Month: August 2020

Sunday Post: The tree is gone

Weekly meme to talk about books & a little about our personal lives

Sunday-Post

Kimberly hosts the Sunday Post each week. I like to take part because it gives me an opportunity to look back at last week and forward to next week in both my personal life and my blog and book life! I also love to see what other people are doing and what books everyone is reading.

Personal life

It’s been very hot here in the Midwest and especially in Iowa where we’re also having a drought. It’s going to be cooler next week and maybe we’ll get lucky and get some rain.

Tree is gone
  • Before the tree was cut down. You can see the limbs my husband already cut
  • The tree company is removing limbs
  • Tree company guy up in the tree cutting limbs
  • The tree is gone 😦

My husband cut limbs as many limbs from our tree as he could during the last few weeks. This is the tree that split apart during our derecho storm a few weeks ago. I showed photos of it in last week’s Sunday Post. My husband was able to get a tree company to come in and cut the rest of the tree down.

Downsizing

We’ve been busy this week. We’re finally trying to use our extra time at home by sorting through some of our stuff–throwing things away and getting ready to get rid of things. I’m even going to get rid of many of my books since most everything I read these days is either an ebook or an audiobook. I will save a few of my favorites, but I can’t keep books that I’m not reading. The problem is that our library isn’t accepting book donations and places like Goodwill are closed. So I hope I can find some places where I can donate things or maybe even sell some things. We’ve meant to downsize more for a long time so I hope we’re successful!

Blog Life

I’m still trying to figure out some of the new parts of WordPress so that slowed down some of my blog post preparation.

Reading

This month I only read six books. Most of the other months this year I’ve read about ten. Even with a smaller number of books read I’m still way ahead in my Goodreads challenge.

Last week
Next week
  • September 2020 books on my list
  • Can’t Wait Wednesday
  • Sunday Post

My books

What I’m reading
  • The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison
What I read
  • The Bride Test by Helen Hoang
Books I got

What have you been doing? What are your plans for next week? Please stay safe.

Can't Wait Wednesday: Hanging Falls by Margaret Mizushima

Officer Mattie Cobb & her K-9 partner Robo along with the Colorado setting makes this one of my most anticipated books of the year

Can’t-Wait Wednesday is hosted by Tressa at Wishful Endings. This is a weekly meme to spotlight and discuss the books we’re excited about that we have yet to read. The books I choose aren’t released yet and usually won’t be published for at least two or three months. So I have a while to wait!

I love finding out about books set to publish in future months and I like to share my excitement about the books. I also like to find out about new books on other people’s blogs and hope they’ll sometimes find something to look forward to on my blog.

I’m excited to read . . .

Hanging Falls

by Margaret Mizushima

Series: Timber Creek K-9 Mystery #6

Published by Crooked Lane Press

Publication date: September 8

Genre: Mystery, Police Procedural

288 pages

Synopsis: A deluge has flooded the high ground near Hanging Falls–but heavy rains aren’t the only menace descending on Timber Creek. While on a scouting mission to pinpoint trail damage, officer Mattie Cobb and her K-9 partner Robo stumble upon a body floating at the edge of a lake. Robo catches human scent, which leads to an enigmatic forest-dweller who quickly becomes suspect number one.

With help from veterinarian Cole Walker, Mattie identifies the victim, and discovers an odd religious cult whose dress and manners harken back to the 19th century. As the list of suspects grows, an unexpected visit from members of Mattie’s long-lost family sheds new light on her childhood as they help Mattie piece together details of the fateful night when she was abducted at age two.

The tangled threads of the investigation and family dynamics begin to intertwine–but darkness threatens to claim a new victim before Mattie and Robo can track down the killers.

………………………….

I’ve read all the books in this series and really look forward to this one. Mattie and Robo are great characters.

Sunday Post: The derecho and a return to blogging

Weekly meme to talk about books plus a little about our personal lives

Sunday-Post

Kimberly hosts the Sunday Post each week. I like to take part because it gives me an opportunity to look back at last week and forward to next week in both my personal life and my blog and book life! I also love to see what other people are doing and what books everyone is reading.

Personal life

I started blogging again this month and am still trying to get into the rhythm.

The derecho
  • The split tree
  • Half of the tree still standing–brown leaves are from Japanese beetles
  • My husband cutting off limbs

I live in Iowa and a derecho (an intense widespread wind storm) blew through the state a couple weeks ago. Iowans are still trying to recover. Many trees were blown down since the winds topped 100 mph. One city in the state had winds of 140 mph. People have described it as a hurricane on land! And lots of farmland was damaged throughout the state. Plus western Iowa is in a drought right now.

Compared to so many other people throughout the state we are very lucky. We lost power for about 3 days, but some Iowans lost power for more than 10 days…ugh. We lost a huge linden tree in our back yard. We were lucky it didn’t hit our house. The tree split in half and my husband has been cutting up the branches so the City will take them from our curb. However, each morning most of the wood is gone since people are cruising the streets looking for firewood!

Blog Life

I’m trying to get back up to speed with my blog after a five month absence. It’s taking some time since WordPress made some updates to the Block Editor (Gutenberg). I was using Gutenberg before I stopped blogging, but have had a difficult time finding some of the menu items since I returned. I’ve had to do some searches to figure out how to do stuff!

Reading

I’ve done a lot of reading so far this year and am about 25 books ahead of my Goodreads goal. That’s a good feeling! However, I’ve started over 10 books this year only to decide I didn’t want to read them. A couple of books I read over 50% of the book and then decided to quit.

Last few weeks
Next week
  • Can’t Wait Wednesday
  • Sunday Post

My books

What I’m reading

I just finished a couple of books and have a DNF book so haven’t decided what to read next.

What I read recently
Books I got recently

What have you been doing? What are your plans for next week?

Sunday Post: A look back at February

Weekly meme to talk about books and a little about my personal life

Sunday-Post

Kimberly hosts the Sunday Post each week. I like to take part because it gives me an opportunity to look back at last week and forward to next week in both my personal life and my blog and book life! I also love to see what other people are doing and what books everyone is reading.

Note: I haven’t done a Sunday Post since last February. I found this Post which should have posted on March 1, but I think we were traveling or I didn’t have internet available. Anyway, I thought I would post the “Personal Life” section which talked about what I had done in February. I was struck by how different life is now.

Next week I hope to post a regular Sunday Post for what I’m doing and reading.

Personal life

What I did in February

My Ragdoll kitten turned six months old and will be a year old in September. Elf is a senior girl at over 10 years old.

I made cards for birthdays, thank you’s and Valentine’s Day. (I’ve made lots of cards to send during the pandemic.)

My daughters made a surprise visit to us over Valentine’s Day and it was wonderful to see them. (Now we wouldn’t surprise each other like that!)

Toward the end of February we went to Seattle to visit our son. Before we left for Seattle we knew there was a Covid 19 case in Seattle, but had no idea what would happen in the months to come. As you can see from the photos we did quite a few activities with lots of people around us. By the time we left Seattle, Covid 19 was in nursing homes there and I felt we should quarantine for two weeks when we returned to Iowa. Before the end of our two weeks the whole of Iowa and the rest of the U.S. were quarantining.

February photos

I’ll see you all next week and look forward to seeing what you’ve been doing.

My pandemic life so far

In the United States months into the pandemic people still get ill, some die and some have long-lasting effects of the illness. Unemployment and homelessness isn’t going away soon. Black Lives Matter still matters. The United States still has a huge number of positive Covid 19 cases and people continue to die at an alarming rate. Schools are beginning to start, but large numbers of children have tested positive for Covid 19 in the last few weeks. I know many people have gone through so much in the last few months and continue to struggle.

The pandemic and quarantine have been mostly okay for my family and me. My husband and I are retired and don’t see a lot of people in normal times! My husband is cooking more and has always helped with cleaning. We are in the higher risk group due to our age and pre-existing medical conditions so we are cautious about our interactions with other people. We do sometimes order curbside take-out from our favorite restaurants. We’re lucky we have a beautiful and serene backyard to spend time in plus a big enough house to spend separate time if we need it!

We’ve had plenty to keep us busy the last five months. My husband has done lots of yard work. He has been able to continue to play bridge over the internet with his regular bridge partner. I have made lots of cards to send to family and friends plus I’ve read lots of books and completed a few jigsaw puzzles.

  • Our backyard
  • A card I recently made

Our three children are safe–two work from home and one is mission essential so she works some at home and some at her workplace. She wears a mask when she’s working with anyone else, but a lot of her time she’s alone in her lab.

During these months I’ve continued to read and am way ahead in my 2020 Goodreads Reading Challenge. That makes me happy, but I have more books than usual I’ve started and gotten quite a ways into the book only to decide I don’t want to read any more of it. One book I was at the 50% point! Sometimes the books were depressing or too disturbing; other times I was bored.

However, even though my life has been safe and fairly uneventful the last few months, I feel overwhelmed, exhausted and emotionally drained from all the dissonance in the world. I’m hoping writing blog posts and interacting with other bloggers will help me get some perspective.

My long absence

I’m going to try to blog again. I’ll see how it goes. I didn’t blog during March because I had technical problems–I couldn’t save any posts. Because of all the pandemic changes and quarantine starting in March I didn’t spend much time trying to figure out what was wrong. Toward the end of March I finally researched the problem and saw that a few people had had a similar problem when they used Chrome (which I was using). So I downloaded Mozilla Firefox and my blog worked again!

I have a blog draft called “I finally solved my WordPress problem,” dated 3 April, but I never finished it. Because of the pandemic I just haven’t felt I could blog and that continued for months.

However, I miss interacting with my book blog friends. I did continue to add the books I read on Goodreads and I’ve added pictures and a bit of text on Instagram sometimes, but that’s all I’ve done since March. Since I wasn’t blogging myself I should have read other blogs and checked to see how everyone is doing. But I didn’t even feel like I could do that. I’m going to start going to blogs now to see how all of you are getting along.

How has the pandemic affected you? How did the quarantine affect you? Have you had to start working away from home again? Have you lost your job?