It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
I am officially an old lady. I was telling my husband how much I enjoy prunes and a few minutes later I gasped and said, “Oh! I have a Murder She Wrote episode to finish! I’m so excited!”
My husband then reminded me I should brew a cup of tea before I got comfortable under my blanket on the couch. All I need is my slippers and a few more cats and my Old Lady Kit is complete.
The best thing is that my 10-year-old daughter, Little Miss, is watching with me, curled up under her own blanket with the dog curled next to her, saying things like, “There’s something wrong with the ginger here. Look at her eyes.” or “yeah, you could be friends under different circumstances because you literally killed a man…” and “Bro really needs some better pants.”
She’s starting her kit early.
Then she said, “Honestly, I would have liked to have had that lady as my grandma on my dad’s side.” (Since she never knew his mom for a variety of not-so-fun reasons.)
When I told her after the second episode that we could watch something else she said, “No! More!”
So we launched into our third episode.
Earlier this week Little Miss finished the art class we’ve been attending that was sponsored by the county library. Friday night The Husband took her to an art reception for her work and I stayed home with a sinus headache or neck thing…not sure which. It was so fun to see her so excited about her work, which the teacher had them name and then set a price on, if they wanted to.
I thought it was very interesting to see which drawing she decided to list as “not for sale” and which one she said she would sell for $20. Nothing would change her mind either.
What I/we’ve been Reading
The Christmas Gathering – a book full of three novellas by Shelley Shepard Gray, Lenora Worth, Rachel J. Good (because I needed something happy and light to read)
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Christy by Catherine Marshall (this is my slow and easy read)
The Secret of the Wooden Lady by Carolyn Keene
The Maestro’s Missing Melody by Amy Walsh, which I reviewed here.
The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashi
Little Men by Louisa Mae Alcott
Little Miss and I finished The Four Story Mistake and started And Then There Were Five in The Melendy Children series by Elizabeth Enright.
Little Miss is also reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets some nights.
The Husband is reading The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood because I told him to. Ha! Okay, because he really wanted to.
The Boy is readingThe Hound of the Baskervilles.
What We watched/are Watching
Above I mentioned what an old lady I have become and I really have because last night I found a new-to-me series of Mary Berry on Amazon Prime and just about giggled with delight. Little Miss was very excited too. We absolutely love Mary Berry. The fact they have several specials or series with her on Amazon now that I didn’t see before has me very excited. One thing I love about her shows is that they don’t only show viewers how to cook but also provide some background about the dish they are cooking or some education about cultures.
The episode we watched last night was about an Indian wedding. It was extremely interesting.
Tonight we will be watching Chocolat, together via a watch party and YOU are invited. We will be pressing play together on the movie and chatting in our Discord server, which you can join here: https://discord.gg/TpWNxJ4Z
I really hope you will join us! If not, it will just be Erin and I chatting with each other and that’s not all bad either. Haha!
What I’m Writing
I finished the rough draft of Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree this past week and now I am in the rewriting and editing stage. It will be released in 2025.
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
This past week was an interesting one in some ways and a regular one in others.
On Tuesday I had a not-so-fun experience at the polling place in my little tiny town. Lesson learned to mail-in ballots from now on. It had nothing to do, by the way, with who I voted for. It just had to do with adults who were rude to my child and it really ticked me off. This paragraph is completely unrelated to politics other than I was in a polling place for an election.
Thursday was better, though, because it was our son’s 18th birthday. My neighbor asked how I felt having an 18-year-old.
I sent her this gif:
Then I told her I was also very proud of my son because he’s grown into a wonderful young man.
It’s all gone by so insanely fast, though. There is so much I miss about him being younger but so much that is also great about this age.
We bought him a War Hammer model set and he’s having a blast painting them. It is a new hobby for him. Little Miss and I traveled to my parents on Thursday to help make apple pies for The Boy because he prefers pie over cake.
My mom ended up coming down with a sinus infection that triggered a flare of her fibromyalgia while we were there. It was a little scary as she was in excruciating pain all over and having some trouble walking. That night she spiked a fever.
We still had a nice day and the next day she was much better and the fever was gone. None of us can really understand why whatever she had only lasted a day and went away, but I do know I prayed a lot that day and night for her healing.
The pie, by the way, was “great” according to The Boy who doesn’t easily give compliments out so Little Miss and I, with my parent’s directions, pulled it out after all.
Yesterday The Boy and The Husband had fun during a father-son day in a city about an hour away. They visited a comic book shop where he picked up some more figures to paint.
They then walked around town, visiting the local university and a used book shop where my husband picked this up for me:
He knows me way too well. That’s an original 1941 Hardy Boys book. I can not wait to read it – as long as the mildew smell doesn’t mess with my sinuses. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t.
I forgot to mention that on Friday we had an art class and then drove the 30-minutes north to pick up our groceries.
Yesterday I spent the day relaxing with an old movie and a new cozy mystery show and also worked on the final chapters of Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree.
I definitely am not used to Daylight Savings yet I’ve come to realize. I was so tired all day yesterday, for one, and then at one point I yawned and thought how I could go to bed soon. That’s when I looked at my laptop clock and it said 6:42.
“6:42? For real??” I cried. “I thought it was 8!!”
I suppose my body will get used to it – you know, by spring when we spring forward.
What I/we’ve been Reading
I am reading The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Christy by Catherine Marshall, and The Maestro’s Missing Melody by Amy Walsh
The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood. Yes, I enjoyed it and yes I just started the series and no it does not keep to the book.
The Secret of the Wooden Lady by Carolyn Keene (Nancy Drew)
The Farmer’s Son by John Connell
The Husband is reading The Housemaid by Frieda McFadden
What We watched/are Watching
This week Erin and I watched Bringing Up Baby with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn for our Comfy, Cozy Cinema.
I watched Harvey with Jimmy Stewart on my own.
I also watched the first two episodes of The Marlow Murder Club on Amazon (that is all that is out so far).
What I’m Writing
I sound like a broken record but I am finishing Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree.
I am listening to The Shepherd’s Abiding by Jan Karon on Audible.
I am also listening to this song my Downhere:
Photos from Last Week
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
Today I sit here as a parent amazed I didn’t spend most of yesterday in the emergency room after my 10-year-old daughter took fall after fall while riding scooters and playing with her friend.
The first one I saw (more may have happened before) was her coming off a steep hill, full speed, on the scooter, hitting the side along the road, and flying off the scooter, meeting the ground with her face. I actually didn’t fully see that one. I was recording the ride and saw the aftermath of her holding her wrist and saying, “That’s it. I’m done.”
She wasn’t done though and an hour or so later she and her friend were back at it and this time she swerved to avoid our cat and ended up on her knees on the pavement.
That incident was after she’d been rocking back and forth on a stool she was sitting on to eat her supper and the stool tipped and she landed on her arms on the legs of it. That time I was certain she’d broken her arm because a long red mark spread up her skin.
“This is it,” I said to myself and then did the mental gymnastics of how I would drive my husband’s big, ridiculous truck up to the ER since he’d taken the car to work, and tell the mom of Little Miss’s friend to meet us there, while explaining it wasn’t her kid this time. Her kids have a history of breaking bones. Her one son broke both his arms in the span of a month.
“I’m okay,” Little Miss said after a few minutes of rubbing the arm.
And back she went to eating her supper.
Later they rode the scooters, she skinned her knee, and when it got so cold we were all shivering and so dark I worried any cars coming up our street would run over them we went inside where she promptly tripped over the dog and almost fell into the coffee table and then turned on a lap and while walking away from it it fell and almost hit her in the head.
At that point, I felt like we should invest in bubble wrap and wrap it around her several times.
She was so tired last night she fell asleep in the middle of reading Harry Potter which was nice because usually I have to argue with her and tell her to put her book down and go to bed.
Zooma The Wonder Dog was also exhausted after having a long walk earlier in the day with The Husband, chasing the girls up and down the street, barking crazily at our neighbors, and almost getting run over by The Husband while he was backing out of the drive to head to work.
Today Little Miss is limping and sore. Luckily, she doesn’t have to do anything or go anywhere.
We are staying home as a family since The Husband actually has a day he doesn’t have to go anywhere.
Next week we have to go somewhere at least once place every day and The Husband has meetings or play rehearsals every single night. On Monday we have an appointment at the vet for our dog. On Tuesday we have art class. On Wednesday night Little Miss has Kid’s Club at a local church. On Thursday – oh, wait. I think we don’t have to go anywhere on Thursday. On Friday we have art class again and grocery pick up, or I might pick the groceries up on Saturday to avoid as much running since I did the art class and pick up this past Friday and it made it a very long day.
By the way, if you are new here, I call my husband The Husband for the sake of the blog as a joke. I nicknamed my son The Boy for the blog because The Husband jokingly calls him that sometimes so then I thought I’d call my husband The Husband to be funny. He does have a real name, of course, and since my name is the domain of this blog, anyone could find it out if they truly cared to know. And everyone who knows us knows his name and that I don’t walk around calling out, “The Husband, where are you?”
What I/we’ve been Reading
I’m juggling three good books and finding it hard to switch between them because I am liking each of them.
The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood
The Maestro’s Missing Melody by Amy Walsh
Grime Doesn’t Pay by Jay Larkin
Two of them are mystery books – one involves murder, the other doesn’t (or at least not yet). The Maestro’s Missing Melody does have a mystery in it but isn’t hard hitting or a strict mystery book.
I’ve decided to share a description for each in case you are interested:
The Marlow Murder Club:
Judith Potts is 77 years old and blissfully happy. She lives on her own in a faded mansion just outside Marlow, there’s no man in her life to tell her what to do or how much whisky to drink, and to keep herself busy she sets crosswords for The Times newspaper.
One evening, while out swimming in the Thames, Judith witnesses a brutal murder. The local police don’t believe her story, so she decides to investigate for herself and is soon joined in her quest by Suzie, a salt-of-the-earth dog-walker, and Becks, the prim and proper wife of the local vicar.
Together, they are the Marlow Murder Club.
When another body turns up, they realize they have a real-life serial killer on their hands. And the puzzle they set out to solve has become a trap from which they might never escape….
The Maestro’s Missing Melody (this is part of a series but there is no reason to read them in order. I’ve read two so far and they are not connected in any major way):
For aspiring musician and college student McKay Moonlight, winning a summer internship with Scottish master fiddler Huntley Milne was a dream come true. When a last-minute change moved the internship program from the Scottish Highlands of her ancestors to a village she’d never heard of along the River Deben, McKay was determined to make the best of it. However, she didn’t expect to make such a terrible first impression on her summer mentor.
Hosting a bunch of college students was the last thing Maestro Huntley Milne needed. He was already up to his ears in problems, with Aunt BeeBee being placed in a care home, resulting in him having emergency custody of his tween nephew and niece. Then he met McKay Moonlight, and the chaos really began.
Grime Doesn’t Pay:
Fired from her boring office position, Jenny lands her dream job at Aunt Audrey’s Angels cleaning agency, where she pursues her twin passions of cleaning houses and solving mysteries. Inquisitive, resourceful and persistent, the cleaner-turned-sleuth stumbles across mysteries wherever she works, including theft, extortion and fraud. Along the way, she enlists the help of a police detective, a private investigator and an attractive lawyer. When Jenny herself is framed for a jewelry heist, she needs all her courage and tenacity to outsmart the criminals and reveal the truth.
I didn’t finish anything this week. I’ve just been reading along. A couple of weeks ago I finished one called The Case of The Innocent Husband, but I don’t think I mentioned that here. It was pretty good.Up
I have a tentative November TBR list that includes finishing the books I am currently reading and then adding The Secret of the Wooden Lady (A Nancy Drew Mystery), The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Miracle in a Dry Season by Sarah Loudin Thomas, and Christy by Catherine Marshall.
Will I get through all these? Eh, probably not but at least The Hound of the Baskervilles, which I am reading with The Boy for our British Literature class.
This week Little Miss has been reading Harry Potter, The Sorcerer’s Stone. The Husband is reading a book by Michael Connelly that I forgot the name of. The Boy is going to be starting The Hound of the Baskervilles with me this week.
What We watched/are Watching
This past week I watched Dracula for the Comfy, Cozy Cinema and wrote about it on the blog. Up next for Comfy, Cozy Cinema was supposed to be Skylark. Big problem. It has been removed from all streaming services when I thought it was still there! Oops! That was my mistake. So Erin and I decided to watch Bringing Up Baby with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, which I have watched a couple of times and enjoyed. My dad is not a movie watcher but even he sat and watched this one and laughed so hard during it. This one is streaming on various services.
I’ll put up a post later today or tomorrow to let people know we’ve had to switch movies.
The other day I watched a movie called The Rage of Paris. I don’t know if the name matched the movie, but it was so funny and just fun to watch. It was made in 1938 but it really held up great.
I also watched a movie of Detective Kitty O’Day. That one was interesting and only about an hour long. It was released in 1941.
What I’m Writing
I will be finishing up Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family tree this week and I am so excited! It has been a loooong haul on this one but it has also been a ton of fun. I’m already brainstorming ideas for book four.
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
The beginning of this week the weather was beautiful which led my dad to decide to take my kids for a hike along the old railroad tracks near his house two days in a row. I stayed back at my parents and helped my mom with cleaning the house.
The kids enjoyed walking the path where the train tracks used to be and my dad told them the history of where the station was and where the trains traveled. He also talked to Little Miss about where the old French mill used to be along the creek.
Zooma The Wonder Dog also loved the trip. She and Little Miss splashed in the creek and looked for fish, but didn’t see any.
The kids took some photos:
Two days later our little town was placed under a water boil advisory when there was a water main break. This made cooking and washing dishes a challenge, but we managed – not without complaint from me. The advisory was lifted on Friday, thankfully.
Last week I wrote a bit about our family’s cats over the years and barely scratched the surface of all the cats we’ve had over the years. I’ve decided I’m going to sit down one day this week and write about all the cats I can remember us having. Cats have such interesting personalities and each one seems to be different.
Mom and Dad’s cat Molly.
I also hope to write a blog post in the next month or so about the letters we have between my great-grea-grandfather and his brothers and mother that were written during the Civil War. They are very interesting.
What I/we’ve been Reading
The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood and The Anne of Green Gables Devotional by Rachel Dodge
Murder Handcrafted by Isabella Alan, which I have been sharing the wrong title of for a couple of weeks. So this one was good but also annoying. First, I didn’t know it was the last book in the series until I read some reviews. Second, there were some super weird typo and consistency issues that really threw me out of the story. I was surprised to see this because the book was published by Random House Publishing.
I really shouldn’t have been surprised because I’ve seen some errors like this before in Amanda Flowers’ books and Isabella Alan and Amand Flowers are the same person. There are so many books out by Amanda that I feel like they are trying to push them out way too fast and therefore letting quality slide.
Now, as someone who is independently published and has a lot of errors in her book as well, I’m not trying to act superior. I’m just surprised because so many readers are so negative about independently published books because of their supposed lack of quality but I am seeing that lack across the board in publishing right now.
In some ways I think the production of books needs to slow down and focus on quality over quantity. There are just too many rushed books out there.
All of this said I did enjoy the story of the book. I was, however, really annoyed to find out this was the last book in the series and she did not wrap up the love story between the main character very well (I mean they were still together so I guess that’s good at least) and left the storylines of other characters hanging. I still enjoy the stories and her writing, though, so this doesn’t mean I won’t read further books by her. Just not for a while.
I need to take a break from mysteries for a bit so I am going to try either Miracle in a Season by Sarah Loudin Thomas or Finding Lady Enderly by Joanna Davidson Politano
I haven’t read either of these authors before.
I decided to put The Cat Who Brought Down the House by Lilian Jackson Braun aside for now since I learned it was one of the later books in the series. I read one or two of those and they weren’t as good, and I think it might have been because Lilian was quite old by then and others may have been writing them or she was, and they just weren’t as good.
The Husband is reading Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie.
Little Miss is reading Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone. At night we are sometimes reading The Four Story Mistake. During the school days we are reading Johnny Tremaine.
The Boy is listening to an audiobook – Tales From The Gas Station Part Four.
What We watched/are Watching
Her Majesty, Mrs. Brown. This was my first time watching this one and I found it very interesting. It sent me down a rabbit hole of reading the real story of John Brown and Queen Victoria.
For Comfy, Cozy Cinema with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs, I watched Dial M for Murder. If you want to join in on our movie marathon posts for the rest of October and November you can follow the list here:
You don’t have to blog about them if you watch them but if you do write a blog post about your impression about the movies, we will be adding a link up at the end of our posts.
On Nov. 14 we will be watching Chocolat as a group watch. We will be pushing play together at the same time and then chatting about the movie in our Discord group (The Dames), which you can join for free now here: https://discord.com/invite/J7qQ36Uf
On my own I watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (original with Danny Kaye) this weekend and really enjoyed it. I loved the music and Danny Kaye’s performance overall. I watched an episode of the first season of Only Murders In The Building as well last week. I am really enjoying it and it’s hard not to binge watch it but I’m trying to wait for my husband to be home to watch it with me.
What I’m Writing
I am getting much closer to the end of the third Gladwynn book.
I released the description this past week, if you are curious:
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
The leaves have almost all fallen off here in Pennsylvania which means it is time for leaf jumping for our youngest and maybe for our oldest too if the youngest can convince him to jump with her.
I don’t remember jumping in piles of leaves very often when I was younger but my kids have always loved it. Little Miss raked some leaves yesterday to get ready for more jumping today and as she raked, my parents’ cat, Molly, watched quietly from the porch. Looking at Molly I thought about how little I know about my parents’ current cats. My parents don’t seek out pets. Any cats my parents end up with were dropped off at the non-working barn on the property or wandered up from the neighbors who seem to refuse to spay or neuter.
Two cats, both now passed away, were mine/ours. When my parents first moved to my grandmother’s house when I was in college, our all-black at Zorro came with us. We had moved from my great-grandparent’s house across a little creek (over the creek and through the woods was how we got to grandma’s house) so I was worried Zorro would try to walk through the woods back to our old house, but, as far as I remember, he never did.
Between college and when I got married, I lived at that old house (built in the mid-1800s) and had a cat named Four that I rescued from my pet-hoarding mother-in-law’s house. The cat once belonged to my sister-in-law who adopted pets and got rid of them like she did old shoes. The cat was mostly gray but had a number 4 in orange in the gray for on the top of her head. When my sister-in-law had her, she peed on my ex-brother-in-law’s side of the bed because she hated him. I wish my sister-in-law had seen that as an omen since she didn’t see his drug use and abuse as one and remained with him for years until he cheated on her after baby number five.
My parents took Four in and when my aunt moved in she fell in love with Four.
Both Four and Zorro are gone now and I miss them terribly.
When I was in college someone dropped a cat off at my parents/grandmother’s house and I named the him before my parents and grandmother could even consider sending him to the shelter. I knew if I named him, it would be harder for them to get rid of him. I named him Leonardo after Leonardo DiCaprio because he was very popular at the time – Romeo and Juliet and Titanic had both come out that year.
Mom said there was no way she was going to go out on the back porch and yell “Leonardo!” but she did for the next several years, including one week when he went missing and we all thought he died somewhere. Instead, my dad went to the small granary where he stores lawn equipment and various other items and a skinny cat darted out and ran to the patio. Mom said, “Well, what cat is that? It’s not Leonardo. He’s too skinny.”
Poor fat Leonardo had been locked in the granary for almost a week and had lost a ton of weight.
I always wanted to pet Leonardo but he had no interest in letting me. In fact, the only one he would let pet him was my 88 year old grandmother who sat calmly in her chair on the deck to enjoy the sun. He would curl up next to her and she’d rub his head. She was not a animal person either. I never remember her ever having a pet when I grew up. Leonardo loved her though.
Anyhow, back to my parents’ current cats. They are Buzz, a gigantic, fluffy, orange beast who looks like a Main Coon, and Molly, a black and white polydactyl. I visit them once or twice a week but don’t know the cats well because they are usually hiding from Zooma The Wonder Dog when we visit which means I can’t sit and really learn about them. I’ve only managed to pet Molly once.
Buzz is almost feral, though, so I wouldn’t get to know him anyhow. My dad is the only one who can pet Buzz and the one Molly will come right up to. I think her tendency to run when we are there and her usual fear of us is why I was surprised she watched us in the yard yesterday. Zooma was even with us, which made it even more surprising. I think both Zooma’s smell and eyesight were broken because she never saw Molly or chased after her like she usually does.
By the way, none of the cats we’ve ever had have been able to be inside cats since my mom is actually very allergic to cats. They make her itch all over.
What I/we’ve been Reading
I am still reading The Case of the Innocent Husband by Deborah Sprinkle and Handcrafted Murder by Isabella Alan. I will finish The Case of the Innocent Husband this week.
I have put the Lilian Jackson Braun book on the backburner because I would really like to read The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood to see what it is like.
After that I would like to finish The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, which I recently started.
Little Miss is reading Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone at night (I’m trying to convince her to also read it during the day. Not going so well.). Some nights she and I are reading The Four Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright and during the school day we are reading Johnny Tremain which we are both enjoying. Last week we painted pumpkins while listening to it on Audible, but normally I read the book to her as part of our school day.
The Husband is reading Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie.
The Boy and I will be starting The Hound of the Baskerville by Arthur Conan Doyle this week after suffering through Beowulf, which I actually just read the summary of. I’m not going to lie about that.
What We watched/are Watching
This past week I rewatched parts of Rear Window so I could write about it for my blog post and then I watched a lot of Murder She Wrote.
The Husband and I watched an episode of the new Frasier show as well. I started watching Only Murders in the Building now that we have a Hulu subscription and then made The Husband watch the first episode with me. We are hooked and I can’t promise I won’t watch more of the show without him since he often has night meetings and I am impatient to find out what happens.
I hope to watch some more old movies this week in addition to Dial M for Murder that I am watching for the Comfy, Cozy Cinema.
What I’m Writing
Still working on Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree and having fun.
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
Yesterday Dad, Little Miss, and I took my mom leaf peeping before all our leaves are gone. We didn’t have a very pretty year because of the warmer, dry temps we had in August and part of September but we did see some pretty trees on our drive.
We drove on some back roads (a.k.a. dirt roads) near my parents and eventually ended up at a house and former farm where some of my dad’s distant family used to live.
Throughout my whole life anytime we decided to go for a drive around the area or anywhere else, what normally would have been a routine or sightseeing trip became a weird adventure. My parents are 80 now so I thought our days of adventure were over but once again a simple leaf peeping trip became a little weird. First we passed a field of modern art sculptures all lined up in a field – sort of weird.
And when we stopped at the distant relative’s house things also got very weird.
We didn’t know who still lived at the house Dad used to visit as a kid, so Dad climbed out of the car and disappeared over a hill between the house and garage for a bit while he looked for the homeowner. While waiting for him, Little Miss, Mom and I watched another car rip into the long driveway, continue between two trees and stopped near our car. I rolled my window down and apologized for being in the way but the woman frowned and just said, “That’s fine.”
She went into the house without even asking why we were in her drive. I decided it was time to look for Dad in case she was really ticked off at us for being there, so I climbed out after telling my mom that the woman looked very familiar. I thought she looked like the manager of our local Dollar General.
A few minutes later, my dad and another man were walking from the back of the house, up the hill, and the woman, who had left the house to put the dog on a lead, marched toward my dad with her finger pointing at him and said, “You get your car out of my driveway!”
I panicked. Our trip was taking a very dark turn and I wasn’t sure how I was going to get my dad away from the crazy woman. But Dad was smiling and so was the man. I couldn’t see the woman but then she was patting my dad on the shoulder and I realized she was messing with my dad – probably how he picks on her when he stops in at the Dollar General.
In the end, we all had a good conversation and Dad shared some memories of visiting the former farm years before – like when he was 12 or 13.
After that, we took the long way home, and Little Miss and I spent the afternoon having dinner with my parents before heading home.
Today I have to pick up The Boy from a friend’s house and we will stop for lunch at my parents on the way back. Hopefully, we don’t have another weird adventure.
What I/we’ve been Reading
The Case of the Innocent Husband (A Mac and Sam Mystery Book 1), Murder Handcrafted by Isabella Alan, and The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler.
The Secret of Red Gate Farm by Carolyn Keene (A Nancy Drew Mystery)
The Cat Who Brought Down the House by Lilian Jackson Braun
The Marlow Murder Clubby Robert Thorogood
Little Miss is reading the first Harry Potter book at night. I love that she’s reading but she starts too late at night and then I have to tell her that it’s time for bed and she tries to make me feel guilty by saying things like, “But I only have 15 minutes of the chapter left to go!”
Stupid Kindles and their ability to tell you how many minutes of a chapter you have to go.
We are also reading The Four-Story Mistakeby Elizabeth Enright on some nights. For school/during the day we are reading Johnny Tremain.
The Husband just finished The Labours of Hercules by Agatha Christies and is getting ready to read book 99. He is going to read The Satanic Verses by Salaman Rushdie for book 100.
What We watched/are Watching
Last week I watched a lot of Lovejoyand Murder She Wrote, Blithe Spirit with Erin for our Comfy, Cozy Cinema, and Reading Rainbow for old time’s sake.
What I’m Writing
I am still writing Gladwynn Grant Shakes The Family Tree and announced on Instagram that I will be pushing off the release date to 2025 so I can take some more time on it. I was pushing myself too hard to get it done before the end of October and now I realize that I am stressing myself out about a book that I am not under a publishing contract for and that I am writing more for fun than anything else.
I was listening to Ever After by Karen Barnett but I am not a big fan of the narrator so not sure I’ll finish it.
Photos From Last Week
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
What a weird coincidence this week that Erin (Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) and I watched a movie with Maggie Smith and a day after we posted out those she passed away. We had watched Ladies in Lavender with her and Judi Dench and wrote about it and then that night I was thinking how upset Judi would be when Maggie passed away. I also wondered which “dame” would actually pass away first – I thought it might be Joan Plowright.
The next morning Erin texted me to tell me that Maggie had died and I honestly felt like I had lost a friend. I haven’t even watched her very much in things like Downton Abbey or Harry Potter (though I did watch Harry Potter with the kids just recently). I stopped watching Downton when they killed Matthew off. It ticked me off so bad I refused to watch the show again.
I’ve seen Maggie in a few movies since then, though, and just sort of fell in love with her spunk and attitude, but also a tenderness I saw in her.
I’m slightly ashamed to admit that I cried more over her death than the death of my mother-in-law the week before – partially because I had more sentimental connection with Maggie – whom I’ve never met – that my husband’s mother. That’s a very long, sad story that I won’t go into here.
I was looking for clips of Maggie to share on Instagram since I had a clip of her and Judi and Joan Plowright from Tea With the Dames go viral last year on my Instagram, when I remembered I had seen that she’d been on The Carol Burnett Show one time.
If you want to see that clip, I’ll share it below in my What I’ve Been Watching section.
I’m really hoping to watch an Agatha Christie movie with Maggie that I just learned about Friday as well.
What I/we’ve been Reading
I was working on the third book in my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series last week so I didn’t read as much as I could have.
Therefore I am still reading the same books I was reading – Move Your Blooming Corpse by DE Ireland and Kristen by Dawn Klinge, but have added The Secret at Red Gate Farm, a Nancy Drew to the mix.
I finished nothing! Nothing, people! See above. *wink*
Murder Handcraftedby Isabella Alan (An Amish Quilt Shop Mystery)
The Cat Who Brought Down the House by Lilian Jackson Braun
The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood
Little Miss and I are readingThe Four Story Mistakeby Elizabeth Enright via Hoopla.
The Husband is readingFear and Loathing On the Campaign Trail 1972by Hunter S. Thompson
The Boy is listening to Beowulf and a book of short stories.
What We watched/are Watching
Last week I rewatched most of Ladies in Lavender to write about it for our Comfy, Cozy Cinema, since I’ve seen it before.
I mentioned above that I enjoyed watching Maggie Smith and Judi Dench in the movie and then the next day Maggie passed away. It was heartbreaking.
Erin and I have a few movies with either Judi or Maggie or both in it on our Comfy, Cozy Cinema this time around and I swear we didn’t do it on purpose. We both chose movies on our own and then whittled the list down, not even thinking about who was starring in them. We both even forgot about Judi and Maggie being in a couple of the movies.
This weekend I’ve been watching some clips of Maggie from various shows or interviews, including this one from The Carol Burnett Show:
I had no idea Maggie sang until I saw this clip with her and Carol on YouTube:
I have also been continuing to watch Lovejoy, an old British show that sometime has a mystery and sometimes just a conman story. I hated how this series ended so I’ve watched it before but seem to have forgotten some of the episodes so I am rewatching them. This is a show my husband always watched and turned me on to.
(I appreciated this non-partisan and just straight review of J.D. Vance’s book. Not a fan of him as a politician but I’m also not a fan of any politician at this time.)
(This one is a little biased on my part, but this was a really nice review of my book Cassie.)
Now it’s your turn
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
Today my dad suggested we go into the pool since it is hot and humid out still – in the middle of September. Yuck.
I had decided we’d already had our last swim in the beginning of September, though, and I’m actually dreading it because the last time we went in the pool there were some 100 mosquitoes I had to clean out before we could swim. This has been a very bad mosquito year apparently.
Plus there is drying off but not getting all dry so when you try to get your pants on you can’t because your skin is still just damp enough to not let the pants slide on easily. That is so annoying to me.
Yes, I know, I am being dramatic about nothing. Ha! But it’s just a little whine and I do actually have fun once we get in the pool. I have a feeling it will not be a warm trip, though, because our nights have been very cool.
I do miss the pool and being able to hop in on a hot day so maybe one last dip will be good for me. I just sort of had packed that part of the year away already and am ready for sweaters, hot cocoa, and falling leaves.
What I/we’ve been Reading
I am still readingAn Assassination on the Agenda by T.E. Kinsey and have also started A Simple Deduction by Kristi Holl.
I am not bowled over by either of them but they are an okay escape. I was liking An Assassination on the Agenda better than a Simple Deduction where I couldn’t connect with the characters at all, but as I started to get into the book I liked it more. I still can’t connect with the main character at all, though. There is no personality written into her in this book, which was written by a different author than the other books (actually each of the books in the series seems to be written by a different author, but with the same main character and setting). In this one she’s just very flat. We don’t learn anything about her personality or her likes or dislikes until halfway through the book. It’s just a straight mystery – which is okay too since that’s how Agatha wrote all her books. We never really got to the know the characters too well – just the mystery, ma’am. I mean we did learn about their quirks and personalities as the series went on – especially Poirot.
I finished Trouble Shooter by Louis L’Amour this past week. It wasn’t my regular read and I wasn’t totally in love with it, but I would try another one of his books. It was a good story and a really crazy ending.
This was a Hopalong Cassidy novel that he apparently wrote in the style of the original author but was re-released in the 1990s under L’Amour’s name. I’d like to read a book by him that’s about one of his own characters.
The Secret of Red Gate Farmby Carolyn Keene (A Nancy Drew Mystery)
Murder Handcraftedby Isabella Alan (An Amish Quilt Shop Mystery)
The Cat Who Brought Down the House by Lilian Jackson Braun
What We watched/are Watching
This past week I watched Lovejoy and the movie Out of The Blue that I watched last week again but with my husband. I also watched The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel as part of the Comfy Cozy Feature I am doing with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumb.
Yesterday I watched an old movie called A Woman of Distinction with Rosalind Russell and Ray Milland. There was a cameo with Lucille Ball in the beginning and it was so funny. She was only on screen five minutes and still cracked me up. The entire movie was full of hilarious moments and the ending wasn’t as bad and cliché as I thought it was going to be.
The movie was about the female dean of a college who has sworn off love, instead choosing her career. When a lecturer from Great Britain comes to the states to present some lectures, the public relations woman promoting his lectures decides she needs an angle to drum up some interest and makes up a story that he has come to the states looking for the dean. Craziness ensued after that and I realized that there are a lot of movies from the 1940s and 1950s that really hold up today.
I also started a movie called Merrily We Live and that one also cracked me up within the first ten minutes. I can’t wait to finish it later today.
I’ve been watching these old movies for free via our Roku and the Tubi app.
What I’m Writing
Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree is what I’ve been writing. I hope to finish it by the end of September. I’ll be announcing a release date later on my newsletter Substack, which is where I share most of my writing news (https://lisarhoweler.substack.com/)
I have been alternating between reading An Assassination on the Agenda and listening to it while I do dishes or other chores during the week because I really like the narrator.
Now it’s your turn
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
Temps have definitely dropped into autumn territory in Pennsylvania. As I started writing this post it was 50 degrees but felt much colder to me. I wrapped myself in my grandmother’s blanket and wore a jacket but still couldn’t warm up. We do our best not to turn on our heat until October and don’t usually start our woodstove until the end of October.
Last night, though, when I couldn’t feel my toes while sleeping, even with two blankets on, I realized we are probably going to have to at least turn on our heat upstairs, which is electric. The heating oil is what really hits us financially and that heats our downstairs.
Today is my parents’ 61st wedding anniversary. We will be attending a family reunion where there isn’t much family left due to everyone getting older and passing away. (What a downer sentence. Sorry.)
I hope to sneak away for most of it to read a book in the car because people will probably start talking politics and I have banned political discussions from my life for the foreseeable future.
What I/we’ve been Reading
I am reading An Assassination on the Agenda by T.E. Kinsey. It is a Lady Hardcastle Mystery.
I love Lady Hardcastle and Flo. They are so fun. I also like that the books are clean and just fun. If you haven’t ready Lady Hardcastle before they are set sometime in the early 1900s (around 1912 for this one) and Lady Hardcastle and her maid Flo are international spies, but seem like your average rich lady and maid to most.
I have listened to at least one of the books on Audible and the narrator was so good. She makes Lady Hardcastle sound exactly like I imagine her in my head. The books are written in Flo’s point of view.
I plan to finish Trouble Shooter by Louis L’Amour this week.
I just finished Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murders by Jesse Q. Sutanto and loved it. Yes, there was swearing and I don’t read a lot of books with swearing, but it wasn’t full of sex or graphic violence. The main character was so hilarious and easy to fall in love with and be shocked by. If you haven’t heard of this one, I highly recommend it. It is a mystery – somewhat cozy.
Here is a description:
Sixty-year-old self-proclaimed tea expert Vera Wong enjoys nothing more than sipping a good cup of Wulong and doing some healthy ‘detective’ work on the internet (AKA checking up on her son to see if he’s dating anybody yet).
But when Vera wakes up one morning to find a dead man in the middle of her tea shop, it’s going to take more than a strong Longjing to fix things. Knowing she’ll do a better job than the police possibly could – because nobody sniffs out a wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands – Vera decides it’s down to her to catch the killer.
A Simple Deduction (An Amish Inn Mystery) by Kristi Holl
The Secret of Red Gate Farm by Carolyn Keene (A Nancy Drew Mystery)
Murder Handcrafted by Isabella Alan (An Amish Quilt Shop Mystery)
The Cat Who Brought Down the House by Lilian Jackson Braun
Little Miss and I are reading The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright before bed. That has taken up some of my evening reading time.
She and I are also reading Johnny Tremaine for history and English since school has started.
The Husband is reading a book by Salman Rushdie.
The Boy will be starting Beowulf this week for school.
What We watched/are Watching
Yesterday I watched a movie called Out of The Blue (1947). It was an absolutely ridiculous and hilarious screwball comedy. It was about people in an apartment building who have some hilarious interactions and one of them involves a murder that isn’t a murder – or is it?
Last night I convinced my teenager to watch The Third Man with me. It is an amazing film from 1949. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should.
Earlier in the week I watched more Lovejoy (a British show).
What I’m Writing
I’m still working on Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree.
I had fun writing this exchange between Lucinda and Gladwynn:
“So do you think you two young people will tie the knot someday?”
Gladwynn asked the question with a smirk, enjoying how Lucinda almost choked on her smoothie when she heard it.
The woman’s eyes widened. “Excuse me?”
In Gladwynn’s amused opinion, it was high time the tables were turned on the meddling woman.
Gladwynn set her fork down and reached for her juice, doing her best to look innocent. “What? I mean you’ve been seeing a lot of each other. Maybe it’s time to make things official.”
Lucinda’s shocked expression faded. She pressed her lips into a thin line and narrowed her eyes, setting her glass down on the table. “That’s how you want to play this, is it?”
Gladwynn raised an eyebrow in challenge. “Play what, Grandma? I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
Lucinda leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest. “What are you going to wear to church today, my dear? Something nice, I hope. Luke did just get back from Northern Ireland this weekend. I’m sure he’s been very anxious to see you and I know you’d like to look nice for him.”
Gladwynn’s eyes narrowed. “Why would I want to look nice for Luke?”
“I think you know why.”
“Do I? Or do you think I should look nice for Luke?”
“I think you think you should look nice for Luke.”
Gladwynn broke eye contact with Lucinda and began eating her breakfast again. This conversation was going nowhere good, as her grandfather used to jokingly say. “Don’t you need to get those curlers out of your hair?”
“Don’t you need to do your makeup?”
Recent Blog Posts I Enjoyed
I will have some blog posts from other blogs to share next week. I’ve been reading some good ones.
Now it’s your turn
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
