Lisa R. Howeler's Blog, page 63

Sunday Bookends: Reading and writing mysteries

Sunday Bookends:

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.

I am very late in posting today because I simply ran out of brain power after a busy week last week of running around a lot. I spent the day resting, vegging, and reading some.

What I/we’ve been Reading

I did not have a lot of time for reading last week so I am still reading the same books from last week:

Secrets of the Amish Diary by Rachael Phillips and The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz.

These books could not be more different from each other and I like that because if I am not in the mood for one, I pick up the other.

I don’t remember if I offered descriptions for the books last week but I will do so today.

(Note: I can not find Secrets of the Amish Diary anywhere except as used copies or on a site called Annie’s Fiction (https://www.anniesfiction.com/products/amish-inn-mysteries/secrets-of-the-amish-diary). I have no idea why!)

Secrets of the Amish Diary:

When Liz Eckardt leaves behind her hectic life as a Boston lawyer to become an innkeeper in charming Pleasant Creek, Indiana, she hopes to find solace – and answers – as she mourns the loss of her mother, Abigail.  Along with her mother’s diary and an antique heirloom quilt, Liz inherited a family secret: Abigail cut ties with her Amish family years ago – a family Liz never knew existed – and Liz yearns to unravel the mystery of her mother’s past.

Liz settles into her new life at the Olde Mansion Inn with the help of the town’s quirky quilting group, the Material Girls, and several members of the Amish community.  She bonds instantly with her new Amish friend, Miriam Borkholder, and enjoys the success of her burgeoning bed and breakfast.

That is, until one of her guests, the unpopular Clarence Peabody, is found dead in the lake behind her inn . . . and Miriam’s son is the prime suspect!

Convinced of the Amish boy’s innocence, Liz begins to piece together the evidence, learning quickly that the killer will stop at nothing to hide the truth.  When Liz receives a cryptic letter written in the local Amish dialect, the message is clear: Stay out of this . . . or else.  Who sent the letter?  And is Clarence’s murder somehow tied to her family’s secret past?

Join Liz and her lively team of crafty investigators as they stitch together clues and uncover the cause of the unusual events happening in Pleasant Creek.  Will they discover the truth about Liz’s family before someone else is silenced?

The Word is Murder has one of the most unique plots I’ve ever seen:

A woman crosses a London street. It is just after 11 a.m. on a bright spring morning, and she is going into a funeral parlor to plan her own service. Six hours later the woman is dead, strangled with a crimson curtain cord in her own home.

Enter disgraced police detective Daniel Hawthorne, a brilliant, eccentric man as quick with an insult as he is to crack a case. And Hawthorne has a partner, the celebrated novelist Anthony Horowitz, curious about the case and looking for new material. As brusque, impatient, and annoying as Hawthorne can be, Horowitz—a seasoned hand when it comes to crime stories—suspects the detective may be on to something, and is irresistibly drawn into the mystery.

But as the case unfolds, Horowitz realizes that he’s at the center of a story he can’t control, and his brilliant partner may be hiding dark and mysterious secrets of his own.

The Husband is reading a Walter Mosely book called The Man In My Basement.

Little Miss and I are reading a variety of things right now, including re-reading Paddington one night when she felt frightened and sad about something (Paddington cheers her up) and listening to The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe on Audible.

The Boy is on a reading break because it is summer break and he’s been working a lot, either with my dad or at his job as a dishwasher at a local restaurant.

What’s Been Occurring

 I rambled a lot about what we’ve been up to in my post yesterday if you would like to catch up.

Today we stayed home and rested. I have a job interview in the morning for a job that would be from home and around 15 hours a week. I’m nervous but hopeful it works out. Our family could use the financial help like a lot of other families.

What We watched/are Watching

Last week I watched a lot of Just A Few Acres Farm on YouTube. The farmer, Pete’s voice is very soothing to me because he’s so calm and cheerful about life. He seems to stay positive a lot and I really need that in my life. On Friday when I had to drive 45 minutes up and 45 minutes back from somewhere, after doing the same thing the day before, I told myself I would channel Pete to make it through the day. I purposely focused on slowing my thoughts and speech down throughout the day and just being like Pete. “I am Pete,” I said each time I became stressed. It helped a lot and I have a feeling I’ll have to do more of that this week.


I also watched an episode of Miss Scarlet and The Duke and a few episodes of Newhart, as well as an episode of Poirot with The Husband.

I watched Some Like It Hot last week and wrote about it on the blog (link below).

This week I’ll be watching The Seven Year Itch.

What I’m Writing

Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing came out this week! You can snatch a copy, or read it on Kindle Unlimited, HERE.

I am working on book two of the series now. It’s called Gladwynn Grant Takes Center Stage.

On the blog this week I shared:

Saturday Afternoon Chat: Warm days, anniversary, and would you stab someone for telling you the end of a book?Summer of Marilyn: Some Like it HotGladwynn Grant is out into the world!Now offering editing services

What I’m Listening To

I am listening to a mystery on audible: Death Beside the Seaside by T.E Kinsey.

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: Warm days, anniversary, and would you stab someone for telling you the end of a book?

Hello, there! How is your summer?

Can I interest you in a slice of cake? A cookie? A cup of tea?

Honestly, I don’t have the cake or cookies so you will just have to have the tea, but I do have some fresh raspberries if you’d like some of those.

Let’s kick our Saturday afternoon chat off with a weird question:

Did you hear of the man who stabbed his colleague at a science lab in Antarctica in 2018 because the colleague kept telling him the end of the books he was reading?

Do you think you’d ever go that far?

I hope I wouldn’t but I would guess that there was a lot more to that man’s stress than simply being told the end of books. The man who was stabbed lived, by the way.

Anyhow, I somehow made it through this week without stabbing anyone despite all the running around and mental gymnastics my brain kept doing.

This summer has been very busy for us in some ways, but usually we’ve only had one thing to do a day. That one thing has often been in the middle or end of the day so it has thrown some things off but that’s okay. We’ve adjusted.

I am looking forward to autumn and winter this year simply for the fact that I will have an excuse to say I can’t attend something.

“Oh, so sorry but we’re supposed to get bad weather and … yeah. I’d love to, but you know. The roads could be dangerous.”

I have that excuse practiced pretty well but, alas, I can’t use that one in the summer. Unless we get flash flooding, and I’d prefer that didn’t happen.

So, Monday I volunteered to pull weeds in my dad’s garden. I forgot how uncomfortable a person’s muscles can get after pulling weeds so the next morning I was hurting quite a bit.

I couldn’t mope around too long, though, because Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing came out on Tuesday and I worked on marketing for that most of the morning. In the afternoon Little Miss and I went swimming at my parents’. She talked me into a couple of swimming competitions which were easier for her because she was in an inflated inner tube and I was using my actual muscles to swim. Using muscles I don’t use enough other times of the year two days in a row left me in a lot of pain later that night and into Wednesday.

Working those muscles, in other words, was both good and bad for me. I had a hard time walking and sleeping this week but I was glad I got out and did things and I was proud of myself for whining less than I normally do when I am in pain.

On Wednesday I drove Little Miss about 15 minutes away to a park for the county library’s Summer Reading program. That’s one thing I don’t think I have ever mentioned on here – our county is so small population wise, we only have one library. It isn’t our town library – it’s the county library and it’s where everyone in the county goes for books and activities, etc. Since it is the county library, they try to hold events in places other than the most populated town in the county, which is my town.

The children at Wednesday’s event painted rocks, played on the playground, and participated in a rock relay race where they had to race to place rocks in the shapes that they belonged to on a large piece of cardboard.

Little Miss had fun but was ready to go home fairly quickly because there were new episodes of Bluey on Disney Plus. These episodes have been withheld for some reason for the last year or so and they were much anticipated in our house. I was glad we didn’t have anywhere else to go the rest of that day.

On Thursday, The Husband took the day off so we could one, take his car 45 minutes north to be worked on and two, go out to dinner for our anniversary.

Our view while we drove. My lunch.

After we dropped the car off, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant we enjoy near us. The Husband took Little Miss to gymnastics that evening and I stayed home and watched an episode of Miss Scarlet and the Duke while turning the air conditioning up full blast to make the house feel like fall. I made myself a cup of peppermint tea with honey and sipped that while I watched the show and designed journals. I know I should live in the present and not wish for it to be another season, but I do have to say, yet again, how much I miss the cooler months where I can snuggle under a blanket with a good book.

Yesterday a friend came to visit for a couple of hours, and then it was back up to pick up The Husband’s car and then he went grocery shopping, something he does because he is very nice, but also because I think he just doesn’t want to deal with whatever weird calamity befalls me if I go.

If you are new here, you may not know that almost every time I go grocery shopping something weird happens to me and I have some kind of emotional breakdown because I am a bit of a mental case at times (that’s the understatement of the year).

One time I locked the keys in the car and we didn’t have a spare. The last time I lost the key fob to the van and thought we didn’t have another one so I burst into tears. It wouldn’t be so bad except we have to drive 20 minutes away from home to get our groceries and I hate when I have to inconvenience someone to dig me out of whatever trouble I have gotten myself into.

I’m a bit high maintenance, which makes it a surprise to me at times that The Husband hasn’t run away screaming and that we’ve actually made it to 21 years.

He’s really very sweet to do the grocery shopping. It helps so much, especially because, even though I hate admitting it, my chronic health issues often leave me feeling drained and achy for a day after I do something like grocery shopping or anything that leaves me on my feet for quite a while.

He does a lot for our family and we’d be lost without him.

Today I really want to stay home and do absolutely nothing other than catch up on blog posts by other bloggers, write some more in the second Gladwynn Grant Mysteries book, or read a book, but it is supposed to get up to 87 and it would be a good day for Little Miss and I to go swimming. We will see how well I get around. Tomorrow, however, I am drawing the line and staying home all day so I can do some housework and catch up on blog posts, etc., because next week promises to be another long week with a church program at a local church, Summer Reading, and probably visits to the pool again.

The pull off along the scenic bypass we travel down to go home.

How about you? How was your week last week? What have you been sipping while you work, travel, or read this week?

Summer of Marilyn: Some Like it Hot

Last week the days got away from me and I completely forgot to watch my Marilyn movie, let alone write about it.

I’m back this week, though, talking about Some Like It Hot with Marilyn, Jack Lemmon, and Tony Curtis.

This was a crazy, hilarious, insane film that had me gasping and laughing through the entire thing. It was released in 1959 and directed by Billy Wilder.

It was something I needed as I’ve felt like my brain has been racing lately with worry and a rushed feeling.

The movie takes place in 1929 with booze being smuggled into a funeral home that is actually a speakeasy.

They are musicians – Jerry and Joe.

The speakeasy gets raided and they don’t get paid

They need money so when they hear that a band needs a couple of replacement girls they decide they need to become women – or well, sort of anyhow. Tony nixes that idea though and says they need to take another job instead but when they go to pick up the car, they witness a mob murder. Now they are forced to dress as women and get as far away from Chicago as they can, which in their case is Florida with the female band.

They buy the clothes and the wig and the makeup and board the train.

That’s when they meet Marilyn, a.k.a. Sugar.

Sugar is a bit of a drinker and they can’t help checking her out, but trying to pretend they aren’t checking her out.

Marilyn sings and dances in this one and shakes a lot which Jack and Tony very much enjoy. Jack, in fact, says he would like to have a cup of that sugar. This is the movie where Marilyn sings, “I Want to be Loved By You” with THAT dress. The one that had to be filmed partially in the dark because it sort of looks like she’s half naked, even though there is fabric there.

It is clear early on that Sugar is an alcoholic who needs her booze. At one point, she sneaks into Jack’s bed looking for booze, which, of course gets him hot under the collar. While it’s Tony that keeps reminding Jack that he is supposed to be a girl, Tony himself gets a bit attached to Sugar himself. When he learns that Sugar dreams of meeting and marrying a millionaire, he decides he’s going to find a way to be that millionaire for her.

While pretending to be a millionaire he does a hilarious impression of Cary Grant, which just cracked me up, especially when he said to Jack later something like, “Of course I’m faking it. No one really talks like that.”

On and on the craziness went on in this movie until my head was spinning with it all and with laughter.

There are a lot of sexual innuendos in the movie, including one where the band leader says,  “A reminder to all you boys out there, all my girls are virtuosos and I intend to keep it that way.”

When Tony reminds Jack that he’s a guy and not a girl, he tells him, “Jerry, there is another problem. Like what are you going to do on your honeymoon?”

That questions ends up being a bit rhetorical as Jack’s character says they haven’t decided where they will go on their honeymoon yet.

According to information online, the movie was made for $2.9 million and made $49 million. Overall since the time it was released, it has made $83 million internationally.

My husband said he read that Marilyn could not stand Jack Lemmon so I Googled to see if this was true. According to the site Slashfilm.com, it wasn’t really that she didn’t like Jack, she just didn’t like anyone at that time. She was lashing out at a lot of people and they got caught in the crosshairs. She was abusing medication at the time and dealing with depression. I guess it is fitting that her character was an alcoholic since she was one in real life at times too.

She was also pregnant during the making of the movie and later went on to have a miscarriage after filming ended. I believe she had a few during her career and I’m sure this was part of her issues during the filming.

She and Tony Curtis actually dated in 1949, which I found interesting. It was only for a couple of months, according to Curtis.

Jack said he liked Marilyn, but felt sorry for her because he could tell she was troubled. He had less scenes with her than Curtis and didn’t have to deal with her habitual lateness as much.

Wilder was completely frustrated with Marilyn through most of the filming because she often could only get through a small amount of dialogue part of the time, after showing up late, according to a couple of articles. She cost the production half a million dollars with all her delays and he made it clear to her he was not happy with her when he held a cast party when the filming was done and did not invite her. She decided she didn’t like him either and told his wife to tell him to do something very anatomically impossible for a person to do with himself.

Years later he said that he didn’t have issues with Marilyn as much as she had issues with herself. He also said that her discombobulated and erratic behavior actually led to some adlibbed moments that made the movie a classic. Still, I think he would have preferred they didn’t have to write her lines on the inside of drawers because her brain was so addled from drinking too much and taking pills.

Wilder and Marilyn did make up before she passed away, especially because he still considered her a brilliant actress despite the issues she had during filming.

A bit of trivia from IMBd:

Some people asked why Curtis was so much better at walking like a woman or having female mannerisms than Lemmon and he told an interviewer it was because he tried so hard to be a female he was very tightly wound and overthinking it. Lemmon, on the other hand, “ran out of his dressing room screaming like the Queen of the May,” kept much more of his masculine body language.”Tony later said that he asked Wilder if he could imitate Cary for his stint as the millionaire in the movie. Wilder liked it and they shot it that way. Apparently, Grant saw the parody of himself and stated, jokingly, “I don’t talk like that.”Marilyn wanted the movie to be shot in color (her contract stipulated that all her films were to be in color),but Wilder convinced her to let it be shot in black and white when costume tests revealed that the makeup that Tony and Jack wore gave their faces a green tinge.Marilyn didn’t originally didn’t want to play Sugar. She said, “I don’t want to play someone who can’t tell Daphne and Josephine are really men dressed in drag.”

Another tidbit that I pulled off Wikipedia was that this movie was made without the approval of the Hayes Code, which was a code in the “old days” that determined what could and could not be in movies. It wasn’t long after this movie was released and became a huge success that the Hayes Code was discontinued.

Oh, and I did figure out that the name for the movie comes from the music when Tony asks if Marilyn plays her music hot and she says she does and he says he likes his music slower but “Some Like It Hot.”

Have you seen Some Like It Hot? What did you think of it if you have? Let me know in the comments.

Up next I’ll be watching The Seven Year Itch.

After that I will be watching:

July 20: Monkey Business (because it’s Marilyn and Cary together)

July 27: All About Eve

August 3: The Misfits

Gladwynn Grant is out into the world!

I am excited to announce that Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing is out a week early! It is now available on Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, and in paperback on Amazon. You can order it HERE and pre-order book two, which will be out November 21, for 99 cents for a limited time HERE.

DESCRIPTION:

A little bit of mystery, a dash of romance, and a whole lot of heart

After being laid off from her job as a librarian at a small college, Gladwynn Grant isn’t sure what her next step in life is. When a job as a small-town newspaper reporter opens up in the town her grandmother Lucinda Grant lives in, she decides to take it to get away from a lot of things – Bennett Steele for one.

Lucinda has been living alone since Gladwynn’s grandfather passed away six years ago and she isn’t a take-it-easy, rock-on-your-front-porch kind of grandma. She’s always on the go and lately, she’s been on the go with a man who Gladwynn doesn’t know.

Gladwynn thought Brookstone was a small, quiet town, but within a few days of being there, she has to rethink that notion. Someone has cut the bank loan officer’s brakes, threatening letters are being sent, and memories of a jewelry theft from the 1990s have everyone looking at the cold case again.

What, if anything, will Gladwynn uncover about her new hometown and her grandmother’s new male friend? And what will she do about her grandmother’s attempt to set her up with the handsome Pastor Luke Callahan?

Find out in this modern mystery with a vintage feel.

Now offering editing services

My husband and I will be accepting manuscripts for editing starting July 24, 2023.

We are offering line editing, copy editing, and proofreading services.

If you are curious about what these three editing services are, keep reading.

Line editing means we will tighten or rearrange sentences to make them sound better or to improve clarity.

Copy editing means we will edit for typos (missing commas, missing words, misspelled words, etc.).

Proofreading means we will do the last look at your manuscript if you have already had all of the other services done.

We will be accepting only those genres under the Christian or clean fiction umbrella at this time. Within those genres, we will accept romance, fantasy, mystery, general, etc. Our services are currently for self-published/ independent or querying authors only.

The style of editing we are offering will be surface level — suggestions of sentence structure changes and fixing typos (proofreading). We are not developmental editors but if we see a huge plot hole, we will certainly let you know and make suggestions that you can accept or ignore.

Both of us have worked in the publishing field for many years – me for 18 years and him for 25 years.

Our definition of clean fiction:

Fiction without graphic violence, without descriptive sex scenes (open-door sex scenes is what some writers/readers call them), and without strong cursing.

If you think that might be a fit for you, then read on for our prices.

Prices are flat fees based on manuscript page counts.

Manuscripts 1 to 250 pages: $250

Manuscripts 251 to 450 pages: $400

We will not take manuscripts over 450 pages at this time.

If a manuscript is only slightly above the upper number, we will consider the lower price. For example, if you have a manuscript that hits 260 we can discuss a price closer to the lower price than the higher one.

Manuscripts must be submitted at least three months before publication. Turnaround times will depend on length.

For more information or questions, please contact us at lisahoweler@gmail.com or via my contact form at the top of the page.

Sunday Bookends: Cozy mysteries, busy days, birthday parties, and flash flood watches

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.

Today I am joining The Caffeinated Reviewer for the Sunday Post.

What I/we’ve Been Reading

Since last posting, I finished the Nancy Drew book I was reading – The Secret of the Old Clock. I enjoyed it very much, even though it was very simple.

Friday night I finished a book I was ready by an indie author for an endorsement. It was Christian Fiction and I will share more about it when it releases officially.

I am also reading Secrets of the Amish Diary by Rebecca Phillips and hope to jump back into The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz later this week.

I really enjoy the Amish Inn Mystery books by Phillips. They are relaxed and easy-going, but also full of murder and mystery. The characters are so loveable and I don’t mind that the pace is a little slow at times. It isn’t too slow but a little slower than some mysteries. I’m fine with that since that’s what cozy mysteries are too me.  The clues for the mystery don’t come out slowly, but the story itself does and I actually enjoy that about cozy mysteries.

What’s Been Occurring

Yesterday we took Little Miss to a birthday party. We weren’t going to stay long because the little girl wasn’t feeling well, but the party was outside so we stayed a little longer. Little Miss and The Husband hiked to a small stream and swimming hole behind the family’s house and Little Miss took a swim with her friend.

This swimming hole and waterfall are actually part of their property. Isn’t that awesome?

After we visited there, the entire family headed to the grocery store for our weekly groceries.

Right before we walked inside, though, The Boy came running to us in a panic because he had looked at the schedule at work wrong and it turns out he was supposed to be at work at that time. We were 30 minutes away so after a quick call to his boss, during which she reassured him he was okay and just to get in as soon as he could, The Husband did a dash through the store and we headed back home. After we unloaded the groceries and took The Boy to work, Little Miss and I headed to my parents for a swim in their pool.

Today, with the area under a flash flood watch, we stayed home to relax and for me to catch up on some work for the book that releases this week instead of next now (you heard it here first). I also have some journals I want to design and upload to our journal store on Amazon. Unfortunately, The Husband could not stay home and relax part of the time because he had to go to a political rally to cover it for work.

At least he was able to enjoy this view while there.

This week we have a couple of summer reading events, gymnastics, and lunch for The Husband and I for our anniversary.

Oh and Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing releases on Tuesday now instead of next Tuesday.

What We watched/are Watching

Last week we were in and out of the house a lot or I was busy with finishing up things for the release of Gladwynn and designing graphics to promote it so I didn’t watch as much as I do some weeks.

I even forgot to watch the Marilyn Monroe movie I had planned to watch to write about on Thursday. I didn’t even remember until Friday that I had not watched the movie. I will be watching it this week instead.

The Husband and I did watch a few episodes of Newhart and I rented Into the West, an Irish movie I really enjoy, but never got back to finishing before the rental ran out.

This week I hope to watch a couple of Marilyn Monroe movies and some documentaries on Ireland. Why Ireland? I have no idea, but I’ve always loved Ireland. This past week I started one and it was being narrated by an American who sounded like he was on an American news show. I just didn’t trust him is all I’m saying. I need a show about Ireland to be narrated by an Irish person. (*wink*)

What I’m Writing

I am working on book two for the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries and have already put it up for pre-order on Amazon. I already mentioned how busy I was last week so I did not have a lot of time to write blog posts. I only posted one yesterday about how busy I was.

What I’m Listening To

While writing this week, I listened to this:

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: Fourth of July, swimming, and a lot of running around (in my mind at least)

I don’t know about you but I really need a cup of tea today, even if it is warm outside.

It’s been a very busy week. Well, busier than it normally is for us.  Part of that busy included a fireworks show during which I felt like I was having bombs dropped around me at the end. I’ll share more about that later on in this post. It’s a hilarious story. More hilarious to The Boy than to me, but at least he had a good laugh.

We are off to yet another event this afternoon – this time for the birthday party of a friend of Little Miss’s.

We spent last Sunday at my parents and Monday at home but I spent the day putting the finishing touches on my book that comes out soon and working on promotional material for that. On Tuesday we were back at my parents where we enjoyed a brief swim in the pool and some lunch. Then we attended a fireworks show near us that night.

Wednesday was another break day, partially because it was so sweltering hot outside. Thursday we were back at my parents for a swim (again because of the sweltering heat) and then some friends stopped by unexpectedly for a fun visit. Yesterday I did some running and then I spent all day either trying to fix the cover for my paperback book because Amazon kept saying the size was wrong, or developing promotional material for my social media.

I already mentioned today’s party. Tomorrow we may have lunch with my parents or I may just fall over. I’m not sure yet.

Honestly, we really didn’t do that much but it felt like I was buzzing around a lot trying to catch up and in some ways my brain was busier than my body. I kept thinking about some personal worries, my parents and their health, and also some more exciting things like upcoming ideas for books, my newsletter, and journal designs.

The Tuesday fireworks show came at the end of a day where I made a dinner of fries and bacon-wrapped chicken and helped clean the kitchen and also went into the pool a while with Little Miss. We didn’t spend very long in the pool because the chlorine was high, which was very frustrating to my dad who had been working to get the chemicals just right for a couple of weeks.

He has also constructed an entire partially solar, partially electric-run heating system to keep the pool warm, which we fully enjoyed on Thursday when we went swimming for part of the afternoon.

When I went to the fireworks I was tired and, quite honestly, cranky. Yes, I know. The readers of my blog could never imagine me as cranky. *snort laugh*

But, yes, I was tired and worried about a lot of things, and flat-out tapped out mentally. I didn’t even want to be there and initially sat in the car while the rest of my family spread out a blanket under a tree in a field along with other viewers. The fireworks were put on by members of a local fire company, but not the fire company itself. I didn’t know what to expect but when the first few were fired off, I knew the show was going to be spectacular – and it was.

The Boy is a teenager so not much impresses him, but he really did seem quite enamored with the fireworks. This was confirmed on the way home when he told me it was the first time in a long time he had experienced childlike wonder. I think how close we were to the fireworks was part of the reason.

They were literally exploding over our heads. At the end I experienced sheer panic when they set a series of them off and flashes and explosions fired off repeatedly, making me feel like I was in a war zone. I decided it was not a good idea to be so close at that point and wanted to move further up the hill in case fireballs started falling on us, but I found when I tried to stand up the ground kept moving in fast-paced light and shadow so I kept falling over. This was amusing to my son who later said he wondered how many times I was going to try to stand up and fall over before I stopped. I eventually just hunched down, squeezed my eyes shut and prayed for it to end without killing us.

For your amusement I am sharing with you my moment of panic and my son’s amusement. I have spared you the four minutes of darkness where you can just hear me saying, “No. No. I need to get out of here” and “That was way too much. Way too much. We’re not sitting this close if we come here next year.”

I’m grateful no fireballs fell on us and we very well might go back again next year – but I will be either staying in our car or sitting much further away!

We could only spend part of the day on Thursday swimming because Little Miss had gymnastics that night. She missed gymnastics, however, after she fell on a makeshift platform my dad set up by the ladder and bruised her – well, bottom – and her shin. She was too sore for gymnastics but was able to play with her friends later. She paid for jumping with them on the trampoline by letting me know as she crawled into bed that her bottom still hurt quite a bit.

Yesterday the only thing I did was run out to buy a few groceries at the local store, but after being on my feet much of Thursday, even that tired me out.

This upcoming week may be a little busy as well. Tuesday Little Miss and I have an event in the evening with the local library for Summer Reading. We have another one Wednesday morning at a park 15 minutes away. Thursday is The Husband and my anniversary so we are going to lunch and then taking Little Miss to gymnastics that evening.

It won’t slow down much the following week as we have more summer reading programs and a church program each day of the week. We, luckily, don’t have events all day, every day, however.

I was so busy this week – or, again, my mind was – that I even forgot to watch my Marilyn Monroe movie and write about it. I will have to take the time to do that this week.

I enjoy warmer weather where we can get outside, swim, grill, etc., but I really do like it when it all slows down in the fall and winter and I can take my time a bit more. I have to admit that I become spoiled by not having to go a lot of places in the cooler months. I prefer watching my slow-living YouTubers, reading books, writing my sometimes silly books, washing dishes while I listen to an audiobook, and making cups of hot cocoa or tea.

How was your week last week? Was it super busy? Super slow and easy? Let me know in the comments.

Sunday Bookends: Horowitz, overly descriptive mysteries and swimming weather

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, and some weeks I share what I am listening to. This week I’ve also decided to join up with Kimba at the Caffeinated Book Reviewer.

What I/we’ve been Reading

I finished A Novel Disguise by Samantha Larsen his week. Well, sort of. I more like skimmed the last half because I was exhausted with the tedious descriptions of the main character getting dressed as her dead half-brother. The plot was hanging by a thread as it was but then add in three-paragraph-long descriptions of the clothes she had to dress in to look like her brother and I was pretty much over it. I enjoyed the writing style but the further I got into the book the more it felt like the author was trying to show off the research she’d done about colonial clothing instead of getting to the point of the story.

It was fine when she explained what clothes she needed to put on to look like her half-brother in the beginning but to keep doing it, complete with all the terms for each piece of clothing, each time she got dressed really dragged the book down. The book was 40 chapters long and I think she could have written the book in half that many chapters and it would have been much better. I did like the characters and the mystery, though, so I’m not saying I’d never read anything by this author again.

To cleanse my pallet (though the book was not horrible. Truly!) I am reading a Nancy Drew book – the first in the original series – and I’m about to start a Anthony Horowitz book – The Word is Murder (A Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery Book 1).

This series of books is unique because Horowitz has written himself into the books.

I’m starting his book because I picked up my husband’s library book — The Twist of A Knife — and got hooked. The only issue is that The Twist of A Knife was the latest book in the series and there are three others before it that The Husband feels I need to read first. So I am starting with The Word is Murder.

Little Miss is reading The Boxcar Children: Surprise Island. I haven’t been reading to her at night the last couple of nights because she’s been so tired she’s been passing out before we can get to the reading.

The Husband read at least four books on his vacation, including the Horowitz book and a Janet Evanovich book.

What’s Been Occurring

I wrote about what we’ve been up to in my post yesterday and nothing worth nothing has happened since then. We have a fairly relaxed week upcoming with one event for summer reading at the local library and gymnastics, but not much else, thankfully.

What We watched/are Watching

This past week The Husband and I watched a Midsomer Murders, a Shakespeare and Hathaway (which was not very good but none of them from the Covid area were), and a lot of Newhart. We also watched the movie Niagara with Marilyn Monroe, which I wrote about on the blog.

I’ll be watching Some Like It Hot this week.

I watched a lot of Just A Few Acres on YouTube as well.

What I’m Writing

I am still working on Gladwynn Grant Takes Center Stage and finished up corrections on Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing so I can get that ready for release the week after next. I’m so close to the release date! I’m excited to release Gladwynn into the world. In August I will be sharing some of book two on my Substack for paid subscribers.

This week on the blog I shared:

Saturday Afternoon Chat: Donkey farm visit, first jump in the pool, the smoke is back, and little country churchesSummer of Marilyn: NiagraThe Story Behind the Photo: Days of Freedom

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: Donkey farm visit, first jump in the pool, the smoke is back, and little country churches

Is it too warm in your neck of the woods for warm tea or coffee?

I have to say that is warming up here but I still enjoy some warm tea in the morning shortly after I wake up. I have not tried any new or exciting teas lately.

Today I am sipping water with lemonade mixed in. I mix the lemonade with water because this lemonade, which we pick up from Aldi, is very sour and acidic for my stomach, but I still like a bit of the flavor of it and it is also a sure way to get me to drink more water.

As I am writing this the sky is darkening up and it definitely feels and looks like we have a storm coming through or at least rain. That may put a damper on our plans for later today.

This week was both a slow and busy week.

It was mainly slow, but we had some events earlier in the week, including two library events that made it a little bit busy.

Both events were related to rescued donkeys and part of the local library’s summer reading program.

The first event was the reading of a book about rescued donkeys, some crafts related to the same topic, as well as a visit by a donkey to the library.

The next day we visited a donkey rescue farm. The Husband was on vacation and was able to go with us. Dark clouds and sprinkles of rain arrived when we drove to the farm but for the most part, the rain held off until after the visit was over.

The farm owners are originally from Maryland. The wife said part of the reason they moved to our area was because of the kindness the local people showed her and her husband when they had a part-time residence in the area.

Now the locals are even more accepting and helpful and also love the donkeys they’ve brought to the area.

After meeting the donkeys, I can see why. They are so friendly. A couple of times I thought they were looking for food, which I didn’t have, but it turned out they simply wanted extra attention. They love to have their heads scratched and seem to love being talked to as well.

I talked along to the one donkey, whose name I think was Tucker, like he was another person. He bumped his nose under my belly if I stopped talking to him or petting him, which reminded me that I am way fatter than I want to be but also that I’m short enough for a mini donkey to be able to stick his little snout under my belly fat.

Little Miss woke up that morning saying she wanted a donkey ride, but I told her I didn’t think they gave donkey rides. Somehow before we left, she convinced the owner to give her a quick ride on the donkey so her day was pretty much made.

She keeps asking to go back to the farm but this was a special event organized by the library so I don’t know that I would feel comfortable just calling up the place and asking if we can randomly drop by their farm because my child is in love with their donkeys. Who knows, maybe she can volunteer her time and help them around the farm.

The view from the pasture of the farm was absolutely amazing and reminded me why I don’t mind living in Northern Pennsylvania, even if we are an hour away from all the bigger towns and stores.

After we visited the farm, we stopped by an old church that I imagine was once also a one-room schoolhouse, but I’m not sure. I found an article online about it so I’ll read that and get back to you about that later this week.

The building was locked but we could see by looking inside that the structure features very old pews that are built into the floor and a woodstove like the ones pictured in the Little House on the Prairie books. I would imagine the stove doesn’t work anymore but the fact that is in such amazing shape was fascinating to me. If they ever have an open house there I am definitely going to go so I can check out the inside of the place.

It also featured an outhouse out back, but I’m guessing that is only for looks since the locks were painted over.

I have no idea if the church is still used regularly or not. Again, I’ll see what the article says.

There is a large, old cemetery on the hill behind the church, but we decided not to explore it since it had started raining. If we make our way out there again, though, I want to go into it since it sits high on a hill and there is probably an amazing view from it.

We had our first dip in my dad’s pool yesterday after weeks of Dad trying to get the thing clean. It was covered all winter but dirt and leaves, etc. fell into it so he had to run the filter, treat it, and run his new little pool-cleaning robot (Stella) too.

Alicia from For His Purpose (https://forhispurpose.blog/) asked yesterday if Stella did her job cleaning my Dad’s pool this past week. Stella is the robot that Dad picked up to clean his pool and he named it Stella to help him remember someone who helps him in physical therapy. I mentioned last week about how we lost Stella the first day Dad set her loose and I stood by the pool yelling “Stella!” ala Marlon Brando in Streetcar Named Desire.

This week we had to rename Stella June Bug because the real Stella was a little creeped out by the robot being named after her. I think she wasn’t really creeped out. She probably thought it was funny but Dad said he didn’t feel right pulling her out of the pool and announcing, “Stella had a bunch of garbage come out of her today.”

So we now have June Bug, a name Little Miss chose for her.

To answer Alicia’s question, yes, June Bug did a very nice job and cleaned up the pool well, which is one big reason why we could go swimming. That and the level of chlorine finally evened out.

Today we are relaxing but might visit the pool later. I’m not sure yet, because of the storms coming in.  When I started this post a bit ago, I was sure we would be over there tomorrow to jump in the pool and maybe help around the house, but I’ve since looked at the weather forecast and we might get rained out again. We will still go for some lunch most likely.

We were both rained out and smoked out of visiting the local state park while The Husband was on vacation this past week. Smoke, haze, and bad air quality drifted down from Canada again this week, keeping us inside much of Thursday. Luckily the smoke wasn’t as bad as it was in the first part of June.

I’m guessing we will be back at the pool someday next week since it is supposed to be much hotter than it has been, which is typical for July in our neck of the woods. The forecast says we could have temperatures in the high 80s, which I am not looking forward to.

How is the weather where you are? Is it blistering hot yet or just comfortable?

Did you have a nice week? Do anything exciting? Let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear (read) about it.

Summer of Marilyn: Niagra

This summer I am watching Marilyn Monroe movies for fun. I was supposed to watch Some Like It Hot this week but The Husband (this is a silly nickname I give my husband for the blog) wanted to watch Niagara so I said we should go for it since I’d never heard much about it.’

It was not the romantic or screwball comedies I’ve watched so far from her so I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was a little nervous it was going to be super dark but it was more intrigue than darkness.

The Husband calls the movie light noir. He also pointed out that she was only in about 35 minutes of the movie but believed she completely stole the show, which I agree with now that I’ve seen it.

This movie is one of the first major acting roles Marilyn had, and she doesn’t use her signature breathy voice which answers the question I had before – that breathless speech wasn’t her normal speech. It was simply her signature voice. I liked hearing her normal voice because the other way she speaks is so fake to me and grates on my nerves. That could be because I have seen so many parodies of her over the years.

This movie came out in 1953 and from what I can see, quite a bit of it was actually filmed at Niagra Falls. It was directed by Henry Hathaway.

The other stars of the movie, who were in it even more than Marilyn, were Joseph Cotton, Jean Peters, and Max Showalter.

The movie starts with Marilyn’s husband at the falls in a place I’m pretty sure you can’t stand at anymore if you were ever allowed to in the first place. The man travels back to a cabin right next to the falls and I really wanted to know if that is a real place because the idea of a room overlooking the falls seems awesome to me. I can imagine it might also be loud, though.

I looked it up and it turns out the cabins are not real.

According to IMbd, “The Rainbow Cabins were not real cabins, they were movie sets built exclusively for the film at a cost of over $25,000. They were built in Queen Victoria Park directly across from the American Falls. The stone structure located by the Rainbow Cabins was torn down, but a similar one can be found in the same park at “Rambler’s Rest.””

The man returns to his room where Marilyn has been smoking a cigarette but then quickly pretends she is asleep which already eludes to the fact that she may not be what she seems.

We move over to a couple who are visiting Niagara Falls both for a delayed honeymoon and to meet up with the owner of the company the man works for after the man won a contest. They reserved a certain cabin but Marilyn and her husband are still in that cabin. Marilyn (Rose) convinces them to let her and her husband (George) keep the cabin because she says her husband is suffering from PTSD from the Korean War and had been in a psychiatric hospital.

The couple reluctantly agrees to move to another cabin, but they will continue to run into Marilyn (Rose in the movie) again and somehow get swept up in the crazy drama that will begin to unfold shortly after they meet her.

While sightseeing at the falls, the wife spots Marilyn making out with a man who is clearly not her husband and realizes there is a lot more to the story of George and Rose.

That becomes even more clear when Rose wanders into a party being held at the cabins, places a record on the player, and George doesn’t like it so he breaks the record.

The wife (Polly) goes to the cabin to help him take care of his hand which he cut on the record and he tells the couple that he met Rose while she was working as a barmaid. She is considerably younger than him, full of life and he thinks she hates him because of all his issues.

Pretty sure the couple (The Cutlers) didn’t want to know all that but, well, there they had it.

Things start to go off the rails pretty quickly for George and Rose and, sadly, for the couple trying to just have a nice holiday. I won’t give away too much but there is a murder plot and mistaken identity and – well, you just have to watch it to believe it. It’s pretty crazy.

I will give away that I really wanted to punch Mr. Cutler about three times in this movie. Maybe five. I, in fact, dislike Mr. Cutler so much with his goofy smile that I didn’t even bother to look up what the first name of his character was while writing this blog post. I don’t even remember the name of it.

The guy was so dismissive of his wife’s concerns the entire time that by the end of the movie I was rooting for a full-fledged divorce. One day I’ll write an alternative ending to the movie where she tells him she’d be better off without him because he acts like she’s a crazy, hormonal woman all the time.

According to Wikipedia, the idea for the film came from Walter Reisch who eventually wrote it with Richard Breen and Charles Brackett. They said most films that take place at the falls are romantic, but Reisch wanted a film with murder in it.

Monroe was suggested to play a main role by the head of Fox Studios, Darryl F. Zanuck. According to Wikipedia, Reisch liked the idea but when Zanuck suggested she play a villain, he wasn’t so sure.

“According to Reisch, “We thought that was a nice idea until there came a second telephone call that he wanted her to be the villainess, not the girl… My God! Here was the prettiest girl in the whole United States of America! But he insisted it was a great idea, so we finally did it. We didn’t know whether she would like it, but she had no objection, whatsoever—on the contrary.”

A bit of trivia:

Jean Peters who played Polly Cutler had originally been suggested for Marilyn’s role, but by the time the movie started to get made, Marilyn’s popularity had grown and Peters was switched to play the wife. (No big deal because the wife got more screen time anyhow).According to IMbd, even though she had a starring role,  was still under contract to 20th Century-Fox as a stock actor at a fixed salary, so she actually made less money than her make-up man did.”During filming of the shower scene, director Henry Hathaway had to keep yelling at Monroe to keep away from the shower curtain and away from the lights as she insisted on being naked (as she was under the bed sheets at the beginning of the film). To pass the censors of the time, the scene was darkened in post-production.Canadian officials didn’t like the film because they said it gave Niagara Falls a bad name by focusing on a murder taking place at it.The “Letterman Hospital” that Rose mentions at the beginning of the film, saying George was a patient there, was Letterman Army Hospital at The Presidio of San Francisco. Built in 1898, it cared for returning wounded soldiers from every major conflict, especially World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. It was closed in 1994, the Army base at The Presidio was decommissioned in 1995 and the buildings of the hospital were demolished in 2002.  2005 Lucasfilm opened its headquarters on the site and named it the Letterman Digital Arts Center. (source IMbd)

Overall, if you haven’t already guessed, I enjoyed this film. It had me biting my nails and hooked until the end. While it did exploit Marilyn’s beauty and there were those moments of men gawking at her like they’d never seen a woman before like in other movies, it was still a great storyline.

If you want to read another review of the movie (which I didn’t agree with) you can click here.

Another review is here.

If you want to read about Marilyn’s fashion in the movie you can click HERE.

Up next for my Summer of Marilyn will be Some Like it Hot which was the movie I was going to originally watch this week. I was going to watch Niagra next week, though, so I just switched the two around.

After that, I’ll be watching:

July 13: The Seven Year Itch

July 20: Monkey Business (because it’s Marilyn and Cary together)

July 27: All About Eve

August 3: The Misfits