Lisa R. Howeler's Blog, page 72

Sunday Bookends: Books with no plots, working on new books, and a lot of British shows

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

What I/we’ve been Reading

This week I finished The Cat Who Dropped A Bombshell by Lilian Jackson Braun and even though it was a later book in the series, it wasn’t too bad. Some of the later books were not the best, which is fine. The woman did write 29 of them and was in her 90s when she died. They couldn’t all be winners.

I wouldn’t really call the book a mystery, but it was light and fluffy and a nice distraction from life.

It didn’t have a plot exactly either…which was fine with me at this point in my life.

This week I am going to be reading The Fellowship of the Ring by Tolkien and Anne’s House of Dreams by L.M. Montgomery.

I also hope to continue Some Through the Fire by Jennifer Q. Hunt, as well, but I am taking my time with it because it is about war and I’ve been going through a lot of depression so I don’t really want to read about war right now. It’s very well written, though, so I do want to continue it so I can find out what happens to the characters.

And I’d love to disappear into at least one short story in Midwinter Murder, a collection of Agatha Christie stories.

Little Miss and I have been reading Imagination Station books by Paul McCusker and we are currently reading one about Vikings in the evening before bed (she’s actually reading the book to me which has been fun) and one about the Plymouth settlement during the day.

The Boy is reading The Fellowship of the Ring, his medieval history book, and a biology book.

What’s Been Occurring

I wrote about what has been going on with us yesterday in my Saturday Afternoon Chat and Something Warm. You can head over there for an update, but I will mention, as I did there, that my aunt, on my dad’s side, passed away last Sunday and so it’s been a tough week.

What We watched/are Watching

Last night the kids and I watched Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Earlier in the day I watched an episode of All Creatures Great and Small. It was a bit sad but also sweet and left me crying a lot.

We also watched a Grantchester episode and a Foyle’s War episode and then we watched – I am ashamed to say it – an episode of the 1970s Hardy Boys. Eek. We didn’t even finish it but may finish it later today. The Husband really wants to see the old Nancy Drew show, though, because of some actress he had a crush on as a kid.

Oh and yes…we watch a lot of British shows.

What I’m Writing

I have been working on a cozy mystery book and wrote a few thousand words on it last week. I’ll share more about it when I know a little bit more about my main character and her motivations.

I am also working on a book that will be part of a multi-author project and will share a bit more about that as I get into that book as well. I wrote about 500-800 words on that last week too.

Last week on the blog I shared:

Saturday Afternoon Chat and a Cup of Something Warm: a hard loss, weird weather, and homeschool gatheringsBookish Thinking: Classics I hope to read this yearGrandma’s BlanketFaithfully Thinking: Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus

What I’m Listening To

I did not listen a lot last week but this week I plan to listen to Matthew West’s new album and some new songs dropped by We The Messengers.

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 and a Cup of Something Warm: a hard loss, weird weather, and homeschool gatherings

Hey there! Come on in. I’m just heating some water for some tea. I also have coffee (made in the Keurig), milk (lactose free only, I’m afraid), orange juice, and, well, water. Let me know what you’d like.

I was out of honey most of this week, so I tried sugar in my tea.

Ew. That was seriously gross. I haven’t had sugar in herbal tea in years. My taste buds have no idea what to do with all that sweetness anymore.

I’m still only drinking peppermint tea. I’m so boring. I am going to look for some new flavors soon.

This has been a tough week emotionally so I hope you don’t mind if I have some chocolate with my tea.

My dad’s sister, my aunt Doris, died last Sunday. She passed away a few hours after my husband drove my dad up to see her.

I’ve been trying to pretend I’m not sad all week for the sake of the kids. This didn’t work well and yesterday The Boy and I pretty much fell apart under the pressure of trying to be fine with it all. When a person who is 90 dies people shrug their shoulders as they offer you condolences. They say things like, “well, she had a good, long life,” or “she’s in a better place.”

My aunt didn’t have a great end of her life as she was forced from her home of 50 years or so into a nursing home. Her family fought very hard to keep her out of that home but in the end, they all ran out of funds and she ran out of health.

It isn’t the ending I wanted for her but I had no control over that and it’s been hard to admit how little control I have over things lately. I feel, in many ways, that my life is spinning out of control around me and I have no say – not even, “stop this thing I want to get off.”

The passing of Doris in combination with a difficult diagnosis for a family member, plus upcoming oral surgery for Little Miss, due to what I feel is some incompetence on the part of local dentists, has left me clinging to all the wrong things. Here on the blog I remind us all to look to Jesus and cling to him but in real life I am clinging to feelings or to forcing feelings or happiness that simply aren’t there.

Pray for me this week that I can practice what I preach.

I should mention that I was typing this part of this post on my phone when the following verse popped up on my Bible app at the top of the screen:

 And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. 

Hebrews 12: 1-2

Timely, no?

I’ll write about my aunt in a future post. For now, I’ll try to move on to some happier topics because there are days we have to choose joy when we do not feel it.

Today I was going to take Little Miss to gymnastics class but woke up and Old Man Winter had decided to vomit an inch and a half of snow on us when I thought it was going to be a dusting.

I decided not to chance driving the roads since the road to get there is a stereotypical rural road that twists and winds around curves and under trees. Instead, I braved the cold temps for a few photos and then Little Miss decided she wanted to go out in it for a bit even though it was only 23 degrees and 13 degrees with the windchill.

She was suited up in a snowsuit, winter coat, thick gloves and boots, and I was not, however. I didn’t last as long as her. While we were out there she wrote a note to Aunt Doris: “I hope you are happy in heaven.”

It made my mom and I cry but it opened the door for us to talk about her feelings about all of what is going on.

Tomorrow she has her first home gymnastics competition. We have to be there at 8 a.m.

Eight.

In the morning.

Ick. Not looking forward to that, but it should be fun for her at least.

Off to a new topic —

Our weather was so seriously bizarre this past week.

Its bizarre behavior made my head feel weird, my ears fill up, and my anxiety rise for some reason. Maybe because the barometric pressure was going up and down, up and down, all week.

It was like it was its own personal yo-yo.

On Tuesday the weather started out with freezing rain, then moved to the sun, then to rain, then to sun, then our lights flicked off and on and I looked out the front window and there were dark clouds. Within ten minutes the outside was a swirling mess of white snow and the wind was blowing trees so hard the tops of them were practically touching the ground. Ten minutes of that and the sun was shining again. So strange.

Then the next day it was freezing rain and some snow and yesterday it was sunny but breezy and only 32 degrees out.

I feel like our weather is very schizophrenic and I’m really tired of trying to get the fire started in the wood stove, so this year I’ll really be happy when spring comes.

There are daffodil shoots coming up in my neighbor’s yard but they may have been frozen in the deep freeze we had last night. Not sure because I forgot to look.

Yesterday the kids and I went down the street to the library in town to attend a homeschool gathering I found out about earlier in the week.

There were about ten other children there and apparently it is a gathering that happens twice a month. The kids and parents gather together, share information, participate in a craft, and read a book to the younger children. There are teens on down in age who attend.

Little Miss really enjoyed herself even though she didn’t talk to the other children too much during this first meeting. Maybe that will change in future meetings.

We are in a very small town so it was nice to find a homeschooling group that is right down the street

I’m looking forward to this next week because I have nothing scheduled except one event for Little Miss which I still call Awana but is actually called Kids Club now. Oh, and I might have an appointment for Zooma the Wonder Dog to get her nails trimmed. That is often an all-day thing because we have to drive 45 minutes away to the vet where we used to live. Actually, I’ll probably do the grocery shopping that day too. So I do have things scheduled but not until later in the week at least.

How about you? How is your week shaping up for next week?

And how about what you are drinking? Hopefully, no booze to get you through. Ha! Luckily all I’ve reached for during this craziness is a cup or two of hot cocoa!

Bookish Thinking: Classics I hope to read this year

I have been remiss over the years in reading books that are considered classics so this year I hope to read a few at least.

Now, I will admit that I said the same thing last year. Or was it the year before? I can’t remember now but I do know I said I would read more classics and didn’t, except for what I read with The Boy for school.

We read Silas Marner, Lord of the Flies, To Kill A Mockingbird, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

We are now reading The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien.

On my own, though, I hope to read at least five other classics this year:

Little Women

Lilies of the Field

Shane

The Secret Garden

and something by one of the Bronte sisters. Who can give me a suggestion of which one to read?

Also, are there any other classics you would suggest for me to read this year? I’ll see if I can squeeze them in.

Have you read any of the classics I mentioned? What did you think of them?

Grandma’s Blanket

Grandma’s Blanket


I’m sitting on my couch under my grandmother’s blanket.

Grandpa passed away in 2003 (in the hospital, not under the blanket, incidentally) and the blanket has been at her house where my parents now live.

One day recently I went to visit my parents and my dad had a stack of blankets for me to go through.

“We’re running out of room. Take some of these.”

He then gestured to three empty Walmart boxes and told me to fill them.

One of the first blankets I reached for was the tan-brown knitted blanket that I remember my grandmother laying under for naps and when she fell asleep on the couch watching the 11 o’clock news. My paternal grandmother weighed about 100 pounds and was probably about 5 foot 1 inches tall. She’d pull her tiny form into a ball in the curved corner of the couch and drape the blanket around her. It would entirely cover her and it’s not a big blanket.

The couch was tan as well and it was a three- or four-piece sectional. The piece she sat in was curved and it’s not a shape I often see in couches these days.

If you looked too fast, you might miss her. That’s how well hidden she’d be under that couch.

I know there were many times I almost didn’t see her when I was checking where she was.

One night, though I can’t remember why, I stayed alone at that house. I believe it was before Grandma died, but my parents were already living there. I curled up in the corner of that couch with all the outside lights on in case someone tried to break in and fell asleep there. Later I wondered how she’d ever been able to fall asleep in that spot, all curled up tight. It was not very comfortable.

The day Grandma died Dad called me from the hospital.

“You said you wanted me to call when she passed,” he said. “So, I am.”

I’d been over in her room earlier in the day.

“I love you Grandma,” I told her as I leaned over her while she slipped in and out of sleep.

“I know,” she said.

She didn’t often say “I love you” back but she may have that day. I truly can’t remember.

I just remember her saying, “I’m so tired, Lisa. So tired.”

She was two weeks shy of turning 94.

“I know, Grandma,” I told her. “Just rest. You can rest now.”

Grandma lived across the hill from us. A drive down a dirt road, a bridge over a small stream, then up another dirt road would bring us to her house – the house Dad and his sisters grew up in.

When I was a teenager and I called Grandma to tell her my mom was sending some food over to her for dinner she’d often hang up without saying goodbye.

The conversations went like this:

“Grandma, Dad’s bringing over some chicken and potatoes Mom made.”

“Okay. Sounds good.”

“She also made some applesauce.”

“Okay. Yep. Mmhmm.”

I’d open my mouth to say something else but the click had already sounded in my ear. She was done with the conversation and had hung up.

Often before she hung up I’d throw in a “I love you” and she’d say, “Yup. Mhmm. Okay then.”

And the click would sound.

One time, though, she said, “Yup. Mhmm. Okay then. Love you too.”

And then the click.

I was flying the rest of the night.

I rushed into the kitchen and told my mom, “Grandma said I love you back!”

It was the best feeling in the world – to actually hear those words.

She showed her love in other ways, though.

In small ways.

In the way she asked how I was or wanted to hear the stories I’d been covering at the newspaper.

In the way she gave me a quilt she’d made years ago for my college graduation.

In the way she didn’t talk a lot about her life but answered questions about it when I asked.

In the way we shared black jellybeans together, even though she said licorice was bad for her blood pressure.

In the way she tipped her head back and laughed at me that day I took her photograph while she sat on the ground next to the ditch behind her house.

In the way she let it slip that one time how she really felt and told me she loved me too.

And even in the hurt I held on to for year – a question about what had happened to me. I used to be so skinny, she said. I don’t think she asked it to be mean, though. She was truly worried. What had happened that was causing me to suddenly gain weight, she wondered. It wouldn’t be until several years after she died that I’d learn my thyroid was dying and leaving the weight on me.

Even though I wasn’t still skinny, my mom always tells me she knows Grandma still loved me. I have a good feeling she is right.

The blanket isn’t super soft.

I don’t know if I’d cover myself with it if it wasn’t full of memories of a love that was quiet when the world was loud.

Quiet when the world was loud.

I’m writing that again for my benefit and maybe yours.

I could use some quiet in the loud right now. Couldn’t you?

So, when I pull that blanket across my lap and up around my shoulders I will think of the action as if I am crawling into a stillness my soul needs.

A stillness that only a quiet love can bring.

A stillness that brings quiet when the world is loud.

Faithfully Thinking: Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus

The song Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus has been running through my mind for a couple of weeks now.

I’ve been humming it when the anxiety starts to overtake me.

When I say anxiety has been overtaking me, I mean it has been overtaking me completely. My body has been trembling, my legs have been weak, and my mind has been clouded.

These are the lyrics I have been singing when I can’t slow my mind down otherwise:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus.
Look full in His wonderful face.
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of his glory and grace.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus.

Not upon a celebrity pastor.

No upon a movement, even if that movement is good.

Not on a person or a group or a group of ideas.

Our eyes are to be on Jesus.

Not the Jesus other people say Jesus is.

Not the Jesus a pastor told us is Jesus.

Not the Jesus a TV show told us was Jesus.

The Jesus we know from reading the Bible. The Jesus we know does not condone sin but still loves the sinner.

Here are the rest of the lyrics of the song (which I don’t remember when I sing it!):

 O soul, are you weary and troubled?
No light in the darkness you see?
There’s light for a look at the Savior,
And life more abundant and free!

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.

Thro’ death into life everlasting,
He passed, and we follow Him there;
O’er us sin no more hath dominion–
For more than conqu’rors we are!

His Word shall not fail you–He promised;
Believe Him, and all will be well:
Then go to a world that is dying,
His perfect salvation to tell!

The hymn was written by Helen Lemmel in 1922.

According to last.fm, “At age 55, Helen heard a statement that deeply impressed her: “So then, turn your eyes upon Him, look full into His face and you will see that the things of earth will acquire a strange new dimness.”

“I stood still,” Helen later said, “and singing in my soul and spirit was the chorus, with not one conscious moment of putting word to word to make rhyme, or note to note to make melody. The verses were written the same week, after the usual manner of composition, but nonetheless dictated by the Holy Spirit.”

As humans, it is hard to keep our eyes on Jesus and not on the storm swirling around us. Trust me, I’ve been failing at the message of the song for weeks now. I’ve succeeded a few times and felt better for it but I don’t keep my eyes on Jesus and on what he can do like I should. We need to daily remind ourselves where our focus should be.

A song like this one helps ground me, along with verses in the Bible.

You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you. Isaiah 26:3 ESV

What helps to remind you where your focus should be?

Sunday Bookends: One book at a time, sunny days, and writing a new type of book

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what I and the rest of the family 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

There is still a lot going on in our family with – well, everything.

There are new diagnoses, surgeries planned, family members very ill, deaths of family friends. To say this year has been a beast for us so far is an understatement. I’d list all that has been going on here, but I don’t want to depress everyone more than I have to. So instead I will point you to yesterday’s post where I talked about some fun things we did this past week and where I shared some photos of my youngest running in the yard with her best friend, Zooma the Wonderdog.

I’ll even share a couple photos here:

Sometimes you have to choose joy and look for it a little harder than other times.

What I/we’ve been Reading

Most of this week I’ve been reading The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell by Lilian Jackson Braun.

That’s it. It’s just been relaxing and I haven’t had time to juggle two books. With all the family stuff going on, homeschooling, working on a new book and just being unable to really think much or too fast.

Later in the week, though, I started listening to The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien on Audible. The Boy and I are reading that together for English.

This week I hope to finish The Cat Who book and continue a Longmire book I started.

At night Little Miss and I are reading Paddington books again. Early in the week, she read a few pages of one to me.

During the week we are reading fiction books based on The Imagination Station from Adventures in Odyssey, which is a Focus on the Family creation.

The Boy is reading The Fellowship of the Ring.

The Husband is reading …oops. Forgot to ask him before he went to bed and he’s going to be gone today so I’ll catch up with what he is reading later in the week or next week.

What We watched/are Watching

This week we watched a couple episodes of Grantchester and an episode of Foyle’s War. I started to rewatch Death Comes to Pemberly, which is a story that extends the story of Lizzie Bennet and Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. It is a reimagining, I guess you would say. There is a murder on the Darcy estate involving the dastardly Mr. Wickham. It is a four-part mini-series.

I also half-watched an episode of All Creatures Great and Small that was a bit emotional and too much for me. I will probably rewatch it and the next episode later this week.

What I’m Writing

I’ve been working on a cozy mystery that I’ll share a bit about later. I was able to write a couple thousand words on it this week, which was a nice distraction from life right now.

This week on the blog I shared:

Saturday Afternoon Chat and a Cup of Something WarmBookish Thinking: Library sale book haulA wake-up call about my writing

What I’m Listening To

I need to listen to more music because it helps to calm my nerves.

Matthew West has a new album out and this is one of the new songs:

I also need to listen to this song a lot this week:

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.

Sunday Bookends: One book at a time, sunny days,

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what I and the rest of the family 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

There is still a lot going on in our family with – well, everything.

There are new diagnoses, surgeries planned, family members very ill, deaths of family friends. To say this year has been a beast for us so far is an understatement. I’d list all that has been going on here, but I don’t want to depress everyone more than I have to. So instead I will point you to yesterday’s post where I talked about some fun things we did this past week and where I shared some photos of my youngest running in the yard with her best friend, Zooma the Wonderdog.

I’ll even share a couple photos here:

Sometimes you have to choose joy and look for it a little harder than other times.

What I/we’ve been Reading

Most of this week I’ve been reading The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell by Lilian Jackson Braun.

That’s it. It’s just been relaxing and I haven’t had time to juggle two books. With all the family stuff going on, homeschooling, working on a new book and just being unable to really think much or too fast.

Later in the week, though, I started listening to The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien on Audible. The Boy and I are reading that together for English.

This week I hope to finish The Cat Who book and continue a Longmire book I started.

At night Little Miss and I are reading Paddington books again. Early in the week, she read a few pages of one to me.

During the week we are reading fiction books based on The Imagination Station from Adventures in Odyssey, which is a Focus on the Family creation.

The Boy is reading The Fellowship of the Ring.

The Husband is reading …oops. Forgot to ask him before he went to bed and he’s going to be gone today so I’ll catch up with what he is reading later in the week or next week.

What We watched/are Watching

This week we watched a couple episodes of Grantchester and an episode of Foyle’s War. I started to rewatch Death Comes to Pemberly, which is a story that extends the story of Lizzie Bennet and Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. It is a reimagining, I guess you would say. There is a murder on the Darcy estate involving the dastardly Mr. Wickham. It is a four-part mini-series.

I also half-watched an episode of All Creatures Great and Small that was a bit emotional and too much for me. I will probably rewatch it and the next episode later this week.

What I’m Writing

I’ve been working on a cozy mystery that I’ll share a bit about later. I was able to write a couple thousand words on it this week, which was a nice distraction from life right now.

This week on the blog I shared:

Saturday Afternoon Chat and a Cup of Something WarmBookish Thinking: Library sale book haulA wake-up call about my writing

What I’m Listening To

I need to listen to more music because it helps to calm my nerves.

Matthew West has a new album out and this is one of the new songs:

I also need to listen to this song a lot this week:

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 and a Cup of Something Warm

About the time you are reading this, I hope to be at my parents’ watching Anne of Green Gables with my mom. This will be after I take Little Miss to gymnastics, where she will prepare for an upcoming competition and I will read a book.

I hope I will be drinking a cup of tea of some kind at my parents.

What are you drinking today?

Is it cold or warm where you are?

It was warmer here earlier this week, but then dropped fast yesterday after a thunderstorm at 5 a.m. A thunderstorm in winter. It was certainly weird. I’ll miss the warm weather. That little sample was enough to make me long for spring. I feel better when it is sunny out. My sinuses are happier with warmer weather too.

Earlier in the week, Little Miss and I played outside and enjoyed the sunshine. She created slime and ran up and down the hill in the backyard with Zooma the Wonder Dog and then I read her history lesson to her. The wind wasn’t cold exactly. More like chilly but it was whipping fiercely most of the time and later that night I realized my face felt dry and chapped. I finally decided I had windburn, even though the wind wasn’t freezing.

That night, though, she developed a sore throat and a low-grade fever. She missed Awana, which she loves, and cried, but said her throat hurt when she talked, and she wouldn’t be able to sing either.

That night she fell asleep in her room with a fever while Bluey played on my phone. The moment struck me as wholesome. Her face was serene and beautiful. I watched her with her hand propped sweetly against her face and prayed that the next morning she would feel better and her fever would be gone. Thankfully it was.

I absolutely dread my children being sick. It’s not only because I lose sleep by watching over them, or in Little Miss’s case, tending to her when she can’t breathe through her nose or wakes up in a delirious feverish state, but because I simply cannot stand to see them suffer. I absolutely hate being sick, but I would rather be sick than see them hurt or suffer.

On Monday, I made a pot of ham and bean soup, which was really only local ham and butter means mixed together in the Instapot because I wasn’t sure what else to put in the soup.

My parents make their bean soup with onions and carrots, but the only carrots I had were canned and I was afraid they’d be too mushy. Also, my son doesn’t like cooked carrots and my daughter doesn’t like onions. This way they’d both be happy. I did find out later, though, that my parents now use canned carrots in their soup to cut back on all the work of cutting up fresh carrots.

It has become a tradition in my family that when one of us makes bean soup we send some to the other one. When my parents make bean soup, they make a huge pot of it and send containers of it to us because the kids absolutely love their bean soup. When I make some I send it on to them, even though their soup is always going to be better than mine.

This week is pretty void of appointments, thankfully.

I hope to keep working on a new cozy mystery I am writing.

Little Miss and I will also be continuing our lessons for homeschool, including history through fiction (I picked up some Imagination Station books for her. They are from Focus on the Family), science and math, which is something Little Miss and I frequently butt heads on. I hope that can get easier for us soon.

I found a couple of photos taken on the way back from our trip to Scranton a couple of weeks ago when I was downloading the photos from our sunny day Wednesday.

The sunset one is near a Procter and Gamble plant near us and the building is a former Catholic school that is now the location for a Jewish summer camp.

Tomorrow in my Sunday Bookends post, I will ramble about what I’ve been reading and watching this week.

How was your week last week? Try any new teas?

Bookish Thinking: Library sale book haul

I mentioned Sunday in my Sunday Bookends post that I had visited a local library that was having a sale, as well as a local flea market-style store that had a large selection of used books.

I thought today I’d share a few of the books I picked up, even though I did mention a few already.

I’m going to toss in there a couple I also picked up last week at a library near us that has a bookshop in the back of their building.

I had to use photos I downloaded online for a couple of these photos because I loaned the books to my mom before I took photographs of them. Mom reads a lot faster than me so I always pass copies of books on to her first.

Her Mother’s Legacy by Francine Rivers

I haven’t read a book by Francine in years, mainly because the topics are usually quite heavy and I often look for books with lighter topics.

Fire By Night and Candle in the Darkness by Lynn Austin

I have yet to read a book by Lynn Austin but people who read Christian Fiction absolutely love her so I figured it was time I tried. She writes historical fiction. These are the first two books in the Refiner’s Fire series.

A Case of Bad Taste and A Case of Crooked Letters by Lori Copeland.

Lori is a new to me author and while I thought her books were cozy mysteries, I needed to take a break from the one book because within the first three pages, two husbands had already been killed off and one of them was fairly young and died from a blood clot, which has been happening to a lot of people lately so that made me uneasy. Of course, this book was written years ago so it has nothing to do with the recent rashes of blood clot deaths, but it still felt a little too close for comfort after someone I know who is in their 30s had a stroke last week. I do plan to pick the book back up again, however, because, despite that dark issue, the book does seem like it will have hope and some humor as well.

Home to Holly Springs, Come Rain Or Come Shine, and To Be Where You Are by Jan Karon

These books looked new and I was excited to add them to my collection.

To Be Where You Are is the last book in the series. Home to Holly Springs is book ten but I believe it was originally part of a planned separate series about Father Tim. It is one of the darker and tougher books of the series, but, in my opinion, one of Jan’s best.

Books from the Walt Longmire Series: A Cold Dish, Death Without Company, Kindness Goes Unpunished, As the Crow Flies, Another Man’s Moccasins, Hell is Empty, A Serpent’s Tooth by Craig Johnson

I’m on book seven of the series, Hell is Empty. We own all of the books on Kindle, but I want to start collecting the books in physical form as well.

Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie (A Miss Marple Mystery)

The Husband picked this one out for me and I’m excited to read it because I’ve never read any of Christie’s books about Miss Marple but she’s one of my favorite Christie characters.

The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell and The Cat Who Blew The Whistle by Lillian Jackson Braun

I picked these two up at the bookshop in the back of the library in the town near us (well, 40 minutes near us). The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell is a later book in the series and the later books aren’t as good, but I’m on chapter 4 and it’s a lot better than some of the other later books I’ve tried to read.

Sean of the South: Whistling Dixie by Sean Dietrich.

He’s a new to me author and this book looks like a collection of short stories or short thoughts. I follow him on Instagram, and he seems like a downhome author that I will like. I have a couple of his books in my Kindle as well.

Treasure Island by Robert Lewis Stevenson

The last book by Robert Lewis Stevenson that The Boy and I tried to read we failed at, but I’m willing to try again. The Husband said this one is better than Kidnapped.

I picked up a stack of books for Little Miss as well, but I’ll write about them in a separate blog post.

Have you read any of the books mentioned above? What did you think of them?

A wake-up call about my writing

I’ve been writing novels since 2019 or so.

I started it as a fun endeavor to help take my mind off some lost friendships and my loneliness. I was lonely before those lost friendships because they really weren’t good friendships at all, but I didn’t realize how bad they were until they were gone.

A few times during this fiction writing journey, I got wrapped up and sad about not making money from my books. Silly, I know, since they are really stories I wrote for my blog readers more than they are books.

As the journey has continued, I have slipped in and out of those feelings, but have had more moments of simple gratitude – not for making money from selling my books because I’ve barely made any of that, but for the friendships and connections I’ve made through writing, either with the books or the blog.

The connections I’ve made through my blog and my books have meant so much more than money.

Those connections have literally been a lifesaver. I’m not exaggerating when I say that.

The encouraging messages, the offers of prayers, and even beautiful songs sent to me privately have sustained me through some very dark days, most recently, but also over the last three years.

Just a couple of weeks ago a follower/reader and now friend sent me this video that was such an important reminder to me. It literally left me in refreshing, needed tears.

The people I have met online came to me in a time when I had lost “real life” (as the saying goes) friendships and felt so lonely and alone.

I used to take the online connections for granted. These were only people I knew online, not really “knew-knew”. But behind that computer they are real people, like me, some of them also lonely or in dark places, and we are making connections, in many cases, on a heart level, not just a superficial virtual level.

I can’t imagine what I would do without all of your wonderful people who read my blog and my books and send me encouraging messages and are just there when I really need someone to be there.

You are appreciated much more than you could ever imagine.