Lisa R. Howeler's Blog, page 65

Saturday Afternoon Chat: Roses are blooming, enjoying some relaxing days, and you don’t always have to explain yourself

I am ready for a chat this week. A happier chat than in other weeks. *snort laugh*

I’ve been a bit of a downer lately. Eek.

So today I have made myself a cup of hot cocoa. It’s not super cold today (or super hot) but I think cocoa can work any time when you are not a coffee drinker.

Outside my window, the sun is shining. The bell at the Catholic Church on the hill across from the house is chiming because it is noon.

In the yard, my roses and my peonies are blooming, though some of them looked a little sickly, are also blooming.

I’m planning to take Little Miss to the library in a bit and then spend the day working on my book with a live writing sprint with an author on YouTube.

The weather this week was rainy and wet part of the time and then beautiful and sunny. It was not too warm, not too cold. In other words, it was lovely for at least the days it didn’t rain.

We didn’t do much this week outside the house other than take Little Miss to gymnastics, explore the garden, and visit my parents. It was just a pretty relaxed week and we needed that.

Yesterday was super relaxed. I mostly wrote, designed journals (which are on sale for – ha. Kidding. I’m so tired of advertising my stuff. I’m going to take a break from that on my blog.), read a book, and watched Forgotten Way Farm on YouTube.

I really enjoy Forgotten Farms because she talks about simple, everyday things. She shares about what she is cooking, thrift shopping, what she’s reading, and simple living. Did I mention enough that she shares about the simple life? Have I used the word “simple” enough? You understand her channel is about simplicity now, right?

Okay. Moving on.

This morning I was thinking a lot about how I explain myself too much in life. I way overexplain why I am doing something because I think that the other person is thinking something negative about me. I go into defense mode way too often.

So, I kicked out this little paragraph to put on Instagram this weekend or later in the week. I’d really like to take an entire weekend off social media so it will probably be next week.

“You don’t have to explain to anyone why you want time to write. You don’t have to explain to anyone why you are writing what you are writing. You don’t have to explain to anyone why you are self-publishing. If it is making you happy and you find joy in it, or it is making you extra money that your family needs right now then those may be your reasons, but you don’t owe anyone an explanation for those reasons. Family, friends or strangers can think you are silly or ridiculous or delusional and they may even tell you that you are all those things, but you still do not owe them anything – not even a defensive response.

Tune it all out and write on, my friends!”

So today I say the same to you – tune it all out and do whatever you want to do (without hurting others or your soul, of course) and don’t explain yourself to other people as much as possible. I mean, sometimes you have to explain a little but, well, you get my drift.

In closing (I know! This post is so short today!) I am leaving you some photographs I took this week of our flowers as they started to bloom. There are more out there now, and I’ll probably take some more photographs of them for tomorrow’s Sunday Bookends post. Really, though, how many flower photos can one person have? They all sort of look the same, right? But, it makes me happy, so I don’t have to explain. Booyah!

Faithfully Thinking: Pockets of Peace

Last week I was really struggling mentally over some situations in my life that I truly have no control over. I kept grasping at quick moments of relaxation to try to steady myself mentally. The mental worry really affected me physically by the end of the week.                 

Throughout the week, I forced myself to put my phone down or stop scrolling Facebook. I scroll through social media when my mind races. I seem to think that doing those things will distract me. They certainly distract me, but they do not calm me down. In fact, my mind races even more when I go onto social media during a time of anxiety.

As you all know, I am an overthinker and I was in full force overthink mode half the week and then much of the weekend.

By Sunday I was at my breaking point – crying over everything, even simple inconveniences. It was like a hormone shift but that hasn’t been happening a lot lately, so I had a feeling it was from me trying to shove all my worries from the week deep down inside, so those worries didn’t spell out onto others. At least one issue is something my husband really doesn’t want to talk about because he knows how helpless we are in the situation so I couldn’t vent on him.

I found a friend to vent to and then tried to pray through my feelings of hopelessness and guilt. I didn’t pray as much as I stewed inside about it all, though, unfortunately. I tried to be a bit better and intentional about praying instead of worrying this week.

Last week, when I felt my most anxious, I had to consciously tell myself to put the phone down or shut off the computer. I would then either go out and take photographs of the flowers starting to bloom in the yard, pick up a book or put on a worship song, even if it was just for 15 minutes or just one song. I started to call these moments Pockets of Peace.

They were little pockets of time in my day where I could regulate my thoughts and my soul, even if only slightly. It helped give my nerves and mind time to calm down, instead of continuing to race and raise my cortisol to dangerous levels. I even made a point to pull a blanket over my lap and make a cup of tea during those times, mentally envisioning myself in a type of comfort zone.

I even imagined stepping inside a type of bubble – or shall we say a pocket made of soft fabric – zipping it closed and making myself cozy down in the corner for that brief moment of time.

Iit’s very important for us all to find those little pockets of time throughout our days to help slow our thoughts and feelings down. Maybe we need to find that time because we are already at the breaking point level or maybe we don’t want to get to that level. Either way, those pockets of time don’t need to be hours of time. They don’t even need to be an hour or half hour. Even 15 minutes of sitting and reading a devotional, listening to music, or reading from a book we enjoy can help calm most of us down inside. There are days where longer stretches of time for peace are needed, of course.

Have you found yourself in need of those little pockets of peace at some point in your life? How would you use those pockets of time if you intentionally made them?

Summer of Marilyn: How to Marry A Millionaire

Two weeks ago I watched How to Marry A Millionaire and decided that weekend I would watch Marilyn Monroe movies for the summer, similar to how I watched Paul Newman movies last summer.

How to Marry A Millionaire stars Marilyn, Lauren Bacall, and Betty Grable and was considered a screwball comedy.

It was released in 1953.

It follows the story of Schatze Page (Lauren), Loco Dempsey (Betty), and Pola Debevoise (Marilyn) who are all looking for ways to marry a rich man and live the high life.

Or at least that’s the goal when the movie starts.

As we progress into the movie, we see the goals of the women begin to shift based on the men who they end up meeting along the way.

Each woman works on snagging a rich man and to do that they need a home base, so Schatze finds a home to rent from a man who is out of the country. She’ll need money to pay for the rental, though, so she begins to sell off the fancy furniture in the home, even though it isn’t hers.

Eventually, she and the other women will meet men who they decide they can snag and marry. Schatze meets William Powell, one of my favorite “classic Hollywood” actors. He’s 30 years older than her and a widower. More importantly, he’s rich.

She sets out to make him her own, but there’s a man named Tom who is trying to get her attention. She wants nothing to do with Tom, though, since he’s poor and won’t support her high-end needs.

Marilyn’’s character meets a wealthy businessman who is also a crook and she’s about to run off with him when she gets on the wrong plane and meets the man who owns the apartment on the plane. The apartment owner, it turns out, is trying to escape the IRS.

Betty’s character meets a married man and thinks she’s on her way to a Elk’s Club meeting in Maine, but has actually been invited to his personal lodge. She tries to leave when she realizes what is going on, but comes down with the mumps and is quarantined. While there, and after the man she came with becomes ill himself, she meets a poor but charming forest ranger and has to decide if she wants to pursue love or money.

Betty was supposed to be the star of the film, according to some articles, but, of course, Marilyn ended up with top billing.

According to the blog, Classic Movie Hub, Fox created the movie using anamorphic lenses developed by Henri Chretien in France. These lenses “expanded the audience’s peripheral vision by creating a panoramic, curved screen triple the size of a conventional screen,” according to the blog. This was in an effort to combat the rise of televisions in the American home.

Fox had two things to compete with television with this movie – Marilyn and these new lenses. They made a movie called The Robe first with the technology, however, because they felt that movie would appeal more to a wider audience and was more family-friendly.

The Robe was about a Roman centurion who commanded the unit responsible for the crucifixion of Christ.

(I think it is interesting that the woman in this photo by Lauren’s name looks nothing like her.)

Marilyn originally wanted Betty’s role since that role had more “snappy lines.” Playing Pola would mean playing a nearsighted woman who felt insecure wearing her glasses and often slammed into walls when she took her glasses off. Marilyn wasn’t confident in her comedic skills and wanted to back out, but the director convinced her to continue and she managed to pull it off amazingly well.

Lauren Bacall was already a well-known actress at this point and I felt she really held the group together.

In some ways I felt Marilyn did overshadow the others with her performance and not just because of her beauty. She pulled off the quirky-plus-innocent role well.

I felt like Lauren was out of place in a comedy but that’s probably because I am used to watching her in Noir-type films with Humphrey Bogart (who she later married).

Betty impressed me with her comedic skills and matched Marilyn’s quirkiness. I guess Lauren was more of the “straight-man” in the trio.

I loved William Powell in this. None of the other men really stood out to me, but that may be because William was so sweet and doted on Lauren’s character even though he really should have known she was a gold digger. And because I have a soft spot for him after watching him in the Thin Man movies.

I won’t share the ending of the movie, but I will say that the women redeemed themselves from their selfishness as the movie progressed.

As for stories from the set, the Classic Movie Hub blog relayed that Lauren and Betty were annoyed that Marilyn was late on set a lot and there were other minor snits between the three women.

From the blog: “When the three female stars assembled on the soundstage for the first time, the press awaited a mushroom cloud of conflict and cattiness or, at least, Grable’s bitter resentment of Monroe. However, Grable immediately embraced Monroe and ceremoniously told her, “Honey, I’ve had mine. Go get yours. It’s your turn now.” In response to Bacall grumbling about Monroe’s tardiness, Grable said, “Honey, give it to her. Let’s listen to records until she gets here. It’s her time now. Let her have fun.” Before long, Bacall found herself also feeling protective of Monroe.

I think this is my first time watching a movie with Marilyn all the way through. I enjoyed it and am looking forward the other films, though I know at least a couple of them are much darker than this one.

The next movies I plan to watch and when I plan to write about them are:

June 22: Gentlemen Prefer Blonds

June 29: Some Like It Hot

July 6: Niagra

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

Educationally Speaking: The end to another homeschool year

It felt so weird yesterday morning when I realized I didn’t have to plan our homeschooling week out and I also didn’t have to get ready to argue with Little Miss about lesson time.

It felt weird and also freeing. I literally did a bit of a dance in my kitchen while warming up my tea as it hit me that I can take it easy most days for another two months.

Speaking of taking it easy, I want to take it easy even during homeschooling next year, especially after talking to my evaluator and realizing homeschooling doesn’t have to be as strict as I have been making it.

“You realize you only have to teach these subjects at some point during grades kindergarten to sixth right? You don’t even have to teach every subject every year, let alone every day.”

I’m paraphrasing that by the way. That’s not an exact quote.

I will be teaching the core subjects every year, of course, but as she pointed out to me – most public schools in my state are focused on reading and math and a small amount of science or history before sixth grade. Apparently, I am an overachiever because I have been teaching math, reading, science and history every day, every year since kindergarten with Little Miss and she is going into third grade this year.

I’ve now been told that, yes, I should teach those subjects throughout the year but I can break it up however I’d like. I can take a month and only focus on English or Math or I can mix things up and teach science a couple of times a week.

The reason I would most likely offer math, especially, every day, is that is a subject where concepts need to build upon one another and be consistent to be sure it is in the brain. It’s more of a subject where practice is very important.

The Boy is another story.

I have to make sure he takes certain courses before he graduates, whether those classes are taught every day or not. I’m also the one who determines if he graduates. Both me and my evaluator, to be more specific. And, well, if we really get technical, the school district does have to sign off on what I submit to them as well, but it’s unusual for them not to approve what a state-certified evaluator signs off on.

I need credits in certain subjects for The Boy from 9th to 12th grade. It’s four credits in English and three in Math, Science, and Social Studies, as well as two years of arts and humanities.

Those credits can be met by either about 120 hours of learning and studying time on the subject (including activities and independent reading) or they can be at least 80 percent completion of a textbook.

He will be attending a trade school for high school students in the fall and part of what he learns there will most likely count toward those credits as well.

The Boy will need two more credits in English and Science. He only needs one more in math and history/social studies. I told him this means that his senior year will mainly be attending the trade school and arts and music. I’d say he liked the sound of that but he’s a teenager, so I mainly just received a grunt in response.

I am hoping to incorporate more art and music into schoolwork for both the kids next year. I really enjoyed being able to focus on artists, composers, and musical instruments throughout much of May with Little Miss.

I hope to be able to incorporate at least a semester of music lessons for The Boy in addition to planned art classes.

I have a feeling I’ll be hammering out all those details in the next two and a half months, even when I am supposed to be taking a break from it all.

In end of the year news, Little Miss and I read 34 books together with two of them being read on her own. The Boy and I read two together. It was one of those years where there were a lot of other things focused on. They were both good, deep reads, though: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Fellowship of the Ring.

When we start school up again – either in the middle of August or the beginning of September, it will be our sixth year of homeschooling. It’s insane to even think it has been that long. What a ride it has been. We’ve definitely had trials, tears, and some doubts, but in the end it has been one of the best decisions we ever made.

The Boy and Little Miss have had more time to explore their interests and also to spend time with their aging grandparents and avoid some of the more stressful situations that can develop at public school.

If we had to do it again, we definitely would.

Next Classic Movie Impressions feature: Summer of Marilyn

I am going to be doing another Classic Movie Impressions feature this summer and so far, I am offering it up for whomever might like to jump in during the rest of June and part of July.

Erin from Still Life, with Cracker Crumbs is too busy in June for this feature and I know Katja has been busy as well, but the invitation for her to join in is totally there.

Anyone else who wants to join may do so as well and at any point. You don’t have to watch or write about all of the movies to be a part.

Now, onto who I am featuring this summer.

Marilyn Monroe.

So yes, the feature will be called A Summer of Marilyn.

If you have been following this blog for a while, you know I featured Paul Newman for my summer movie watching last year and Cary Grant for this spring.

I thought I should choose an actress this time around and decided on Marilyn when I discovered how many of her movies we own on blu-ray. I’ve also been a little fascinated with Marilyn because of how Hollywood really abused and used her until there was nothing left of her. It’s a story with a sad ending but I guess I am looking for some happiness she might have experienced in the making of at least a couple of these movies.

I’m going to kick off the feature this Thursday with How To Marry A Millionaire, which I watched on that wonderful Saturday where I had where five hours to myself with no responsibilities and no one else to care for.

If you want to quickly watch it, or have already seen it, and want to jump in, go for it. Or you can share a post later and just link to mine and I’ll let readers know you’ve shared your views too.

Without further ado, here are the movies I plan to watch and the dates I plan to blog about them on:

June 15: How To Marry A Millionaire

June 22: Gentlemen Prefer Blonds

June 29: Some Like It Hot

July 6: Niagra

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

Sunday Bookends: reading cozy mysteries, watching a show about a victorian farm, and fun with Little Miss’s friends

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.

What I/we’ve been Reading

Last week I finished Death and Daisies by Amanda Flower, which is part of the Magic Garden Mystery series.

I borrowed the first and second books in the series from Libby and then found out that my local library hadn’t put book three in. Argh! Hopefully they will eventually so I can finish the series.

The books are pretty good but are I don’t know that I like how the mysteries are always solved in less than a week. In book two the ending was so abrupt that it was like the story just hit a wall – pretty literally actually. The stories are entertaining, though, and I guess she solves the mysteries fast to keep the action going non-stop, which keeps the reader turning the page. They are well-written books and just a nice escape from life, even if there were a couple of things I didn’t like about them.

 I read plenty of books that I don’t like every aspect of it but still enjoyed the escape from life I experienced while reading them. If I didn’t like the books at all then I wouldn’t have added another one of her books from a different series to my Kindle this weekend from Libby and wouldn’t be hoping to get book three for less than the $13 being charged on Amazon for the eBook edition. I’m going to wait and see if I can get it on Libby instead at some point. I find it odd that you can get the other two books in mass paperback for $8 but it’s $13 for even an ebook for the new one, even though it is three years old, but I’ll never understand how publishers work.

Anyhow, enough rambling about books and costs and etc., etc. Here is a quick description of book two of the Magic Garden series in case you are wondering what it was about:
Fiona Knox thought she was pulling her life back together when she inherited her godfather’s cottage in Duncreigan, Scotland—complete with a magical walled garden. But the erstwhile Tennessee flower shop owner promptly found herself puddle boot-deep in danger when she found a dead body among the glimmering blossoms. One police investigation and a handsome Chief Inspector names Neil Craig later and Fiona’s life is getting back on a steady—though bewitched—track. Her sister Isla has just moved in with her, and the grand opening of her new spellbound venture, the Climbing Rose Flower Shop in Aberdeenshire, is imminent.

But dark, ensorcelled clouds are gathering to douse Fiona’s newly sunny outlook. First, imperious parish minister Quaid MacCullen makes it undeniably clear that he would be happy to send Fiona back to Tennessee. Then, a horrific lightning storm, rife with terrible omen, threatens to tear apart the elderly cottage and sends Fi and Isla cowering under their beds. The storm passes, but then, Fi is called away from the Climbing Rose’s opening soiree when Kipling, the tiny village’s weak-kneed volunteer police chief, finds a dead body on the beach.

The body proves difficult to identify, but Kipling is certain it’s that of the parish minister. Which makes Fiona, MacCullen’s new nemesis, a suspect. And what’s worse, Isla has seemed bewitched as of late…did she do something unspeakable to protect her sister? The last thing Fiona wanted to do was play detective again. But now, the rosy future she’d envisioned is going to seed, and if she and Craig can’t clear her name, her idyllic life will wilt away. 

Since I didn’t have book three, I jumped back into my first Nicole Deese book, All That Really Matters. It is a romance and I know where it is going but it is well-written so I’m going to keep reading it.

I am also reading The Regal Pink by Jenny Knipfer. This is a faith-based fantasy book and so far, I am enjoying it, even though it is not my normal genre.

I’m switching between books based on my mood like I usually do since I am mainly a mood reader.

Little Miss and I are still re-reading Little House on Plum Creek, but I have a few other books on my list that I hope we can start soon.

What’s Been Occurring

I posted a little bit about what was happening last week on my post yesterday if you want to read that to catch up, but I will warn you that it wasn’t terribly exciting. *wink* There was a little sadness, a bit of stress, and a lot of wildfire smoke.

Yesterday Little Miss had a friend over and we attended a graduation party for our neighbor’s daughter who graduated from high school Friday night.

The party was held at a small hall down the street from our house but then it was moved back up to the neighbor’s house, which let Little Miss and her friend play with our neighbor’s grandsons and some other children who came to the party for a little while.

She and her friend jumped on the trampoline, then played on the slip n’ slide, then went to the trampoline, then back to the slip n’ slide and so on. I’m not sure about the other kids, but my daughter slept pretty hard last night after all that playing. I also let her sleep in this morning.

We finished school last week and are looking forward to our summer break to refresh our minds and souls. We are hoping for some relaxing days, a little bit of fun, and a lot of time to simply take our time and not feel like we have any obligations to do anything intentionally academic.

What We Watched/are Watching

I started watching Victorian Farm on BritBox this week because Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs has talked about it quite a few times to me and on her blog. It is an interesting show about how farmers lived in the Victorian age in England.

Here is a little description in case you are curious:

This historical documentary series finds archaeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn and domestic historian Ruth Goodman on the Acton Scott estate, located in rural England and frozen in the Victorian era. The trio lives here for a year, using only Victorian-era tools and materials, such as those found scattered around the estate, to re-create everyday life during the late 1800s. The three must grow and harvest their own food, care for and breed a variety of livestock animals, maintain the estate’s buildings and even craft their own tools and furniture.

The Husband and I also watched a few episodes of Newhart on Amazon last week because it is such a lovely escape from life.

This morning I watched a sermon from Elevation Church and then I watched another one with Robert Madu from Social Dallas. Both were very good. One was about our need to connect with other Christians and the other one was about Jonah and God’s call on his life and on our life. Then I watched half of another sermon by Robert, which was about loving others even we do not agree with them because God loves them even if he does not love what they do (just like he often doesn’t love what we do).

What I’m Writing

I am working on Gladwynn Grant Takes Center Stage, book two in the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries. The first book comes out July 18th.

Last week on the blog I shared:

Saturday Afternoon Chat: Hazy, smokey days and the cruelty of natureSpring of Cary: Notorious

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: Hazy, smokey days and the cruelty of nature

Can I make you a cup of tea? It’s been a weird week here and I could use one myself.

This week took a little bit of an odd turn on Tuesday and Wednesday when our already minimal plans for the week were thrown off even more by the smoke and haze that came down from Canada and made our air unhealthy to breathe. I’m sure many of you found your week impacted similarly (except you folks in California who deal with smog all the time anyhow.)

The smoke chased Little Miss and me inside for two days since she and I are the most sensitive members of the family when it comes to smells and smoke, etc. When I first smelled it all on Tuesday, I thought one of our neighbors was burning trash since outside burning is something we are allowed to do here in our area.

I looked outside a couple of times to see which neighbor it was. My eyes were burning some and I had already been sneezing but thought it was normal allergies.

I mentioned the smoke smell to The Husband who told me it was the Canadian wildfires and suggested I start shutting all the windows to keep it out.

I started Googling and found out that air quality was getting worse in New York state and realized that the air quality feature on our weather app does actually serve a purpose. I looked at our levels and started to become concerned, but on Tuesday it wasn’t as bad as it became on Wednesday when our air quality level jumped from code red to code purple and over 330 points. I learned the scale goes to 500 so I started to wonder if we were going to get up that high or not.

I spent much of Wednesday reading about what the fires were doing to the east coast and trying to convince my dad to stop going out in it and to bring my son home since the two of them were going to do work around Dad’s house. He finally agreed it was very bad out there and brought The Boy home.

The view at my parents when Dad decided the air really wasn’t healthy to breathe.

My son snapped a couple of photos on their way through town and he took a few on his way to work as well.

I snagged this photo from a newspaper 45 minutes south of us. This photo is not Photoshopped and there is no filter on it. This is how yellow it was out there.

My son said there were more people in our small town than he’s ever seen before during the day as the smoke got thicker and they were all out there talking about how bad the air was and coughing.

Sounds like a typical human reaction. Ha.

It was very yellow outside, as the photos above show, similar to how it looks when there is a really nasty thunderstorm coming, and that yellow stretched into our house, making it look otherworldly. I wanted to pull all the curtains over the windows and pretend it wasn’t out there. This was one of the few times I regretted all the windows we have that let in wonderful natural light. Mainly because the natural light was not wonderful at all.  

This introvert should have liked being forced inside for two days but I did not. I like at least being able to go outside and look at my slowly blooming flowers without coughing and my eyes burning. Grilling outside wasn’t much fun either. I ended up only going out once on Tuesday and not at all on Wednesday.

By Thursday I was excited when the air quality was improved, and I could go visit my parents. The air was much clearer with only a faint whiff of smoke by the afternoon when I went to their house. I also went into the yard Thursday to take photos of the white peonies that are already blooming and the pink ones that are just starting to open.

The peonies open every year around my brother’s birthday, which I mentioned last week, I think. His birthday was yesterday.

From what I heard from him, he had a nice, relaxing birthday.

My roses aren’t blooming yet but the buds are out and that makes me so giddy with excitement!

Let me go back to that visit to my parents on Thursday for a moment. My dad and Zooma the Wonder Dog went outside at one point, but Dad came back in a few moments later looking for his iPad. He said that there was a fawn in the backyard and that Zooma had been nose to nose with it, calmly sniffing it.

By the time we came back out, Zooma was walking away, looking very wary at the fawn. She didn’t even bark at it. Long story short, we left the fawn there as we know we are supposed to do because the mom will usually come back to the fawn and takes them back with her. We did think it was odd that the fawn was curled up in the short grass, not in higher grass because the doe usually leaves her fawn in a camouflaged area.

Little Miss and The Husband stopped by on the way back from gymnastics (Little Miss is in a new class) and Little Miss got a look at the fawn. She wanted to pet it, but we didn’t let her. After some online research, I did learn that the doe will not abandon her baby even if it comes in contact with humans or pets, but l thought she should stay back from it because I honestly thought it didn’t look like it felt well. We did read that a doe will abandon a fawn if it is sick.

We left my parent’s house and Mom and Dad went to bed later thinking the doe would come back for her fawn. In the morning, though, Dad discovered that the fawn had died.

We were all heartbroken.

When we pulled up to the house yesterday to take some packages that had been dropped off at the garage into my parent’s house, a fawn ran up the bank behind the house, near the dead fawn, (which Dad had covered with a tarp because he was going to bury later it later in the day), and we were confused, thinking maybe the fawn really hadn’t died. The fawn had, sadly, indeed died, but two other fawns were on the bank and ran into the woods. We are hoping that the three fawns weren’t abandoned by their mom somehow and we are also now wondering if the doe had triplets and the youngest one just didn’t make it.

The whole experience made me very weepy yesterday and added to a few other things that have made me weepy lately. I’ve had a lot on my mind this past week. I’ve been worrying and praying for a lot of people and situations but probably worrying more than I’ve been praying. I’m not going to share any of the situations I am worrying about because they involve situations with others.

We were glad that the heavy smoke didn’t come into our area until Tuesday because this gave Little Miss some time to visit with her friends who are moving back to Texas. They moved there once before, came back, and it looks like they are moving again. They flew out of an airport near us yesterday. Little Miss was very heartbroken that they most likely won’t be coming back from Texas again and I held her for a long time after they left, crying along with her. I had gotten used to them running up from their great-grandmother’s down the street and playing here for a while in the summer. It will be sad to no longer see them, but the move is necessary for their health and well-being for a variety of reasons.

Little Miss does have another friend coming over today to play and I know she’s looking forward to that after saying goodbye to her other friends and being locked up in the house for two straight days.

Tomorrow we may visit my parents. I will be put to work cleaning out the pool so we can eventually swim in it when the weather gets hotter, which I’m sure it will do by mid-June to early July.

As for next week, the sky is the limit. Homeschool is officially over for a couple of months (I plan to have a post up about that later in the week) so we will just take it easy until Summer Reading starts June 20th.

The local summer reading program includes activities at the local library and a couple of field trips. It should be fun and fill up our summer so we’re not sitting at home too often.

I usually share what I am drinking, tea-wise, but I didn’t do that at the beginning of the post this time. This week I went back to my regular peppermint tea because our days were a little chilly, but we are warming up again today and throughout next week. Little Miss made me some cinnamon sugar milk last week for fun and I actually liked it.

So how was your week last week? Did you have to deal with the smoke from the wildfires as well?

Spring of Cary: Notorious

Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs, Katja from Breath of Hallelujah and I teamed up this spring to watch Cary Grant movies for fun and then write about them.

These were movies that I picked from a list of his movies I had never seen.

This week we are on the last movie for our feature – Notorious.

Now, I want to preface this by saying that it’s going to sound like, at first, I didn’t like this film, but that isn’t true. I didn’t like it at first because I didn’t like Ingrid Bergman’s character but I eventually got swept up in it all and recognized it for being a very brilliantly written and directed film.

The movie stars Cary, Ingrid, and Claude Rains.

This is another Alfred Hitchcock Grant movie (we watched Suspicion last week) and it again showcased Hitchcock’s brilliant cinematography and directing skills.

We start with a man being remanded to the U.S. Marshal for charges of treason and from there we will be thrown into a world of espionage and mystery as we try to find out who the man is, but most importantly, who is daughter is.

We also will be thrown into yet another world where Cary is sexy and suave and the woman is conniving, heartless, and slutty, even though she’s probably slept with the same amount of people Cary has over the years. But Cary is a man and he’s cool when he sleeps around. Women are sluts. You know how it goes.

Oh, how I hate those commentaries on movies that overthink and look way too deep into the theme of the movie. Yet here I am about to do just that.

First, a bit of a summary of the movie. Alicia Huberman is the daughter of a convicted Nazi spy in 1946. T.R. Devlin is the U.S. Marshal assigned to follow her and ask her to help break up a ring of escaped Nazis hiding in Brazil.  This movie was released in August of 1946. It was filmed at the end of 1945 and the beginning of 1946. It was a very timely movie at the time and I was actually sort of surprised they made a movie so quickly about what was still a very raw subject at the time. It was easy, however, to make German Nazis the bad guys in the movie because, well, they were, but they definitely were in 1946.

After watching so many movies of Cary’s in a row, I do have to say that there is a definite theme in them and this one was no different. Cary is handsome, manly, dashing, charming, and irresistible and all the women know it and love him for it. He can get them to do anything for him. Leave their families, isolate from their friends, turn their backs on their ideals, and, in the case of this movie, spy for the United States and risk their life. Not that spying against the Germans after World War II is a bad thing, of course.

If you know the history of Alfred Hitchcock, you know that he had a particular view of women and that was that they were sort of stupid and had to be molded to the wishes of the men. He had obsessive issues with women in real life and though I hate to use the term misogynistic because it’s been abused in recent years, he truly was misogynistic.

 In his movies, women are often indecisive and need to be rescued by a man, yet they are also strong and have their own minds – deceptive minds with cruel intent of course. It’s a complex dichotomy but in Notorious we see Hitchcock stick with Cary being handsome and charming and Ingrid doing what he wants because of it.

As a Guardian writer shared when commenting on Hitchcock’s history with women:
“Norman Bates is Hitchcock himself, kidding himself that women are scheming devils and men are just innocent folk, acting up because they got caught in a tricky situation.”

While I do like Hitchcock’s movies, I have to admit that there is some truth in that quote and part of it was because Hitchcock had very deep issues with his own mother.

That is why so many of his movies, including this one, feature an evil mother who is behind schemes to destroy someone, usually the woman, in the movie.

There were many obvious moments in this film where I felt like the characters were just plain stupid. Like seriously, Cary keeps showing up wherever Ingrid is, even though she only met him on the plane – or so her story goes. Why would the guy she met on the plane keep showing up at parties? And the man she’s pretending to be in love with (Raines, who is the former Nazi) clearly knows the guy is more than what she says he is. Cary and Ingrid act like the bad guy should believe all their lies too. So annoying.

Like many Hitchcock movies, the mother of the former Nazi is evil and helps him figure out how to do something very bad (I won’t give away what it is in case you watch the movie.) She is more terrifying than Claude Raines and he was a former Nazi. Seriously. She’s horribly creepy. Her deceptiveness with a smile reminds me of someone in my extended family but I’ll keep that to myself for now.

All this criticism I’m offering up, though, can’t take away from the amazing cinematography and angles and use of light and shadows that Hitchcock uses to draw the viewers’ attention to the characters and their faults or to an important moment or expression. For example, there is one poignant scene when he zooms in on the guilty parties in such a unique way that I was just like, “Oh! That is brilliant.”

Yes, he was a brilliant filmmaker. A misogynist and a brilliant filmmaker. Yes, it was possible for him to be both.

Even though I sometimes get annoyed at Hitchcock’s idea that women had to be rescued, I really wanted Ingrid to be rescued in this movie – by anyone, but Cary was fine because…again…he’s good looking.

1946: Cary Grant (1904 – 1986) and Ingrid Bergman (1915 – 1982) get very close in Alfred Hitchcock’s spy thriller ‘Notorious’. (Photo by John Kobal Foundation/Getty Images)

A little trivia about the film:

Hitchcock wanted to make this film two years before it was made and he wanted Ingrid from the beginning.

He pitched the idea for the film this way: “the story of a woman sold for political purposes into sexual enslavement.”

Some think that Hitchcock maybe have gotten the idea for the plot from a short story written in 1921 by John Taintor Foote and called The Song of the Dragon.” It had appeared as a two-part serial in the Saturday Evening Post and, according to Wikipedia, “Set during World War I in New York, “The Song of the Dragon” told the tale of a theatrical producer approached by federal agents, who want his assistance in recruiting an actress he once had a relationship with to seduce the leader of a gang of enemy saboteurs.”

Whatever his inspiration, Hitchcock wrote the plot of Notorious with Ben Hecht who he wrote Spellbound with in 1944. One plot device used in the rewrites caused the FBI to begin following Hitchock. It involved uranium ore, which it later turned out was being used to build the atomic bomb. Hitchcock didn’t know this, but the FBI was worried he did when he started asking a scientist at Caltech about uranium. By August of 1945, a year before the movie was released,  everyone knew about what was being used to make the bomb anyhow.

The project was originally a David Selznick production but was later passed over to RKO when Selznick got bored with it. This allowed Hitchcock to produce as well as direct and write. Selznick had 50 percent stack in the movie as part of the deal with RKO, however, and continuously harassed Hitchcock about changes he wanted.

Hitchcock ignored almost all of those suggestions. Suggestions he didn’t ignore were those by Ingrid, who he apparently worked very well with.

In fact,  he made Ingrid his closest collaborator on the project, which was very unusual since, as I mentioned above – he was a misogynist in many ways.

There were some other interesting tidbits on Wikipedia but they weren’t citing sources and that drove me crazy so I’m not going to share them here.

Les Enchaines Notorious de AlfredHitchcock avec Ingrid bergman et Cary Grant 1946

One thing that is mentioned there and other sources is the very sexy two-and-a-half-minute kiss in the movie, which was filmed in a way to get it past the censors of the day, who determined that kisses in a movie could not be over a certain time limit. In the scene, Cary and Ingrid’s lips aren’t locked the entire time but they are extremely close physically and they are stealing kisses between words about what they’ll have for dinner, where they will go later, etc. The actors did find it a bit awkward to walk so close together and bump mouths off and on, but it turned out to be a classic scene.

For the trailer you can click here:

https://youtu.be/EhMyp8ZvjWs

To read what Erin thinks of the movie, check out her blog either today or at a later date (she’s been super busy all week so she may not have time to write her views this week).

Kajta has also been busy and if she writes her thoughts on it she will post it on her blog.

Sunday Bookends: Some time alone, books about fairies and murder, Summer of Marilyn

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.

What’s Been Occurring

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, I had about five hours to myself at home, which is a very unusual thing. I said I would update today whether I enjoyed it or cried because I missed my family.

Update: I had a blast.

Sure, I missed my family and if they had been gone much longer than they were I would have been a mess, but for those five hours I had so much fun by myself.

I watched whatever movie I wanted to watch (How To Marry A Millionaire) without being interrupted 18 times.

I made myself grilled chicken on our grill and ate it while it was still hot! I didn’t have to eat mine after I fixed everyone else’s plate, which I don’t always do, but still . . .

I didn’t have to get up and make anyone a snack for anyone or listen to my movie over the sound of a kid’s show on a phone or stop what I was doing to look at anything someone wanted to show me.

It was wonderful! Again, though, I also would absolutely miss those other things if my family wasn’t around, so I was super happy when they came home. I could only enjoy being alone with my thoughts for so long.

I’m doing my best to carry that relaxed feeling into today. The weather is beautiful and I just want to hold on to that feeling.

I realized at the end of the day that one reason I felt so peaceful last night even after my alone time was that I stayed off social media and the news. Today and into this week I plan to do the same thing. I’m not saying I won’t go on social media at all but I will definitely go on much less than I do some weeks.

The words that came to mind this morning on that topic were: I need to protect my peace.

It was what I did around this past Christmas. I locked myself away in a bubble of comfort, in a way, through the month of December and I need to do that more often. Of course, we can’t always keep the bad way, but we can make every effort possible to protect our peace and not go looking for those things that threaten that peace.

Calamity and chaos will always find us but there is no reason we should seek it out through scrolling mindlessly on social media or news sites.
I mentioned in a recent post that I was worried that the frost and freeze we had was going to kill my peonies and roses as it did my lilacs. I am happy to report that I checked my peonies yesterday while everyone was gone and they survived and are starting to bloom.

The white ones come up first and then the dark purple/pink ones and then the light pink ones. They bloom fully every year right in time for my brother’s birthday (June 9th. Gifts can be sent to him at  . . . just kidding.).

If you want to read more about what we did last week, you can pop on over to yesterday’s post.

What I/We’ve been Reading

This week I am reading Death and Daisies by Amanda Flower and I should have it finished later this week. Her books are quite easy reads and fairly light. They are cozy mysteries with a bit of magic mixed in. Or at least this series (the Magical Garden series) is.

I’m also reading The Regal Pink by Jenny Knipfer. This is a fantasy/fairy book which is not usually my thing but I try to read all of Jenny’s books so I am going to try it.

At night Little Miss and I are reading Little House on Plum Creek.

The boy is finishing Fellowship of the Ring.

The Husband is reading. I can’t ask him what because he slept horribly last night and he’s taking a rest upstairs.

What We Watched/are Watching

Yesterday I watched How to Marry A Millionaire with Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable, and Lauren Bacall (and William Powell). I started it while everyone was gone and finished it with The Husband when they came home.

I watched it years ago but had forgotten most of it.

While looking for a movie to watch I found a whole stack of blu-rays we own but that I either have not watched at all or haven’t watched in years and remember very little of. Among those movies were a bunch of Marilyn Monroe movies. The Husband pulled out a couple more of her movies when I told him I was considering watching the stack I’d made for the summer and blogging about them – or just watching them without blogging about them.

Seeing that stack of Marilyn movies made me decide I am going to have a Summer of Marilyn through the month of June and July. I’ll create a list of movies I am going to watch for a post later this week. I may be doing this one alone since Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs is super busy in June. I haven’t asked Katja yet if she wants to join but I’ll ask her later this week. I’ll also open the invitation for anyone to watch along who wants to. You do not have to blog about the movies just because I plan to.

Speaking of the Classic Movie Impressions Erin and I have been doing – the last post of our Spring of Cary will be up Thursday of this week.

I watched the movie and wrote the post but then forgot to post it on Saturday, which was the day Erin and I had decided to push it off to. Erin did not have a chance to write her post, however, because she had a very, very, full week with some fun stuff and some not-so-fun stuff.

The Husband and I also watched a Miss Marple movie this weekend (well, we will be finishing it later today) and Little Miss and I watched a ton of Mary Berry clips from YouTube one night this past week.

What I’m Writing

I am working on the second book of the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries.

Are you ready to know what it is going to be called?

I think I already mentioned it, but I’ll share again that it is going to be called Gladwynn Grant Takes Center Stage.

The first book is set to release on July 18th, and you can either sign up for the ARC team (you do not have to promote the book all over – simply read and review it on Amazon and Goodreads) or pre-order it for 99 cents on Amazon.

This week on the blog I shared:

Saturday Afternoon Chat: Some alone time, a couple of outings, visit by friends, and bad Anne of Green Gables sequelsGoodbye May, Hello June!

What I’m Listening To

I’ve been listening to playlists of vintage music as I write this week including this one:

Blog Posts I Enjoyed This Past Week

I have not read a ton of blog posts this week, but I was informed and made necessarily uncomfortable by this post about gender ideology by Abigail Shrier.

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: Some alone time, a couple of outings, visit by friends, and bad Anne of Green Gables sequels

Everyone, I am so excited because by the time you read this, or maybe while you are reading it, I will be having an afternoon to myself to write and watch movies and do whatever I want.

In other words, I will be sitting in my house completely lost and wondering why I thought it would be a good idea to accept my husband’s offer to take the kids to a movie and for me to stay home.

The whole thing sort of went down like this:

Husband: “I’m going to take the kids to Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse on Saturday and you can stay home and write.”

Me: “Uh. Oh. Okay.”

Husband: “Great. Have fun.”

And boom. Here I am. Alone. Writing a blog post.

Alone. In my house. With the dog. With my family 45 minutes away from me one way.

Alone with my thoughts and an old movie (How to Marry A Millionaire).

Ahem.

Did I ever mention that alone time is highly overrated? Because it is.

 I’ll update in my Sunday Bookends post how many times I cried wishing my family was home with me interrupting me 15 times while I try to write and that I had instead gone with them.

For now, though, a little about last week.

There is very little to report, honestly. It was a fairly relaxed week – at least physically. Mentally my mind seemed to race all day.

We spent Sunday at a Memorial Day service at a small cemetery about 30 minutes away. A bagpiper played some music in honor of the holiday at the cemetery which was recently repaired and cleaned up.

The speaker who was supposed to come didn’t make it so it was just the bagpiper, but he did a wonderful job. The music was very poignant and moving as we overlooked the cemetery full of veterans of wars that our country fought as far back as at least the Civil War, if not the Revolutionary War as well.

After the service we stopped at a playground right down the road for Little Miss to play a bit. She, however, was more interested in playing in the creek behind the playground, which is totally fine with me. She had no interest in leaving the creek when it was time to go and we hope to stop by there again soon to give her even more time to play.

The water was very low there because we have not had a lot of rain recently and also did not have a very snowy winter.

I have a feeling that our county will be under a burn ban soon. In our area we are allowed to burn trash in a barrel outside in our backyards, but not if there is a burn ban in effect. That will probably come soon as our grass is starting to fade to yellow in some places and our trees are very dry.

Little Miss and The Husband threw rocks in the creek and Little Miss and I put our feet in the water. It was really a very nice and relaxing afternoon.

The Boy was home resting after working the night before.

On Monday we visited my parents for Memorial Day after The Husband went to a Memorial Day service to take photographs and my dad and The Boy went to a service downtown.

The Husband cooked steaks on the grill that my dad had bought a while ago from a local farmer.

The steaks were excellent.

Little Miss, The Husband, and the Boy took a ride on the golf cart before we left. Little Miss helped clean out the pool at my parents before the golf cart ride. My dad is trying to get it summer ready. We will have to do some more cleaning tomorrow when we visit to get it all the way ready.

On Thursday Little Miss had a friend over to visit.

Yesterday we did pretty much nothing, other than The Husband who was awesome and braved the heat we were having to pick up groceries.

It turned out to be not as hot as we thought it was going to be but he didn’t want me to have to deal with any drama after the loss of the key fob last week. There always seems to be drama when I do the shopping. Sigh. He also does a great job and keeps us well within budget. Not that I go too crazy with the budget, but Little Miss does tend to add extra fruits to the cart when we do it, which is okay by me.

This past week started writing more of book two of the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries. I am having fun crafting the story and will hopefully write a little more on it today during my break.

I started to watch Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story today but – ick. I forgot that the story was not from the books and was, quite frankly, ridiculous and way too over dramatic. The actors were too old to be playing the parts, they took the story out of Prince Edward Island and to the United States and Kevin Sullivan took way too many liberties with the characters for my taste.

I have not enjoyed every Anne book I’ve read (like Anne’s House of Dreams. Yuck. So depressing. Seriously.) but there is a reason I love L.M. Montgomery’s books. They are whimsical and full of joy, most of the time anyhow. There are some sad and hard stories but at their heart is a youthfulness and hopefulness to Anne that I really didn’t see in this mini-series or as much of it as I was able to watch today. I watched it years ago and remember not enjoying it very much then either.

Staying on the topic of Anne of Green Gables, this week I unfollowed the official account of the original mini-series when they started pairing scenes from the film with modern music – particularly Taylor Swift.

I am not a fan of Taylor, one, but, two, I am not a fan of modern music being paired with films about vintage shows or books. I read those books and watch similar movies to escape the modern world. I don’t see why they need to be combined and connected to the modern world in any way. Leave me my vintage fantasy world, please. That’s what I wanted to tell them but instead I just quietly unfollowed. No need to be a prude and a drama queen at the same time. *wink*

I usually share what I am drinking and forgot to do that at the beginning of the post so I’ll share now that I have made myself a cup of peppermint tea to sip and filled it with honey after being without honey for a week or so. The weather was very warm last week so I didn’t bother to make tea, but instead drank a lot of water with lemon or grape juice mixed in.

How was your week last week? Did you do anything exciting?

Drink any lovely teas or lovely beverages?

Let me know in the comments.