Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, where we offer a place for bloggers to link up and get a fresh set of eyes on their posts. We also feature one blog a week, letting our readers know about the blog and providing a link so readers can learn more about it.Please feel free to post new blog posts or old ones you want to bring attention to again.
Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.
Our family is still recovering from the effects of a virus that hit us out of nowhere.
Our daughter has been dealing with horrible sinus drainage that has kept her and us awake. We are truly hoping to turn a corner next week. I can’t believe how long the effects lasted for a virus that didn’t even last a week. I think it would all have gone away faster if it hadn’t been for all the sleepless nights that followed it.
The weather has been sort of nice, though, despite the haze from the wildfires in Canada making everything look very dystopian.
Now, let’s introduce our hosts for the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot:
Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!
Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household – The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!
Lisa from Boondock Ramblingsshares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.
Sue from Women Living Well After 50 started blogging in 2015 and writes about living an active and healthy lifestyle, fashion, book reviews and her podcast and enjoying life as a woman over 50. She invites you to join her living life in full bloom.
We would love to have additional Co-Hosts to share in the creativity and fun! If you think this would be a good fit for you and you like having fun (come on, who doesn’t!) while still being creative, drop one of us an email and someone will get back with you!
WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!
A little about Judee: I am a retired high school teacher, author of the popular cookbook, Easy Plant-Based Soups From Farm To Ladle (which you can purchase below), wife, mother of two and grandma Judee to four adorable grandkids.
I have always loved to cook and entertain. I post heath conscious plant-based recipes that are also naturally gluten free.
I live a vegan lifestyle with a focus on nutrition, wellness, and personal development. My blog has given me a platform to share and connect with the blogging community. I’m grateful to all of my dedicated readers.
Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up!
And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:
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 is my mom’s 81st birthday. Sadly, we are probably not going there for dinner because my family is recovering from a summer virus/cold. We are almost all the way over it but we’re making sure we are still not contagious before we go. So, we will celebrate her birthday later this week.
The biggest issue with our illness this week was Little Miss’s cough at night and our being unable to stop it so she, and we, could sleep. We were happy to have some beautiful weather the second half of the week that allowed us to go outside and get some fresh air. During the first part of the week, it was simply too hot to enjoy anything outside.
Fans of Summer have been disappointed this week since we had fall-like temperatures for the last few days but I have been loving it. I would love it even more if Little Miss could kick her cough all the way. I have a feeling that will happen by tomorrow or Tuesday, however.
A couple of quick reminders:
I have a monthly book-related link party if you are interested. You can find the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea link party at the top of my page or here (https://lisahoweler.com/2025/08/02/a-good-book-a-cup-of-tea-monthly-link-party-for-august/) . It is for posts about books that you are reading, have read, book reviews — just anything book-related really. So even posts about book collections, authors etc. etc.
We will be holding another one in August, but I am not sure when yet.
The Crafternoons are events where we gather on Zoom and craft at our respective homes and chat while we work on various projects. We are calling them drop-in crafternoons because you can drop in and out during the time we are on (usually from about 1 to 3 p.m. EST US time). No need to stay the whole time if you can’t. Come late if you want or leave early.
If you want to join in, email Erin at crackcrumblife@gmail.com and she will add you to the mailing list.
This wasn’t the worst cold/virus/whatever I’ve ever had so I was able to get some reading in, mainly from Dave Barry Isn’t Taking This Sitting Down while I sat up keeping an eye on Little Miss in the middle of the night. I also read quite a bit of The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy.
I didn’t read any of the 100-Year-Old-Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson this week but I do plan to continue it and finish it. I did read some from Carry On, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse and I love it.
Soon I hope to read The Clue of the Broken Blade, a Hardy Boys Mystery, and Password to Larkspur Lane, a Nancy Drew Mystery.
The Boy is listening to Red Tithe by Robbie MacNiven, a Warhammer book.
The Husband is reading something or other but he laid down for a nap because he might be getting the virus next so I will have to ask him later.
Little Miss and I have not started anything new lately but I hope to finish Magical Melons by Carol Ryrie Brink soon. That title was later changed just to Caddie Woodlawn’s Family. I think that’s a good thing because the first title was .. a little weird in modern times.
Last week I watched The Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn, a few episodes of Murder She Wrote, an episode of As Time Goes By, a documentary of David Suchet on the Orient Express, and an episode of a new-to-me show called Canal Boat Diaries. I also watched The Court Jester as part of my Summer of Angela series. Next week I will be watching The Picture of Dorian Gray.
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.
Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, where we offer a place for bloggers to link up and get a fresh set of eyes on their posts. We also feature one blog a week, letting our readers know about the blog and providing a link so readers can learn more about it.Please feel free to post new blog posts or old ones you want to bring attention to again.
Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.
My kids and I came down with a virus over the last couple of weeks and it has not been fun but we are luckily on the mend. The worst part of it was the sore throat and earaches for my son and I and for my daughter the worst was the sore throat and then the sinus drainage that made her cough and kept her up all Wednesday night. And by all I mean ALL.
I’ll be glad when this is over!
Now, let’s introduce our hosts for the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot:
Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!
Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household – The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!
Lisa from Boondock Ramblingsshares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.
Sue from Women Living Well After 50 started blogging in 2015 and writes about living an active and healthy lifestyle, fashion, book reviews and her podcast and enjoying life as a woman over 50. She invites you to join her living life in full bloom.
We would love to have additional Co-Hosts to share in the creativity and fun! If you think this would be a good fit for you and you like having fun (come on, who doesn’t!) while still being creative, drop one of us an email and someone will get back with you!
WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!
A little about Joanne: I’ve been homeschooling since June of 2012 and that’s when I started my blog. I was new to homeschooling and while I jumped in with both feet and lots of enthusiasm I was feeling overwhelmed and over my head– and I was a teacher by profession!
I have my master’s degree in early childhood education and worked in the public school system as both long term & regular substitutes. Within one year of having all three of my kids attending school full time I realized we were all miserable and with the support of my family we turned to homeschooling.
They all had far more confidence in me than I did.
We live in a state with little to no homeschooling laws & guidelines which I found even scarier at the time. I hoped to use my blog as a way to hold myself accountable for what I was teaching and have found it tremendously helpful over the years to look back and see all that we do manage to cover even when I feel like we aren’t doing any schoolwork for long periods of time.
Over time my blog has evolved to showcase more of me; my interests, crafting ideas, recipes and more. I love that homeschooling my children has allowed us all time to peruse so many other interests– That’s why I had to change the name of my blog!
I used to blog over at Our Unschooling Journey but found more and more of my posts had nothing to do with homeschooling. I changed the name of my blog to Slices of Life since that’s what I felt like I was sharing!
Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up each week, Joanne!
And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:
This past week was interesting if only for one thing that happened to me — something I knew would happen one day, but luckily it wasn’t as dramatic as I worried it would be.
I don’t have any photos, but it finally happened — I went out to my back door to get my cats in, and there was a black bear on the back porch. A black bear. Yes. Maybe three feet away from me but luckily there was a glass door between us.
I thought I was seeing a reflection on my door or just a shadow, and then the shadow moved! It hopped off the porch and took off across the yard while my cat watched from the other side of the yard, apparently amused by how I gasped, slammed the door shut and locked it (because the bear was clearly going to open it again) and then tried to get Little Miss to come see it by gasping. “Bear. Bear. Little Miss. See. Come.”
It was gone before she got there, sadly.
The Husband and The Boy were both upstairs so I couldn’t call for them.
(I want to say that the bear was as big as the one on the left, but it was actually probably more like the one on the right.)
We are now investing in a ring camera so I can get a better look before any of us step out there from now on.
I did a search on Facebook in a group that focuses on bear sightings in our area to see if anyone had seen our bear and learned that bear sightings are up. One reason they are up is because the state game commission has changed the weigh-in locations for bears when they are hunted. This means hunters aren’t as interested in hunting bears. They have to drive them too far to weigh them. Since the bears aren’t being as hunted as much, there is more of them. More of them means more of them are wandering into backyards and small towns.
Hopefully, we can keep ourselves and the bears safe. In most cases bears leave as soon as they see a person and we’re lucky that black bears aren’t like their grizzly bear cousins who sometimes do attack people (but probably rarely).
This week we lost three celebrities. I’m not a huge celebrity follower but these three were connected to my childhood. When the second one passed away I told my son there would be a third and on Thursday there was.
First, we lost Malcom-Jamal Warner who used to be on The Cosby Show. He sadly died in a drowning while on vacation and his 8-year-old daughter witnessed it. That made me flat out cry. That poor child. I can’t imagine the trauma she experienced and will experience from here on out. My heart goes out to her and his family.
Credit PEOPLE Magazine.
I have positive memories of Malcom on The Cosby Show. I know a lot of people today want to forget anything that Bill Cosby was involved with because of what he was convicted of but I can’t toss the baby out with the bathwater on that one. That show was part of my formative years and helped shape a view of black people for me that fought against the ideas that many TV shows and books focused on at the time that said that black people were only “former slaves” and “lived in poor neighborhoods” or were “members of gangs.”
The Cosby Show starred (clockwise from top left) Tempestt Bledsoe as Vanessa Huxtable, Malcolm-Jamal Warner as Theodore “Theo” Huxtable, Lisa Bonet as Denise Huxtable, Phylicia Rashad as Clair Huxtable, Keshia Knight Pulliam as Rudy Huxtable, and Bill Cosby as Dr. Heathcliff “Cliff” Huxtable. (Credit AP)
I didn’t even know about these stereotypes until I was much older because my parents never spoke about other races based on stereotypes, and because I watched shows like The Cosby Show. Bill was a doctor and Claire was a lawyer and they lived in a very nice house in the city and their kids were smart, pretty, and fun. That’s all I know about black families before my teen years, when others I met tried to suggest black people were inferior. I knew they weren’t because my parents taught me they weren’t and because I’d seen shows like The Cosby Show. They weren’t any different than me other than the color of their skin and the fact the Huxtables were rich and I wasn’t. I sometimes got a bit jealous of all they had but one thing I had that they had was a loving family.
I absolutely loved that about the show. There was so much love in that family. Unconditional love too.
I know Malcom was an actor but to me, he was part of my family, in some ways, back in the 1980s. It was so hard to hear of his passing, even though I hadn’t kept up with him a lot over the years. He seemed so sweet and nice when I saw interviews with him. It must have been so hard for him and the other actors to lose parts of their past because of what Bill Cosby did. The show was taken off the air and it was as if it was blacklisted in a way because of one man’s actions. Plus, finding out much of your childhood was a lie because the man you worked with was living a double life has to be very traumatic too.
In 2023, he told People magazine, “”Regardless of how some people may feel about the show now, I’m still proud of the legacy and having been a part of such an iconic show that had such a profound impact on — first and foremost, Black culture — but also American culture.”
The second celebrity death was Ozzy Osbourne. I’ve never been a huge Black Sabbath or Ozzy fan, persay, but I did watch The Osbournes off and on when I was younger. Despite all his drug issues and his effort to be “the prince of darkness”, Ozzy was a softy. He cared about people. He loved his family. My heart breaks that he was never able to come to know God and his love for him, as far as I know. There was a lot of trusting in self for him and his family, and that has to be a very hard way to live life. Only God knows his heart, though.
I won’t lie that I cried some looking back on videos of him and his family. I wish they all could have had more time with him.
Thursday afternoon my husband texted me to let me know that the wrestler Hulk Hogan had died. My husband has a lot more of a connection to Hulk Hogan than I do. He grew up watching him when he was a kid. I grew up seeing his toys and gear and even a match or two, but I really didn’t know much about him. I was playing with Barbie and My Little Ponies.
My husband sent me a few matches from his past to watch on YouTube last night to honor him, so I will be doing that today.
He seems like a complex person with faults, but one who a lot of people also cared about despite those faults.
The rest of my week was fairly mundane. Today I am supposed to go to my parents to take Little Miss swimming, and tomorrow we are going clothes shopping for the kids. They truly need new clothes, especially Little Miss who is growing so fast.
Next week we will be starting school a little more, easing into it, but otherwise it is another fairly mundane week planned.
How was your week last week?
This week’s encouraging verse:
“May the Lord answer you in the day of trouble; May the name of the God of Jacob defend you; May He send you help from the sanctuary, And strengthen you out of Zion; May He remember all your offerings, And accept your burnt sacrifice. May He grant you according to your heart’s desire, And fulfill all your purpose. We will rejoice in your salvation, And in the name of our God we will set up our banners! May the Lord fulfill all your petitions.”
Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, where we offer a place for bloggers to link up and get a fresh set of eyes on their posts. We also feature one blog a week, letting our readers know about the blog and providing a link so readers can learn more about it.Please feel free to post new blog posts or old ones you want to bring attention to again.
Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.
This has been an interesting week for me with bear sightings on my back porch! (I’ll write about that in a future post), some cooler temps, choosing homeschool curriculum and .. well…that’s about it! Ha! I said interesting, not exciting!
I hope you have been having a more exciting week!
Now, let’s introduce our hosts for the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot:
Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!
Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household – The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!
Lisa from Boondock Ramblingsshares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.
Sue from Women Living Well After 50 started blogging in 2015 and writes about living an active and healthy lifestyle, fashion, book reviews and her podcast and enjoying life as a woman over 50. She invites you to join her living life in full bloom.
We would love to have additional Co-Hosts to share in the creativity and fun! If you think this would be a good fit for you and you like having fun (come on, who doesn’t!) while still being creative, drop one of us an email and someone will get back with you!
WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!
Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, where we offer a place for bloggers to link up and get a fresh set of eyes on their posts. We also feature one blog a week, letting our readers know about the blog and providing a link so readers can learn more about it.Please feel free to post new blog posts or old ones you want to bring attention to again.
Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.
My husband and I celebrated our 23rd wedding anniversary on Sunday and we had such a nice day. We visited a nearby bookstore (in a village in the middle of nowhere) and then had lunch at a cute café with amazing food.
We watched a movie together at home after that and now my husband has been off from work all week and we’ve been spending time together as a family.
I hope you have been having a great week!
Now, let’s introduce our hosts for the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot:
Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!
Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household – The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!
Lisa from Boondock Ramblingsshares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.
Sue from Women Living Well After 50 started blogging in 2015 and writes about living an active and healthy lifestyle, fashion, book reviews and her podcast and enjoying life as a woman over 50. She invites you to join her living life in full bloom.
We would love to have additional Co-Hosts to share in the creativity and fun! If you think this would be a good fit for you and you like having fun (come on, who doesn’t!) while still being creative, drop one of us an email and someone will get back with you!
WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!
A little about Karin: Collaborating with brands is like adding a sprinkle of excitement to my blogging journey! It’s not just about products; it’s about weaving stories that resonate with my wonderful readers who are mostly over 50.
It’s like throwing a fantastic party and inviting everyone to join in the fun – and who doesn’t love a good party? So, here’s to more brand collaborations that light up our lives and homes together!
Some of the brands I have worked with are Nearly Natural, Shutterfly, Fabric Wholesale Direct, Turtle Fur, Poster Store, Personal Creations and Basic Invite.
Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up!
And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:
I’m the type of person who has never liked summer unless I can spend most of it in a pool. This year, though, we don’t have the pool we had before at my parents. Maintaining it has become too much for my dad with all his mounting health issues and it’s hard for us to maintain it the way he would like.
The decision to take it down was made a couple of weeks ago and it’s been very sad to walk out back and not see it. This past week my dad and son put up a small pool that our neighbors gave us a couple of years ago but it is a ton smaller than the last one.
It will at least be something that we can sit in, almost like a hot tub, when it is super hot out at least. Of course, I have to get myself in the pool without injuring myself. I am short and round so climbing in and out of a pool without a ladder, even when it is a shorter pool, can be a challenge. I did manage to get in the pool while it was filling on Thursday. It was nice to sit in it and watch Little Miss play and splash around. It was less fun trying to get back out again, especially since I needed to use the little girl’s room.
It was only comical after the fact, of course.
We are looking for a small ladder or step stool that will make getting in and out easier for all of us.
Last week was very busy for us, compared to our usual schedule in the summer.
Little Miss and I went to a library event and her 4-H Wildlife Club on Monday. On Tuesday we went to VBS but had a not-so-great experience there so on Wednesday we went to my parents to help clean. We went back on Thursday.
Yesterday and today, we stayed home and watched movies and TV, read books, ate watermelon, cooked dinner, bathed the dog, and tried our best to just relax.
Tomorrow The Husband and I are celebrating 23 years of marriage, so we are going out to dinner and to a used bookstore. Yes, we are that exciting. We both love books, though, and the little village where the bookstore is located is very picturesque so it should be a nice day.
Next week The Husband is on vacation and we have a few day trips planned but nothing very exciting. He and the kids are most excited about seeing the new Superman movie, but I’m really not that excited so I might sit this one out.
While typing this blog post up, Microsoft’s One Drive suggested I look at some photos from this same date five years ago.
Here are those photos:
These are from a trip we took a friend’s farm for me to take some photos for them and to sell for stock photography. I don’t know why but my dad took me out with the kids and on the way home he took the long way back and we ended up with a flat tire. Luckily, he knows how to change tires, but we had to wait a bit while he did that. While we waited there was a wonderful sunset for us to watch.
It was fun to visit the friend and see all her cows and the creamery she had opened. Sadly, life circumstances led to the creamery being closed and the cows being moved but her sons are still involved in farming and in showing cows for 4H.
In closing, I’ll leave us all with a quick reminder of how we need some breaks from all the hard stuff in the news. I read a couple of reminders this week that we as humans are not meant to consume all this information about the tragedies in the world all at once. Our minds are not infinite enough to handle all the grief, all the horror, all the fear on our own.
My advice to myself and to you is to take breaks from it all.
Don’t take it all in at once.
Just because we can know everything that is going on these days, doesn’t mean we need to.
Read a book. Watch a nice movie. Take a walk outside. Play with your kids and grandkids. Pet your dog and/or cat.
Sing some hymns.
We can’t ignore all the bad news, of course, but in the end we have to leave it in the hands of the only one who can carry it all.
How was your week last week? I hope it went well and I hope you have a good week this week.
Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, where we offer a place for bloggers to link up and get a fresh set of eyes on their posts. We also feature one blog a week, letting our readers know about the blog and providing a link so readers can learn more about it.Please feel free to post new blog posts or old ones you want to bring attention to again.
Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.
This week has been difficult for many people, especially those in Texas, but I think really the whole country has felt the heartache of the sudden losses in the floods on July 4th. It a sick, has left me with sick, heavy feeling the stomach for most of the week and I’ve been trying to regain some joy as the week has gone on.
I’ve been watching movies and reading funny books and just doing anything I can to distract myself which has also meant limiting my news consumption.
For now let’s distract ourselves with introducing our hosts, our featured blogger, and highlighting a few posts.
Our hosts for the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot:
Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!
Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household – The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!
Lisa from Boondock Ramblingsshares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.
Sue from Women Living Well After 50 started blogging in 2015 and writes about living an active and healthy lifestyle, fashion, book reviews and her podcast and enjoying life as a woman over 50. She invites you to join her living life in full bloom.
We would love to have additional Co-Hosts to share in the creativity and fun! If you think this would be a good fit for you and you like having fun (come on, who doesn’t!) while still being creative, drop one of us an email and someone will get back with you!
WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!
A little about Joyce: Welcome to This Side Of The Pond! I’m Joyce and I’ve been blogging in my little corner of the Internet since 2009. When I started this blog a) we were living in England, b) my girls were in university on the other side of the pond (technically now this side of the pond), and c) I had no idea what blogging was all about???
Since then we’ve moved three times, both my girls have graduated (one twice!), and I’ve decided I use too many words to meet the traditional definition of blogger, but I’m okay with that. Making a short story long is my superpower. We’ve moved nine times in our 35+years of marriage (you do the math) with stints in Tennessee, Virginia, Ohio, New Jersey (twice), Maryland, England (sigh), and most recently South Carolina (the Upstate, not the Low Country).
My college sweetheart (aka the hubs) retired in February 2015, went back to work in 2016, re-retired in 2017, got his real estate license in 2018 and you can see why I need to eat my Wheaties, right?
Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up!
And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:
I hope everyone in the U.S. had a very nice Fourth of July. My family did and partly thanks to cooler temperatures in our area.
It wasn’t too cold or too warm for our afternoon cookout and an early evening waving of sparklers in the backyard at my parents’ house.
Today we stayed inside from the warming temps and watched movies and relaxed while our son went to visit a friend.
Last night some neighbors were shooting off fireworks, which always freaks out Zooma the Wonder Dog.
She hates gunfire (which does happen here occasionally), thunder, and fireworks and lately when she hears any of those she has been getting so nervous she just paces back and forth and goes to each of the family members and paws at us. She was doing this last night. We tried to let her out to see if she needed to use the bathroom, gave her an extra treat, and do other things we thought she might want but finally decided it was indeed the fireworks upsetting her.
So last night I finally got a clue – after looking online and after an hour of her pawing and pacing and refusing to settle. I closed all the windows and turned on the fan and air conditioner for some white noise. Then I wrapped a blanket around her (thankfully yesterday was a cool day) and rubbed her temples and she started to close her eyes and finally flopped over on the couch next to me and fell asleep.
The poor thing had had a long day at my parents, running all over their property, and I knew she had to be exhausted. She laid next to me asleep under that blanket for a good hour.
I think the blanket is a comfort to her because in the winter our daughter covers her up like she is a baby and they fall asleep together that way.
She is a bit of a spoiled dog and she pretty much knows it.
Tonight I also I want to offer up prayers for the people of Kerrville, Texas and the surrounding area. I’m sure many of you know about the flooding there so I won’t go into detail. I’ve been struggling with the news of this since last night. My 10-year-old daughter has gotten a lot of hugs and kisses since I first heard yesterday. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about those girls and their families and the other victims.
I know that it seems to be common these days for people to try to politicize absolutely everything, but in this case, I wish people just wouldn’t.
The fingers of blame have been shot out at everyone from the current administration, the past administration, meteorologists, camp leaders, media, and everyone in between.
The fact is that sometimes some people might be to blame for a response to a weather event, but sometimes weather is going to do what weather is going to do. That doesn’t make the aftermath any easier or less horrifying, of course.
In 2011, when I lived 45 minutes north of where I live now, we were told by the National Weather Service we would get heavy rain from the remnants of Tropical Storm Sandy. There might even be flooding, we were told. It could be significant flooding, especially since our town was along two rivers that converged right at the end of town. We were not told the whole town might flood, though. That hadn’t happened since the remnants of Hurricane Agnes in 1972.
What we were not told until the middle of the night, mainly because forecasters didn’t know this was going to happen, was that the storm system had stalled over our area. That meant that rain kept falling and falling and falling. Hours earlier, business owners in our town’s business district were told they would get some damage, but their businesses should be fine. Homeowners were told to get to higher ground, but they should be okay.
By 2 or 3 a.m., though, it was clear those assurances were absolutely wrong. One business owner recalled to my husband that when they got the middle-of-the-night call from the fire department, they were told, “We were wrong. The weather people were wrong. The river is coming over its banks. You’re going to lose everything. You can’t come into town, though because there is water over the bridge and it’s not safe.”
The business district was destroyed. The next day, people were in boats on main street, just like in the photos I had seen from 1972. It was completely surreal.
People who hadn’t left their houses were trapped on their roofs. A few houses floated downstream, just like the photos we are seeing in Texas. As far as I know, the owners were not in the houses at the time. We did not have the high number of fatalities like they have in Texas.
I’m sure a lot of blame flew around after that flood, but most people understood what really happened was that nature did what nature does — acted in an unexpected way for us, but an expected way for it.
No one, or at least very few people, could have predicted that storm system would stall and dump more than 10 inches of rain on the area overnight and even more the next day.
From what I am reading about Texas, a similar situation occurred, but even worse because dams overflowed. I watched a video of how fast it all happened and yes, people knew there would be flooding, but flooding that wiped out entire towns? No. They didn’t predict that because the area had been a drought about two months ago. A lot of news channels are choosing not to share that because they want to stir up controversy.
While some responses might have been lacking (I have no idea yet), most people were completely caught off guard — even officials. This area isn’t like a city or even a well traveled rural area, from what I understand. This is true wilderness without not a ton of communication and that’s how people want it. These are campgrounds. They did have cellphones in some areas but even then they were keeping an eye on the water, but had no idea it was about to break loose further upstream.
I just wish the hyper-political people in our country (those who see life through political lenses only) would keep their mouths shut until we can at least bury the dead.
I should also add that there are still people missing in North Carolina from the flooding last autumn which surprisingly people have stopped talking about. That entire area is still devastated, and people are living in temporary housing, and others are still waiting to bury their dead.
There is too much tragedy in the world for us all to keep up on it, so I don’t blame people for not knowing about what is happening in N.C. still. I can’t take it all in most days. I disassociate myself by watching movies, reading books, and then writing blog posts about it all.
I simply wish we didn’t all have to start dividing each other even more during these tragedies. Screaming that this or that party is to blame for this or that natural disaster isn’t going to help these families through their grief. I hesitate and hate to say this, but I think in this situation, no amount of warning was going to help stop some of this from happening.
Even if they had known the rivers would rise fast, I don’t see how they could have known it would rise up to 20 feet in less than an hour. That’s just not something that normally happens….which brings me to another topic that I probably won’t write about on this blog ever because I usually try to keep posts here as happy as I can.
All this being said, I’ll be back to happier topics tomorrow in my Sunday Bookends when I write about Thriftbooks sending me the wrong book but it turned out to be a possible collectible.
Next week Little Miss and I will be going to VBS, helping my parents, and dealing with some heat again. Maybe we will even find some time for swimming.
What have you been doing and what do you have going on next week?
Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.
You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
