Lisa R. Howeler's Blog, page 48

10 on 10 for February

Today I am taking part in the 10 on 10 with Marsha In the Middle as host.

Here are the questions we are supposed to answer and the answers are below the graphic:

I looked at this one for a bit and was grossed out with both ideas but then decided that I’d rather have the potato chips dipped in chocolate because, well, it’s chocolate. I could eat almost anything dipped in chocolate except crickets and, well, other gross things one shouldn’t eat, but you get my drift. (Looks like Gertrude Hawk actually makes this product!)

2, I would definitely prefer to recite an original poem to my husband than sing anywhere, let alone in front of a bunch of people. I don’t write poetry but I come from a family of poets so I think I could pull that off. I could not pull of singing or singing in front of a bunch of people. I’d probably giggle while reciting the poem and my husband would probably make funny faces to make me laugh, but it would be a lot better than doing anything in front of a bunch of people.

3. Oh gosh – this one was a little hard. I think both of these singers would be interesting to have dinner with but I guess I would choose Dolly because I want to see how old she really looks close up. I mean, the woman is 78 but has so much makeup and plastic surgery done, she’s got to really look old close up right? I just can’t imagine a human’s skin can stretch that much through plastic surgery and not rip somewhere. I’ve got to see for myself how wrinkled she really is. Plus I think she’s hilarious and I’d crack up at her jokes while she’d probably crack up if I told her I want to see how old she looks close up.

4. This one was easy – I would love to have only one red rose. I love red roses the most and I’m also not a huge flower person. I like them but I can take them or leave them. If my husband came home with one rose and said “We’re going to sit tonight and watch a mystery together tonight” that would be a better gift than a dozen roses and chocolate. I kid you not. I’m very, simple like that. If he threw a book I wanted in the midst of all that I’d be even more over the moon. Not that I’m hinting because he does a fine job with gifts for birthdays, holidays, and Valentine’s Day, etc.

5. I’m going to pick the pink with purple hearts because those are my favorite colors. As long as the hearts aren’t too big and I don’t look like a clown. Hopefully, it can be a comfy cotton dress that I can just lounge around the house in. *wink*

6. Uh, can I have both? I mean, both sound cool. This is “would you rather” though so I will go with the carriage ride in the Scottish Highlands because my ancestors are from Scotland and I absolutely want to visit there one day. On the list is Grant Castle because my family members were Grants (hello…why do you think the main character in my book series is Gladwynn Grant. One, it was my grandmother’s name, but two, to keep the Grant name alive in my family.).

7. This one was easy. The Rock, but not for the reason you think. I don’t agree with him politically and I want to give him a piece of my mind. Ha! That and I think we probably agree on more things than I think and I’d like to ask him some questions about WWE and if he thinks Vince McMahon did all those things he is being accused of.

8. I think Satin sheets are pretty slippery so I’d go with the flannel sheets with Teddy bears on them. This question doesn’t tell us what season we would  have these sheets in, but I think even in the summer I’d rather have the flannel sheets. I’d simply not have a top blanket and put the fan on me so I wouldn’t get too hot. Yes, I thought of this way too long. I may have issues.

9. I will go with the box of chocolates with my least favorite fillings. I have dealt with some pretty bad allergies before and they affected my breathing so I’d rather not like chocolates than not be able to breathe!

10. Oh dear, my husband might read this and I don’t want to offend him but he likes surprise dates and I don’t. I mean, I’ve always enjoyed the surprise places he’s taken me but I like knowing where I’m going and what we’re going to be doing. I have anxiety and if I can plan for contingencies like how I’m going to be able to escape if I feel anxious or if I’m going to get carsick or not because it is a long drive, then I prefer to know ahead of time. If I planned the date then I’d know everything that was going to happen and that would help my control freak tendencies and my highly-prone-to-anxiety brain.

I’m so glad I was able to remember to do the 10 on 10 this month. I usually forget about it until I see Marsha post about it but this time, I remembered the day before. I simply didn’t write about it until after I saw Marsha post about it. *snort*

If you want to read more responses to these questions, visit Marsha’s blog here: https://marshainthemiddle.com/10-on-the-10th-february-3/

Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot February 8

Welcome to another Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot hosted by Marsha in the Middle, Melynda from Scratch Made Food & DYI Homemade Household, Sue from Women Living Well After 50, and me.  Look for the link party to go live on Thursdays at 9:30pm EDT. 

This week has been very busy for me.

I have had to leave the house every day except today. Two of those days I took my dad to doctor appointments for an injured foot. Thankfully the foot was not broken but it has been causing him a great deal of pain.

Luckily the sun came out this week, even though the temperatures were very chilly still. Today the temperatures are in the low 50s and it feels like a heatwave. My daughter and I went outside and played with the dog (nicknamed Zooma The Wonder Dog here on the blog) by throwing her ball across the yard, something she has only done once before all winter. She won’t give up the ball so we throw one ball and to get her to drop it, we throw another one.

She was having a ton of fun because she absolutely loves being outside and being able to run around. I needed to just sit and watch her run around because our trials from last week with broken down this or that have continued into this week. First, my dad broke down (Har. Har.) and now our dryer, which was starting to die before.

Unfortunately, we only have a limited budget to have all of this fixed.

I need new eyeglasses at the end of the month because the “anti-glare covering” on my lenses is peeling, making it hard for me to see through and aggravating the floaters I already have.

It will all get worked out, though. God has always provided for us.

Now, on to our most clicked posts for this week and a list of my favorite posts.

The most clicked:

First February Thrift by Thrifting Wonderland

My top three or three favorites:

Lean Into Grace by A New Lens

I cheated a bit by choosing this one because the book that Pam talks about here is written by the daughter-in-law of a family friend and I was pleasantly surprised to see it up on someone else’s blog. The woman’s husband’s family grew up not far from me in my little corner of Pennsylvania.

8 Ways to Make February Fabulous by Women Living Well After 50

I don’t know if it is proper to pick a post from one of the hosts or not, but I did really enjoy all these ideas for surviving February by Sue from Women Living Well After 50. She called it: ‘It’s February – 8 ways to make it Fabulous’. The ideas on how to make life more relaxing and easier to work through are ideas I’m going to be taking to heart for the rest of February.

Winter at Nelson Crest: Saturday Snippets by Debbie Dabbleblog

I chose this one because – babies. Yep. Beautiful babies. That is all.

I hope you had a great week and have a great week ahead.

Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family-friendly. You can link up posts from last week or even from years ago.

Also, please take the time to visit the other blogs on the link-up and meet some new bloggers!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

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Faithfully Thinking: He did it for his own heart, not a pat on the back.

A couple of years ago a large church near us sent out an invitation online for people to come be baptized at their church.

My husband decided he wanted to do it.

This church is like a mini-mega church in our area.

I didn’t feel totally comfortable with it because their service seemed more like a show to me than an actual church service. I feel bad saying that because quite a few people we know attend the church and they are very kind, lovely people. Still, it’s the feeling I get when I attend.

My husband wanted to do it, though, so he called the church. The secretary said she’d send him some info and told him to send it back and he’d be on the list.

He filled out some personal information and sent it in, but had to fax it because they’d literally given him one day to have it back by and the church is about an hour from us so we knew it wouldn’t get there in time with the mail.

I thought the pastor would call him ahead of time, chat with him a bit, ask him about his decision, etc.

That never happened. No one from the church called except the secretary to tell him what time to be there.

We all went, including my parents, and he was placed in a line of other people getting baptized.

Still no one from the church spoke to him to tell him they were proud or good luck or how great his decision was or anything else.

Surely the pastor would come to speak to him before he was led up to the baptismal they’d set up in front of the worship team, right?

I didn’t see that happen but I was sure it had before he’d walked up and been dunked while the worship team sang a song from Elevation Worship in the background and right after a man read a small testimonial from my husband.

From my point of view it was like a conveyor belt. People went down and came up and then they handed them a towel and moved them on. They were already in T-shirts with the church’s name emblazoned on it. It was a great marketing opportunity, of course.

There was even a professional photographer.

No one from the church spoke to our family afterward, other than my parents who some of the parishoners knew. The pastor didn’t shake our hands, no staff members thanked us for coming – we just left the church like we just went through the line at the drive in.

I asked my husband in the car if the pastor had spoken to him at any point.

He shrugged. “Nope.”

I was indignant. “Are you serious? So this was just a marketing opportunity for them? What, they needed some publicity shots or something?”

I was angry and disappointed in the people who called themselves Christians.

My husband had at least hoped for a certificate but he didn’t even get that in the mail later.

None of that really mattered to him, though, he told me.

To summarize what he said: It wasn’t about the show for him or a pat on the back from the pastor or anyone else from the church. He did it for himself. For his own soul and for his family

I was sitting there feeling bitterness toward the church while he felt joy at having made a decision for his own heart and his own salvation.

A little background might be needed here. I was brought up in the church. I’ve been a Christian since I was five years old. My husband has been a Christian for several years, but more committed the last four or five. Yet he was the one who had an attitude of what really mattered was why he did it and who saw it and acknowledged it.

His response was a wake up call to me — a reminder to stop focusing on what I see as the failings of the church or God’s people.

People will never be perfect. They will never live up to the expectations I have for them because only God can reach our highest expectations.

In the end it truly didn’t matter that the pastor didn’t talk to him or the secretary never sent the certificate. There may have been very good and plausible reasons for those things not happening but even if there weren’t, it doesn’t matter.

What matters is my husband’s heart and the choice he made that brought him closer to Christ in a way that felt tangible to him.

Bookish Thinking: Comparing The Black Stallion book with the movie

At the end of 2023, Little Miss and I finished the book of The Black Stallion (1941) by Walter Farley and then watched the 1979 movie based on it.

There are movies that stick with you from childhood to adulthood. The Black Stallion was one of those movies for me. A longtime horse lover, I was infatuated with horses, but knew I could never have one.

“They’re too much work,” my parents always said.

I had two childhood friends who had horses so I knew they were right. I also knew we didn’t have the space for the horses. Still, I loved to watch them, look at photos of them, and read about them. Enter Misty of Chincoteague and King of the Wind and My Little Ponies and – The Black Stallion.

If you don’t know what The Black Stallion is about, it is about a young boy (Alec Ramsey) who is on a ship sailing back to the United States from visiting his uncle in India when the ship is caught up in a storm. The ship sinks and the boy is rescued by a black Arabian stallion who was brought on board at a port along the way. The boy and horse live on a deserted island for twenty days before they are rescued by a fishing ship. They then return to Long Island where Alec fights to keep the horse, even though they live in a fairly populated area. His parents agree to let him keep the stallion because he saved Alec’s life, but they find a place for him in a neighbor’s barn (so this isn’t a super, super urban area, clearly.)

I will say right at the start here that we enjoyed the movie more than the book, only because we felt the book was a bit slow as in repetitive at times, and overly descriptive, especially when it came to the scenes of Alec riding The Black (the name of the stallion).

 A good quarter of the book could have been cut by just trimming those scenes down. We already read about how it felt for Alec to run the black on the island. I don’t think it was important to describe that feeling every single time he rode the horse after that.

Despite not liking the slow parts, we did like the book overall and Little Miss was anxious to see the movie to see how similar it was. I watched the movie when I was around her age and was completely enamored with it and knowing she loves horses as much as I always did, I couldn’t wait to show it to her. I insisted we finish the book first, though, because I had never read it and I thought it would be good to compare the two.

She was fine with that, as long as I skipped over some of the overly descriptive parts with the running and the very repetitive and mundane dialogue in some places.

There were parts of the movie that were similar but there were also some very big glaring changes between the book and movie.

For one, in the book, Alec Ramsey is a redhead with freckles. I don’t remember him being given an age in the book, but I guessed him to be around 14 or 15.

In the movie, the boy looks about 10 or 11 and he has freckles, but very dark hair. (I looked this up and the actor was actually 11. Maybe Alec is supposed to be that young in the book. I may have missed his age when we were reading.)

In the book, Alec’s parents are waiting for him at home but in the movie, Alec’s father was on the ship with him.

So there is definitely a different dynamic from the book to the movie.

The action, of course, moves a bit faster in the movie. The imagery in the movie, especially when Alec (portrayed by Kelly Reno) and The Black are on the island and Alec is learning to ride him is gorgeous and mesmerizing. The riding scene is one of the most enchanting and relaxing scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie. When I was a kid and watched that scene, everything around me faded away and it was almost like I was on that beach, riding a horse across the sand and through the waves. It was the same watching it again as an adult. My heart pounded, my skin tingled, and I leaned forward as if I was the one holding on to the mane of the horse, my body crouched low as the horse picked up speed.

Looking back, I sometimes wonder if watching that movie is what lit the spark for my passion for photography.

In the movie, Henry, the man who ultimately ends up helping Alec train The Black to run in races, is portrayed by Mickey Rooney. Little Miss said he didn’t look anything like she imagined Henry to look and, though I had grown up only knowing Henry to look like Mickey Rooney, I sort of had to agree. I pictured someone completely different in my mind when I read the book.

Still, I think Mickey does an amazing job portraying Henry – a slightly grumpy, retired jockey and horse trainer. He was even nominated for an Oscar for his performance.

Teri Garr portrayed Alec’s mother in the movie. It was produced by Francis Ford Coppola and directed by Caroll Ballard.

I always found the scenes with the horse amazing. Like how did they get the horse to film the scenes where he was getting used to Alec? And the race scenes were amazing. The movie was filmed before CGI, which makes it all even more amazing.

Wikipedia is not the most reliable source for information at times, but if what they shared about the horses used in the film is true, it is very interesting.

“Cass Ole, a champion Arabian stallion, was featured in most of the movie’s scenes, with Fae Jur, another black Arabian stallion, being his main double. Fae Jur’s main scene is the one where Alec is trying to gain the trust of The Black on the beach. Two other stunt doubles were used for running, fighting, and swimming scenes.

El Mokhtar, an Egyptian Arabian racehorse, was the producers’ first choice to portray The Black, but they were unable to secure his services for the film from his owners, who declined any offers. He does appear in The Black Stallion Returns, alongside Cass Ole, by which time the studio bought out the syndicate of owners to secure El Mokhtar’s services.

Napoleon was portrayed by Junior, who previously appeared in National Lampoon’s Animal House as Trooper, Niedermeyer’s horse.”

I also found it interesting to read on IMBD’b that Kelly Reno, who played Alec (as I mentioned above) did his own stunts in the movie because he was the son of a cattle rancher and was used to riding horses. He did have a stand-in part of the time but for the most part, the stunts were his own when he was riding The Black.

Kelly was injured in a very bad truck accident involving a semi-trailer after he graduated high school, which ended his acting career. He became a cattle rancher, like his dad, and then a truck driver and lives in Colorado from what I could find out online. There is not a ton of information available about him online since he no longer works in acting, but I did find this really interesting interview from this past year on a site about Thoroughbred Racing.

“It was a friend of the Reno family who noticed an ad in the Denver Post calling for young riders to audition for a role in a movie,” writer Jay Hovdey writes in the article.
“I wasn’t trying to be an actor,” Reno said recently. “For me, it was a day off from school, so why not?”

The article is also where I learned that the shipwreck scenes in the movie were filmed in Italy. The beach scenes were filmed in Sardinia. Reno and his entire family were flown there to film that scene. When we see him shivering from the cold rain and the waves crashing over the ship, that was real because they were using fire hoses to create the illusion and he was very cold.

I’ve always wondered how they got The Black to follow Reno around on the beach and he answered that in this interview.

“There was a pocket in my shorts with oats I’d feed him,” Reno said, “so when I’d take off running across the beach, he knew where those oats came from and follow me around.”

He also said the horse bit him in the shoulder, lifting him up and shaking him like a rag doll the one time he didn’t feed him fast enough.

““He picked me up and shook me like a rag doll. I reared back and punched him right in the nose. The director yells: ‘Don’t be punching the horse!’ But I’m 11, a ranch kid. I think he was mad because the horse was the star.”

Reno said Rooney was amazing to work with and only got “mad” at him once when they were at a horse race and he bet on a horse that won 50-1 and Rooney lost.

About the movie, Hovdey wrote: “As for the legacy of the movie, which was produced by Francis Ford Coppola of The Godfather fame, the Los Angeles Film Critics honored Caleb Deschanel for his cinematography and composer Carmine Coppola for his music.

In 2002, the National Film Preservation Board added The Black Stallion to its list of significant films, then in 2005 a poll published by the American Film Institute placed the movie at No. 64 among America’s 100 Most Inspiring Movies, ahead of Cool Hand Luke, Thelma & Louise, and The Ten Commandments.”

You can read the full article and interview with Reno here: https://www.thoroughbredracing.com/articles/5835/jay-hovdey-movies-black-stallion-bonafide-classic-among-greatest-horse-fables/

There was a sequel of the movie made, The Black Stallion Returns, which was the second in Farley’s 21-book series that featured the stallion.

Kelly and Teri Garr were both in the sequel. They were not in the television series that ran from 1990 to 1993 and starred Mickey Rooney and Richard Ian Cox.

So my final thoughts on the book and the movie is that the book is worth a read if you are okay with skimming over some of the scenes that drag a bit.

The movie is worth a watch because you won’t want to fast forward past any scene since it is beautifully acted, filmed, and `presented.

Have you read the book or seen the film?

What was your impression of it or them?

Here is an interview about the making of The Black Stallion and the trailer that ran in 1979 for it.

For additional reading about the movie and the making of it and the book and author, visit Tim Farley’s site here:

The Black Stallion Web Site

Sunday Bookends: Books with no plot, Lark Rise to Candleford, and praise music

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.

This week I’m joining up with  Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer , Deb at  Readerbuzz,  and Kathyrn at  The Book Date.

What I/we’ve been Reading

Currently Reading:

The Cat Who Went Into The Closet by Lilian Jackson Braun

Hell is Empty by Craig Johnson

Do The New You by Steven Furtick

Recently Finished:

Sisterchicks Do the Hula by Robin Jones Gunn

This book wasn’t horrible but there wasn’t really an actual plot and that annoyed me. I kept waiting for something to happen – like a mystery or a trial they had to overcome or .. well, anything really. Like a plot maybe. Once I decided and accepted that was never going to happen it was much easier to skim ahead and just see what happened at the end and moved on to the next book.

Up Next or Soon:

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly

Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny

Bats Fly At Dusk by Erle Stanley Gardner

This week Little Miss and I finished The Cabin Faced West by Jean Fritz. I hope to finish The Borrowers with her this week but she’s been reading Fortunatly the Milk by Neil Gaiman to me.

What We watched/are Watching

This past week I watched Miss Austen Regrets and wrote about it on the blog. I really enjoyed it. The rest of the week I watched Lark Rise to Candleford and Miss Scarlet and the Duke.
What I’m Writing

I’m plugging away on Cassie and hope to have it finished at the end of this month so I can start the third book in the Gladwynn Grant series.

Last week on the blog I shared:

Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot February 1 Jane Austen January: Miss Austen Regrets Faithfully Thinking: When it feels unnatural to not worry and ruminate but you stop doing it anyhow

What I’m Listening To

This week I listened to this song on repeat:

And loved this version of it:

Now it’s your turn! What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.

Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot February 1

Welcome to another Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot hosted by Marsha in the Middle, Melynda from Scratch Made Food & DYI Homemade Household, Sue from Women Living Well After 50, and me.  Look for the link party to go live on Thursdays at 9:30pm EDT. 

Our cold weather came back this week with a vengeance and some snow will just not go away because it’s been too cold for it to melt.

Luckily, we did not return to the arctic temperatures we were faced with the week before last.

This has not been an easy week in our house. While everyone is healthy (for the most part), everything has broken all at once, including cars, trucks, washers, dryers, the sink and my sanity.

It has been one thing after another and we’d love some prayers.

In the midst of all that I have wanted to find some time for relaxing, reading, and watching things, but that really hasn’t happened this week. I need to find a way to have that break this weekend or I think I might crumble into a weepy mess.

This week for our Weekly Traffic Jam Reboot Link Up we had another tie for the most clicked!

The most clicked posts were:

Snow Leopard for the Win by Marsha in the Middle

And Be Mine Valentine by Thrifting Wonderland

My favorites for this week were:

Winter Wonderland Trees & Villages in the Den, 2024 by Debbie Dabbleblog

I loved this tour of Debbie’s trees and den decorated for winter! It was relaxing to take the photo tour!

A Sweet Valentine’s Day Table At Sunset by Life Is Better Lakeside

I really enjoyed how this table was decorated and amazed with the view as well!

Beauty Update and Makeup Bag Rummage by Is This Mutton

I don’t know enough about makeup so this was an amazing crash course for me. I loved the details about the makeup, her skincare routine, and other things she takes or does for her skin and health.

It is hard choosing favorite posts some weeks because I really enjoy so many of them so please go check out the links each week so you can see what everyone is sharing.

Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family-friendly. You can link up posts from last week or even from years ago.

Also, please take the time to visit the other blogs on the link-up and meet some new bloggers!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

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Jane Austen January: Miss Austen Regrets

For the month of January, Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I watched a movie adaptation of Jane Austen books for our link up for Jane Austen January (you can find the link to our past posts at the top of the page).

Erin has been unable to participate the last two weeks so this week I watched Miss Austen Regrets (2007) by myself.

I enjoyed this movie over any of the others we watched. The movie was the semi-biographical (biopic) story of Jane Austen — not the polished, proper, and fantasy versions we see in her books (though there is a great deal of realism in them as well). Of course, there was a lot of fiction in this movie as well, since there isn’t a ton of information known about Jane’s real life.

This movie follows Jane later in life, exploring why her chances at love like she wrote about were never fully realized. Those chances either slipped away or she pushed them away according to the movie and other accounts. Taking creative license, mixed in with some truth, the movie weaves in the story of Jane’s niece with her own. Fanny Knight a wide-eyed young woman who has romanticized love partially because of her aunt’s books.

Through Fanny and Jane’s interaction, we are led through a bittersweet journey that carries the viewers through a series of regrets by Jane, that she may or may not have really had in life.

The story was beautifully presented, not because of beautiful settings or scenes, though there were those too, but because of the emotions, we lived with a woman we know very little about other than what we read between the lines of fictitious prose. That prose within novels she wrote became so popular there is now a new cinema adaptation of her work every other year and thousands upon thousands of fan fiction based on the books she wrote and released in her short 41 years.

When this movie ended, I actually had to pause to process it all and to stop crying over the ending.

There is way too much about Jane’s history to share in one blog post or in one movie so this movie specifically focused on Jane’s later life and this blog post will do the same. One thing I should mention is that we don’t know a lot about Jane’s personal life because her sister burned tons of letters Jane sent to her. Some historians believe Jane wrote thousands of letters to her sister Cassandra over the years, but in the end, only about 150 survived and many of those were redacted or cut apart to keep certain information out of the public eye.

Some historians surmise that Cassandra wanted to protect the privacy of her sister. Jane was known to be very blunt and straightforward in her commentary and it is possible she was a bit opinionated about some in the family or others the family knew and Cassandra didn’t want people to see those comments. Or she might have wanted to protect Jane’s love life from a curious family and public.

Either way, some vital information that would have shed even more light on who Jane was in her personal life is no longer available.

What we have in Miss Austen Regrets is a fictionalized telling of what Jane may have been like, what may have happened between her and her family, and how she may have felt as she became ill.

I think that Jeremy Loverling who directed it and Gwenyth Hughes, who wrote the screenplay, did an amazing job weaving an imaginative story with a bit of historical facts that we do know mixed in.

One of the biggest messages of this movie, starring Olivia Williams as Jane, is that we shouldn’t confuse fiction with real life. This point is driven home several times but first when Jane tells her niece, portrayed by Imogen Poots (that’s an unfortunate last name, right?), “”My darling girl. The only way to get a Mr. Darcy is to make him up.”

The other message is that a woman should marry for love not for protection and wealth, like when Jane tells her niece, “Fanny, do anything but marry without affection.”

She tells Fanny this when Fanny asks Jane for advice on a man who she feels will propose to her – John Plumtre, who was played by a curly-headed blond Loki – er, I mean Tom Hiddleston. That was a bit shocking to me because I’m used to an older Tom with darker hair but here he was – all in his young, blond glory and totally out of character for me as an anxious 17th century man.

Jane tells her niece she likes to flirt and that’s why she never married. Viewers can tell there are a variety of reasons Jane never married and one of them is because she’s afraid she will no longer be able to write if she is married and taking care of children.

Later Jane runs into a man – Rev. Brook Edward Bridges, played by Hugh Bonneville — who reminds her that he wanted to marry her and would have cared for her, her sister, and her mother. He’s such a tender character and he becomes even more tender when he sees she is not feeling well later in the movie. It is clear that he has always loved her and still loves her, even though he is now married to someone else.

I had to find out more about him so I did a deep dive online and found this article about letters between Cassandra and Jane that hints Edward did propose at one time. It also mentions Edward’s wife who Jane wrote: “for her health, she is a poor Honey—the sort of woman who gives me the idea of being determined never to be well—& who likes her spasms & nervousness & the consequence they give her, better than anything else” 

She used Edward’s wife as the basis for the sister of the main character in Persuasion – a woman who used her supposed illnesses for attention.

Ironically, Edward Bridges passed away five years after Jane at the age of 46. His wife lived another 40 years, despite all her “ailments”.

If rumors are true and similar to what happened in the movie, Jane didn’t have an easy go of it with her difficult mother who always held a grudge against her for not marrying someone wealthy to take care of them.

Watching this movie gave me an entirely different impression of the woman whose books I have resisted because of her fans who have what I saw as a silly obsession. Whether some aspects of the movie are true or not, I can now see that there were most likely many elements of Jane’s own life that she used for her books. Some of those were joyful moments, some heartbreaking, but all made up her life and allowed her to give readers a tiny glimpse into her life through her novels.

If some of what was shared is true, I think Jane believed that someday she would find love like she’d written about before her death. Before she could, though, she became sicker and too weak.

I have to agree with what Walter Scott wrote in his diary in 1926 after rereading Pride and Prejudice for the third time.

“That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The Big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me. What a pity such a gifted creature died so early!”

We really did lose her too soon.

If you want to read about where this made-for-TV movie (which I thought was better than most movies on the big screen) was filmed you can read the post from Joy from Joy’s Book Blog. This concludes our Jane Austen January. Thank you to everyone who participated in it! I hope you will check out the links at the link up above. The link party closes on Saturday.

Have you seen this movie? What did you think of it?

Faithfully Thinking: When it feels unnatural to not worry and ruminate but you stop doing it anyhow

I didn’t feel like writing a post about trusting God this week but I did it anyway.

There are times it feels unnatural to let go of a situation and walking in the knowledge that you cannot fix that situation.

Sometimes it feels impossible to let God take care of something, even though we know he is the only one who can.

I’m going through that now.

I have gone through it before.

I will also go through it again.

I believe there are times we have to do what feels unnatural in our walk with Christ.

Natural for me is to lay awake and worry.

Natural for me is to try to fix it – whatever it is.

Natural for me is to manipulate a situation so I can fix it in my own power.

More times than not, trying to fix a situation on my own has resulted in disaster.

This week I am in a battle of the mind.

When I start to ruminate on an issue we are having as a family this week, I have been trying to tell myself to stop and that God will handle this situation. Sometimes it has worked and sometimes (like part of today) it has not.

Instead of lying awake in bed or walking around the house writing my hands, I have picked up a book, taught a kid a school lesson, watched a funny old show, cooked, or made myself a cup of tea and taken ten minutes to slowly sip it.

Am I succeeding in letting God take control of my situation this week?.

Sometimes I am. Sometimes I am not.

The last three days I have been anxious and paced, rolled over at night a few times, stared at the ceiling, and overthought a bunch – but I have done all of those things less than I usually have when life is stressful and I call that progress. Slow progress but still progress.

I’m not going to lie — It has felt like I’m doing something wrong by not worrying or ruminating or trying to figure it all out.

It has felt like I am not my normal self.

Sometimes, though, in certain situations, being our normal self is exactly what God doesn’t want us to do.

He doesn’t want us to be our normal anxiety-ridden self.

He doesn’t want us to have a God-complex and think that we can do what only he can do.

He wants us to know that he is in control, even when we don’t understand what he is doing.

All this could change tomorrow, but, hopefully, I will remember that even if it feels unnatural to trust and place my worries in his hands, I need to do that because God is God and I am not.

Sunday Bookends: Miss Marple, Little Women (yes, still!), Lark Rise To Candleford and the cold weather returns

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.

This week I’m joining up with  Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer , Deb at  Readerbuzz,  and Kathyrn at  The Book Date.

What’s Been Occurring

I rambled about last week in yesterday’s Saturday Afternoon Chat post if you would like to catch up there. I will mention that today our weather doesn’t know what it wants to do as it is snowing and raining and switching back and forth. The weather has been warm this week so the ground isn’t as cold as it could be. It remains to see how much of the stuff will actually stick

What I/we’ve been Reading

Currently Reading:

Little Women by Louisa Mae Alcott and Sisterchicks Do The Hula by Robin Jones Gunn

Little Women is relaxing and enjoyable and I will have it done this week. I’ve been reading it very, very slow and only a chapter or two a day, in case you’re wondering why I keep saying I’m STILL reading it. (Since the end of November! Ha!). This week I’m just going to read it through and finish it up so I can move to another classic – which one I don’t know yet.

The Sisterchicks book is just a light, fun read that is a very nice distraction from life. I’m reading through it quickly so I will probably have it done this week as well.

Recently Finished:

Dysfunction Junction by Robin W. Pearson

Up Next or Soon:

The Cat Who Went Into The Closet by Lilian Jackson Braun

Hell is Empty by Craig Johnson

The Bungalow Mystery (A Nancy Drew Mystery) by Carolyn Keene

Little Miss and I are reading: The Borrowers by Mary Norton and The Cabin Faced West by Jean Fritz

The Boy is reading: Lost Names: Stories from a Korean Boyhood by Richard Kim

The Husband is reading: Fury by Salaman Rushdie

What We watched/are Watching

Yesterday I started Agatha Christie’s Marple, the BBC show that ran from 2004 to 2013 and was based on the Miss Marple books by Agatha Christie. I have never wanted to watch anyone as Miss Marple other than Joan Hickson but after someone mentioned the show to me on Instagram, I decided to give it a try since The Husband  had to work and the kids were doing other things.

There were so many actors in Season 1 Episode 3 who I recognized from other shows. The episodes, like the episodes from the Miss Marple series, were like mini-movies at 90 minutes each. Episode 3 was called What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw but was based on the novel 4.50 from Paddington.

The one actress I was most surprised to see in his episode was Amanda Holden who I’ve only seen as a judge on Britain’s Got Talent. I always wondered what the woman actually did to land her on that show as a judge. I had no idea she was an actual actress. I thought she was a talking head on a news show in addition to being a judge.

She wasn’t too bad of an actress but I kept waiting for her to say, “That was lovely. Good job.” And push the golden buzzer.

I also recognized Michale Landes who  played an American in the British sitcom Miranda. When I saw him in that show, I thought he was British doing a horrible American accent. I looked him up while watching this because he was playing an American again and it turns out he has a horrible American accent despite being an American.

He has been acting since the late 1980s and has been on several shows, often as secondary or one-off characters.

He was really the weak link in this episode.

After I watched Marple, I watched a couple episodes of Lark Rise To Candleford. I had started to watch this show years ago but only made it to season three, I’m not sure why. I think there was some cast change I didn’t like. I don’t remember a lot of it so I am rewatching it and plan to go through all four seasons.

It’s a very nice distraction from life.

This upcoming week I will be watching Miss Austen Regrets for our last movie for Jane Austen January. The link up for Jane Austen January will still be up until Saturday if you want to add a post.

What I’m Writing

This week I worked on Cassie, which comes out in August of 2024. On the blog I shared:

Saturday Afternoon Chat January 27: warmer temps (for a bit anyhow), relaxing with Miss Marple, and kids should be able to play and get messyWeekly Traffic Jam RebootJane Austen January: Emma (1996 Theatrical version)Books I want to read for the remainder of the winterFaithfully Thinking: In full disclosure, I do not think I can love Judas.

What I’m Listening to

A Tale of Two Cities on Audible

New audible books I hope to listen to soon:

Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz, The Jane Austen Collection by Jane Austen and In This Mountain by Jan Karon.

Blog Posts I Enjoyed This Past Week

Emma Film by Joy’s Book Blog

I love it when Joy writes about the real-life places you can visit in the Jane Austen movies.

Now it’s your turn

Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.

Saturday Afternoon Chat January 27: warmer temps (for a bit anyhow), relaxing with Miss Marple, and kids should be able to play and get messy

I really enjoy our Saturday Afternoon Chats. I feel like I am talking to my friends – even if I can’t see most of you.’

I had considered dropping this weekly feature and rolling it into my Sunday Bookends but that would make that post very long and rambling so I’ve decided to ramble here on Saturdays instead. Ha.

The fire is not burning in my woodstove this weekend as we are in a warm-up after the horrible cold we experienced last week (the week before this past week I mean) and last weekend.

Yesterday it was 60 degrees in the little village I was visiting a friend in and our kids were outside playing barefoot in her yard..

Almost eight days of arctic and bitter cold are behind us for now and we can finally go about our business without worrying about our fingers and noses being frozen and asthma attacks being triggered.

We do, however, have snow and ice coming tomorrow so winter is not done with us yet.

Still, those nice warm temps and the sunshine were very welcome yesterday as Little Miss and I drove 40 minutes South to hang out with our friends.

The family has three cats and three dogs and the youngest dog is just a couple of months old, tiny, and very cute.

The youngest cat is also pregnant.

So in between cats and dogs running in and out of the house, there were also children running in and out of the house and onto the trampoline behind their house, an activity Little Miss hasn’t been able to do for a few months now. In other words, it was a very nice and fun day.

While we were chatting my friend and I spoke about parents who like their children to remain clean and not play in the mud and dirt too much. That concept is very foreign to us. Our children love to get messy, run in the mud and climb trees or play in creeks, or even wrestle at times.

The idea that they couldn’t do those things because we don’t want their clothes to get messy is weird to us.

That’s why I buy used or cheaper clothes – because I know my kid is going to roll down a hill or play in a pile of mud – okay, well, maybe not the mud. She’s always been a bit resistant to getting herself too muddy, but she was still running barefoot through our friends’ yard yesterday and I didn’t even think twice about it.

The drive back to our house was a little stressful because we have the headlight to replace the headlight that was damaged in October when we hit a deer but haven’t had time to set up an appointment with a mechanic to have it replaced.  I tried to leave our friends’ house before it got dark but that didn’t happen so I drove with my hands tightly gripping the steering wheel and trying to see the road in front of me with a busted headlight that was pointing up toward the top of the trees and the other one trying to light the road on its little own.

I already have horrid night vision so this added to the stress of night driving for me. There was a deer along the road at one point and I put the brakes on to see what she was going to do. She just stared at me with her buddies in the woods behind her so I laid on the horn and she and her friends took off, away from the road.

I was so grateful when we made it home. It felt like a much longer drive than it would have been if it had been light out. I made myself some dinner (The Boy had already eaten and Little Miss was snacking on these little cans of tuna fish salad that she likes), grabbed a blanket, curled up under it and just relaxed the rest of the night, with the plan not to leave my house again until at least Sunday.

Today I am watching Agatha Christie’s Marple, the series based on the Miss Marple books by Agatha Christie, that ran from 2004 to 2013. I will talk about that more in tomorrow’s Sunday Bookends post.

I have that blanket over my lap again and I’m sipping hot peppermint tea and munching on French fries cooked in the air fryer.

I could have cooked the fries in my oven, though, since my husband fixed it last week after a year of our oven not working. We had an idea of what was wrong with it but it would have cost $200 to have the repairman come so we kept putting off getting it fixed. We have an air fryer, a stove, and an Instapot that we can use to cook anyhow so we didn’t miss it too much. I use the stove and Instapot more than the oven anyhow. It turned out that the part for it was only $30 but neither of us are very mechanical and didn’t want to bother my dad to help us.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the episode of Little House on the Prairie where Pa is trying to buy a new glass window for the cabin, but in the episode the modern glass windowpane repeatedly gets broken and he has to keep going back to the store for a new one. It’s a running gag throughout the whole episode. I don’t remember all the ways he breaks it but I think one time he drops it and another time Laura is upset and climbs into the back of the wagon and steps on it. I think someone in town runs into it or hits it with a broom handle too.

In the end, Pa gives up and just puts up the old-fashioned glass paned window.

I thought that might be like what would happen with us after The Husband ordered the part, showed it to me so I could see how fragile the part (an ignitor) was, returned to the kitchen, sat it on the tabletop, and then it rolled off and broke. He had to order a replacement and start all over again. Luckily the second time was the charm and he didn’t break it. He replaced it on Monday night and was very proud of himself since he isn’t someone who often does house repairs.

Tuesday night I made some breaded chicken in the oven, made waffles in our new waffle maker, and tried chicken and waffles.

The Boy had started suggesting we try to make chicken and waffles since The Husband picked up the waffle maker in December.

My recipe didn’t come out exactly like real chicken and waffles, but everyone said it was pretty good. I’m trying to cut out gluten so I just ate the chicken with some peas (honestly because I had already had gluten earlier in the day. I’m not doing great at the no-gluten thing in other words.).

I’m looking forward to relearning recipes that I can cook in the oven.

We usually visit my parents on Sunday afternoons but we might have to skip it tomorrow since we are supposed to get a snow and ice mixture.

If we stay home, The Husband and I hope to try out the mystery show Vera and maybe some more Marple. We haven’t had a lot of time to watch things together because he has been working a lot lately.

The rest of today will be me watching more Marple, maybe some more Lark Rise to Candleford, reading and hopefully finishing Little Women (after leisurely reading it for a couple of months I now hope to finish it and move on to some other classics. I’ve been enjoying it). I will be drawing some with Little Miss too. She already has the sketch paper and markers all set up.

I want to sit down at least once a week for an hour with her from now on and just draw with her and talk about art.

She really loves art and has since she was a toddler. Her current sketching obsession is dragons. I haven’t really sketched in years so I try to draw people when we sit down to draw and then I notice that the proportions are off and crumple it up and throw it away.

It’s nice to take some time, though, even an hour or so, to step away from social media and my computer and use my brain for something other than trying to figure out how to promote my books or write them in the first place.

I think this week we will draw and listen to an audiobook or a story from Adventures in Odyssey and completely remove ourselves from the rest of the world, so to speak. What’s nice is that our art time can count toward our homeschool lessons for the week.

How was your week last week? Do anything fun or exciting or just relaxing? I’d love to know.