Lisa R. Howeler's Blog, page 78

Sunday Bookends: Little white lies, Three Amigos, and it is time for Christmas books

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 I/we’ve been Reading

I finished Love and A Little White Lie last night after working on it for a few weeks now. It didn’t take me this long because it was bad, but because I kept getting interrupted by writing projects, books, or just the everyday weirdness of life.

I will be honest that I almost bailed on this book part way through because the one character was so annoying to me and because the middle dragged a little bit. I really wanted to reach into the book and slap the one character. He was so whiney. Argh! But the book was really worth finishing because the writing was so good, the main character was so complex, and many of the supporting characters were loveable.

In case anyone reading this is interested, here is the description:

There’s a lot of irony in hitting rock bottom

After a heartbreak leaves her reeling, January Sanders is open to anything–including moving into a cabin on her aunt’s wedding-venue property and accepting a temporary position at her aunt’s church despite being a lifelong skeptic of faith. Choosing to keep her doubts to herself, she’s determined to give her all to supporting Grace Community’s overworked staff while helping herself move on.

What she doesn’t count on is meeting the church’s handsome and charming guitarist. It’s a match set for disaster, and yet January has no ability to stay away, even if it means pretending to have faith in a God she doesn’t believe in.

Only this time, keeping her secret isn’t as easy as she thought it would be. Especially when she’s constantly running into her aunt’s landscape architect, who seems to know everything about her past-and-present sins and makes no apologies about pushing her to deal with feelings she’d rather keep buried.

Torn between two worlds that can’t coexist, can January find the healing that’s eluded her, or will her resistance to the truth ruin any chance of happiness?

I am finishing a book for an author friend this week (By Broken Birch Bay by Jenny Knipfer) and then I plan to focus on Christmas books, including Shepherd’s Abiding by Jan Karon, America’s Favorite Christmastown by Dawn Klinge, and A Highland Christmas: A Hamish Macbeth Mystery by M.C. Beaton. If I can find a paperback copy, I’d also like to read some of Christmas with Anne by L.M. Montgomery, if it is a real book and not just some knock-off Amazon thing. Has anyone heard of it?

Little Miss and I are reading Paddington before bed and Children of the Longhouse by Joseph Bruchac during the day.

The Boy is reading Sea of Monsters, which is a Percy Jackson book and yes, during the week I am making him finish The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The Husband is reading Kagan The Damned by Jonathan Maberry.

What’s Been Occurring

This past week we had a good school week during which I actually felt like I had fun, even if the children didn’t.

We didn’t do much else during the week, other than visit my mom on Thursday and grocery shop on Friday. Our shopping trip was delayed by an issue with the van that I thought was going to cost a lot, but turned out could be fixed by my dad dumping three quarts of oil in the engine. In other words, I don’t pay attention to the lights on the dash of my car.

This week’s weather was a mix of mess, wind, and cold. Still no snow, which was fine with me.  

This next week we don’t have a ton planned and if it’s going to be as cold as it has been, I am fine with that too.

What We watched/are Watching

Last Sunday, The Boy and I watched Planes, Trains, and Automobiles while The Husband took Little Miss to a train ride with Santa.

Later in the week we watched The Three Amigos, an old movie from the 80s with Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Chevy Chase.

It is a movie I used to watch with some friends of mine, probably when I was 9 or 10 and it was so weird and funny to watch it again all these years later. There was at least a couple of off-color moments, but for the most part the movie is clean.

The movie is about three actors who portray a trio of heroes called the Three Amigos in silent movies. A woman who is looking for someone to rescue her town from an evil man who is terrorizing it sees the movie, thinks it is a newsreel and sends them a telegram, asking them to come save her town. The telegraph operator decides to edit the telegram so she can afford to send it and, unfortunately, the actors think they are being hired for an acting job. Hilarity ensues from there as “they” say.

During the movie, there is a scene where Martin Short and Steve Martin sing a song called “My Little Buttercup,” which I had forgotten all about until it started. I used to sing the song to my mom and dad after my friends and I watched the movie and they would laugh so hard because I looked so ridiculous. I’m leaving it here for your viewing pleasure.

Little Miss’s impression of the movie: “Nope. Too much fantasy. Not enough reality.”

Sigh. If you knew what movies she watches, you’d really laugh at that comment.

There is a scene in the movie where the villain has a discussion about the word plethora and what it means. As I watched it I remembered that this is where I learned the word and from then on kept finding ways to use it in sentences. I still find a plethora of ways to use the word in sentences. Get it? I still find a plethora – yeah, okay. You get it.

Anyhow, later in the week, I started to watch You’ve Got Mail then realized that I don’t really like that movie because the two main characters are lying to their boyfriend and girlfriend and chatting to each other behind their backs. It is essentially a movie about cheaters, even if parts of it are cute.

I clicked off that and saw The Bookshop Around the Corner with Jimmy Stewart and then realized something I didn’t realize before. You’ve Got Mail is based on this 1940 movie.

As usual Hollywood is not original because I also started to watch A Man Called Ove this week and it is a Swedish movie that is being released in the U.S. under the title A Man Called Otto starring Tom Hanks. From what I can see, the American movie has been recreated frame for frame. I enjoyed what I did watch of A Man Called Ove, even though I would consider it a dark comedy and those aren’t usually my thing. I stopped it because I decided I should watch something a little happier since I was home by myself. I plan to finish the movie this week.

Anyhow, back to The Bookshop Around the Corner – it’s supposed to take place in Hungary, but only one person has a Hungarian accent. The rest either have New York accents or British ones. Besides that odd glitch, it is a very good movie about a man who is writing to a woman and later learns that the woman is someone he actually knows in real life.

I very much enjoyed the movie and was glad I watched that instead of You’ve Got Mail.

Also this week I watched The Muppets Christmas Carol as part of the ‘Tis the Season Cinema with Erin from Still Life with Cracker Crumbs and Katja_137 from Breath of Hallelujah.

They both had such interesting posts about the movie. I loved how Katja_137 threw in so much trivia about it, including an edited scene I didn’t even know existed.

You can read her post here: https://breathofhallelujah.com/2022/12/02/the-muppet-christmas-carol-tis-the-season-cinema/comment-page-1/#comment-56

And Erin’s here: https://crackercrumblife.com/2022/12/01/tis-the-season-cinema-the-muppets-christmas-carol/

What I’m Writing

I’ve been working on a short story that I will start sharing on the blog Friday and run for 12 days after that. It will feature the characters from Spencer Valley, including Molly, Alex, Robert, Annie, Franny, and maybe a little bit of Jason and Ellie and Matt and Liz.

Here is a little sneak peek for those of you who might like to read along:

Cold bit at Robert Tanner’s skin, stung his lungs, and made him wish he could stay inside under a blanket with a warm cup of coffee. Instead, he stepped further into the cold, pulling his winter cap down further on his head.

Between the house and the barn snow swirled wildly, darkening the sky and making it feel like dusk instead of late afternoon.

Inside the barn it was warm, and he was grateful for it, even if his arrival did mean he’d have to start cleaning out the cows sleeping area and preparing the second milking of the day.

Truthfully, his mind was far away from the tasks of the day. His thoughts were consumed with another project he hoped to have complete by Christmas – a gift for his wife of 30 years.

On the blog this week I shared:

A Chat and A Cup of Something Warm‘Tis The Season Cinema: The Muppets Christmas CarolRemembering Miracles Can Happen

What I’m Listening To

I have not been slowing down and listening to anything except for some worship guitar music while I write. I hope to remedy that this week and listen to some more music. Some nights my daughter and I listen to the family hour on our local Christian radio station, which features Adventures in Odyssey and other Christian radio dramas from 7 to  8 p.m.

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.

A Chat and A Cup of Something Warm

(Author’s note: I wrote this to post this morning but wanted to read over it again and my day got crazy with car issues, grocery shopping, etc. so I am posting it in the evening. Update again: I posted this at 7:40 at night and it never published. So, then I hit publish again at 11:05. It will probably show up on Saturday morning at this point. Ha!)

Today is Friday and usually, I share a chapter from one of the stories I am working on for Fiction Friday, but I don’t have a story to share right now so I thought I’d share a ramble about life in general today.

As always, pour yourself a cup of something warm, pull up a chair, and sit and chat with me. If you have time, of course, since it is the Christmas season, and many people are very busy during this time of year.

We have been a little bit busy but not necessarily because of the holidays. There have been doctor’s appointments for family members, homeschool, and errands and The Husband has been working a lot. So, for now, our busy is simply with the every day. My brain doesn’t seem to be able to focus these days which means I don’t get as much done during the day, including reading blogs, which I am so behind on!

Later today I will need to go get groceries, an errand The Husband has been taking on because he’s been close to the store we usually go to – Aldi. I’m not really a fan of grocery shopping. It tires me out, which is silly since our list usually isn’t that large. I also have anxiety so I always worry I’ll have some medical issue in the store. Yeah, I know, I have issues. Ha.

I usually take the kids with me and we split the list. They run ahead and get what we need on the far side of the store while I take the side of the store closest to where we walk in. They also help me bag the groceries and get them into the car. I usually reward them with a quick trip to Wendy’s.

We then come home and I put away most of the groceries while they run off to be children and The Boy runs off to finish the school work he didn’t get done earlier in the week. They do help put the groceries away sometimes, but I don’t mind putting them away. I take my time and listen to a podcast or some music while I do it.

Grocery shopping does take a rather large chunk of time out of our day since we have to drive about 30 minutes north to get to the store and 30 minutes back and usually find we have to stop at a couple of other places along the way.

How about you? Do you like grocery shopping or dread it like me. Or do you place pickup orders, which we used to do when we lived closer to a Wal-Mart?

Right now, I am typing this sitting under a blanket with my daughter, in a very cozy living room lit only by the TV, Christmas tree lights and my neighbor’s beautiful Christmas display next door. I’m also listening to guitar worship music on my headphones because my daughter is watching a show that she’s watched over and over and I need a little break from it (even though the show is cute and funny).

Earlier today The Husband and The Boy drove my dad three hours south to a specialist appointment. The drive and visit went well. Part of me wouldn’t have minded the drive, just to get out of the house, but it was a long day and Little Miss probably wouldn’t have enjoyed the long ride. Instead, Little Miss and I went to visit my mom and have dinner with her.

After dinner, we played a round of Go Fish with Mom, talked with Dad a bit when he got home and then we headed home and enjoyed looking at our neighbor’s Christmas display. I called a woman in my online Bible group to check on her and we chatted for about 40 minutes. I don’t know her that well so when she suggested I call her I was a little nervous. I’m glad I did, though. She’s a fun woman who is going through a lot right now. She lost her mother a month ago, she has a serious health condition that is now affecting her heart, and her family has rejected her in a lot of ways. If you think of it, please say a prayer for her. If you need a name, just say Lisa’s friend “A from Texas” when praying. God will know who you’re praying for.

As I mentioned Sunday, I am working on a short story for the blog for around Christmas. It will feature the Tanners and Alex Stone and is probably going to be a little boring or silly, but even boring and silly can be a nice distraction when the world seems so heavy.

I’ve barely looked at the news lately as it all seems like some kind of weird farce. Nothing seems real, the news reports on half-truths, and politicians have absolutely lost their minds. They seem to be playing a game where they all pretend to battle each other, without admitting that they are all scam artists.

Instead of watching the news or listening to politicians, I have been trying to read, write, or watch light movies. I’ll ramble more about those things on Sunday in my weekly Sunday Bookends post.

I’m not doing very well with my morning devotionals. I have been trying to do one through You Version, which is a Bible app on my phone. The problem is that when I open it up, I get overwhelmed by everything they are shoving at me, and I don’t know where to look first. They offer a daily verse and a ton of devotional plans. I did choose one this week by Christine Caine, who I really like, but I really think that sometimes having tons of choices isn’t a good thing.

You ever log into a streaming service and just stare at all the offerings and think, “There’s too much! There’s too much! My brain is melting!”?

No? Just me?

I do the same thing when I walk into a bookstore, which happens maybe twice a year.

I want to buy a book but sometimes I am just too overwhelmed by the wall-to-wall bookshelves.

Growing up we had four TV channels and I hated it. I wanted more choices. Now I have them and I want less choices. I’m never happy.

I’m also someone who likes things to be way more simple than they are.

This week Little Miss wanted me to make a Christmas list for her and her dad. I did but I had to be honest, I’m pretty simple. Buy me a book, a blank journal that cost $5 or even less, and a pen and I’m pretty happy. I really don’t want a lot of gifts for Christmas. It’s nice, but I’m just as happy with a couple of gifts versus a ton.

It isn’t that I’m a perfect person who doesn’t crave material things. Of course, I do, but I’m also happy with simple things. You know, after I mourn not being able to afford the less simple things. *wink*

This weekend I am taking Little Miss to gymnastics and then we don’t much else on the schedule, thankfully. Next week I might be going with my dad to another doctor’s appointment, but this one will be much closer, and then Little Miss has a dentist appointment on Thursday about 45 minutes away.

I am looking forward to not having to leave the house too much since it appears the cold temperatures are here to stay.

So, how are you doing? Need a warm-up?

Since you’re not actually with me, I guess you’ll have to do the warming up and you can let me know how you are doing in the comment section below.

‘Tis The Season Cinema: The Muppets Christmas Carol

This week for the ‘Tis The Season Cinema Erin and I watched The Muppets Christmas Carol. I watched it with my kids.

I thought I’d give you a blow-by-blow of our watching experience for something different this week.

After we open with the film being dedicated to Muppets creator Jim Henson, who had died in 1990, two years before the movie was made, we move forward into the movie.

We open up with Gonzo telling us he’s going to tell us the story because he knows it “like the back of his hand.” He also says his name is Charles Dickens.

He gets the story a little bit messed up as he starts out by saying the Marleys are dead.

(illustration by Brianna Ashby)

And then he introduces Scrooge.

Oh, a song. I forgot this was a musical. Okay. I’m ready for that.

This starts a debate between The Boy and I about how many of these A Christmas Carol renditions are musicals featuring songs about how mean and miserly Scrooge is. I said there aren’t many and he says there are a ton, like every remake that has been released lately. I still disagree.

Seeing Michael Cain  as Scrooge makes me think of this hilarious story he told on The Graham Norton Show one time about how he was at a Hollywood party and Katherine Hepburn asked him why everyone kept calling him “my cocaine.”

The Boy must have thought of it too because we call out “My Cocaine!” at the same time when we see him.

Wow, he was young in this movie. Well, he would be since it was made in 1992.

That poor little rat was just used to clean a window.

Oh Kermit. There he is. Sigh. I love Kermit.

Dude. Michael Cain is bald in this movie. Is that a hair piece? Or is it a hair piece when he wears in other movies?

Kermit is so cute in his little suit.

The Boy and I read A Christmas Carol two years ago and actually enjoyed it.

Who is playing the nephew? Hmmm…some British actor I’ve never heard of – Steven McIntosh. I’m not going to look up what he’s been in before. I’m not going to do it. Not this time. No.

Okay. According to Wikipedia:  “He is perhaps best known for his role as Andreas Tanis in the action horror films Underworld: Evolution and Underworld: Rise of the Lycans.” Never heard of it. That was a waste of a search.

Beeker!!

More singing. Now it is Kermit’s turn. Also, those rats are really clean for … well, rats.

I always think it is interesting they mix humans in with animals. I don’t know why I find that interesting. My life is just a little sad, I guess.

This movie must have cost quite a bit to make.

Google says $12 million and that it made 27.2 million. Now you know.

Ha. Jacob Marley is one of the old men that usually complain during the show.

In case you were curious, this is what Michael Caine told GQ Magazine about being in the movie: “To start, my daughter, who is the mother of my grandchildren, was then seven, and she had never seen me in a movie. I had never made a movie that a 7-year-old can see. And so a man mentioned the Muppets and I said, “That’s it! I’ll do that!” And it’s A Christmas Carol, it’s a fabulous tale! You’ll be old Scrooge, it’ll be marvelous! And it was absolutely perfect at that time for what I wanted. I could make it, and my daughter could see it. That’s why I did it. And it was lovely.”

Scrooge just beat his dressing gown. That dude is a bit on edge, I’d say.

I have to be honest, I haven’t seen this one in years and forgot it was a little darker than other Muppets movies. I was hoping for a little more goofiness in it, but yet it’s so well done I can’t help liking it.

The angles of the camera are very nice indeed. Scrooge should be eating more than bread, though. He’s an old man and needs more nutrients in his diet.

Oh good. The old guys. A bit more silliness now and now I know why Gonzo said the Marleys were dead. Because there were two.

This first ghost? Yikes.

Imma gonna have nightmares tonight.

Seriously. What is that? It is bad 90s special effects is what it is. She’s sort of like a digital cabbage patch doll. Shudder.

Ah. Now we are getting to the Muppet goodness. We are singing and dancing and just being downright silly at the dance where Scrooge meets Belle.

 “Oh please, do not show me that Christmas,” Scrooge says.

Yes, because you were a JERK during that Christmas, Scrooge! It’s why you are totally alone now.

We’ve gone through a couple more songs and another ghost and now here is Miss Piggy.

Aw and Kermit and his nephew playing Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim.

The Husband walks in and brings up an awkward point: “He’s a frog. She’s a pig. How did they have children?”

We tell him we don’t want to think about it and to go back to working on his stories for the paper and be quiet.

Now the nephew and Kermit are singing a sweet song and I ask The Husband what the nephew’s name is.

“That’s a great question. They introduced him in –”

I tune TV Trivia Man out by Googling and finding out his name is Robin.

Little Miss looks up and sees Miss Piggy and says, “That hair doesn’t work for her.”

Now The Boy and The Husband are arguing about what happens to the ghost of Christmas Present at the end of the night. The Boy says he dies because it is the end of the day and the end of the present. He pointed out that his hair gets grayer each time we see him, which means he dies at the end. He’s a ghost, though, so I don’t think he can die.

The Husband says he lives on because he is in the present and the present is always there.

Who knows. I’ll let them have that debate. I have a movie and blog post to finish.

Oh dear, poor Miss Piggy. She’s crying. Tiny Tim has died.

Now Michael Caine is crying with her. Now I want to cry.

Little Miss is finding the movie a little scary so now she’s watching The Muppets Now show on her phone.

The Spirit of The Future is…um…ominous.

Ah. We’ve reached the scene where Scrooge is joyously celebrating being alive and being able to celebrate Christmas. Now he’s giving money to all the creatures around, ordering a turkey, etc. This is my favorite part.

Now Michael Caine is singing and The Boy says, “Who knew My Cocaine could sing.”

He’s doing a pretty good job. Not really. I’m just trying to be nice.

Singing is not really his thing. He reminds me of Rex Harrison in – well, anything he tries to sing in. He sort of sing-talks, but it works.

This was such a nice cozy movie to watch together and now that our Christmas tree is up it is making Christmas movies even nicer and relaxing to watch together.

Overall we agreed that it was a nice movie.

Except for The Boy who said, “Yeah. It was alright.” But then he added. “I enjoyed that.”

To see what Erin thought of the movie hop on over to her blog. If you joined in with us, leave a link to your blog post in the comments so we can link to yours as well.

Up next in our feature is Holiday Inn. We post our impressions on Thursdays.

After that we are posting our impressions of the following movies:                                                                           

Dec. 15: It’s A Wonderful Life

Dec. 22: Charlie Brown Christmas and Emmett Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas

Remembering Miracles Can Happen

This is a bit of a follow-up to the Faithfully Thinking post I shared on Friday. I shared these couple of paragraphs on my Instagram account last week. I wrote a little more about this incident here on the blog last year.

Last year I was in a hospital room with a woman I didn’t think was going to make it through the night. Her oxygen kept dropping but despite what we were seeing in the news, every effort was being made to keep patients off ventilators. Her supplemental oxygen was increased but the numbers still kept dropping into the high 60s, low 70s and sometimes in the mid-80s. I knew all these numbers were bad. She and I had been able to talk some in between her throwing up and falling into deep sleep from the effects of the illness. A few times she even apologized to me for falling asleep, which was of course silly. The poor woman was fighting off a nasty illness and trying to breathe.

One night the nurses begged the woman to use a BiPAP. She tried but her breathing became even worse. The nurses left the room discouraged but not yet ready to rush her to ICU. Instead, they increased the supplemental oxygen to high flow and hoped it would work. They monitored her stats from the nurses’ station.

I stood and walked to her side of the room. Laying my hand on her shoulder I began to do something I very rarely do – pray out loud for her lungs and for her oxygen to come back up.

I didn’t know what to expect. Maybe it would just be comforting to my roommate if nothing else. In minutes, though, the numbers rose dramatically until her oxygen was at 98. I was floored and delighted. I broke down and went back to my bed to try to rest.

I left her there a couple days later, still worried I would later find out she died. When I called and asked to talk to her a week or so later, I was shocked to hear her voice, free of the oxygen mask, talking clearly and happy that she was going to be released the next day. Her lung did collapse after I left and before she was discharged and she still has COPD, which she had before, but I texted her to wish her a Happy Thanksgiving yesterday. She texted back. Like me, she’s grateful to have spent her Thanksgiving at home. I am planning to stop in for a visit to her sometime in the next month so we can remember that miracles do happen.

Sunday Bookends: Pretty Christmas lights, making pies, and a lot of Christmas movies and 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’s Been Occurring

Last week we had a wonderful Thanksgiving and I was so glad to be there with my family after spending last year’s in a hospital room, alone, with a burly nurse who was really nice but not who I wanted to spend Thanksgiving with. The ambulance drivers and ER nurses and doctors were nice too, but again…not family. 

This year we had a small gathering at my parents and it was the best thing ever – for me at least. I couldn’t stop feeling giddy inside because I was simply there. Little things that usually annoy me – okay, fine. Some of those things still annoyed me but they annoyed me less because I was alive to be with my family! Whoot!

Earlier in the week we went over to help my mom make an apple pie for The Husband’s birthday (he’d rather have my mom’s apple pie than cake any day – the same as our son) and Thanksgiving. We made two apple pies and figured we’d have the second one for Thanksgiving and skip the pumpkin pie since there was only six of us. My husband is given one whole  pie for himself.

Dad decided we needed a pumpkin pie though and made one Thanksgiving morning.

On The Husband’s birthday we visited a local Festival of Lights, per his request. This is a light display set up at a golf course about a 35 minute drive from our house. We had visited it in 2020, missed it last year because we were sick and then recovering so this year The Husband said that’s what he wanted to do for his birthday.

The display is massive with trees wrapped in lights and various displays set up on the grounds. You drive through it slowly and take it all in. I wish it could be done twice but, alas, they charge $30 for one drive through. This year it was completely worth it as they had added even more to the display than when we visited in 2020.

I invited our neighbor and her granddaughters (friends of Little Miss) to come with us and it made the night even more rich and fun. The giggles and squeals of the little girls in the back was a little overwhelming at times but also wonderful to hear.

We encountered a dead deer in the road in the other lane on the way to the display. On the way back our neighbor, who is in her late 70s and gets up very early in the morning, dozed off as she said she probably would. She was maybe out for ten minutes but we thought she was still out when suddenly she said, “Don’t forget that dead deer up here!”

We all about wet ourselves because we thought she was asleep. Luckily, someone had already moved the dead deer out of the roadway because it was a large deer and missing it would have been hard to do.

Friday was a lounge-around-the-house day for the kids since they I had given them the rest of the week off school. Little Miss had a friend over. They decorated our tree for us, which we didn’t expect to happen but it was nice to have that job done for us.

Saturday The Husband and The Boy went to see Wakanda Forever (Black Panther 2) and Little Miss played with her friend again.

What I/we’ve been Reading

I haven’t been reading as much as I want to be so I am still – yes, still – on the same books I’ve been on for a month now.

I hope to finish Love and A Little White Lie by Tammy L. Gray this week so I can continue on some Christmas books, including Shepherd’s Abiding, which I am reading off and on.

I am taking a break from The Father Brown collection for now.

I’d like to read or finish the following books for December:

Shepherd’s Abiding by Jan Karon

By Broken Birch Bay by Jenny Knipfer

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Christmas in Absaroka County by Craig Johnson

And

America’s Favorite Christmastown by Dawn Klinge

Knowing what a slow reader I am, I doubt this list will be accomplished, but we shall see.

What We watched/are Watching

Last week I watched another Signed, Sealed, Delivered movie, White Christmas, Brokenwood Mysteries, a show called Still Standing, the movie Enchanted, and started the follow up movie to A Christmas Story on HBO Max.

What I’m Writing

I am working on a short story that I hope to share on the blog before Christmas. It will feature Alex and Molly, Robert and Anne especially, but also some of the other characters from Spencer Valley. That’s all I can tell you.

I’ve also started another book and would love to finish it in time for a spring release.

This week on the blog I shared:

‘Tis The Season Cinema: White ChristmasFaithfully Thinking: When All You Have Is God

What I’m Listening To

 I’m not actually listening to a lot right now. Anyone have any suggestions?

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: Pretty Christmas lights,

Sunday Bookends November 27

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’s Been Occurring

Last week we had a wonderful Thanksgiving and I was so glad to be there with my family after spending last year’s in a hospital room, alone, with a burly nurse who was really nice but not who I wanted to spend Thanksgiving with. The ambulance drivers and ER nurses and doctors were nice too, but again…not family. 

This year we had a small gathering at my parents and it was the best thing ever – for me at least. I couldn’t stop feeling giddy inside because I was simply there. Little things that usually annoy me – okay, fine. Some of those things still annoyed me but they annoyed me less because I was alive to be with my family! Whoot!

Earlier in the week we went over to help my mom make an apple pie for The Husband’s birthday (he’d rather have my mom’s apple pie than cake any day – the same as our son) and Thanksgiving. We made two apple pies and figured we’d have the second one for Thanksgiving and skip the pumpkin pie since there was only six of us. My husband is given one whole  pie for himself.

Dad decided we needed a pumpkin pie though and made one Thanksgiving morning.

On The Husband’s birthday we visited a local Festival of Lights, per his request. This is a light display set up at a golf course about a 35 minute drive from our house. We had visited it in 2020, missed it last year because we were sick and then recovering so this year The Husband said that’s what he wanted to do for his birthday.

The display is massive with trees wrapped in lights and various displays set up on the grounds. You drive through it slowly and take it all in. I wish it could be done twice but, alas, they charge $30 for one drive through. This year it was completely worth it as they had added even more to the display than when we visited in 2020.

I invited our neighbor and her granddaughters (friends of Little Miss) to come with us and it made the night even more rich and fun. The giggles and squeals of the little girls in the back was a little overwhelming at times but also wonderful to hear.

We encountered a dead deer in the road in the other lane on the way to the display. On the way back our neighbor, who is in her late 70s and gets up very early in the morning, dozed off as she said she probably would. She was maybe out for ten minutes but we thought she was still out when suddenly she said, “Don’t forget that dead deer up here!”

We all about wet ourselves because we thought she was asleep. Luckily, someone had already moved the dead deer out of the roadway because it was a large deer and missing it would have been hard to do.

Friday was a lounge-around-the-house day for the kids since they I had given them the rest of the week off school. Little Miss had a friend over. They decorated our tree for us, which we didn’t expect to happen but it was nice to have that job done for us.

Saturday The Husband and The Boy went to see Wakanda Forever (Black Panther 2) and Little Miss played with her friend again.

What I/we’ve been Reading

I haven’t been reading as much as I want to be so I am still – yes, still – on the same books I’ve been on for a month now.

I hope to finish Love and A Little White Lie by Tammy L. Gray this week so I can continue on some Christmas books, including Shepherd’s Abiding, which I am reading off and on.

I am taking a break from The Father Brown collection for now.

I’d like to read or finish the following books for December:

Shepherd’s Abiding by Jan Karon

By Broken Birch Bay by Jenny Knipfer

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Christmas in Absaroka County by Craig Johnson

And

America’s Favorite Christmastown by Dawn Klinge

Knowing what a slow reader I am, I doubt this list will be accomplished, but we shall see.

What We watched/are Watching

Last week I watched another Signed, Sealed, Delivered movie, White Christmas, Brokenwood Mysteries, a show called Still Standing, the movie Enchanted, and started the follow up movie to A Christmas Story on HBO Max.

What I’m Writing

I am working on a short story that I hope to share on the blog before Christmas. It will feature Alex and Molly, Robert and Anne especially, but also some of the other characters from Spencer Valley. That’s all I can tell you.

I’ve also started another book and would love to finish it in time for a spring release.

This week on the blog I shared:

‘Tis The Season Cinema: White ChristmasFaithfully Thinking: When All You Have Is God

What I’m Listening To

 I’m not actually listening to a lot right now. Anyone have any suggestions?

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.

‘Tis The Season Cinema: White Christmas

This week for the ‘Tis The Season Cinema Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I watched White Christmas. We pushed off our blog posts for it until today since we were both busy with family events for Thanksgiving, though Erin had a lot more going on than I did.

If this is your first time here, Erin and I have been watching Christmas movies since the beginning of November to get into the holiday spirit.

If you haven’t watched the movie White Christmas here is a little background without giving away the story:

The movie begins in December of 1944, during World War II, with Danny Kaye and Bing Crosby entertaining fellow soldiers at war.

The movie moves forward after that to Kaye and Crosby becoming an entertainment powerhouse duo who tour for years, have a fight, realize they’ve been working too hard and too long, and then later meet a couple of lovely ladies who are also singers/entertainers. To make a long story short, the four of them travel to Vermont to have a white Christmas and while there learn that the owner of the inn they are staying at is their old commander from the war. They then learn that the inn isn’t doing well financially and work to bring the inn back for their commander by holding their show at the inn.

While this movie is a Christmas movie, it isn’t all Christmas all the time and there is an actual plot instead of just one Christmas song to the next.

For those who don’t know, White Christmas was originally written by Irving Berlin for the 1942 movie Holiday Inn (which is on our list to watch in December). Holiday Inn also starred Bing Crosby. The song was first publicly performed by Crosby after the movie and later recorded by him, though he wasn’t that bowled over by the song to begin with (and probably hated it by the end of his life when he had to keep singing it).

(Off the subject a bit but I often get Holiday Inn and White Christmas mixed up in my head since there are two male leads in both movies and Crosby is in both movies.)

Wikipedia writes this about when the song was written: “Accounts vary as to when and where Berlin wrote the song.  One story is that he wrote it in 1940, in warm La Quinta, California while staying at the La Quinta Hotel, a frequent Hollywood retreat also favored by writer-director-producer Frank Capra, although the Arizona Biltmore also claims the song was written there. He often stayed up all night writing. One day he told his secretary, “I want you to take down a song I wrote over the weekend. Not only is it the best song I ever wrote, it’s the best song anybody ever wrote.”

I don’t know that I agree the song is the best ever written, but it is one of the most popular Christmas songs ever, and also very sweet.

As for the movie, which was released in 1954 we kick right off with the song about seven minutes into the movie, setting the tone for a sentimental and sweet ride, with a little bitter mixed in as you are forced to think about our soldiers and how they had to fight or be stationed overseas during Christmas and other holidays. As always, the singing of the song, while American soldiers look heartbroken in the audience, made me tear up again this year.

According to that same Wikipedia article (yes, I was lazy and looked things up on Wikipedia which isn’t always the most accurate site), Bing Crosby once told his nephew that the hardest thing he ever did was perform White Christmas in December of 1944 in a USO show with Bob Hope and the Andrew Sisters in front of 100,000 GIs without breaking down. Many of those men were killed two days later in the Battle of the Bulge.

There are many happy moments in the movie, though, even if some of the background is a bit tear-inducing. I would definitely call this one a feel-good movie, but not so feel-good there isn’t some depth in it. It’s, of course, a musical with plenty of impromptu songs and dance routines, especially as they rehearse for the big show to be held at the inn.

Kaye and lead actress Vera-Ellen were well-known dancers and actors at the time. They sizzle up the screen with their moves. Vera-Ellen always fascinated me because she looks like a real life Barbie doll. The cynical side of me wonders if she ate properly but I’m guessing her thin stature was from all the dancing.

I read in an article on Good Housekeeping that interestingly, Rosemary Clooney played Vera-Ellen’s older sister, but Vera-Ellen was actually seven years older at the age of 33. Bing played Rosemary’s love interest and was actually 25 years older than her, which is a bit creepy when you think about it. Rosemary did look a lot older than 26, though.

Another piece of trivia from that article was that one of the most famous scenes, when Crosby and Kaye dress up as Rosemary and Vera-Ellen, was actually not in the script. Crosby and Kaye were goofing off and it was written into the script because the director thought it was hilarious. Crosby and Kaye also thought the scene was hilarious because they kept laughing throughout.  

White Christmas is not only sung at the beginning of the movie but also in a large routine at the end, which produced the classic image of the singers in their white suits with the red trim (Santa suits in other words).

I would say this movie is the number one reason that people all over the world think they have to have snow on Christmas. It was hard for me to accept as a kid when we traveled to North Carolina and didn’t end up with snow for Christmas day, except for one year when they had a freak snowstorm.

Luckily, living in the North, we have White Christmases more often than not. Of course, it is nowhere near as romantic as the crooners make it sound when they are singing along about it on the train on their way to Vermont. When we are shoveling out our driveways we don’t sing, “Snow! Snow! Snow!” in perfect harmony. We more often mumble the words and follow them with some other choice words while flinging our shovels back in the garage.

I made a cup of cocoa to sip while I watched the movie, which I watched alone this year since we’ve seen it as a family several times and I was sure the family would want a break from it this year.

I might make my husband suffer through It’s A Wonderful Life again when we watch that one, which is a movie I like, but he doesn’t. Too bad for him. Ha.

To read Erin’s thoughts about the movie, see her post on her blog.

Up next for our ‘Tis The Season Cinema is Muppets Christmas Carol, if you’d like to join and blog with us about it.

The finishing list for the feature is:

Dec. 8: Holiday Inn                                                                           

Dec. 15: It’s A Wonderful Life

Dec. 22: Charlie Brown Christmas and Emmett Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas

Faithfully Thinking: When All You Have Is God

It’s hard to write about something you don’t want to write about.

Over and over I heard this in my head when I start to write: “No one cares, Lisa. No one cares.”

And maybe no one does care about the time last year when I was in the hospital with Covid and I felt closer to God than I ever had before or since, but I’m going to write about it anyhow.

For the last couple of weeks, I have been thinking a lot about how there was a time I thought I wouldn’t be here to enjoy the smallest joys in life.

I’ve been finding myself stopping in the middle of a frustrating moment with my child or pet or husband and taking a deep breath and letting it out again, my shoulders relaxing as I remember how lucky I am to be here with them, enjoying life.

When you think you might never come home again, you find yourself noticing the simplest things and smiling. You stop on your way in to the house after Thanksgiving dinner with your parents and look in the kitchen window and watch your daughter and your cat and your husband and smile.

You tip your head back and you look up at the sky and just sit for a few minutes in the silence, grateful for your feet on the ground and the breeze on your cheek, even if it is a cold winter breeze.

I’ve been interrupted, distracted, and thwarted every time I’ve tried to write this post.

I’ve typed, deleted, typed and deleted again.

I’ve reworded, taken it apart and put it back together again and then I deleted it all again.

Apparently, this post is something someone doesn’t want me to write, which is why I’m going to write it anyhow.

When I’m done, I won’t like how I wrote it and I’ll want to rewrite it again, or maybe even delete it, but I’m not going to. I’m writing this while the chaos of my house is going on around me and it may not make sense, but I’m writing it, posting it and hoping it encourages someone, shows them that God is with us in the small and big moments, even when we feel like he’s not.

On this day last year I was admitted to the hospital with Covid after my oxygen dropped. I didn’t feel like my oxygen was low while I had Covid. I was tired and weak, but I could take deep breaths. While I had Covid I read about oxygen dropping and some people not noticing it because of something called silent hypoxia.

 I had been reading too much about all the bad that can happen, quite frankly, partly because I’d had a fever for eight days and couldn’t get it to go away and partly because I was worried about the rest of my family.

My pulse ox was lower than it should be on the morning of Thanksgiving, but not super low. Just not coming up past 95, which I had read could mean that things might be getting bad. An ambulance ride and a visit to the ER confirmed my oxygen was even lower than what my home pulse ox was saying. I was hooked up to oxygen and transferred to a hospital 45 minutes north. I was relieved when I was transferred to that hospital because originally they had thought they might need to transfer me three hours south.

I knew if I was 45 minutes north my family would be able to visit me. Three hours? Yeah, that would have been a lot harder.

In the ER I was started on an anti-viral that would keep me in the hospital for five days. I didn’t want to do it or stay in the hospital, especially when it looked like my oxygen was responding well to a very small amount of supplemental oxygen.

Oddly, a sense of peace settled over me as if I knew God was going to be with me. I won’t say I was totally calm the entire time. I did wonder if I was going to die, but the nurses were very reassuring and my stats were doing well.

I started out my stay in the hospital in a private room but was later moved to a room with a roommate when they needed the room for a male patient.

I detailed a lot of this last year in a post I shared shortly after I was released from the hospital, but during my stay I found myself listening to worship music and praying not only for myself but for the woman next to me who was in much worse shape. There was more than once I thought the woman wouldn’t make it. At one point I stood and walked to her bed, laid my hand on her shoulder and prayed for her while she fitfully slept, fever and exhaustion overwhelming her.

The nurses and respiratory therapists had been trying to encourage her to use a cpap and had also been increasing her oxygen while decreasing mine.

When I laid my hand on her and prayed, the numbers on the monitor began to rise. Her oxygen level had been in the 60s at one point ,then the 80s and as I prayed it rose to 98 and the woman was able to rest some.

The night I was preparing to leave I was being given my last dose of antiviral when my blood pressure rose. The nurse in charge didn’t want to let me go home, which was a devastating thought to me. I knew that I needed to be home with my family to heal. I began to panic, which, of course, wasn’t helping my blood pressure.

I silently asked God why he was doing this to me. Why was he having this happen when my blood pressure had been doing so well while I was in the hospital?

My roommate was sitting on the edge of her bed behind the curtain, breathing hard, waiting for a nurse to come and help her to use the portable toilet next to her bed.

I felt like I needed to pray for her, tall her how she could talk to Jesus any time she needed to. I felt weird even thinking about it. I am not a bold Christian. I am not someone who walks up to someone and asks them if they know God. I had already prayed with the woman a couple of times and she had told me she appreciated it. This time I prayed over her and told her how she could talk to Jesus and ask him into her life while we waited to see if my blood pressure would come down.

It didn’t come down but the nurse finally agreed to let me go home if I would monitor it at home, call my primary care doctor the following day and return if it continued to rise. I agreed to all of this and was sent home.

Relying on Jesus to be with me when no one else could was what got me through those five days and it was what got me through the next two months while I recovered.

This Thanksgiving I couldn’t stop a giddy feeling bubbling up inside me as I remembered where I was last year. Before dinner I hugged my son several times, telling him how happy I was to be here with him, with the whole family.

I wished I could explain to them what it feels like to be handed your life back when you think you’re going to lose it. I wish I could explain it better even now. I wish I could convey to anyone who reads this what it is like to be dragged to the bottom of an ocean and just when you think you can’t hold on another moment you’re dragged up to the surface, bursting from the water, taking a deep breath and feeling the sun warm against your skin again.

I wish I could capture in a bottle that feeling of thinking you’re life will never be the same and then realizing that it never being the same isn’t actually a bad thing because it’s going to be even better now that you have been shown what it means to live again.

For the last year I have had many moments of fear. I have had many moments of questioning if I will catch Covid again and if my lungs were damaged or if my oxygen will drop again. I have questioned what is wrong with my health or what my future will mean. Each time the fear hits me, though, I try my best to remember the peace I felt those five days in the hospital. I remember a voice I’ve heard more than once saying, “I saved you then, I’ll do it again.

 I can’t stop the feeling that I’ve been given a gift, that God yanked me from my comfort on Thanksgiving Day of 2021, tossed me into one my biggest nightmares, held me close while there, then ushered me home and whispered, “Never forget how I was there for you in the hospital. It’s exactly how I am there for you now.”

Thanksgiving Day is to remember what we are thankful for. How fitting that God gave me an experience that will never let a Thanksgiving go by without me remembering one of the biggest reasons I have to be thankful.

Sunday Bookends: Snow returns, Charles Bronson movies and fathers in my reading

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

I have started my annual reading for Shepherd’s Abiding by Jan Karon. I love this sweet story about Father Timothy Kavanaugh who finds a nativity set that he wants to repaint and fix up for his beloved wife Cynthia. Sigh. It’s just such a sweet story.

(If you haven’t read Mitford before, Father Tim is Episcopalian so he is allowed to marry. *wink*)

I am also continuing with the Father Brown Collection by G.K. Chesteron, which is a collection of short stories. I’m a mood reader so I read a story and then switch to a different book for a bit.

I’ve also started Love and A Little White Lie by Tammy L. Gray and am enjoying it so far. It’s about a woman who has taken a job at a church but doesn’t feel she belongs there. It is the first book in a three book series.

At night I have been reading Paddington Races Ahead with Little Miss.

I am also reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain off and on during the week with The Boy, who is reading it for school.

The Husband is reading…. Oops. I forgot to ask before I scheduled this and he’s alread

What’s Been Occurring

I rambled about what has been occurring on a post from Friday and not much more has happened since then. In that post, I shared that we had our first official snowfall earlier in the week, only a couple of days after it was in the low 70s. Last night we had more snow, but only about an inch and a half.

This week we are looking forward to celebrating The Husband’s birthday by attending a festival of lights display about 45 minutes from us and then a quiet Thanksgiving with my parents. We are also looking to five days off from school since the kids seemed to be burned out on lessons. Yes, already burned out. This early in the school year.  

What We watched/are Watching

The Husband and I watched two Charles Bronson films this week: Mr. Majestyk and Red Sun. They were both very good. Red Sun featured a bit of female nudity that we weren’t expecting and Mr. Majestyk featured swearing that was tame compared to the movies of today but still swearing. That’s just a disclaimer for anyone who is sensitive to those aspects of movies.

I also watched two Hallmark Christmas movies. Sign, Sealed, Delivered for Christmas made me cry and Trading Christmas made me smile. I own Trading Christmas because it is just a light movie I enjoy watching. Both are on Amazon.

I also watched The Christmas Carol Goes Wrong for the ‘Tis The Season Cinema feature with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.

This week Erin and I will be watching White Christmas and posting our impression of it on Saturday. Please feel free to join us and post your impressions as well.

What I’m Writing

I’ve started writing a new book while I am editing Shores of Mercy, but I am not ready to share it yet and not sure I will share it on the blog or not this time. It’s going to be different than my previous books, in some ways, and it is not part of The Spencer Valley Chronicles, or any series. I can tell you that the main character is male, over the age of 50, and it will be one point of view, third person. I’ll keep all of you updated.

This week on the blog I shared:

A Chat and a Cup of Tea or Something Warm

‘Tis The Season Cinema: A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong

Special Fiction … Wednesday? Mercy’s Shore Final Chapters

Educationally Speaking: Fall Homeschool Update

What I’m Listening To

While I am watching Christmas movies early, I haven’t yet started Christmas music and won’t do that until December, most likely. When I do it will be the Michaels – Smith and Buble.

I found a Youtube video of worship music being played on a guitar that I’ve been listening to while I write.

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.

A Chat and a Cup of Tea or Something Warm

Welcome to another chat and a cup of tea blog post. What can I pour you? A cup of coffee? Tea? Cocoa?

I’m having tea with honey today. Well, a little bit of honey because I am actually almost out of honey, but at least the tea is warm.

I thought I would share this post today because I finished up the serial story I usually share for Fiction Friday.

(Full Disclosure: Again, I will mention I fully stole this blog post idea from Erin at Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I am not ashamed to admit it.)

Would you like a snack with your beverage?

How about cookies? Oh. I don’t have any in the house.

I have crackers. That’s about it right now, but I’ll be sure to have cookies or better snacks next time.

Do you have snacks with your tea?

I don’t normally myself.

So last night I watched Signed, Sealed, Delivered For Christmas and sobbed through half of it. I guess it’s what I needed this week to remember all I have and all I could have lost last year. I watched it on my laptop while my daughter watched something else on the main TV and the boys did their own things. A couple of times The Boy and The Husband walked by and looked at me curiously. The Boy actually stopped and hugged me and then showed me a funny meme because he figured I needed cheering up. I wasn’t depressed, though, just touched by the movie.

I watched it on Peacock, but I believe you can also watch it on Amazon through their Hallmark channel.

 I felt like I needed happy things yesterday after becoming very down about the state of our word, and the sort of odd night I had Wednesday.

The odd night turned out okay, but it was a little draining, so I welcomed the mental break Thursday evening.

Now the story behind the odd night because I know you want to know (ha).

I take my daughter to Awana on Wednesday nights. We were running late because I dropped off food for my parents and four quarters for The Husband (who was at a meeting) to pump up his tire that was soft. I took Little Miss into the church and shut off the van and it started making weird noises – like an animal was running inside and thumping around. I turned it off and on a few times, and kept hearing it but couldn’t figure it out.

I decided it must be an animal inside the engine and pulled out my laptop to do some editing. That’s when my phone dinged and I looked down to see a message from The Husband telling me he’d blown a tire on the way home and was at my parents.

I joked with him to not breathe while there because my dad had had a cold. I immediately forgot I told him that because my mind was on the weird sounds in the car and how we were going to pay for the tire. So then I was thrown into a complete panic when I got this text from him:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

 “Lisa, I can’t not breathe” but I was so distracted I read “Lisa, I can’t breathe.”

He had some chest discomfort last week from reflux and for a few seconds I really started thinking he couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t call him because there is no service at the church, only WiFi. I told him to call an ambulance, but he wrote back, “Lisa, I’m at your parents. I’m fine.”

All I could think is that he wasn’t fine because he just told me he couldn’t breathe.

I’m freaking out at this point – thinking I am going to be a widow, but also trying to figure out how he’s texting so well if he can’t breathe.

After I urge him to call an ambulance again, he texts back “Lisa! Read what I wrote again.”
I scroll back and read: “Lisa, I can’t NOT breathe. I’m at your parents. I’m fine.”

I started laughing and crying because at that point because I was so relieved and felt so stupid at the same time. I was also wondering if I breathed in some fumes or something that made me that even more airheaded than normal.

I was still worried about the van so I moved it to an area of the parking lot where there was more light. I then went into the church and collected Little Miss a little early so we can go pick up The Husband at my parents.

I came back out and the van wouldn’t start. No kidding, In the past I would have probably started crying but I guess the small amount of CBD oil I have started taking each day had kicked in because I felt like laughing instead. Here we were with both of our cars out of commission in one night. It was a bit surreal and odd and sort of like a sitcom.

Long story short, a guy at the church looked under the hood and said he thought it might be the fuel pump.

In the end the van was actually out of coolant, but I was able to start it at the church and make it to my dad’s where he filled it up and sent us on our way.

The Husband will get a new tire today and hopefully we will have a break from car problems for a while.

The day before the weird car stuff, I received a package from Bettie G., a lovely lady and writer I met here in the blog world. She’s retired from blogging, but still has wonderful posts on the blog, which she has kept up. She’s also written a wonderful devotional type book called Abiding In Him: A Life Together in Ministry, which is the story of her and her husband devoting their lives various Christian ministries.

You can learn more about the book HERE and purchase copies HERE.

It will be something I can read this weekend while we stay inside, away from the cold weather. We aren’t getting the snow that cities north of us our getting, thankfully. We aren’t supposed to get any snow again until next week and I am fine with that.

We literally went from temperatures in the low 70s to temps in the 20s and 30s within two days. Blah!

A couple of inches of snow fell earlier in the week and in the first thirty seconds of stepping into it, Little Miss picked up some snow, packed it into a snowball and hit me in the face with it.

Yeah. I’m so excited for four more months of this.

The cats, who normally spend most of their time outside, have been only going out for short jaunts and then running inside, taking turns laying on my chest. They both have horrible timing and try to snuggle when I need to be doing something, like finishing dinner. This morning, the youngest came into the bedroom and fell asleep on my legs for two hours.    

The whole time I kept thinking, “I should move,” but then I would think, “But she doesn’t get to cuddle with me often and this is sort of nice.” In the end I just laid there while I pulled some old blog posts together that I plan to edit and share again later, posted and commented on Instagram, finished a chapter of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and complained to my husband via text that I couldn’t feel my legs anymore.

It has taken me forever to finish this blog post because I have been interrupted by various children, pets, and thoughts (plus I had to warm my tea a couple of times), but that’s how life goes, isn’t it? We often seem to get interrupted.

I had to order heating oil this morning – that was another distraction, sadly. It’s $4.89 a gallon right now and we needed to fill our tank so that should be a fun bill.

Despite the financial worries and worrying about various family issues, I am looking forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. We aren’t ready for Christmas yet, of course, but we are having fun getting ready to celebrate it by buying decorations and watching Christmas movies.

How about you? Are you getting into the Christmas spirit yet?

What has been going on in your world?