Lisa R. Howeler's Blog, page 106

Sunday Bookends: Movies about death, books about the undead, and dying leaves but still hope in Christ

Welcome to my weekly Sunday Bookends post where I rambling about what I’ve been reading, watching, listening to, writing and doing.

What I’ve Been Reading

I finished Sunny: The Weather Girls Book One this week. It was an okay book. Very simple and sweet with a totally out of place “conversion” scene tossed in at the end, as some Christian fiction books do. I will have a review up for it Tuesday, since it is part of a book tour.

I am in the middle of The Rhise of Light by Max Sternberg and enjoying it.

Last week I neglected to share the description for it and thought I would do so this week. It is a Christian fantasy novel.

The entirety of living civilization stands on the very brink of death. Undead hordes have rampaged across the world. Determined to do his part, Leon Rhise left his wealthy father’s estate and chose to defend the last living kingdom by joining the military. It had seemed to be a good idea at the time.

After his career in the airship navy came to an abrupt end Leon arrived home, hoping for a warm reception. Instead, he was abruptly tossed out. Disowned, unemployed, and friendless. All hope seems lost. Then Leon discovers a mysterious relic, which opens up the possibility of him becoming a Judge: a hero of legend. One that has not been seen for centuries.

As Leon travels the road less taken his destiny converges with newfound companions, each one surrounded by mystery. Advised by strange beings in dreams and visions, Leon learns that the undead onslaught the world has suffered is part of a much larger problem. A solution can be found by learning about the forgotten being known as Adonai. But the world is ending, and time is running out.

Delve into a world that brings a unique twist and interpretation to faith-based high fantasy. With emotional highs and lows, certain peril, dysfunction, and humor; tough questions are asked, and answers will come to light.

I am really enjoying the fourth book in the Craig Johnson Longmire series, despite having started it two or three months ago. I haven’t taken on any other books for the rest of the month, into November, so I should have plenty of time to finally finish it this week. Yes, the Longmire books are much different than what I write or usually read.

Little Miss and I are reading Little Town on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder at night and Toliver’s Secret by Esther Wood Brady for her school during the day. Now that we are on book seven of the Little House series, it is interesting to see how Wilder’s writing progressed from her first book. There is much more description in the later books, as well as a lot more introspection on the part of Laura.

I do have to wonder though, if the story about Laura’s future sister-in-law Eliza Jane being so mean to her when Eliza Jane was her teacher was true or not. After looking up some information about Eliza Jane, I found it interesting that she passed away before Laura finished her series. Maybe that was why Laura felt comfortable writing about how mean Eliza Jane was too her. Of course, a lot of Laura’s books were only based on fact, not completely factual, so maybe she elaborated that story for the sake of the fictional Laura’s story.

If the story was true and Laura had to see Eliza Jane at family gatherings, I would imagine that was a bit awkward, to say the least.

The Boy is reading Blood Brothers by Elias Chacour, which is a book about Palestine around the time that the nation of Israel was established, for school.

What We’ve Been Watching

I’ve been watching The Elliot Sisters, which is chocked full of drama every episode. I can’t seem to look away, even though the drama is a bit silly at times. The one sister seems always to fall for a man who is at risk of dying and the other sister is often overly, and illogically, dramatic and uptight about the simplest of things. But the acting is good, it is very clean, and it is a nice distraction from the craziness of the world.

Another nice distraction is the show Lovejoy, a British show about an antique dealer who seems to always get himself mixed up in some kind of trouble. I usually watch that with the Hubs.

The Boy and I finished up Paul, Apostle of Christ, a movie I encourage all Christians to watch. I assigned it to The Boy for his Bible lesson this past week. It stars Jim Caviezel as Luke from the Bible as he tries to record the words of Paul before he is executed in Rome.

The movie includes an underlying story of Christians being persecuted by Nero as well as the story of the jail keepers daughter dying from an illness. This a complex movie that is not your traditional “Christian” movie in other words.

The Boy and I were watching a scene when a woman comes in to the Christians in hiding, covered in blood. They ask her where she is hurt and she says, “This is not my blood. It is the blood of my baby.” The Romans had killed her husband and baby and only she was able to escape. My son looked at me and said, “Daaang. They aren’t pulling any punches in this one.”

And they do not. From Christians used as torches to light the streets of Rome to Paul being brutally beaten and whipped, this is real life at it’s most raw and horrific. Yet in the end you will find hope. A hope that does not come without trials, just as Paul told us in his letters.

What’s Been Occurring

Last week Little Miss had two days to celebrate her birthday. We took her to a fall event at a local camp on her actual birthday and then she had a party at our house on Sunday.

After that we had a very regular, routine week of school and life. We watched the majority of leaves around us turn brown and fall off, which was rather depressing. We did take one day to seek out some pretty leaves and found a few laying in our yard and a few on a couple of maple trees around us.

The large maple tree in front of our house that usually showcases lovely red leaves instead turned brown and looks awful. It’s a bit depressing, actually.

Our one adventure this week was when the kitten escaped and was gone for several hours. We had just decided that she had been eaten by a wild animal when she sauntered up the driveway toward me, running at first, then slowing down and flopping on her side to let me know she didn’t give a fig that she’d completely freaked us all out.

She’s now grounded.

We try to keep her inside anyhow, but she’s a quick little stinker and darts out our back door before we can stop her. She isn’t like our other cat who sneaks out and then wanders around close to the house. I have a feeling Scout, as we named our crazy kitten, tours the entire town before returning home, which is the main reason we aren’t letting her outside for a long while.

Saturday, we took Little Miss to a roller rink to try out the skates we and her grandparents gave her for her birthday. We met a friend there and she had a blast.

Later this week we have a science camp for her at a local Christian camp for homeschool.

What I’ve Been Writing/What’s Been on The Blog

I’ve been working on The Next Chapter in between writing book reviews and blog posts about homeschooling.

This week on the blog:

Creative Fusion: Book Review with Celebrate Lit

Yes, you can homeschool your children. No, you don’t need a teaching degree. Links for parents ready to step into the world of Homeschooling

Ten pieces of advice to make your homeschooling experience easier

Blood From a Stone Book Review with Just Read Blog Tours

Fiction Friday: The Next Chapter Chapter 6

Fiction Friday: The Next Chapter Chapter 6

On Hopes, Hearts and Heroes, a blog I contribute to, I shared a blog post from 2017 about planting a garden, taking a step away from rambling about writing and fiction.

What I’ve Been Listening To

I’m including this section because sadly I have not been listening to anything and I should be. I’m much more relaxed when I listen to music or podcasts and I have been failing on that lately. I hope to find some good podcasts to delve into this week. I started listening to Livin’ La Vida Gokey with singer Danny Gokey and his wife and enjoyed it so I hope to get back to it. I have also enjoyed Matthew West’s podcast and hope to get back to that as well. I seem to only find time for podcasts at the end of the day, so when I lay down to listen to them, I fall asleep.

So that is my week in review. How about yours? What are you reading, watching, writing, listening to or doing these days? Let me know in the comments or link up your own blog post if you want to take part.

Looking back at September

I’m a week late for this looking back at September but . . . oh well . . . it’s my blog, I can be late if I want to, right?

In some ways September was fairly routine and boring, but in other ways it was a weird month.

It started out weird with my daughter’s snake bite and a trip to the ER, even though said snake was not poisonous. We still don’t know what happened but she passed out after the snake bite or after she hit her head on the table and then passed out at least one more time when my husband picked her up.

All tests were fine and we brought her home and then there was some more minor weirdness in the month with a dog being sprayed with a skunk and a spider falling on Little Miss and then Little Miss and The Boy catching a cold that somehow skipped me and my husband.

Before the weird snake debacle, we visited the local fair and that was about the only exciting thing we did in September, other than visiting my 89-year-old aunt and celebrating my birthday.

The rest of the month was full of homeschooling and pretty routine events.

Fiction Friday: The Next Chapter Chapter 6

As regular readers continue to read you might remember than when I started this story, I had it beginning in the winter. That was an error because Harvesting Hope ended when it was still summer and this book will be picking up right after Harvesting Hope ended. In other words, I will be fixing the timeline errors in the final edition of the book, but for now, just pretend I did not suggest Olivia was coming home from college for her winter break in the second chapter I posted here. I will fix that in future chapters and the final book.

Also, here was another horrible discovery this week — my laptop is saving my stories in two different places when I hit save. I have no idea why it is doing this but now I know why the corrections I thought I had made on final versions of the books that I uploaded to Kindle weren’t showing up when the book printed. So I had very nice people letting me know about typos and erros and I was baffled. I had gone over the book a number of times, my family and other readers and an editor went over it and then I went back and made all the changes. Where were the changes? Apparently the changes were being saved in one place on my one drive but that wasn’t the version I was using when I uploaded it to the Kindle create software. AAARGH!

Now that I have noticed this, I will be much more careful in the future and hopefully will not have to deal with these typos and huge errors in the final book copies again. For those who had to weed through the errors, I sincerely apologize, but hopefully you know the corrections were made, they just apparently weren’t saved. Again…. AAARGH!

Now, I’m done rambling. Here is Chapter 6 of The Next Chapter, which has not gone through an editor so I am sure there are errors. Want to catch up on the rest of the story? Click HERE.

Chapter 6

Holding Liz’s baby against her chest sent joy and peace surging through Ginny within seconds. She’d breathed in deep the smell of lavender baby wash and closed her eyes, a song she used to sing her children coming to mind as Isabella began to whimper. A tiny hand curled into her shirt, gripping tight and Ginny had kissed it and rubbed her cheek against the soft head.

She hadn’t expected the singing to work. Her singing voice wasn’t something she’d call award winning, but it was apparently enough to calm the untrained ears of a newborn. That newborn was now swaddled tightly, fast asleep in the basinet. A little belly rub trick Ginny had picked up from late nights with Olivia hadn’t hurt either.

That reminded her; she should call Olivia and see if she’d changed her mind about staying in California again. First, she was coming home, now two weeks later, she was staying in California until the semester starting, and planning to get a job at a local juice bar. Ginny didn’t even know what a juice bar was. Did they serve juice instead of alcohol and did people really spend money to have someone make them juice when they could just buy a juicer and make it themselves at home?

Who even knew anymore. The world seemed to have gone mad and sometimes Ginny felt like she was the Mat Hatter, trailing along behind.

She checked her messages and noticed there was one from Stan. She wasn’t sure how she’d missed his call.

“Hey, hon’ I’ve got another late meeting today. I’m just going to grab some dinner from the diner and eat it here. Don’t wait up for me. This is with that developer from Jersey. It could take a while.”

She rolled her eyes. At least he’d called this time. That was something she guessed.

Half the time she sat at the dinner table alone, trying to decide if she should start eating or wait for him to come. Lately she’d begun eating without him and setting his food in the fridge for him to heat up later.

A sigh huffed out of her as she remembered the early days, when she’d been a teacher and how she’d have dinner on the table for him when he came home, and they’d sit down as a family and talk about their days. Eventually the children became involved in activities and those days of sitting down as a family became further and further between. Then the kids began moving out, one by one, until it was just her, Stan and Olivia. Two years ago, Olivia had left, and Ginny had been excited at the idea of her and Stan having more time alone. That was around the same time the real estate business had taken off, though, and Stan had added a partner and two more agents to the office. Those dinners happened occasionally for about a year and then rarely for the next six months and practically never now.

There were days Ginny wondered what the purpose of her was. The kids didn’t need her and neither did Stan. She supposed the library needed her, but they could get anyone do to her job if she finally decided to leave. She liked to joke that a trained monkey could do her job, but really? It was probably true.

She should make the most of the time she had and start that grocery list she would need at the end of the week. She’d been trying to eat healthier so she should write down healthy food. She made a face, remembering the avocado she’d tried earlier. There had to be healthy food that tasted good, right?

There had been a whole list of suggested healthy food for “women of a certain age” in that Good Housekeeping magazine she’d picked up at the doctor’s office. She’d have to look for it when she got home. She stood and stretched, the idea of making a list abandoned until she found the magazine.

The apartment was on the second floor of a former home. It was bigger than most in town, with two bedrooms and a spare room, a large living room and a small hallway that led to a small kitchen. The bathroom was at the end of the hallway with a bathtub and plenty of floor space. This was Ginny’s first official visit to the apartment, but she’d seen the photos on Stan’s website when he’d sold the building, which included space for a business below. That space was now vacant but had previously housed a clothing boutique. And before the boutique it had housed several rooms, including two parlors, a magnificent dining room and a kitchen. Ginny had admired old photos of the home in a history book the county historical society had published several years ago.

The apartment was sparsely decorated, yet cozy. The faded yellow walls coupled with the restored hardwood floors made Ginny feel like she’d walked into a modern coffee shop. A light gray couch sat against the back wall, a recliner next to it at an angle, and a blue papasan chair across from the recliner next to a floor to ceiling window — all of them facing a small TV and DVD player.

Ginny imagined herself curled up in that papasan chair with a good book and without a care in the world other than what to make for dinner that night and which friend to go out to a movie with. How lovely would it be to be young with a special group of friends again. She didn’t have that anymore. In fact, she didn’t even have one close friend these days. Her friends had drifted away over the years, wrapped up in their own families and lives. She couldn’t remember the last time a friend had actually messaged or called to ask how she was.

She supposed that how life was when you hit your 50s. Rather lonely and confusing, like a person lost at sea in some ways.  

There was part of her that envied Molly and Liz’s friendship, how they were able to live here together and experience life together. She was sure it wasn’t easy for Liz raising her daughter on her own, but at least she had her family and Molly to help her.

Sliding in to the papasan chair she curled her legs up under her and slid the hair tye out of her hair, releasing her usually ponytail and raking a hand through her dirty blond hair, grateful for the change of scenery. Normally on a day like this, when she left work early, she’d sit at home, reading a book in the on the enclosed back porch she’d thought would be lovely for afternoon teas with friends or Stan. Then the friends had faded away and Stan’s job had taken priority, so most of the time she sat alone on the porch, listening to the birds chirp until it was time to start dinner.

Sitting here, out of her normal, rather stale, environment, made her remember simpler days, when she and Stan were young and actually spoke to each other.

Her gaze roamed the room, flicking across Native American pottery, Vanilla scented candles, two cat figurines and a picture frame with the words “into the field I go to lose my mind and find my soul” and the image of a field of corn engraved on it.

Next she found a wall of photos, a mix of images of Liz with her family and Molly with hers.

She smiled, looking at a photo of Alex and Molly together, embracing each other next to a haybale on the Tanner’s farm. There was also one of Ellie and Jason, who would be officially married in two more days. They’d planned to hold the wedding two weeks ago, but heavy rains had made the pasture they’d wanted to hold it in unusable. Ginny hadn’t been invited to the wedding, but she didn’t mind. She didn’t know Ellie and Jason well. She only knew about their arrangements from chatting with Molly at the gym last week.

Yes, it was true. She and Stan were young once. Very young. He was a senior and she was a junior in high school when they’d started dating.

Ginny touched her fingers to her lips, thinking of secret kisses under the bleachers during football games. The kisses happened there to make sure her daddy didn’t catch them when Stan took her home at the end of the night. Her daddy had never liked Stan, at least not until Stan came back from college and proved what a hard worker he was. He was even more of a hard worker now than he had been then.

Her throat thickened with emotion, surprising her. She couldn’t even remember the last time Stan had kissed her other than a quick peck on the cheek.

The opening of the apartment door startled her out of her memories. The sight of Marge rushing in with a newspaper in her hand jerked her abruptly back to the present. Marge stopped short when she caught sight of Ginny.

“Oh. Ginny. Hello.” Marge’s cheeks flushed and her eyebrows shot up.  “I didn’t expect to see you here. What brings you by?”

Ginny stood and smoothed her hands down her slacks, feeling suddenly intimidated, a familiar feeling when she was around Marge, though she wasn’t sure why. Marge had never been rude to her. It was just that Marge was — what was the best way to say it? Bold. Marge was more bold, confident, and to-the-point than Ginny and for some reason that was intimidating.

“Liz was by the library today and looked exhausted, so I offered to watch the baby while she slept.” Her voice had sped up and she knew she was rambling, but the nerves had gripped her and wouldn’t let go. “She said you had a meeting with the business association and would probably be by later, but I really thought she needed some rest now so I popped by early. I didn’t mind at all.” Her smile felt tight and probably looked even tighter. “Hopefully you don’t mind.”

Why would she mind? Why did I even say that? Ginny thought, as her brain began firing thoughts wildly back and forth.

Marge frowned, looking puzzled, but luckily not angry. “Of course I don’t mind. I’m glad you were able to help out. It’s just — well, I did have the business association meeting, but it was postponed because Millie Baker has a cold.” She sighed. “I don’t know why she doesn’t think to ask her dad. I mean, he has a men’s meeting this evening, but he’s free this afternoon. ”

Ginny shrugged, trying to ignore the tension in Marge’s voice. “It was no problem, Marge. I know how busy you and Frank are. I really didn’t mind. I don’t get to hold my grandchildren very often, so I enjoyed holding yours.”

Marge smiled, her previously furrowed brow relaxing. “Well, thank you, that was really sweet of you. Of course, we will both get to hold our other grandchildren soon. Isn’t it exciting?”

 Ginny agreed and the women chatted a few minutes about when Clint and Tiffany might be arriving and how long they’d be staying with Marge and Frank.

“Well, anyhow —” Marge glanced at the closed bedroom door and bit her bottom lip. “I guess I’ll let Liz sleep. I can always come back later.”

Ginny wasn’t sure how to answer. Liz had been asleep for a couple of hours now, but Marge was her mother and seemed uneasy. Maybe something was wrong. She pulled her shirt down and smoothed it across her waistline nervously. “She’ll probably be awake soon.”

It wasn’t any of her business why Marge had barged into her daughter’s apartment looking panicked and she really didn’t want to be in the middle of their business. But, still, she heard herself ask, “Is something wrong?”

Marge let out a quick breath, looked at the paper in her hand for a brief second, and then held it out toward Ginny, who noticed it was folded to the birth announcements section.

Marge wrung her hands. “It’s just — well, Isabella’s birth announcement is wrong.”

Ginny’s brow furrowed as she looked at the paper, scanning the last names until she came to Liz’s.

Cranmer/McGee

Baby girl, Isabella Molly Cranmer, 7 pound 8 oz, 21 inches long, born August 26, to Liz Bailey Cranmer and Matthew Grant McGee.

Her eyebrows raised.

Oh. Well, this was certainly news to her. She’d never officially asked anyone who the father of Liz’s baby was, not even Tiffany. She didn’t feel it was her business, but as far as she’d gathered, Gabe Martin was the father.

“Do you see?” Marge pointed at the page. “It has Matt listed as the father of her baby.”

“Yes,” Ginny answered. “I see. But, I mean — are they even dating? Or were they?”

Marge shook her head. “Not that I know of. I’m sure you heard she gave birth in his truck and we never got the full story there, but  — I mean she told us Gabe is the father. Why would she —”

The door to the bedroom creaked open and both women watched a sleepy Liz shuffle her way out of the darkness wearing a faded blue T-shirt and pair of striped shorts.

She blinked in the bright sunlight, a hand sunk deep in the dark brown hair on the top of her head as she scratched her head and yawned. Her gaze drifted between the two women as the yawn widened. Ginny’s chest constricted. She kept her eyes on Liz, afraid to make eye contact with Marge. She knew she should excuse herself, let mom and daughter talk things out, yet she was afraid her departure might make the situation even more awkward.

Liz’s gaze darted to the basinet, scanned a sleeping Isabella then moved back to the women.

She found Ginny’s eyes first. “Is everything okay?”

Ginny nodded, glancing at Marge, wishing she could snap her fingers and disappear. “Isabella is fine. She’s been asleep almost the whole time you were napping.”

Liz smiled sleepily as she looked into the basinet. “You got her to sleep in the basinet? You must be some kind of baby whisperer.”

“Not at all.” Ginny laughed. “I haven’t a clue how I did that. Maybe she just finally gave out of energy.”

Liz stretched her arms over her head and spoke through a yawn. “I just wish I could figure out what is making her so uncomfortable.”

Ginny briefly forgot about Marge standing behind them, holding a newspaper with a scowl furrowing her eyebrows. “Are you exclusively breastfeeding?” Liz nodded and tugged at her hair tie, shaking loose her messy ponytail and letting her dark brown hair fall loose around her shoulders. Ginny rubbed the palm of her thumb along her bottom lip. “Maybe something you’re eating is giving her gas. Have you talked to her doctor?”

“More than once. He thinks it’s definitely gas and gave me some drops, but they don’t seem to be helping.”

Ginny nodded, looking thoughtfully at the sleeping baby. “Then maybe it is something you’re eating. You could try eliminating a few foods that are known to cause issues. Your sister had to cut dairy out when she nursed Wyatt. He was miserable until she did.”

Liz sat on the couch. “Yeah. That’s right and he’s lactose intolerant now so that could explain some things.” She shrugged a shoulder. “Who knows. Maybe it runs in the family.” Her eyes drifted away from Ginny toward her mother. “Well, if she’s fine then why do you two have such odd looks on your faces? Did someone die?”

Marge pursed her lips, tipped her head back, and looked down at her daughter, thrusting the newspaper toward her.

Ginny inwardly cringed. Oh boy. Here we go.

Liz’s gaze followed her mother’s pointing finger. Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open as she read under the birth announcements column. “What?!”

Marge frowned. “I’m guessing this is some kind of mistake? A misunderstanding? Because I thought you told me that Gabe was Isabella’s father.”

Ginny took that as her cue to exit, awkwardness or not. She took a step back from where she’d been standing in between the two women. “Listen, I really —”

Isabella’s cry drowned out her words. The three women looked at the baby but Ginny was closer, so she reached down, unwrapped Isabella from her swaddle and lifted the tiny baby against her shoulder.

Turning to look at the women she realized she was stuck. Her road to escape blocked by a crying child. Maybe she should hand the baby off to Liz. It was probably time for a nursing session anyhow.

At that moment, though, Liz closed her eyes and her jaw tightened, signaling she wasn’t ready to hold her baby. If anything, she looked ready to have a full-blown breakdown.

***

Liz closed her eyes and clenched her jaw against the urge to scream. McGee, what have you done? I told you to stop that nurse.

When she opened her eyes, Marge’s expression had darkened even more.

“Liz.” She pointed at the paper again. “What is this about?”

Liz drew in a deep breath, tipped back her head and let it out slowly. “Listen, Matt’s a good guy and I —” She swallowed hard. She could tell her the mom the truth, about how Gabe had been abusive, about the night she’d gotten pregnant, about how stupid she’d been, or she could let her mom believe the town’s golden child was the actual father of her child.

No. She closed her eyes, her head still tipped back. She was way too tired for this conversation, for one, but she was also not about to throw McGee under the bus simply to get herself out of being interrogated by Marge.

Marge huffed a breath out of her nose. “You what?” She hugged her arms across her chest, pursed her lips, and narrowed her eyes, making Liz feel like she was in high school again. “You didn’t want people to know you were living with one guy and sleeping with another?”

The words hit Liz full force in the chest.

Was her mother serious?

Her ears roared from what she could only imagine was her rising blood pressure. She stood, hands clenched at her side.

“What are you even trying to say, Mom? Do you really think I am the kind of person who would be dating one guy and sleeping with another? Really, Mom? That is what you think of your daughter?”

Marge held up her hand, “Now, Liz, that is not —”

“No.” Liz’s face flushed warm as she flung the folded paper on top of the coffee table. “Not ‘now Liz.’ That’s seriously who you think I am. You just accused me of being a slut.” Liz’s face crumpled as she sat back down on the couch. “I can’t even believe this.” She dragged in a ragged breath, a sob working its way into her throat. Clutching the edge of the couch, she looked at the floor and tried to stop the room from spinning. She started to speak, but no sound came.

“Liz, I didn’t say you were a slut. I shouldn’t have said it that way. All I wanted to know was —”

“I want you to leave.”

Marge scoffed. “Excuse me?”

Liz looked up slowly, her head feeling like it was stuffed with lead. “I said leave. Get out of my apartment. I don’t want you here.”

Marge tossed her hands up and slapped them down again. “Liz, you are completely overreacting. I misspoke.”

“You did not. You spoke exactly what you were thinking.” Liz pointed at the door, her jaw tight. “What you’ve thought of me for a very long time. I want you to leave. Get out.”

Marge’s mouth formed a thin line as she stepped back. “Fine. I’ll leave. But I’ll call later so we can talk this out.” She looked over her shoulder, clipping out her next words. “You put words in my mouth, Liz, and I don’t appreciate that one little bit.”

The door slammed with a reverberating echo. Out of the corner of her eye, Liz see Ginny visibly flinch.

Liz’s chest constricted with guilt. She should have let Ginny leave before the explosion.

Ginny’s hand rubbed across Isabella’s back in a circular motion as she smiled weakly at Liz. “You okay?”

Liz cleared her throat. “Yeah — not really. Sorry you had to see that. You came here to be nice and then I stuck you in the middle of our family drama.”

Ginny sat on the couch. “You think my family has never had drama? I raised two young girls remember?” Ginny paused for effect and winked. “And one of them was Olivia, so you know what I mean.”

Liz knew she shouldn’t laugh. She’d certainly heard about Olivia’s reputation for having a flare for the dramatic, but she hadn’t expected Ginny to admit it. She wiped her finger under her eye and apologized again as she reached out for Isabella and then leaned back to let the fussy newborn nurse.

Ginny laid her hand against Liz’s shoulder and squeezed gently. “Oh, Liz. I’m sure your mom didn’t mean —”

“You don’t know my mom.” Liz choked back a sob. “Not really. You only see the good side of her. She and dad have been angry at me since I moved in with Gabe. I know it was a mistake. I told them it was when I moved out, but now I know for sure what they think of me.”

Ginny shook her head. “I can’t imagine that, Liz. Your parents love —”

“Isabella.” Liz’s eyes filled with tears. “They love Isabella. And Tiffany. And Clint and my nieces and nephews. They see me as a disappointment.”

Ginny squeezed Liz’s hand in hers and drew in a breath. Liz braced herself for a gentle defense of her parents. Instead, Ginny simply shook her head and said, “I don’t think that’s true, but even if it is, you know in your heart that you did the right thing having Isabella, even if you feel how you got her was a mistake. God plans our days out Liz. None of what happened surprised Him and he meant for you to be this baby’s mother.”

The woman meant well, she did, and Liz understood what she was saying, but if God wasn’t surprised about Isabella’s conception, was he surprised about what happened with Gabe that night at his apartment. Why couldn’t God have intervened somehow? Stopped it all from happening the way it had? It was a question she wasn’t sure she’d ever have an answer to and one she didn’t want anyone in her life, including Ginny, to know she was even asking.

“Thank you, Ginny. Listen, you should really head home. I’ve taken up way too much of your time this afternoon. Won’t your husband be waiting for you?”

Ginny smiled but Liz sensed a sadness in her as she shook her head. “He has a late meeting tonight actually.” Her eyes drifted toward the window, the late afternoon sun casting shadows across the apartment floor. Her smile faded for a brief moment before it returned again when she looked at Liz, who recognized the attempt Ginny was making to create the illusion that all was well. “But that will give me time to read a book and maybe even watch a movie before bed.”

Liz tilted her head, narrowing her eyes. She couldn’t ignore the nagging feeling Ginny’s smile was all an act. Was there trouble in Jefferies paradise?

Maybe Liz wasn’t the only one who needed a break from family tonight.

“Eating alone doesn’t sound like fun to me.” She spoke the words before she changed her mind. “I was thinking of ordering a pizza to drown my sorrows. Want to stick around?” She winked. “I promise not to use you for your baby soothing skills. Or at least not only for your baby soothing skills.”

Ginny laughed and pushed a strand of hair that had fallen from her ponytail back from her face. She pulled her lower lip between her teeth for a few seconds, then nodded. “Yeah. Sure. That would be nice. How about I call and order the pizza while you finish nursing?”

Liz was grateful for a moment along to try to gather her emotions as Ginny stepped into the kitchen to dial Vinnie’s Pizza, the closest pizza place to the apartment.

She’d been so angry at her mother, she’d almost forgotten she needed to call Matt, warn him about the birth announcement. The birth announcement he was supposed to keep out of the paper.

 Of course, maybe he already knew. Maybe his family, friends, co-workers and church groupies were already peppering him with questions, or even worse, giving him the side-eye, thinking about how little they really knew about the perfect Boy Scout of Spencer Valley. Maybe they were silently, or not-so-silently judging him. The thought made her sick to her stomach.

She picked up her phone to text him, then stopped herself, her finger hovering over the screen. She couldn’t tell him about the announcement in a text. A phone call would be better. A soft sigh escaped her lips as she adjusted Isabella on her lap. He’d been stopping by or calling almost every day since she’d come home. Today most likely wouldn’t be any different. She could talk to him then, ask him why in the world he hadn’t stopped that nurse from sending the birth announcement to the paper. Had he forgotten to speak to her or was there something more going on?

Blood From a Stone Book Review with Just Read Blog Tours

Welcome to the Blog + Review Tour for Blood From a Stone by David James Warren, hosted by JustRead Publicity Tours!

ABOUT THE BOOK

The continuing adventures of Rembrandt Stone from the creative minds of James L. Rubart, Susan May Warren, and newcomer David Curtis Warren, writing collectively as David James Warren.

Title: Blood From a Stone

Series: The True Lies of Rembrandt Stone #5

Author: David James Warren

Publisher: TriStone Media

Release Date: October 5, 2021

Genre: Time Travel Detective Series

He fled the future with blood on his hands. Now, he’ll do anything to stop a killer.

Tragedy has yet again taken from Detective Rembrandt Stone everything he loves. Now, he has one last chance to get things right and stop a killer he’s been hunting across four timelines. Instead, he gets tangled in a petty crime that just might cost him his one chance at justice.

With two murders to stop, and thirty-eight lives still in the balance, Rembrandt must play his hand against time just right if he wants to win his future. Play it wrong and his life will stay shattered beyond repair.

What sacrifices will he have to make to come home to his wife and daughter?

The stakes have never been higher in the heart-wrenching, edge-of-your-seat fifth story of the True Lies of Rembrandt Stone.

PURCHASE LINKS*: Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | BookBub

BOOKS IN THIS SERIES

CONNECT WITH REMBRANDT STONE: Website | Instagram

REVIEW

I have loved every book in the Rembrandt Stone series so far and the fifth book, Blood From A Stone, was no exception. There were aspects of this book I didn’t enjoy as much as others, but that was only because certain situations weren’t working out the way I wanted them to. I wanted the parts of the main character’s life that were broken in other books to be fixed. Fixed I tell you!

I was hooked on this series from page one of the first book, Cast the First Stone. I fell fast in love with Rembrandt and his wife Eve and their daughter Ashley and all the supporting characters around them.
My fast attachment is probably why I have read these books with a “fist in my gut” as Rem would say. I’m on edge, anxious to know if it will all turn out okay, if the family will be happy again, which isn’t a spoiler if you know these books are time travel thrillers. In time travel there is always a chance things will go wrong, but that they can be corrected again. They can be corrected again, right? Right?! Of course, they can, as long as the author (or in this case authors) want it to. Oh, I truly hope these authors want it to.

Most who review this book, and others in the series, are going to tell you they love the fast-paced action, the way Rem breaks the fourth wall, the characters, the backstories that are woven through the series and I love all those aspects as well. What I also love, though, is how marriage is portrayed in these books. It’s not boring, mundane, or something to get out of. It is passionate, special, something to fight for. The bond between Rem and Eve spans timeline after timeline but each time Rem knows that Eve belongs with him, that without her his life isn’t worth living, no matter how many cases he solves, how many wrongs he makes right.

You rarely find a series of books that can balance suspense, mystery, action, and romance. Thankfully, the Rembrandt Stone series is one of those rare, to-be-treasured finds.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James L. Rubart is 28 years old, but lives trapped inside an older man’s body. He’s the best-selling, Christy Hall of Fame author of ten novels and loves to send readers on mind-bending journeys they’ll remember months after they finish one of his stories. He’s dad to the two most outstanding sons on the planet and lives with his amazing wife on a small lake in eastern Washington. More at http://jameslrubart.com/

CONNECT WITH JAMES: Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

Susan May Warren is the USA Today bestselling, Christy and RITA award–winning author of more than eighty novels whose compelling plots and unforgettable characters have won acclaim with readers and reviewers alike. The mother of four grown children, and married to her real-life hero for over 30 years, she loves traveling and telling stories about life, adventure, and faith.

For exciting updates on her new releases, previous books, and more, visit her website at www.susanmaywarren.com.

CONNECT WITH SUSAN: Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

David Curtis Warren is making his literary debut in these novels, and he’s never been more excited. He looks forward to creating more riveting stories with Susie and Jim, as well as on his own. He’s grateful for his co-writers, family, and faith, buoying him during the pandemic of 2020, and this writing and publishing process.

CONNECT WITH DAVID: Instagram

TOUR GIVEAWAY

(1) winner will receive a print copy of Blood from a Stone and a $15 Amazon gift card!

Full tour schedule linked below. Giveaway began at midnight October 5, 2021 and will last through 11:59 PM EST on October 12, 2021. Winner will be notified within 2 weeks of close of the giveaway and given 48 hours to respond or risk forfeiture of prize. US only. Void where prohibited by law or logistics.

Giveaway is subject to the policies found here.

ENTER GIVEAWAY HERE

Follow along at JustRead Tours for a full list of stops!

*NOTE: This post contains affiliate links.

Ten pieces of advice to make your homeschooling experience easier

If you’re a new homeschooler, or even a veteran one, it can help to have homeschooling families offer you tips they’ve learned over the years.

I don’t know if I am exactly a “veteran” homeschooler, but since we are in our fourth year of being a homeschooling family, I guess I do have more experience than some. That’s why I consider myself semi-qualified to share the following twelve tips on how to homeschool your children without losing your mind.

 I also offered a few tips in a post I shared yesterday, which reminded parents that you don’t have to have a teaching degree to homeschool your child.

 Don’t treat homeschool like regular school/Be willing to be flexible

I feel this is one of the most important pieces of advice I can give a new homeschooler. It is advice I needed to hear early on in our journey because I was treating our homeschool as if it was a public school in a home setting.

The whole point of homeschooling your child is to offer them a flexible style of learning which works for their personality and learning style. You shouldn’t expect that your child will be “in school” for six to eight hours a day like they are in public school. I always remind new homeschooling parents that their child isn’t actually at a desk learning for all six hours they are in a brick-and-mortar school. Most children probably only receive about 3.5 hours of actual instructional time. The rest of the school day is spent sitting in homeroom, eating lunch, recess if the child is younger, study halls if they are older, extracurricular activities, and then riding the bus to and from school.

When my dad and son built a shed as part of my son’s “life skills” class. My dad didn’t even need the shed in the end. *wink*

In other words, your child does not need to sit at a desk and do six straight hours of work. Not only is that unrealistic but it would also kill their love of learning at rapid speed, making school feel more like a prison. Most homeschool children complete their work in less than four hours, but there is no magic number of hours suggested to ensure your child is receiving a quality education. In education, like in many aspects of life, quantity does not always equal quality. You shouldn’t, in my opinion, force your child to study science for two hours, believing that amount of time will ensure they are receiving a quality education in science. In fact, making your child sit that long to learn a subject could have the opposite effect, as they will be so burnt out and overwhelmed from trying to comprehend so much at one time they will most likely forget what they read or studied at the end of their session.

Many younger children can finish their subjects in even less time, such as 1 to 2 hours, depending on what assignments they have that day. Teaching a younger child can sometimes take longer because they won’t be able to work independently. Not only will you have to teach the lesson, but you’ll also have to do the work with the child. How long this takes all depends on the child and should never be rushed or stretched out. I “play it by ear” with my children. Some subjects take longer than others on different days.

 I am starting to learn that I need to be flexible when it comes to how my children learn. If I don’t like the idea of my child sitting at a desk for six hours, then there is no reason I should do that when they are homeschooled.

Earlier this week I became frustrated because my youngest would not sit and listen to the history lesson I was reading to her. She was flipping the handle on the recliner repeatedly, standing up, and even started to put on her new roller skates. After a crying session from both of us, I finally convinced her to take off her skates for her reading lesson, but then allowed her to skate around our dining room while I read science to her and she watched three videos about whales.

Let’s be clear: I am very bad at following my own advice. I am not as flexible as I would like to be with our homeschool. I need to learn to “let it be” and “go with the flow” more when it comes to how I teach my children. If what they are doing is too distracting and won’t allow them to learn, then I shouldn’t allow it. But if my daughter can listen to our literature while creating with her clay, painting, or roller skating laps around the dining room table then why not? Learning doesn’t only happen at a desk, as I have mentioned before (link)

2. Don’t expect to fit in every subject every day.  

Along the same lines of not treating your homeschool like a public school, I remind myself and other parents that you do not need to complete every subject every day. There will be some days your child will be able to complete a lesson in every subject, but many days one subject will take longer, pushing other subjects to the following day.

 “Are you suggesting my homeschooling student might run out of time?” A new homeschooling parent might ask. “This isn’t regular school with set times. Why would there be a specific time limit for them to do their work in?”

A homeschooling student can indeed complete their work whenever they want to, as long as it is done that day, but for me, I was attracted to homeschooling because it allows them a life outside of schoolwork. When I was in high school, I did work in class, and then I took work home with me to do there as well. I have a feeling that students bring even more work home now than they used to and that doesn’t leave much time for kids to be kids.

What I like about homeschooling is my children have time for education but then they also have time where they don’t have to worry about the tests or the worksheets or the assigned reading. If they want to push a subject off to the next day because they spent a long time on another subject on one specific day, I’m totally fine with that, as long as the assigned work for that subject is completed by the end of the week.

If you start homeschooling and you want to fit every subject in every day, then that is totally fine too. I have just found that cramming every subject into one school day overwhelms me and my children. It leaves them dreading their day because they know it will be filled to the brim with work and leave them little time to expand or explore a topic they discover they are interested in.

Remember, homeschooling is you and your child’s opportunity to take as little or as long as he or she needs on a subject. Math may take longer one day while English is short and on another day, it might be switched. One day your child may be fascinated with the science lesson so they will want to spend longer on it and explore it more. Another day, math may be what fascinates them (writing that caused me to physically shudder. Who would want to spend more time on math?! Ha!) If you have the day so regimented that you aren’t allowing for time to further explore a subject, you may suffocate not only their opportunity to further explore not only that one topic but their overall love of learning.

3, Don’t be afraid to supplement your curriculum 

I rarely only use the curriculum I have chosen for the school year for each lesson. I often supplement the lessons in the text with either a video, a field trip, or a book to bring the lesson home even more.

For my son, I add videos to the lessons to bring the message home more and give us more of a well-rounded lesson. Last year we also add fiction books and this year his social studies curriculum comes with a set of literature books both fiction and non-fiction, on a variety of topics.

For my youngest, I also plan to start supplementing with crafts related to the subjects we are studying. Supplementing your student’s curriculum can assist them in delving into the topic even more.

For example, for the past couple of weeks, my daughter and I have been studying early American history. There was a cartoon in the early 90s called Liberty Kids that focused on this time in history, and I found it on YouTube last year. It may be streaming somewhere as well, and I know it is out on DVD. I have been able to match up many of the episodes with the topics we are discussing in history, which works out well. Watching the cartoon gives Little Miss a visual of what was happening at that time, in addition to what I am reading to her in the textbook. Of course, there are extra, fictional characters in the stories on Liberty Kids, so I do explain that those characters aren’t historical, but the characters they interact with are.

4. Don’t be afraid of taking mental health days 

This one is very hard for me to follow. I often feel that if I don’t do schoolwork on a school day, I am somehow failing my children. This is an example of where outside influences have tried to shape how I run my homeschool and my household.

My parents are well-meaning, caring, and lovely people but their view of education is still stuck on the traditional, public school mindset. When my mom calls me during the day she says ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I hope I’m not interrupting your school day,’ and if I mention we haven’t started yet or the kids are doing something else at the moment, I feel the judgment, even though she probably isn’t even throwing any out my way. In my mind, though, she is thinking, “They need an education. Is she shirking her duties as a mother and not making them do their lessons?!” I feel this way because when we started homeschooling our son my parents were very leery.

“What do you mean he’s done with his lessons already? That doesn’t seem long enough to learn anything.”

“He’s done with work already? But it’s only 1. Shouldn’t he be working until 3?”

“But he can’t be in sports if he’s in homeschool. I was in wrestling when I was in school and it was good for my confidence and self-esteem.”

“Is he getting enough socialization?”

You will get all of these questions and more and sometimes they will keep coming, but sometimes, like in my case with my parents, they will eventually stop. Your family and friends will begin to accept that you are homeschooling your children and you are doing it the way that works for you.

Whether that acceptance comes or not, though, you need to tell the little voice in your head that says you can’t take a day off to recharge or relax, to shut it. There will be days where everything falls apart. There will be days your kids get sick, or you get sick, or a neighbor stops by to visit and throws it all off the rails. Don’t be afraid to put the books away for a day and take a breather. In our state, you need a certain number of hours or days (depending on how you want to track it) of instructional time to meet the requirement for the homeschool law, but you keep track of those days and hours. That means you can make those days and hours up at any time when your schedule allows. Your children can even finish some work on a Saturday if you so desire.

You are in charge of your homeschool, which means you can take a mental health day if you need it and not feel a bit guilty, Lisa. Er…I mean — you, whoever you are, shouldn’t feel guilty.

5. Double up on work on some days so you can have plenty of time for play

Bouncing off the above reminder that you can set the days and times for your children’s instruction, it is very easy in homeschooling to double up on work one or two days out of the week so you can take a day off for play guilt-free. You can do two math lessons one day or two reading lessons, or whatever you need to do to make sure you can take a day off and not feel “behind.”

There is no “behind” in homeschooling since you are working at your child’s individual pace, but I still feel like I have to be at a certain point in their instruction at certain points of the year. This is leftover from traditional school and their strict lesson plans, which they need to have for how a traditional school operates. It is not a bad thing to have strict lesson plans or goals you want to reach by a certain point in your school year, so if you do have a strict plan of where you want to be with your instructional material at certain points in the year, please do not think I am criticizing. Not at all.

I’m just encouraging you to also find days for play. The importance of play for the development of children and adults has been well-documented over the years. I won’t link any of those articles here, but there are plenty of them out there on the interwebs.

6. Take field trips

Perhaps you still don’t like the idea of taking a day off of learning. In that case, take a field trip. Field trips combine fun and play with learning. Many people live in larger cities where there are tons of opportunities for field trips. Ideas for field trips include museums, parks, or even stores and factories where your children can see how something is made, libraries, historical landmarks, etc.

When you live in a rural area as my family does, your field trips will require a bit of a drive, but even that can be fun because you can shout “road trip!” and the children perk up at the idea of getting out of the house instead of sitting and reading their textbooks.

We have even combined family outings with field trips. If our weekend family outing is going to take us somewhere that is also educational then I count that as a field trip and even a school day. I ask my son to write a couple of paragraphs about what he learned on our visit and make it part of his English/Writing curriculum.

Field trips are not only great opportunities to learn, but they are also great opportunities to bond as a family.

7. Don’t forget you’re a family first and a homeschool family second 

Bouncing off the idea of bonding as a family, I think it is important for us homeschooling parents to remember that our children are more important than reaching a certain point in your curriculum by a certain time of the school year.

Helping our children grow as well-rounded human beings, Christians, and kind members of society will always be more important than drilling math facts into their brains. I know this thought may bother some who see education as the number one priority of their homeschool and I don’t mean to dismiss the need for consistent and high-quality instruction, but at the end of the day, the relationship we have with our children will determine the outcome of them as human beings, not whatever math lesson they learned that day

8. Connect with other homeschool families 

Homeschooling can be very lonely. Because you are schooling at home, your children will not have the same socialization at traditional school, but that’s not always a bad thing. In homeschooling children can socialize with a variety of ages, not only their peers, as long as you introduce your children into situations where they can do that socializing. Taking your children with you on errands can help them interact with adults, which will help them with their communication skills, but you will also want to find a way for them to interact with children around their own age.

To do this, you will want to find a group of homeschooling families around you and hopefully, that group will be an organized group like a co-op.

This one has been a huge challenge for me since we live in a rural area, but if you live in a more urban area, this might be easier for you. In my area, many homeschooling families travel 45 minutes one way or another to connect with other homeschooling families. I have reached out to these groups in the past but have always felt like an outsider.

I have not felt welcome in any of the groups, which seem to be formed among friends and family. Many are not friendly to those who don’t fit that category.

I’m hoping to try to find a group again this year, but until then I am working on finding other ways for my children to socialize, whether through a church program, a community organization, or classes being offered locally. The benefit of finding a homeschool co-op or support group locally is being able to connect with other parents who can relate to your journey and experience. So, even though I haven’t been able to zero in on a local co-op or support group, I still believe this is an important part of the homeschooling journey.

9. Ask your children what subjects they want to study

Don’t be afraid to ask your child what they want to study. I realize that sounds dangerous. What if your child says, “I want to study creative writing all year and nothing else!” Or “I want to study only Minecraft! That’s learning, right?!”

When I suggest asking your child what they want to study, I mean asking them what aspect of science are they interested in right now, or what time in history interests them. This doesn’t mean you will study that specific aspect of science or history the entire school year, but you can carve out a unit that will allow you to focus exclusively on the topic your student is interested in. Being interested in a topic makes a student much more willing to learn about it. 

 You won’t always be able to do this, obviously. Your son or daughter might hate math, but they still have to learn it. They may dread grammar, but it still needs to be tackled. They will have to push through subjects that bore them practically into a coma each time they open the textbook, but that will make the opportunities they have to delve deeper into a topic of interest for them even more special.

Teaching your children that we often have to push through what we don’t want to do to get to what we do want to do is an important life lesson.

10 Don’t be afraid to change direction or even curriculum if it is not working.

I know some parents purchase curriculum, dive in, and discover partway through the school year that the curriculum isn’t working for them but are then afraid to change curriculum. This is a fear that new homeschooling parents should learn to dismiss as soon as possible. The point of homeschooling is educating your child in a way that benefits them the most so if they are using a curriculum that is impeding their learning then it needs to go.

Much like you should never waste your life doing things that make you unhappy, you should never waste the precious time you have to homeschool your child with curriculum that isn’t serving their educational needs.

Use one set curriculum, combine a couple, or change to a new one, but never keep pushing through curriculum that is making you or your child dread learning.

Bonus Tip: Listen to your children not everyone else about how homeschool is working for you.

This bonus tip might be one of the most important of all. Is your child flourishing, showing progress in their education, and seem well-adjusted and happy overall? Then what does it matter if grandma or grandpa or your best friend or a neighbor says homeschooling isn’t good for your child? It doesn’t matter what others say about your homeschooling journey. All that matters is what your child is saying, or more importantly, how they are acting.

Is every day going to be rainbows and flowers? Um…no. It’s school. Children are going to complain, whine, flounce, flop, and even have tantrums at times when you tell them it is time for their lessons, but if you have more good days than bad and your child shows that they are learning despite “hating school” then you are on the right track.

Will you need to rethink homeschool and consider sending your child back to a brick-and-mortar school or sign them up for an online school? You may and if you feel that will benefit your child’s emotional wellbeing then do it. Just as you should push aside the opinions of others about how you homeschool your child, you should also politely push aside the opinions of other homeschoolers who try to talk you out of sending your child back to a “regular” school. How you educate your child is your decision and you need to do what is best for your child. It isn’t that you shouldn’t ever listen to opinions, especially from the well-meaning in your life, but you also don’t have to accept every opinion as fact when it relates to the personal decisions you make for your child’s education.

The bottom line of all these tips?

Do what works best for you and your family when it comes to your homeschool journey. Pick a direction and take it, only letting outside influence affect you if you feel that outside opinion is going to enhance your experience, not harm it.

 Have more questions about homeschooling?

 Feel free to use the search bar to the right and type in “homeschool” or “homeschooling” to find past blog posts I’ve written about the subject. Also find more information at the following websites:

Homeschool Association

Notgrass History/Daily Encouragement

My top 16 tips for beginning homeschoolers (The Survival Mom)

The Beginner’s Quick-Start Guide to Homeschooling (The Survival Mom)

Choosing Curriculum: The Confident Homeschooler

Book review of The Farmer’s Daughter

Thank you Kelly for this review of The Farmer’s Daughter, which was nice timing since it and Harvesting Hope are free this week on Amazon. Find a link to buy them HERE (The Farmer’s Daughter) and HERE (Harvesting Hope)

Kelly F Barr

As a Book Reviewer I received a free ebook copy of The Farmer’s Daughter by Lisa R. Howeler and this is my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor any review of this book.

The Farmer’s Daughter by Lisa R. Howeler is Ms. Howeler’s debut novel as well as the first novel in her “A Spencer Valley Chronicles” series. It is the story of the Tanner family with the main focus on Molly Tanner. The story takes place in a small town and on the Tanner family’s dairy farm in rural Pennsylvania.

Times are tough and many of the local farmers are struggling to continue their farming business, and as Molly watches several family friends sell their farms and move on to something else, she begins to grow restless, wondering if farming is all she will ever know. Then Alex, Molly’s brother’s friend and her…

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Sunday Bookends: Too much depressing news, but also fun on birthday

Welcome to my Sunday Bookends post where I ramble about what I’ve been doing, reading, watching, listening to, writing, etc. each Sunday.

 What’s Been Occurring

Last Sunday was my birthday and we spent it with my parents. They bought steaks to cook on the grill and then my dad built a fire in the side yard and the kids made s’mores.

I ate some of the chocolate but can’t do full s’mores because of my weird food allergies (I know. I’m so weird. I swear I only mention it because my weird food issues just crack me up sometimes, not to try to paint myself as a victim. It is not the end of the world I can’t eat s’mores. Really. I can eat plenty of other things that are bad for me, including chocolate. . . as long as said chocolate doesn’t have corn syrup).

The rest of the week was very tame, other than the fact cold, wet weather moved in and as it always seems to happen when that happens, Little Miss got sick. As of last night she was running a 102-degree fever off and on, pretty run down, but still insisting she was getting better. She might be right because each year when the weather changes from warm to cold, this happens to her, including the fever. It lasts about a day and then it’s gone. I am hoping this keeps the same trend.

If she is feeling better by Thursday, and no one else comes down with anything, we will be going to a science class at a local Christian camp and then next Saturday we will go back to the camp for their fall open house, which will also be on her seventh (hold me!) birthday. Next Sunday we will celebrate her birthday with my parents.

 What I’m Reading

 I finished the fifth book in the Rembrandt Stone series and am now impatiently waiting for book six, which is supposed to be the last. Boy, I hope they clean up this guy’s timeline mess-ups in the last book or my head is going to explode!

It’s a good series. Easy to read and captivating. I recommend it to anyone. It is clean but does mention some crimes that are hard to read about.

It is written by two Christian fiction writers and one of the writer’s sons, but it is not Christian fiction.

I am planning to exclusively read The Weather Girls Book One: Sunny this week, but also finish up Creative Fusion, a book about how creativity is given to us by God. Both of these books are for book tours for Celebrate Lit and I will provide reviews for them, and the Rembrandt Stone books, in October.

So far, The Weather Girls is a good book and capturing my attention more than Creative Fusion. I think that’s because Creative Fusion has some very deep thoughts and I am having issues focusing on anything too deep these days. It is extremely well written, and it is a book I will most likely go back to from time to time in my writing/creating journey.

I really hope to finish the Longmire book next week, but I will probably take a break this week because it has a heavy subject matter and after reading way too much about the Gabby Petito murder case, I can’t really handle a book about the murder of a young girl. It makes me extremely down, depressed, and anxious, so I will take a break and pick it back up next week. I really do want to find out what happens and I enjoy Craig Johnson’s writing.

What I’ve Been Watching

I’ve been watching way too much on the Gabby Petito murder case this week, but then I started to break it up with The House of Eliot because that show has a much lighter subject matter.

Hubby and I also watched more of Upstart Crow, a British sitcom about the life of William Shakespeare. It’s ridiculous and I need that right now with all the craziness of the world.

I barely check the news anymore. Just can’t stomach it and I have no idea who is telling the truth any longer.

What I’m Writing

I’m working on The Next Chapter and shared a chapter this week that I found a ton of typos in after I posted it. Argh! I will probably replace what I posted with a corrected version later this week. Oh well, my fiction is a work in progress, as I often explain. And it is just fiction I am posting for fun on my blog, so I am not going to stress too much.

On the blog this week:

Comfort reading with The Cat Who . . . book series

Randomly Thinking: Florida men stories, murder case obsessions, behind on blog reading and other random thoughts

Fiction Friday: The Next Chapter Chapter 4

Blog Posts I Enjoyed This Week

I mentioned in my Randomly Thinking post this week that I am very behind on reading blogs. I did, however, read a few good ones this week as I caught up on my favorite bloggers and thought I’d share a few of those posts with you.

Erin’s After Dark Musings hit a nerve with me because it sounded a lot like how I have been feeling lately.

I also enjoyed this post from Words From Annelli about entire houses being moved.

Our Little Red House wrote about her adventures going to five stores in one day. She always makes shopping sound fun.

Mama’s Empty Nest wrote about her love for lighthouses and one she visited in Rochester, N.Y.

So that is my week in review. How about you? Let me know how and what you have been doing in the comments.

Fiction Friday: The Next Chapter Chapter 4

Welcome to Chapter 4 of The Next Chapter. If you want to catch up with other chapters, you can go HERE, or you can wait until all the chapters are together in one book in the Spring of 2022.

To read my other books, visit my Amazon Author Page.

Chapter 4

“I still think you should have come to stay with us a few days, Liz. Climbing up and down these stairs while you are recovering really isn’t a good idea.”

Marge Cranmer was a blur of activity, placing food on Molly and Liz’s small kitchen table, pouring drinks, pausing every few minutes to smile and coo at her sixth grandchild.

Liz shrugged. “It’s really not a big deal. I won’t have anywhere to go for a few days. My follow-up appointment isn’t until next week and Molly’s been nice enough to offer to get me supplies and groceries while she’s out.”

Marge scooped rice onto her daughter’s plate. “Well, that’s nice, but the offer still stands if you change your mind. Of course, I will be over here to help watch Isabella while you rest. Isabella. I love that you chose that name. Your grandmother would have been tickled pink. Really. It was sweet of you.” Marge reached over and pushed a strand of hair back from Liz’s face. “You look so tired. Did you rest at all in the hospital? I bet you didn’t. Hospitals are so hard to sleep in, plus I’m sure you were watching the baby. Did the nurses take the baby? They should have so you could sleep.”

Liz took a deep breath, waiting to see if her mother was done talking yet. She wasn’t.

“This is the rice recipe I got from Ginny at Tiffany’s last baby shower and the chicken you said you liked that time you came over for dinner a couple of months ago. Oh, and so sorry your dad couldn’t stay after he set the crib up. He had a meeting at the church with the building committee. I told you they’re building on right?” She sat abruptly and reached one hand toward Molly and the other toward Liz. “Let’s say a quick prayer of thanks.”

Liz glanced at Molly, trying to catch her attention, but her eyes were glued to Marge, her brow furrowed and her mouth slightly open. She was probably thinking what Liz was. How much sugar has Marge consumed today?

“Lord, bless us this food to our bodies and thank you for this wonderful day and for my little granddaughter. In your name, amen.”

“Amen,” Liz and Molly chorused.

Liz picked up her fork. “This looks great, Mom. Thank you for making lunch of us. You really didn’t have to.”

Marge set a glass of lemonade on the table. “Of course, I did. It isn’t every day your youngest brings home her first little bundle of joy.” She smiled down at the baby asleep in the car seat next to the table.

Looking at her mother, cheeks flushed from rushing, Liz couldn’t decide if she liked this new version of Marge — the one who seemed delighted Liz had given birth to a baby instead of the one whose eyes had filled with tears the night Liz told her she was pregnant, or the one who had barely spoke to her the entire two years she’d lived with Gabe.

“Is Gabe the father?” she’d asked the night Liz had told her. “Does he know he’s going to be a father even?”

And now she was back to Gabe as she sat down across from Liz. “So, did you let Gabe know that —”

“That what? That I gave birth to the baby he told me he wanted nothing to do with?”

Marge raised an eyebrow. “Well, I thought maybe his mind might change if he knew — or if he saw the baby.”

Liz swallowed the retort she wanted to give. Her mom had been trying so hard to be kind and understanding the last few months, something she’d once been fairly poor at. She didn’t want her mom to think the retort was aimed at her. She decided a softened tone was in order instead.

“I don’t think his mind would change, no. I’m sorry. I know you don’t like the idea of your granddaughter not having a father, but Gabe isn’t father material. He wasn’t even boyfriend material.”

Marge set her glass down on the table and nodded. “Okay, hon’ . We don’t have to talk about it right now.”

She reached her hand out and covered Liz’s briefly, a move that startled Liz since her mother hadn’t necessarily been affectionate in the last few years. Not that Liz could necessarily blame her. She hadn’t been the best daughter, or really a daughter at all.

She’d been selfish, self-centered and a first-class know-it-all, which is why she was now a single mother of a child fathered by a emotionally and physically abusive man. Her mom didn’t know about Gabe’s abuse though. She knew he hadn’t always been kind or attentive but there was only so much Liz could handle her parents knowing about how far she’d fallen. They already knew she’d moved in with a man she wasn’t married to, drank too much while with him and, obviously, gotten pregnant from him. How could she also tell them that she’d been stupid enough to stay with him even when he yelled at her, pushed her against a wall once, slapped her another time, and cheated on her at least once, if not more? She was humiliated enough.

A knock on the door broke the tension.

Liz stood quickly. “I’ll get it.”

When the room blurred into a mesh of colors, she clutched the edge of the table and gasped.

Molly was at her side immediately, her hand under her elbow. “Sit down. You just had a baby. You can’t rush around like your used to.”

Liz nodded, the dizziness fading as she slowly sat. “Thanks for the reminder.”

“I’ll get the door,” Molly said. “You going to be okay?”

Liz nodded slowly, trying to shake the left over weakness in her legs.

“Sip your lemonade,” her mother instructed. “It’s probably low blood pressure. Maybe you should go lay down.”

Liz shook her head. “No. I’m fine now. Really. I think I probably need food more than anything.”

“You’re eating for two for real now by breastfeeding.” Marge sighed. “Really I don’t think you should be breastfeeding at all. That’s a huge time commitment. You have a job you’ll be going back to and that won’t leave much time for nursing sessions.”

Ah, here was the old Marge Cranmer, creeping back in.

“Linda is completely supportive of my decision to breastfeed. She’s already told me I can pump in the back office anytime I need to.”

“It’s not the logistics that concerns me but the exhaustion it’s bound to bring,” Marge said, spearing a piece of chicken with her fork. “You’ve never been as hearty as Tiffany.”

Liz laid her fork down and groaned. “Really, Mom?”

“It’s not an insult, honey. It’s just the truth. You’ve always been a little more . . . sensitive I guess I’d say. That’s just how you are made.”

Liz folded her arms across her chest. Here we go again, she thought, a burning in her chest spreading up into her throat. “Yes. I get it. I am made of less sturdy stock than perfect Tiffany.”

Marge tipped her head and pursed her lips. “Liz, hon’, you have got to get over this whole competition thing with your sister. I’ve told you that before. And that is not what I said. Don’t place your insecurities in my words.”

Liz pushed her plate back and stood abruptly. “You know what? I’m not hungry anymore. I think you were right. I should lie down for a while.”

Marge stood as well. “I wasn’t trying to start an argument.” Her tone denoted the annoyance she felt but Liz could also see by the jumping muscle in her jaw that Marge was trying to keep her temper in check. “I was simply expressing concern for you.”

“Right.” Liz tossed the napkin she’d been clutching onto her plate of half-eaten food. “Because I can’t handle it. I got it, Mom.”

Turning on her heel, she winced as the room tilted again. She closed her eyes against her swirling surroundings, a static buzz filling her ears. She felt herself falling and reached out into the darkness, her hand colliding with something firm, yet soft before darkness overtook her.

When she came to, Matt was standing over her, brow furrowed, his face etched with concern.

She was on the couch and Molly was kneeling next to her, pressing a cold cloth to her forehead. A coldness touched her lips as Molly lifted her head. “Drink this. I haven’t seen you drink anything all day.”

Matt set his hands on his hips. “Maybe it’s low iron. Did they test her iron before they sent her home?”

Her mom was over her next, smoothing her hair back from her forehead. “Maybe we should take her back over. They could have missed something.”

Liz sipped the water and after pushing the glass away propped herself up on her elbows. “I think I’ve just pushed myself too much today, guys. How about I rest a little and if I’m still not feeling better, we can discuss me going back to the hospital.”

Molly stood and sat back on the chair across from the couch. “I think that sounds like a plan. I’m going to call the store and let them know I won’t be in for the afternoon shift.”

A small cry came from the kitchen and Marge turned and started walking toward the car seat. “No need, Molly. I’ll stay here with her.”

“Don’t you have your ladies group?” Molly asked.

Marge kneeled by the car seat and uncovered her squirming granddaughter. She lifted Isabella out gently and placed her against her shoulder. “Nope. I told them I needed to postpone it until Monday because Liz was coming home today.” She patted the baby’s back, the small whimper now becoming a full-on wail.

Liz laid her head back against the couch pillow. She hated the idea of her mother seeing her in such a weak state, having another excuse to call her weaker than her older sister.

At the same time, her entire body was actually weak not to mention aching and her head was still spinning. Maybe her mom was right. Maybe Tiffany really was made of sturdier stuff.

“I’m going to head out and let you rest.”

Matt’s voice startled her. She’d briefly forgotten he was there and now that she remembered, the familiar flush of humiliation spread from her chest to her cheeks. Yet again he was seeing her in a vulnerable position.

“Did you need something?” She flinched when her voice squeaked out the last word like a boy going through puberty.

Matt shook his head, his eyes still clouded with concern. “Just stopped by to see if you and Molly needed anything before I headed to work.” His gaze slid to Marge. “Luckily Mrs. Cranmer is here.”

Marge waved a hand. “Matthew McGee, there is no need to call me Mrs. Cranmer. It makes me feel so old. Please. Call me Marge.”

Matt nodded, grinning. “Old habits die hard.”

“You haven’t been in my Sunday School class in over 20-years.” Marge laughed and winked. “Kill the habit, young man.”

Liz’s eyes narrowed. Since when did her mom wink? Maybe she had an eyelash in her eye. Of course, this was Matt McGee, Encounter Church and Spencer Valley’s golden boy, she was talking to. The man who felled criminals all day as an officer with the Spencer Tri-Township Police Department and led Bible studies when he was done. He was also a Little League coach, a volunteer with the county boys and girls club, volunteered with the soup kitchen and the local pregnancy care center, and last year the town council had tried to convince him to run for mayor. At this point she couldn’t decide if she should be jealous of him or submit his name for sainthood.

If any of the women in town were turned off by the fact Matt wasn’t as built or muscular as one might expect of a police officer, they didn’t show it. His bright hazel eyes and charming smile and personality more than made up for what he might be lacking in physique.  Liz’s eyes drifted across broad shoulders and down the length of this arms. Then again . . . had he been working out?

“No problem, Marge.” Matt said the words, but Liz heard the strain when he said her mom’s first name. “Looks like Liz is in good hands so I’m going to head out. Reggie doesn’t like it if we’re late for  staff meetings.”

Liz knew she shouldn’t laugh but she couldn’t help it. “Reggie Stoddard holds actual staff meetings?”

Matt mocked gasped. “Now, Liz, don’t pick on Reggie.” He teasingly wagged his finger at her. “Yes, he is one of the laziest people I have ever worked for, but he’s also a good man and he loves the people in this community. We’re lucky to have him.”

Lazy was an understatement, but she supposed Matt was right. Reggie, the department’s chief, did care about the community, even if he did make his officers and everyone else do most of his work for him.

“I’ll check on you tomorrow, okay?” Matt smiled and she swallowed hard. It wasn’t fair he had such a nice smile when he was totally out of her league. “Get some rest.”

Molly was the next to leave, on her way to the farm store. After nursing Isabella, Liz pulled the covers up over her shoulder and decided she’d take a nap on the couch instead of finding her way to the bedroom.

Her mother began swaddling Isabella in the bassinet she’d brought over the week before. “That was nice of Matt to stop by. I didn’t realize you two were friends.”

Liz closed her eyes. If she laid here long enough maybe her mom would think she’d fallen asleep. In fact, she was almost there so  —

“Not that it is a bad thing you are friends. Matt is a wonderful man. He leads the singles Bible study at church, coaches the local Little League and everyone in town just adores him. I just didn’t realize you two knew each other that well. I mean, well enough for you to give birth in the front of his pickup truck that is.” Marge cleared her throat. “Which is something I’ve been meaning to ask you about. How did that all come about anyhow?”

Liz attempted a realistic sounding snore.

Marge sighed. “I know that tactic, Liz. You’ve been doing that since you were three, but okay. If you don’t want to talk about it right now, that’s fine. I know you’re exhausted. Get some sleep while you can. Isabella will need to be fed again soon and you still have to establish that milk supply.”

Yes, mother. I know. Despite what you think, I do know something about taking care of a newborn.

Liz thought the retort, instead of saying it, glad she was too tired to open her mouth and speak the words out loud.

“You know, I should get you a copy of that book Tiffany got when she had Evan.”

Why was her mother still talking?

“The Baby Book by some doctor. It was like her own personal baby bible for the first 18 months of Evan’s life. I’ll ask Elaina at the bookstore if she has it or can order me a copy, but in the meantime, I bet you could find a copy at the library. Just ask Ginny to look it up for you. I’m sure she’d be happy to.”

Oh, yes. Of course. How wonderful.

Now not only would her entire family, her best friend, and Matt McGee know how inept she was at motherhood, but now her sister’s mother-in-law would know too.

She was grateful when sleep washed over her, so she didn’t have to think about how bad she was going to be at this whole motherhood.

***

Matt shook his head as he drove toward the police station.

What had he even been thinking stopping to see Liz like that?

They weren’t dating. They were barely friends.

For goodness’ sake she’d just given birth to another man’s baby in his truck three days ago. If that wasn’t a sign there wasn’t anything between them, he didn’t know what was.

Of course, that man wasn’t in the picture anymore and never should have been in it in the first place.

Liz had plenty of people to take care of her, though. What did he think he was going to do? The only good thing about him stopping was that he’d been there to catch her when she’d blacked out. His mind had been racing as he carried her to the couch.

He’d been ready to call an ambulance until her mom assured him she was probably just weak from needing to eat. Still, he’d kneeled next to her, taken her pulse, checked her breathing and even laid a hand against her forehead to see if she was feverish. He’d heard of women having infections after giving birth.

Ridiculous.

That’s what this was.

Thinking and worrying about a woman he wasn’t in a relationship with. It wasn’t that Liz was rude to him, but the walls she flung up whenever they were alone should be sign enough of a sign she didn’t want him around.

Inviting her to go fishing with him at his favorite spot on the lake had probably been one of the stupidest ideas he’d had, especially she was nine months pregnant at the time.

He’d been tired of her talking about how fat and unattractive she was when they were hanging out with Alex and Molly. No matter how many times he told her she was beautiful and glowing, how pregnancy made her even more beautiful, she wouldn’t listen. Plus, she was stressed that the baby hadn’t been born yet, so he thought a trip to the lake would take her mind off things.

They’d been standing on the edge of the pond when her water broke.

He’d just brought her arm back to show her how to cast when she screamed. He looked over at her saw her looking down in horror and followed her gaze to the puddle on and around his favorite pair of hiking boots. He missed those boots. They were in the trash out back, waiting for his next trip to the landfill.

Basing his experience on his sister and sister-in-law’s labors he’d thought they had plenty of time to get to the hospital. That assumption had turned out to be completely wrong halfway to the hospital, making him wish he had even more experience of women in labor.

“I’m not going to make it,” Liz had told him with wide eyes.

Thinking she’d meant she wasn’t going to make it through labor, he tried to encourage her. “You’ve got this, Liz. You can totally get through this. Millions of women do every —”

“I’m not going to make it to the hospital, McGee! This baby is coming NOW!”

McGee. What was with that anyhow? She’d been calling him McGee since high school, but he thought by now, a decade later, she could manage to say his first name.

She hadn’t made it to the hospital either. He’d pulled the truck over, silently rehearsing what he’d learned in his first aid classes about delivering a baby as he walked around to her side of the truck.

Thankfully his brain had switched to police offer mode during the delivery. He’d focused on the task at hand, acting as if Liz wasn’t the woman he’d wanted to kiss at the lake an hour earlier, and instead pretending she was a stranger he’d come upon during his shift.

He realized with a start he’d been sitting in his truck outside the police station for ten minutes while he remembered Isabella’s birth. He looked at the clock on the dashboard. That meant he was now 15 minutes late to work instead of five.

“McGee!” Reggie’s voice from the back of the building was sharp, but Matt knew there was little bite behind it. “Get in here!”

Matt tossed his jacket on to the back of his chair and headed toward Reggie’s office. The portly police chief was standing, pushing a drawer of a green metal filing cabinet closed

“Sorry, I’m late chief, I —”

Reggie scowled as he walked back to his desk, but Matt could already see the smile trying to tug at the corners of his mouth. “I have you for two more months McGee, don’t start checking out now. I’m not going to have you acting like a space cadet until you leave for the academy.”

 Reggie reminded Matt of a roly-poly toy he’d seen last year at an antique store while he was on a hunting trip with his uncle. The buttons of his uniform trained against a round belly, short, stumpy legs stuck out from the bottom and wild tufts of graying brown hair stuck out from the top of his head. He was rarely clean shaven and today was no exception.

“Sorry, chief. Really.” Time to be open. “I stopped by to check on Liz and she passed out. I stayed until I was sure she was okay.”

Reggie huffed into a ripped black desk chair and slapped a file onto his desk. “Passed out, huh? She low on iron?”

Matt shrugged a shoulder. “Thought the same thing. She’s not sure, but her mom was with her so I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

Reggie leaned toward the desk and tipped his head down to look over a pair of cheater glasses he’d picked up last week at Bert’s Drugstore. “What’s the deal with you two anyhow? Somethin’ you ain’t tellin’ me, McGee? You the father of that baby of hers or what?”

Anyone else might have taken offense to Reggie’s straight forward questions, but Matt never did. He knew Reggie meant well. He simply lacked tact.

“No sir. We’re just good friends. I’ve known her since high school.”

After a couple of seconds of watching Matt with narrowed eyes, Reggie seemed to accept that answer and leaned back in his chair, flipping the folder open. “Alright then. That topic is closed. Now. I’ve got a case here I’d like your help with since you’re the brains in this outfit.” He pushed the file across the desk. “Bernie Denton. Know him?”

Matt nodded as he looked at the mug shut attached to the file. “Yes, sir. He was in my class at school. We didn’t graduate together. He dropped out in tenth grade. Been in trouble ever since. I picked him up for drug possession my first year here. He moved to Clarkson a few years back, so he’s been someone else’s problem, but I’ve seen his name in the paper more than once for several different offenses.”

Reggie folded his fingers against his palms and tapped the top of the desk. “Yep. That’s him. Well, guess what? He’s our problem again. Not directly our problem, exactly. He’s living somewhere in the area. As far as I know, he’s not in our jurisdiction, but the state police are looking for him and they’ve asked for our help. He’s up on some bigger charges this time. Meth manufacturing and trafficking.”

Matt sat in the chair across from Reggie’s desk, flipping through the file. “And here we thought the heroine epidemic would push meth out the door. Guess not.” He laid the file down and leaned back in the chair. “What help are the state police looking for?”

The sigh that came out of Reggie triggered a brief coughing spell. He sipped his coffee and cleared his throat. “Dang allergies. Ragweed must be blooming out back the house again.” He took another sip of coffee. Matt knew it was mostly black with a drop of creamer. He’d poured it enough for him. “Anyhow, they want us to keep an eye out and let them know if we see Bernie. If we do, they want us to contact them, but they also might want one of our guys to make first contact, break the ice, so to speak, and help them get their foot in the door with him. They don’t think he knows they know about the meth factory he’s got up at his junkyard, if you know what I mean.”

Matt laughed. “Yeah. I get your drift, but if you think I’m the guy for this job, you’re wrong. Bernie and I never hit it off in school and he knows I’m a cop. He’s not going to open up to me.”

“Probably not, but you’re a familiar face. He might trust you more than a statie from out of the area. Maybe we can bring him in without too much fanfare.” Reggie dragged the folder back across the desk and slapped it closed. “Of course, all of this will be moot if we don’t happen upon him in the next couple of months. After that you’ll be lost to me. Down state being brainwashed by them gray gods.”

Matt snorted a laugh. “Now come on, Chief. Not all state police are like that.”

Reggie looked at Matt over his mug of coffee and rolled his eyes. “Just the majority of them.” He gulped the last of the coffee and set the mug down hard on the top of the desk. “Promise me you won’t let them change you, make you one of the elite who look down their noses at us small towners.”

“I promise,” Matt said, raising a hand and plastering a solemn expression on his face.

Reggie scowled at him, but a faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“Get out of here, McGee. I’m tired of looking at your handsome face. Go do some actual work for once. Start with training that rookie out there. He’s driving me nuts, following me around and reciting what he learned in the academy like he’s some big shot.”

Randomly Thinking: Florida men stories, murder case obsessions, behind on blog reading and other random thoughts

You just know it’s going to be a weird day when the tabs of your computer are opened up to “Man Found Naked In Chicken Coup After Manhunt”, a search bar for “what are the names of those round people toys, and a tab with the headline “Sean Connery’s James Bond was Basically A Rapist, New 007 Director Says.”

***

A couple of weeks ago my family picked up some Chinese food at the local Weis. It included spring rolls, but my husband said they were mini egg rolls. I informed him that they were indeed spring rolls, but I couldn’t explain the difference so when we got home, I searched for the difference online. I thought I’d share that information here in case any of you need to win a pointless argument as well in the future.

The differences between spring rolls and egg rolls:

Wrapper. Spring rolls are wrapped in thin flour wrappers or rice wrappers, while egg rolls are wrapped in a thicker, noticeably crispier wrapper that’s been dipped in egg for richness.

Preparation. Egg rolls are fried, which accounts for their bubbly, crispy exteriors. Meanwhile, spring rolls may be baked or fried, and are sometimes not cooked at all apart from the filling.

Filling. Spring rolls are usually filled with a fresh vegetables, whereas egg rolls are filled with a combination of savory meat and vegetables.

If you would like even more information on this two different Chinese foods, you can click over to the article HERE.

***

I don’t know about any of you, but I have been both horrified and enraptured with this terrible case of the missing and then found murdered girl, Gabby Petito. My son has called me obsessed, but I promise I have done more than poor over the internet for more information on the case this week, opening up my internet browser every morning and hoping they have caught her boyfriend, who I suspect killed her. I have. Truly. I have written several hundred words in book four of the Spencer Valley Chronicles, taught homeschool lessons, finished a book, continued to read on two more, cooked meals, and let a dog and a cat in and out a few times a day.

Unlike many following this case, I do not see myself as an internet sleuth of any kind. I’m simply curious of the final outcome. That’s why I joined a discussion group about the case on Facebook. The case itself is very serious, heartbreaking, and solemn, but some of the posts in the group have kept me laughing while also making me question the sanity of a great deal of people in this country.

I was glad to see there are many in the group who can laugh at themselves for thinking they know more than the FBI, which is investigating the case, and that there are others who can laugh at the sad state of their lives where they have found themselves with way too much time on their hands.

I thought I’d share a few of the funnier screenshots I took from the group, as well as some hilarious comments that I could relate to, as well as my own responses to some of the comments.

Comment: I think all of the 23 year-old, semi-bald guys with brown hair, flip flops, and a backpack probably better just stay home for the next few weeks.

Comment: Now I know why Brian Laundrie looks familiar. He looks like just about every other average guy in this country.

Comment: Anybody else in this group discover a new toxic trait about themselves during this case that has manifested itself in the form of a pretentious pseudo-investigator? I find that when friends and family, that are just casually following the case, send me some piece of information that I dissected 3 days ago I can’t help but scoff and hurriedly explain to them why it is irrelevant so I can get back to business. Sometimes I have to be brought back to reality and remember while I did major in social media sleuthing my cheating exes, I am not in fact, lead detective on this case. [image error]

My response to her: Yeah, but come on — I have watched sooooo many mystery and cop shows and I’m on the fourth book of the Walt Longmire mystery series so I am totally an expert. That’s all the training I need, right?!

Showing how some in the group really do feel like they are all working together:

There have also been several posts in the group about bodies being found or people barricading themselves in apartments or hotel rooms. This made a lot of us in the group realize that all those Florida man memes are totally true. Surely you have heard of them. Florida man . .. followed by something crazy that a Florida man did. Let me explain this in my next random thought.

***

A couple of years ago my son was showing me memes and told me about all these crazy news stories that have the headline: “Florida man . . .” followed by something crazy a man from Florida did.

There are also Florida woman stories, I should add.

It didn’t take me long to realize he was right. I started seeing all these crazy stories and every time it would be someone from Florida that something crazy.

Then one day I came across this headline: Man Found Naked In Chicken Coop After Manhunt.

I snorted a laugh and said to my son, “Oh my gosh. Sounds like something that would happen in our area, or would involve a Florida man.”

I proceeded to read the story and it turns out it involved both a Florida man and our area. The man was being sought because he had been driving the wrong way on a local interstate. After he crashed his car, which he drove all the way from Florida, he jumped on the back of pickup (while on the highway) and rode a mile before jumping off and running into the woods.

Police searched for this guy for seven hours, only to find him after he was found naked in a chicken cop by the coop’s owner. It was apparently not the first chicken coop he had run into while naked and on the run. He also threatened the one homeowner with an ax.

He killed a dog and injured two chickens during his run. The article doesn’t say it, but I suspect he was found to be under the influence of a controlled substance — most likely  meth.

By the way, I went to search for this story again to confirm the headline and there was actually another similar story in Lousiana. I guess there is something that happens to meth heads when they get high that makes them want to run naked into chicken coops.

***

Earlier this week I decided I had better catch up on posts from my favorite bloggers. I am very behind due to school starting (and the aforementioned obsession I’ve developed). I logged on to the WordPress reader and clicked over to my friend Erin’s blog (link) and gasped. There was a huge list of posts from her that I had missed. I immediately sent her a private message, telling her the thoughts that rushed thro ugh my mind at this discovery, because obviously she needs to know every thought that rushes through my mind on a daily basis.

What I wrote to her, word for word, (sadly): I was like: “Where did all these posts come from!??? I can’t be this far behind?? What am I doing with my life? where have my days gone? What hours have I wasted doing things when I could have been reading Erin’s posts???!”

Anyhow, after my obvious failure at being a good blog follower, I read and commented on many of Erin’s posts and then jumped over to some of other favorite bloggers to read and leave comments and likes there. I’m still weeding through the list, though, so don’t feel left out if I haven’t stopped at your blog yet.

***

Little Miss and I were coming home from an Awana meeting the other night (it’s a church group for kids) and I was telling her why we say The Pledge of Allegiance.

“It’s to remember the freedom we have in this country,” I told her.

“What freedom? I don’t have freedom,” she told me.

“You don’t?”

“No. You keep me in the house and tell me what to do all the time.”

“You mean like when I make you do schoolwork?”

“Yeah. I don’t have freedom to whatever I want.”

“Really? How long did you talk to your friends the other day compared to how long I made you do schoolwork?”

“Yeah, well —”

“When you want a snack you get it, right?”

“Yeah, but —”

“When you want a toy we often get it, don’t we?”

“Yeah, but —”

“And the mere fact you are allowed to have an education when little girls in other countries aren’t even allowed to learn or expand their education simply because they are women shows what freedom you have. You may not think so now, but the fact you are being educated is a gift to you. A gift other young girls your age don’t have.”

The rest of the ride home (all four minutes of it) was pretty quiet after that, though I’m still not sure she agreed with me.

***

I’m starting to wonder why I even bother teaching my daughter science. Most of the time she teaches me. Yesterday we were doing a lesson on the different layers of the ocean (Sunlight, Twilight and Midnight) and while she didn’t know about those layers, she could tell me a bunch of stuff about the creatures who live in each of them. I figure I should just record her and sell the classes for some extra money at this point.

***

Earlier today my husband was like, “I want to take you to the new James Bond movie” and I was like, “No. No. Don’t make me stare at Daniel Craig for two hours. How cruel.” Ha. Ha.

Honestly, though, I always think he looks like a pretentious jerk with the way his lips are always pursed like that and his jaw is all tight. I also don’t understand the phone prop. Who is he calling? Someone in 1986?

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A couple of memes that hit the nail on the head for me recently:

(My husband recently remarked on how long it is taking to build the Aldi’s in the town near us and suggested they hire the people who build all the Dollar General’s around here to do it. Seriously, every time I turn around there is another one in a town I’m driving through where there wasnt one before. Also, we live near Seneca Lake so this pretty funny.)

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Those are my random thoughts for this time around. How about you? What random thoughts or events do you have to share? Share them with me in the comments.

Comfort reading with The Cat Who . . . book series

I’m a stickler for books set in smaller towns with a large cast of fun and quirky characters, if you couldn’t tell by the stories I share on here for Fiction Friday.

I mention The Cat Who books by Lilian Jackson Braun from time to time and when I do I write that I am reading one as “comfort reading.” I consider them comfort reading because I used to read them when I was a teenager. For me, reading about James Mackintosh Qwilleran and his Siamese cats, Koko and Yum-Yum, and the cast of characters around them, feels oddly like coming home.

I call them The Cat Who . . . books because all of the book titles start with The Cat Who . . . followed by something the cat did.

Examples include The Cat Who Played Brahms, The Cat Who Sang for the Birds, The Cat Who Lived High, and The Cat Who Sniffed Glue. There were 29 books written between 1966 and 2007. There were 18 years between the third and fourth book and after reading that in an article while researching for this post, I started to wonder what the delay was all about. What did Braun do in between and what made her pick up the series again? I did some digging and learned there were a few reasons for the break, including the death of her husband and the fact that she was working at The Detroit Free Press as the “Good Living” editor during that time, and for 30-years, retiring in the late 70s. The other, bigger, reason for the break, though, was that when she turned in the manuscript for the fourth book, the publisher said they were interested in books with more sex and violence.

Luckily Braun was able to find a publisher in the future who recognized that not every reader wants books full of sex and violence.

As a writer who has started writing fiction fairly “late in life,” I found it interesting that Braun published her first fiction book at the age of 53. She was 97 when she passed away and her husband told a newspaper that her biggest regret was dying before she could finish her 30th book, The Cat Who Smelled Smoke.

When she did release a new book in 1986, after that 18 year break, it was called The Cat Who Saw Red. It was published under a new publisher and nominated for an Anthony Award and an Edgar Award in the best original paperback category. The new publisher also re-released her other three books.

The original cover of the first The Cat Who book. The second book with the original cover. The third book with the original cover.

The books always offer a mystery, of course, usually in the form of a murder or two, but woven within the mystery are hilarious anecdotes about the people of Pixax, the town James Qwilleran, a retired crime beat journalist and columnist, has settled into.

The series started out with Qwilleran working “Down Below”, as the country folk call the city of Chicago. After inheriting some money from an eccentric distant relative (who, if I remember correctly he wasn’t even biologically related to), he ends up moving to the tiny town where many of his mysteries occur, which makes me ask, “how many criminals live in this one tiny town?” That thought always makes me a bit paranoid, since I also live in a small town. After reading one of these books (or watching an episode of Murder She Wrote) I start looking at my neighbors in a different light.

“Do you think Mrs. Smith down the road is capable of murder?” I might ask my husband, but I don’t actually since there isn’t a Mrs. Smith down the road.
Or sometimes I think, “What does Mr. So-and-So have in those containers in his back yard? Compost or . . . bodies?!”

Anyhow, back to the books. Not all of them aren’t all winners, a couple of them are stinkers, only saved by the cats and quirky characters. Still, I keep reading them, enjoying the feeling of coming home, in a way, much like I do when I read and re-read the Mitford books.

It isn’t only the quirky characters and pets that captures my interest in the books. Being a veteran of the journalism world, I also find myself drawn to the parts of the stories that involve reporting and the newspaper office. The characters of the small town newspaper are about as odd as some of the people I used to work with, but not quite.

When the subject of reporters and journalists come up in a conversation, I often comment that a newspaper’s newsroom is full of people who are two clicks away from being certifiably crazy. Then I remember I was once one of those people and wonder what that means about me. I guess it means I was the only sane person in the four newsrooms I worked in over my 15-year career.

Braun’s own career in journalism helped her to become a prolific novelist, releasing one or two books a year. She said she was used to continously writing after doing it for 50 years. I can relate to the idea of being used to writing often and a lot, since that’s what I did when I worked at newspapers, but of course I only did it for 15 years, not 50!

When I picture Qwill in my mind he’s a cross between Sam Elliott and a former boss of mine (who incidentally no longer has the mustache he used to have). Qwill is an old school newshound with a passion for digging up the answers to mysteries, even after he stops working as an investigative reporter and knows it isn’t his place.

How I picture Qwill but without the long hair.

Getting to the bottom of something was my favorite part of being a reporter. I loved to dig for the news, but I was nowhere near as good at is as my husband is. He’s like a dog with a bone. When he gets a tip, he’ll dig that thing out of the ground and bring it in the light no matter who tries to stop him.

He isn’t as obsessed with it as I am, though. I remember laying awake at night wondering what the local school board or district attorney was hiding from me while he comes home, drops the mystery at the door, picks up a book and doesn’t pick up work things again until the next morning. Usually anyhow. Some nights he does lay there worrying about work things, but not necessarily a story he is working on.

Throughout the books, Qwill ages from his late 40s to his mid-50s. He is a divorced, slightly overweight, former alocholic who now declines offers to drink any alcohol when the books first start. He loses the extra pounds as the series progresses.

Women find him irrestible, Braun writes, and one reason they do is because of his “luxurious mustache.” He also has salt-and-pepper hair, but it is the mustache that is the most intriguing, not only because of it’s appearance.

An excerpt from an article on Wikipedia describes the role of the mustache perfectly.

Whenever Qwilleran gets a suspicion that something is wrong or his instincts are right, he will get “a tingling sensation on his upper lip.” Depending upon the strength of the sensation, he may be seen “stroking it with his fingertips” to “pounding [his mustache] with his knuckles”.

Characters in the books (especially women) are also drawn to Qwill because of his willingness to listen, a skill he picked up in his job as a reporter. It’s a skill I picked up as well. I found that the more I let a person talk, the more they would tell me, without even realizing they were telling me it. Idle chitchat also helped relax the subject of a story or the person I was interviewing. I never felt like I was manipulating the person. I was simply reminding them that I was human too and helping them to feel comfortable with talking to me.

Qwill uses this tactic in his reporting, but also in his sleuthing. It may appear to the reader that the character is simply telling Qwilleran about the new decor in their homes, but Qwilleran might hear something quite different, including the fact that the person who designed the new look for their home new the victim in a recent crime.

Now, I would be very remiss if I did not mention that Q’s cat Koko helps him solve his crimes in unusual and distinct ways. Koko sometimes yowls at the guilty person, flips a book to a page that offers a clue, or leads Q to a clue when they go on their walks, with Koko on a harness and leash.

Koko’s full name is Kao K’o-Kung and he is named after a 13th-century Chinese artist of the same name. He was once owned by an art critic who Qwill used to work with at the Fluxion, a newspaper Down Under. His first owner fed Koko a gourmet diet of lobster, chicken, and other fancy meals, which means he won’t eat normal cat food.

Qwilleran later adopts Yum-Yum, another Siamese, and ends up having to feed both cats expensive food on his sometimes meager salary, which of course expands when he inherhits a fortune and mansion later in the series.

While locals often credit Qwill when he solves a crime, there are some who know Koko is the real brains in the operation, as shown by this exerpt from The Cat Who Played Brahms:

“Qwilleran’s Siamese cat was a celebrity at the Press Club. Koko’s portrait hung in the lobby along with Pulitzer Prize winners, and he was probably the only cat in the history of journalism who had his own press card signed by the chief of police. Although Qwilleran’s suspicious nature and inquisitive mind had brought a few criminals to justice, it was commonly understood at the Press Club that the brains behind his success belonged to a feline of outstanding intelligence and sensory perception. Koko always seemed to sniff or scratch in the right place at the right time.”

In addition to the newspaper angle, I, of course, like the way the books nail the personality of cats, especially Siamese, right on the head. I had a cat that our vet said was part Siamese and he was a very interesting cat, so I relate to the way Braun writes about cats as well as the mysteries.

Being a cat lover, and the owner of two Siamese herself, Braun certainly had first-hand experience about the behavior of cats.

Braun with the Siamese she named after her literary cats.

The good thing about these books is that they are fairly simple and straight forward. They aren’t raunchy, have very little to no swearing, and don’t feature grotesque or detailed descriptions of violence. They are almost completely void of romance, other than a very tame, chaste storyline involving Qwill and town librarian Polly Duncan.

I have been having fun snatching books from the series up at book sales but have also purchased a few through my Kindle. I don’t know why, but I prefer reading The Cat Who books as hard copies, maybe because that’s how I started reading them when I would sign them out at the local library.

So, how about you? Do you have a series of books that are like “comfort reading” to you? I would love to hear about the series.