picked Scout after Scout Finch from one of my favorite books To Kill A Mockingbird. We will see which one we end up sticking with. We like these choices better than the name the foster family had for her at the shelter: Valerian, after the flower and root. I can’t say the word right and when I do I can’t seem to say it without a posh British accent.

Phots from the week:

I actually barely touched my camera this week. Hopefully I will pick up the camera more this next week but I at least have some photos of the new kitten I can share.

Sunday Bookends: A book challenge for me for the rest of the year; books read; and photos from the week

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends11 Comments


Sunday Bookends is my week in review, so to speak. It’s where I share what I’ve been up to, what I’ve been reading, what I’ve been watching, what I’ve been listening to and what I’ve been writing. Feel free to share a link or comment about your week in review in the comments.

What’s been happening/Garden update

Not a lot has been happening lately, but I have been trying not to kill my garden. So far we’ve eaten some summer squash from it, one piece of broccoli and we tried to eat the lettuce but it was bitter. I think we will eventually get some carrots and tomatoes from it and maybe a few more squash and zucchini. I also hope to get a few potatoes and later on some butternut squash. I’m horrible at weeding the garden. Maybe I’ll get better at it next year, but I don’t have much hope.

I took some photos of my garden but then I was going to put in the photos of my dad’s garden and tell all of you his was mine. I didn’t think that would be honest, but his looks much more impressive than mine this year, which is funny because he originally said he wasn’t doing one. I’ll share a couple photos of his garden at the end of the post.

These are my tomatoes, lettuce, and squash and a meal I made with my squash, my dad’s kale, and a pork chop. The green beans my daughter is snapping at the end of the post are 99.9 percent my dad’s and about five from my own garden. My green bean plants didn’t have enough room to grow.

I had planned to chop down some flowers outside our house before they got too big but I — uh, never got around to it (again) and they grew two feet tall and sprouted these freaky alien flowers and hundreds (okay 20) of bees of three or four different kinds of varieties swarmed them. The only good thing about leaving them there was a butterfly landed on them and Little Miss was able to enjoy watching the butterfly. I’m going to cut these flowers back before next year because they seriously took over the side of our house and they weren’t attractive at all (to me anyhow).

What I’m Reading

I am reading Misty Of Chincoteague (I definitely had to look up how to spell that) each night with my daughter I tried this before with my son years ago but he was not impressed. My daughter, however, is a huge fan of horses so I’m .hoping she will enjoy it more, even if it isn’t her regular Paddington. She has, however, asked for Paddington more this week than Misty. I’m going to keep trying because I think she will like it.

I finished By Book or By Crook by Eva Gates this week (yes, I know. What took me so long) and really enjoyed it. The book is about a young woman who moves to the Outer Banks of North Carolina to work at a library that is built inside a lighthouse. She’s moved to her family’s old vacation spot (and her aunt and uncles hometown) to avoid an awkward situation back in her hometown of Boston involving a failed relationship. Not only does Lucy encounter the mayor of the small village, Connor, who she remembers kissing on the beach when she was there on vacation and were 14, but Butch, a police officer in the village. She encounters Butch more than she might like when someone in the village is discovered murdered in the library.

The description from Amazon:

For ten years Lucy has enjoyed her job poring over rare tomes of literature for the Harvard Library, but she has not enjoyed the demands of her family’s social whorl or her sort-of-engagement to the staid son of her father’s law partner. But when her ten-year relationship implodes, Lucy realizes that the plot of her life is in need of a serious rewrite.
 
Calling on her aunt Ellen, Lucy hopes that a little fun in the Outer Banks sun—and some confections from her cousin Josie’s bakery—will help clear her head. But her retreat quickly turns into an unexpected opportunity when Aunt Ellen gets her involved in the lighthouse library tucked away on Bodie Island.
 
Lucy is thrilled to land a librarian job in her favorite place in the world. But when a priceless first edition Jane Austen novel is stolen and the chair of the library board is murdered, Lucy suddenly finds herself ensnared in a real-life mystery—and she’s not so sure there’s going to be a happy ending….

The next book I started was A long Time Comin’ by Robin Pearson and though I’m only on Chapter 5 it is already keeping me up late by being caught up in the story.

The description from Amazon:

To hear Beatrice Agnew tell it, she entered the world with her mouth tightly shut. Just because she finds out she’s dying doesn’t mean she can’t keep it that way. If any of her children have questions about their daddy and the choices she made after he abandoned them, they’d best take it up with Jesus. There’s no room in Granny B’s house for regrets or hand-holding. Or so she thinks.

Her granddaughter, Evelyn Lester, shows up on Beatrice’s doorstep anyway, burdened with her own secret baggage. Determined to help her Granny B mend fences with her far-flung brood, Evelyn turns her grandmother’s heart and home inside out. Evelyn’s meddling uncovers a tucked-away box of old letters, forcing the two women to wrestle with their past and present pain as they confront the truth Beatrice has worked a lifetime to hide.

If I can start reading faster, I would love to do a reading challenge a local library did for the summer. I definitely won’t finish the challenge before the August 15 deadline but I’m thinking of trying it for the end of the year:

  1. A book published in 2019
  2. A book recommended by a librarian (my brother is sort-of a librarian so I’ll have to ask him to recommend one to me)
  3. A book published before you were born (done)
  4. A fantasy book (this will be a bit harder for me, since I’m not a huge fantasy fan)
  5. A book recommended by a friend or relative (done)
  6. A book that became a movie
  7. A book with a character from another country
  8. A non-fiction book (uuugh. I’m not a very big non-fiction reader but luckily Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs has recently recommended a couple I am interested in)
  9. A fiction book (no problem and done)
  10. The first book of a series (already done with By Book or By Crook)

What I’m Watching:

This week I watched a movie called All Saints with John Corbett about a Episcopalian pastor who is put in charge of closing down a charge on his first assignment. The description on Google:

Michael Spurlock decides to trade in his corporate sales career to become a pastor. Unfortunately, his first assignment is to close a country church and sell the prime piece of land where it sits. He soon has a change of heart when the church starts to welcome refugees from Burma. Spurlock now finds himself working with the refugees to turn the land into a working farm to pay the church’s bills.

I really enjoyed the movie which I found terribly touching and very well acted by a strong cast. I didn’t know many of the actors besides Corbett, but did recognize David Keith from Heritage Falls, which I watched the week before. I found it on Amazon but it may be available on other streaming services.

What I’m Writing:

I’m working on finishing a novella that will combine my short stories Quarantined and Rekindle and hope to have it complete and ready for publication by the end of August. I’ll be releasing it free for blog readers, if I can figure out how to do that.

I’m also working on The Farmer’s Daughter, of course.

On the blog this past week:

On Monday I wrote about A Little Farm Making Special Milk (a blog post about a local farm);

Tuesday I rambled about me and the blog (which was totally awkward for me, to be honest);

Friday I shared another chapter of The Farmer’s Daughter.

I’ll end the post like I have been ending it lately; with some photos from the week, but I really did not take many photos at all this week. Hopefully, I will have some more from next week.

Sunday Bookends: slow summer days, slow reading, slow everything

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Sunday Bookends13 Comments


Sunday Bookends is my week in review, so to speak. It’s where I share what I’ve been up to, what I’ve been reading, what I’ve been watching, what I’ve been listening to and What I’ve been writing. Feel free to share a link or comment about your week in review in the comments.

What I’ve Been Up To

I haven’t been up to a ton this week. We did visit my parents a couple of times so we could go swimming since our area was hit with a short heatwave. I think we will also go swimming later today because it is supposed to be in the low 90s (yes, Arizona people.. I know that is not really hot. 😉)

We visited a local farm earlier in the week and ended up with a flat tire but I’m planning a separate post on that for later in the week.


What I’m Reading:

I’m reading very slow these days but am going back and forth between books. I am still reading By Book or By Crook by Eva Gates. I don’t know why I am reading it so slowly other than I’ve been switching between it and A Long Time Comin’ but Robin Pearson the last few days and I also find myself playing with the little one throughout the day and that takes up quite a bit of time. Plus cooking and taking the dog in and out. I’m not cleaning because I’m a huge cleaning failure. My husband is a cleaning success story, however.

What I’m Watching:

I watched a movie called Heritage Falls with David Keith, Coby Ryan McLaughlin, and Keenan Johnson this past week. I was pleasant suprised because it seemed like one of those faith-based independent films and they aren’t always great. This movie, however, was well, written, well-acted, and not predictable or cliche.

It was about a father and son who aren’t having a great relationship and the son is also having a challenging time with his teenage son. To try to mend things between his son and him the grandfather takes them all on a camping trip and during that time all three end up bonding and at least working through some of their issues. It was much more entertaining than I expected and also had me reaching for tissues a couple of times.

I also watched The Fitzgerald Family Christmas which was much different than Heritage Falls in some ways and very similar in others. What was different was the language (much more colorful) and what was similar was it was a movie full of a family talking things out and working through past family hurts involving a father. It isn’t a movie I would normally click on but I needed something different so I tried it out.

Sometimes I find a gem in the list of cruddy movies stream services offer and this week I found two (both on Amazon prime).

The Fitzgerald Family Christmas starred Edward Burns, who also wrote it.

What I’m Listening To:

I’ve been listening to the music my son has been listening to lately and it is interesting to see him developing his own taste in music. It’s nothing like what I expected. On his listening list lately has been John Denver, Smokey Robinson, Al Green, Queen, Marvin Gaye, Hozier, AC/DC, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, and the Grateful Dead to name a few. I’m not fans of all of these but I try to listen to a few of them with him. Maybe I can push some Needtobreathe, George Straight, Marc Martel, TobyMac, and early Mumford and Sons on him this week but I doubt it. He’s not interested in much of his “mom’s music” these days. And I thought my music was “hip” and “cool.” Hmmm..oh well.

What I’m Writing:

I’m still working on The Farmer’s Daughter and shared another chapter this week.

I’m also still working on Fully Alive.

I wrote about visiting an old stone railroad bridge in Nicholson, PA.

Photos from the week

Sunday Bookends: Joan Hickson was how old when she played Miss Marple?!

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends10 Comments

My week was fairly low key since I was recovering from a UTI (or a possible different condition. I’m not sure yet). I used to get them all the time as a kid, teenager and even my early adult years, but this is the first one I’ve had in probably 12 years and this time there wasn’t any pain, just using the bathroom all night long and totally messing up my sleep pattern. We spent a lot of time in the backyard running through the sprinkler to beat the heat and I spent a lot of time drinking water and wishing I could sleep normally again. I’ve been waking up every 90-minutes for about two weeks (maybe even a month) so, yeah, I’m a little out of it these days.

What I’ve Been Watching

Since my husband has been suggesting I watch old shows like Perry Mason and The Rockford Files with him, I talked him into a Miss Marple movie this week. We both agreed that the movie was complicated and a bit confusing, but still intriguing.

The movies are based on Agatha Christie’s books about Miss Marple. There are a number of different portrayals of Miss Marple, but my favorite is Joan Hickson, who to me is just a perfect Miss Marple even though (shhhhh) I’ve never read any of the books. *And yes, I am sure I’ve mentioned Joan Hickson as Miss Marple before on my Sunday Bookends.

When Joan came on my husband said: “I don’t mean to be rude but she looks ancient! How did she even remember her lines at her age?”

So then I started Googling and it turned out she started — I emphasize started — filming 8 years of movies as Miss Marple at the age of 78.

Yes, 78.

She was 86 when she retired and they stopped making movies. Never say you’re too old for anything.

My favorite part of her portrayal is the way she acts so sweet almost the entire movie, all the while knowing she knows what is going on when no one else does. And then at the end of the movie when she lays it out for the dolt police detectives and she says things like “Well, obviously” or “of course it was…” implying she, an elderly woman, could figure it out, since it was as plain as the nose on her face, then why couldn’t they? Those endings where she wraps it all up in a neat little bow are like the ultimate mic drop. Plus it helps me because I’ve usually lost the plot somewhere in the middle since the movies are so complex.

This week we also watched The Magnificent Seven, the modern version with Chris Pratt and Denzel Washington. I missed most of it because I was outside on the back porch playing unicorns with my daughter. I’ve seen the original and from what I did see of the modern version it was pretty close. Denzel was a good choice to play Yule Brenner’s part. Neither movie is really one of my favorites since I think the story is pretty dark and depressing. For those who don’t know it is is a western and the main plot is that a bad man is running the town and a widow hires a gunmen and others to take out the bad man and set the town free. Pretty simple explanation of it.

I also rewatched the movie Risen which is about a Roman tribune who witnesses the crucifixion of Christ and then is put in charge of making sure his followers don’t remove his body from the tomb to make it took like he has risen from the dead. When the body turns up missing, Clauvius (played by Joseph Feines), begins the search for Yeshua (Jesus in English) and a search for what he has been missing in his own life after years of slaughtering people in the name of Rome. It stars Feines, Tom Felton, and Peter Firth, so it is a Hollywood driven retelling (in a way) of the Gospels, but it is well done, despite some glaring inaccuracies, which Amazon’s trivia feature pointed out to me and some which I noticed on my own. It is also much more violent and graphic in the early part of the movie.

Despite what the words say up there, this is not in the theaters.


What I’m Reading

I’m deep into By Book or By Crook by Eva Gates and enjoying it so far.

Here is the description on Goodreads:

For ten years Lucy has enjoyed her job poring over rare tomes of literature for the Harvard Library, but she has not enjoyed the demands of her family’s social whorl or her sort-of-engagement to the staid son of her father’s law partner. But when her ten-year relationship implodes, Lucy realizes that the plot of her life is in need of a serious rewrite.

Calling on her aunt Ellen, Lucy hopes that a little fun in the Outer Banks sun—and some confections from her cousin Josie’s bakery—will help clear her head. But her retreat quickly turns into an unexpected opportunity when Aunt Ellen gets her involved in the lighthouse library tucked away on Bodie Island.

Lucy is thrilled to land a librarian job in her favorite place in the world. But when a priceless first edition Jane Austen novel is stolen and the chair of the library board is murdered, Lucy suddenly finds herself ensnared in a real-life mystery—and she’s not so sure there’s going to be a happy ending….


In the next couple of weeks I hope to start A Long Time Comin‘ by Robin Pearson; The Secret Life of Sarah Hollenbeck by Bethany Turner; Death by the Seaside by T.E. Kirney; and Top of the Heap by Earle Stanley Gardner.

What I am Writing:

I have been working on The Farmer’s Daughter this past week in between running to the bathroom and also put in a few hundred words of Fully Alive. I’ll have a new chapter of The Farmer’s Daughter on Friday and maybe a new part to Fully Alive on Thursdy.

Here is a sneak peek of what I’m working on for Fully Alive:

Atticus wiped the back of his hand across his forehead, wiping away the sweat gathering there and watched the people walking, wondering about the devotion they had to this one God they followed, this Yahweh. He’d never understood it. He was raised to believe there were many gods and it took offering them sacrifices and performing well in life to appease them. Perform well, live well. Make a mistake and suffer for it. It was all he’d ever known. But these Jews. They had been defeated time and time again, taken over by Rome, killed in the thousands, their bodies rotting in the desert, yet they still held on to the belief they were chosen by this one god who supposedly cared about them more than anyone.

A few of them were wealthy, yes; the priests, their religious leaders, tax collectors or anyone who tied their allegiance to Rome. But for the most part most of these Jews were poor, living in squalor, many begging for food. Year after year, though, they journeyed here, feasting, gathering, worshipping their “one true God.”

Atticus scoffed as a beggar held up his hand, asking him for money.

Oh, yes. Of course, the one “true God” who couldn’t even pull his people out of the depths of depravity and starvation. Atticus walked past the man, barely looking at him, sick of the beggars and the crows and the long days and even longer nights. Dreams, nightmares, had been waking him from sleep for week. Visions of his time in battle, of the men he killed filled his mind nightly and he woken more than once in a cold sweat. Long soaks in the baths hadn’t helped. Prayers to Mars, the god of war, hadn’t helped. His past mocked him and it made him angry, sickness gnawing at his gut every day.

On the blog last week:

Sunday Bookends: What I’m reading, the week in photos, and mysteries seem to be a theme for me this week

Our cat has no consideration for my mental health

Short Fiction: Rekindle Part 5

Friday Fiction: The Farmer’s Daughter Chapter 15

Planned for this week:

A review of Wooing Cadie McCaffery; a post about our trip to the Nicholson Viaduct; more fiction

How about all of you? What are you reading, watching, doing, writing? Let me know in the comments.

The Week in Photos (missing a few, including some of The Boy. He does exist, but as a teenager he is often camera shy these days.)

Sunday Bookends: What I’m reading, the week in photos, and mysteries seem to be a theme for me this week

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends5 Comments

What I’m Reading

I finished two books this week and they couldn’t have been more different from each other.

The Knife Slipped by Earle Stanley Gardner was a noire crime novel, of sorts, while Wooing Cadie Mccaffey by Bethany Turner was a well written, humorous and light romance with light Christian undertones. Even if you’re not a Christian you would enjoy Cadie and Will’s story of love, break up and maybe love again. It was extremely entertaining and not preachy at all.

I don’t usually write book reviews but I might try to do a couple on these this week, just for fun and to distract myself from the weirdness of the world.

Gardener is the author of the Perry Mason books, of which the show and movies are based. Speaking of Perry Mason movies, my husband made me watch a couple of those this past week on his vacation. We enjoyed them, since they hold sentimental value for him (he used to watch them as a kid) but we also made a lot of fun of them. We especially made fun of the one actor’s hair because each movie it became more and more “flock of seagulls.”

Books I started this week include:

By Nook or By Crook by Eva Gates, which I am really enjoying so far (I’m up to chapter 2); a Lady Hardcastle Mystery, Death Beside the Seaside by T.E. Kinsey; and A Long Time Coming by Robin W. Pearson.

Up for later are Top of the Heap by Earle Stanley Gardener, another Cool and Lamm mystery; a Perry Mason book and Dreamwalker by a self-published author, Carrie Cotton.

What I’m Wrote/writing

Last weeks blog posts included:

The Little Garden That Might Grow. Maybe. We’ll See.

Serial Fiction: Rekindle Parts 3 and 4 (a sequel to Quarantined)

Fiction Friday: Catching Up

Upcoming this week I am planning a post entitled: Our Cat Has No Consideration For My Mental Health, possibly a book review or two, and at least one installment of fiction. I also hope to share a post about the stone railroad bridge we visited this week, including its history and photos from our visit there.

I am working on some upcoming installments for The Farmer’s Daughter and would love to get back into working on Fully Alive this week. I also hope to finish Rekindle, which I want to combine with Quarantined as a novella at some point, which will probably mean adding a little more background and developing the characters more.

What I’m Watching

I already mentioned we watched some Perry Mason episodes and movies on my husband’s vacation this week.

We also watched Knives Out with Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Christopher Plummer, Don Johnson, Jamie Lee Curtis and many others. I didn’t think it would be my type of movie but I was pleasantly surprised by it. It was definitely not what I expected but I did predict the “who done it” in some ways at the end. Daniel Craig was great but his Louisiana accent was really throwing me off since I’m used to him as James Bond. If you don’t like hard language I would skip this one (even though the big F-word is only said once) but one thing you won’t have to worry about it too much gore.

I gave up on Hart of Dixie this week. I know that I am going to sound like a super, super prude in a moment but I gave up on it because some of the characters jumped in and out of beds like they were eating candy instead of having sex. I mean I get that the show is meant to be a bit silly at times but I had a feeling if I kept going I was going to lose track of Dr. Hart’s bed partners. Plus my husband made fun of me for watching it so I bailed out.

I did start Frankie Drake Mysteries on Amazon and so far I like it but I am only on the second episode. It’s about a female detective group in the 1920s. Frankie Drake is the lead detective. I love the 20s swing music featured throughout the show, but could do without them playing it in the background during some scenes where I think it is out of place. I don’t mind music during scene switches or beginnings but I don’t like when it’s played behind dialogue. Also, it’s a wee-bit preachy about feminism and their Hollywood is showing because they are sort of pushing socialism and communism. I still like the simple story lines, so far, however. And no, I’m not a tv critic but I play one on my blog.

What I’m Listening To

I’m actually not listening to a ton of music because my son has been playing music around us a lot and he has very eclectic tastes — like his dad and me and his uncle (my brother). I’m not really a fan of the 80s rock he’s been listening to or metal or whatever it is — Aerosmith, Guns and Roses and AC/DC but I’m good with Johnny Cash, The Beatles, and Bill Monroe and Bruce Springsteen. If he Rick Rolls me one more time, though, I am going to pop him one (I don’t hit me kids so this is a total joke. I may shut off the WiFi on him, however.

My daughter and I listen to Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, or Dean Martin before bed on nights she’s super tired and wants music instead of a book. I often keep listening to whichever one we’ve chosen even after she is asleep.

I am also trying to listen to more sermons lately. I listened to one by Steven Furtick called Why Am I Anxious (I listen to this one a lot) and I also listened to one by Chip Ingram, but I fell asleep (sorry Chip! It wasn’t boring. I was just tired.

What’s Been Going On Otherwise

I mentioned I’ve been watching my garden grow, and in some cases die, in a post earlier this week.

We also watched all our lovely flowers leave us and I will miss them. Luckily my parents and neighbors had some day lilies pop up to perk up the greenery a bit.

My husband was on vacation this past week and we didn’t really go anywhere other than a day trip to the Nicholson Viaduct, which is the largest stone railroad bridge in the world, or at least the country. Like I said, I’m planning another post on this later this week.

We spent all day Friday at my parents and the kids went swimming there and we had chicken and vegetables on the grill. We celebrated the Fourth with a hot dog and marshmallow roast and my dad shot off some fireworks for us. We invited one of The Boy’s friends to join us. After the fireworks we stood in my parents’ field and watched the fireflies (lightening bugs to some). I thought that they were something fading out of existence because I don’t usually see as many as I did as a kid but last night there were hundreds of them in the fields and the trees and it was so cool to watch them.

Now that we live more in the country our drive home includes a lot more wildlife sightings. This time it was mainly deer jumping out in front of us.

We still haven’t seen the bear everyone has told us about and we are starting to wonder if our neighbors are playing a joke on us and there really isn’t a bear and her cubs in our neighborhood. I joked with my son that they meet behind our backs and say “I told them I saw the mom and cubs in the backyard this morning” and laugh. The other one then says “So funny! I told the wife yesterday that I stepped out by our backdoor and the bear was right there and turned and ran away.” Then the other one says, “And then I told her that there is a huge male bear down the road too!” Then they laugh together at us and how naive we are.

Of course I am kidding about the neighbors. I really do think there is a mama bear and cubs out there and while part of me would like to see them (from the window of my home only), I’m okay with not seeing them, especially after someone about five miles down the road said they walked into their backyard and found a bear with it’s mouth around their dog’s throat. Yikes!

My son is so determined to catch sight of the bear he now goes out with our dog at night and sits on the back porch with his BB gun across his lap like a real redneck. He seems to have decided that if that bear tries to mess with our dog he’ll fill it with some BBs.

So, how did last week go for you? What are you reading, watching, listening to or up to? Let me know in the comments.

Some photos from the week

Sunday Bookends: Amazing roses, new authors, and a little too much binge watching

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends4 Comments

What I’m Reading

I found a new author this week. Someone I “met” on Instagram world where self-published and traditional authors intermingle and share their latest publications.

Bethany Turner has authored a selection of books and I’m trying out Wooing Cadie McCaffery on Kindle Unlimited. I hope to grab up her latest, Hadley Becket’s Next Dish, at another time (I have to limit my book budget or I’ll go crazy.)

Here is the Amazon description for Wooing Cadie McCaffery:


After four years with her boyfriend, Cadie McCaffrey is thinking of ending things. Convinced Will doesn’t love her in the “forever” way she loves him, Cadie believes it’s time for her to let him go before life passes her by. When a misunderstanding leads to a mistake, leaving her hurt, disappointed, and full of regret, she finally sends him packing.

But for Will, the end of their relationship is only the beginning of his quest to figure out how to be the man Cadie wanted him to be. With the dubious guidance of his former pro-athlete work friends and tactics drawn from Cadie’s favorite romantic comedies, Will attempts to win her back. It’s a foolproof plan. What could possibly go wrong?

Bethany Turner is back with more of the heart and humor readers love. Anyone who enjoys a good romance or binges romantic comedies on Netflix will devour this delightful story.


I’m on Chapter 2 and so far I’m really enjoying it. Bethany really pulls the reader into the story right from the beginning. Her writing is fully relatable and full of humor and romance. Definitely a winning combination. (Bethany did not pay me for these comments, don’t worry. She doesn’t even know me or that I’m writing this.)

Another new author to me that I hope to read this next week is Robin W. Pearson who I also just discovered on Instagram. Her first book is A Long Time Comin’ and so far I am absolutely in love with her writing and with her main character Granny B. I can’t wait to really get into t his one. I don’t often buy books at full price on Kindle but I did this one.Her second book is coming out in February and also sounds great. It can be pre-ordered at this time.

A Long Time Comin’:

To hear Beatrice Agnew tell it, she entered the world with her mouth tightly shut. Just because she finds out she’s dying doesn’t mean she can’t keep it that way. If any of her children have questions about their daddy and the choices she made after he abandoned them, they’d best take it up with Jesus. There’s no room in Granny B’s house for regrets or hand-holding. Or so she thinks.

Her granddaughter, Evelyn Lester, shows up on Beatrice’s doorstep anyway, burdened with her own secret baggage. Determined to help her Granny B mend fences with her far-flung brood, Evelyn turns her grandmother’s heart and home inside out. Evelyn’s meddling uncovers a tucked-away box of old letters, forcing the two women to wrestle with their past and present pain as they confront the truth Beatrice has worked a lifetime to hide.

(Just a FYI, I know some authors plug other authors to get attention to themselves, but that is not my intent here. I actually only thought of that after I started writing this. I don’t know these women, but I’m really enjoying their writing and wanted to pass them along because many of us need some good distractions right now.)

Looking for intense escapism to hide from the absolutely insanity of the world, I plan to head back to a familiar cozy mystery series with another Lady Hardcastle book at some point, if not this week, then next. Death Beside the Seaside sounds very interesting. T.E. Kinsley’s stories are fairly light and even if the mysteries are easily solved, it’s not always clear how Lady Hardcastle and her maid Flo will reach their conclusion.

Death Beside the Seaside:

July 1910. Lady Hardcastle and her tireless sidekick Flo have finally embarked on a long-overdue seaside break. But just as they’re wavering between ice creams and donkey rides, their fellow guests start to go missing—and the duo find themselves with a hysterical hotel manager and a case to solve.

The first to disappear is Dr Goddard, a scientist doing something terribly top-secret for the government. Gone too are his strongbox and its mysterious contents. By the time Lady Hardcastle has questioned the horde of international guests, her number-one suspect has been dispatched in grisly circumstances—and then the others start vanishing too.

As the case begins to look like a matter of national security, Lady Hardcastle takes advice from her brother in the secret service. But could there be an even more personal connection at play? To solve the case, Lady Hardcastle may face a shocking discovery of her own.



Still in my reading que:

The Knife Slipped by Earle Stanley Gardner (I hope to finish it this week. I like it so far. It’s very different from what I’ve read before. I shared a little about it a couple of weeks ago.)

By Book or By Crook by Eva Gates. This author was recommended by Erin at Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and last week I said I wasn’t sure it was my type of book, which sounded sort of rude. Well, guess what, my finger must have bumped the wrong book in my Kindle because this week I reopened it and that is not the book I started and said I didn’t think I’d like. I actually started reading the book this week and I do think I’m going to like it! I don’t know which book on my Kindle I looked at last week but this wasn’t it. So thank you, Erin! This particular book is the first in the series.


What I’m Watching

I finished Virgin River this week and totally predicted the last episode but I want more. Luckily Netflix just announced they will be having a second season.

To fill the void of missing Virgin River I’m alternating between Hart of Dixie (I’m in the first season and it’s growing on me), When Calls the Heart, and my husband and I started watching Longmire, which is different for me, but I’m really enjoying.

What I’m Writing

I’ve been sharing chapters from The Farmer’s Daughter each Friday and I’m also writing the second part of Quarantined and I’ve decided to combine it with the first Quarantined and make it a novella on Kindle Unlimited at some point. I have to fix all the typos and errors on Quarantined first, of course. (Oh my gosh, I wish I had caught those errors before sharing it on here but, well, the blog is for fun and doo-doo happens!) I’ll most likely share another part of the second part , which I am currently calling Rekindle; on Thursday. Chapter 13 for The Farmer’s Daughter was published Friday.

A New Beginning is for sale on Amazon in ebook or paperback form and it can be read through Kindle Unlimited. You can find an excerpt from it HERE.

What’s Going on Otherwise:

Our roses bloomed even more this week and I also learned from the neighbor, who once lived in the house, that the rose bush is over 100 years old. So, the bush has been growing for 100 years or more and the flowers have bloomed year after year for the families that have lived here. I love that thought.

I seem to have a slightly sad life since I check on the status of the roses every day and have possibly taken a couple hundred photos of them. I don’t know what I’ll do with a couple hundred photos of roses, but I have a feeling I may need to look back on them in these next several months and especially in the Fall and Winter when I struggle with Seasonal Depression that I have a feeling will be even worse this year with the state our world is in.

We also had another peonies bush bloom and this one produced lighter pink flowers that were gorgeous.

We, unfortunately, weren’t able to walk out and enjoy the flowers as much this week because there are a bunch of gnats swarming us in the backyard near the bushes. We aren’t sure what is up with that but our neighbor thinks maybe they just hatched and will hopefully go away. I’ve never seen them this bad and I guess the neighbors haven’t either.

This is my daughter trying to wave the gnats away.

The roses that bloomed late last week are starting to fall and I have a feeling by next week they will be gone. It’s sad how fast the flowers bloom and then fade, but I’m enjoying them while they are here.

So, how about all of you? What have you been reading, watching, or doing? Let me know in the comments.





Sunday Bookends: Holy drama and bad Southern accents, blooming flowers, and cozy mysteries

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends6 Comments

What’s Been Going On

Since moving to our new house we’ve watched various plants around the property bloom and it has been fun waiting to see what shows up. Last week, I mentioned being excited because peonies were blooming next to our house. I was excited because we had peonies outside our house when I was growing up and I haven’t really seen them since. Last week I counted four of the bushes, two on the side of the house, one on each front corner, but then I discovered there is a fifth near the neighbor’s property and Friday I discovered a sixth on the other side of our garage.

My mom told me that the blooms usually open by my brother’s birthday so I waited and the first blooms did indeed open on my brother’s birthday. He came to the house for a visit that day (he lives 90 minutes away) and had to leave before we went to see if the blooms had opened (he had work the next day) but later I checked and there they were – opened, or at least part of them.




Now we are waiting for the purple/pink ones to open fully.

The white ones were slightly damaged during heavy rains one night. Either that or the resident bear laid in the middle of them. I did mention our neighbor saw the resident bear in the backyard two weeks ago right? If I didn’t, then I’m telling all of my readers now. The bear is real and he/she was about 50 yards from our house at 5 a.m. one morning.

We missed him/her but have seen a lot of other wildlife, including rabbits, blue herons and our neighbor let us know her daughter saw a rattlesnake. My husband says if he sees the snake it will be dead within seconds. He’s not a fan of snakes. At all.

Anyhow, I digress; back to the blooming flowers. After discovering the peonies I also woke up one morning to find pink roses blooming outside behind our garage, near the lilac bush (which barely bloomed this year). I knew my daughter, who loves flowers, would be excited so we walked up the hill to see them together. We then discovered another rose bush next to the peonies bush near the neighbor’s fence.

There are also these purple/blue flowers, but I have no idea what they are. I really am ignorant about plants and flowers.

I’ve stayed away from social media, for the most part, but did jump on quick this past week. That was a huge mistake. The atmosphere there was even more toxic than it was about a week or so ago when I decided to step away. Everyone is angry, offended, and calling each other racists if they ask a question. Quite frankly, I don’t have the energy for it all so I’m back off social media. I can’t live my life offended 24/7 like the rest of the world. It’s just not healthy.

It seems like a lot of the pastors are out there trying to tell people they need to feel offended 24/7 too so I’m not even listening to well-known pastors right now. Honestly, I need to get back into the Bible and stop listening to pastors anyhow. They seem to be led by the world lately and when I listen to them I feel further away from God and my faith than ever.

What I’m Reading

I am finishing up two books, A Light in the Window by Jan Karon and The Knife Slipped by Earl Stanley Gardner and I am also hoping to dive into a couple of cozy mysteries this week, including By Book or By Crook (A Lighthouse Mystery No. 1) by Eva Gates. I’ve peaked into this book and after reading the first page, I’m not sure this is going to be my type of book, but I’m going to try anyhow because I may be totally wrong!

What I’m Watching


Sweet Magnolias


I binged watched the first season of Sweet Magnolias on Netflix this week (we have a trial month of Netflix because I’m not a big fan of them, for various reasons) and I have a lot of opinions on it, but will try to keep my “review” short.

First of all, for the writers of the show: thanks for the parenting lessons on how NOT to be a parent. None of these parents actually talk to their children or ask them what’s really wrong. They just assume and then act on what they assume and then the kids get upset and the parents get upset because the kids get upset. It’s a really strange cycle to watch and I suppose it is slightly realistic but a little overblown.

Then there is the little girl the husband hooked up with and got pregnant and the fact she’s an idiot and doesn’t understand she is only a few years older than her new boyfriend’s oldest child so she shouldn’t be acting like she’s going to be the new mom of these children.

Then there is the whole “lifetime friends” baloney. Three women who always remained friends. What is that even like? You know it’s fiction when there is a story line like that — with friends who actually talk to each other after high school.

They meet once a week or so for margaritas and seem pretty wound up in their own lives and not their kids’, but the show is primarily about them so they can’t pause it every five seconds for a heart-to-heart with the kids.

The show is supposed to take place in a tiny town named Serenity in South Carolina. The one problem is that only half the members of the town have Southern accents and the actors who do try the accents (especially Chris Kline who plays Bill) are pretty bad at it. They are some of the oddest southern accents I’ve ever heard.


I did binge-watch the show in two days but that’s partially because I fast forwarded a good portion of the last three or four episodes because the drama had gotten to be a bit too much and I really wanted to run over Bill. If you watch the show you will realize very quickly why I want to run over Bill and then back over him again. Then later I wanted to run over Maddie, but again, you’ll have to watch the show to figure out why.

I talked to the screen a lot with this one. I said things like “Hey, maybe you should have been paying attention to your kids and that wouldn’t have happened.” Then I looked up and my 5-year old was missing. Luckily she’d just gone to get a piece of bread and was still in the house, but still . . . I learned to be less judgmental of these fictional parents in that moment.


Virgin River

After fast forwarding through part of the last episodes of Sweet Magnolias, I started Virgin River, which is a fairly feel-good show that has a very similar storyline to Hart of Dixie, (which I watched a couple of episodes of this week as well.) in that a woman comes to a small town to work with a much older doctor. Oddly, the actor (Tim Matheson) playing the doctor in Virgin River also played the doctor on Hart of Dixie. Typecast much?

The difference is that in Hart of Dixie, the woman is a doctor who needs to earn more experience before she can become a heart surgeon and in Virgin River the woman is a nurse practitioner who is looking to escape her past. On Virgin River we learn about the main character’s (Mel’s) past through flashbacks throughout each show. Trigger warning: so far the show does deal with the topic of infant loss. By the way, Virgin River is the name of the town.

I much prefer Virgin River and it’s acting and story line to Hart of Dixie and Sweet Magnolias (so far anyhow). I’d have to say my favorite character in Virgin River is the mayor, Helen. She’s a pistol and I used to know a small town mayor just like her. The mayor I knew dragged an oxygen tank behind her while also smoking a cigarette, just to give a sneak peek into her personality.

What I’m Listening To

I haven’t been listening to a lot and that may be why I’ve felt off some days. I have still been listening to some of the Dead South and this week I listened to Unchained Melody by Marc Martel because his voice soothes me. I haven’t been listening to some of the worship music I used to listen to because it just seems like a big money-making machine at times since every big church sings the same songs over and over again. When I do listen to it, I listen to Michael W. Smith’s Awaken album.


I enjoy Unchained Melody by Marc Martel because the beauty of his voice makes the world seem less ugly.


What I’m Writing

I’m still in the middle of The Farmer’s Daughter and I’m also plugging away on my novella Fully Alive. I haven’t had much time to finish the short story I started — Rekindle —- which is the sequel to Quarantined.

My first two books A Story to Tell and A New Beginning are both on Kindle Unlimited, at least for the next months.

So, what have you all been up to this past week? Reading? Watching? Doing? Listening to? Let me know in the comments.

I’ll leave you with a few photos from our week: