Sunday Salon/Sunday Post - January 12, 2025: Just another week.

Hello! What a weekend around here! After 46 hours of work so far and feeling a lil stressed, I left work earlier than expected on Friday because it started snowing. I am unnecessarily excessively nervous about driving in the snow. I planned to work 10 hours on Friday and leave at 4:30pm. There was heavy snow outside the window at 3pm, and I was on the road by 3:15pm. The roads, by the way, were still mostly fine. I had also offered to supervise six hours of work on Saturday, but called that off at my husband's suggestion Friday night. 

While I could probably have made it and worked fine, being home yesterday was for the best. The kids ended up calling for assistance on their way to the ski hill (hubs was also going to the ski hill, but needed to pick up a rental car on the way). I was here to help the kids, and then got laundry and dishes done, and got to eat an artichoke I forgot I'd bought earlier in the week. Happy-ish morning for me! I would have been home from work shortly after noon, so my afternoon was still as expected. I took my son to his euphonium lesson and then to Hot Topic to get a new t-shirt he wanted, then started getting dinner ready. Oh! Another great highlight was running into a favorite former co-worker at the grocery store. YAY!! After all that, ended up saving last night's planned dinner for tonight, as daughter got home not feeling well. So we took care of some things she needed done and grabbed pizza. All in all, a very full weekend so far, and only half done!

But it's been in my plans all weekend to post for my favorite weekly link-ups! Join me and some other cool peeps by posting and visiting Sunday Salon (hosted by Readerbuzz) and Sunday Post (hosted by Caffeinated Reviewer). Do you have or know another great linky? Most of what I post are clearly these, or book reviewers. Hoping to get to a 2024 review/2025 planning list in the next week or so....

What I'm reading this week:

Last week was apparently busy for reading! I finished up and reviewed Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix (5 stars - though others say it isn't like other Grady Hendrix books? I believe this was my first by him...). Also enjoyed Damaged Beauty: Joey Superstar by Margaret Gardiner (4 stars - review to follow on Books I Think You Should Read). 

I'm getting started on a print copy of Rough Magic: A Biography of Sylvia Plath by Paul Alexander, and a kindle review copy of The Magic Maker by Mickey Dubrow.

Three Good Things:

1. Can I repeat things? Like I said last week, the new restaurant downstairs is really cool. And besides the restaurant, the cooler even has a favorite caffeine drink - Uptime!
2. We finished the Lego Poinsettia! I'll have to get a picture of all the cool sets we've finished lately :) While the bonsai is now my oldest un-finished set, I think I'm gonna do the wildflower bouquet next so I can put it in a vase by the stairs. I've also got a plan to order a few more of the Disney sets soon..
3. I think work is back to full-ish staffing this week! I mean, we still have six openings, but last week we ended up with a couple team members on bereavement leave. And I'll probably work next Saturday and end up with a ton of overtime, if enough people are willing and the weather cooperates.

Three Goals for this week/month/whatever:

1. The Stafford Challenge (to write a poem each day) starts this Friday, January 17, 2025. According to the site, it's the second year. I signed up - wish me luck! Or even better, come join me and the other poets :)
2. Weird one, but I really want to replace our kitchen faucet this week. I think the current one is installed sort of..sideways? And the part that can pull out keeps FALLING down, usually onto whatever I'm tryng to wash or rinse. So I need to buy a new one, and find some YouTube guidance and motivation.
3. If the weather will break (it's freezing or a lil colder here lately) OR hubby heats up the garage to work on cars, the garage fridge really needs cleaning. One of the theater kids who was here for a party laid down a 2-liter of soda...that wasn't closed all the way. So the bottom shelf has some serious ick. And I think there may still be some hot dog buns and condiments from when our son sold them at an event in the fall. Hello, trash bin!

Keep warm and have a great week!

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls - Book Review

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
Publication: January 14, 2025
Pages: 496 pages
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars ☆☆☆☆☆
Sweet Spark: This great book made me feel all the feels.

While the narrator got pregnant at 15 as Neva in Alabama, once she arrived at Miss Wellwood's home in Florida, she was Fern from Boston. She was supposed to forget about her life from before until she had her baby, gave it away, and went back home like none of this ever happened.

The relationships Fern makes with the other girls in the home are everything. She doesn't know much about who the girls were before they arrived, just like they don't know her. But their personalities are very distinct, and it's easy for them to imagine lives outside for each other.

Soon, the girls end up with a book about witchcraft, and an adult they should be able to trust leads them to believe that maybe, there are solutions to their problems besides what Miss Wellwood, the social worker who practically insists they give away their babies, and the creepy doctor. But sometimes when something seems too good to be true, well, we know how that goes. 

I loved this book, and especially the epilogue about the girls in adulthood. This was my first Grady Hendrix book, and it simmered my rage just right. I could imagine a little of myself in each of the characters, and appreciated the treatment of the girls/women in childbirth. The book earned 5 out of 5 stars, and I would recommend it to those who enjoy witch stories, stories from the 1970s or so, and strong female characters.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for my advance electronic copy of this book. Receiving the book for free did not influence my review.

Sunday Post/Sunday Salon - January 5, 2025: Wait, what?

Happy 2025! I can confidently say that I don't ever recall going into a new year so... hopeless. Like, it's a new year - so? I can't name any real goals, or things I want to do different, or better expectations. I'm going to keep doing what I always do, which seems to work out adequately. I do it all for my kids, and while I'm excited to see the great things they do and enjoy, I'm more of a NPC (non-playable character) in my life. And I'm not sad about it or anything. It just is.

Of all the goals and such I listed for 2024, I definitely did blog more consistently/often than other recent years. Huge shout out to Sunday Post with Caffeinated Reviewer, and  Sunday Salon with Readerbuzz. I specifically said I wanted to post more, and something besides book reviews. The majority of my posts in 2024 were participating with their link-ups, and interacting with other bloggers doing the same thing. The posts and following along with other bloggers has truly been a bright spot in many of my weekends. Thanks!

What I'm reading this week:

In last week's goals, I wanted to finish the two books I was reading in 2024, and I came close. I finished Love and Death in the Sunshine State (3 stars) on New Years' Eve, and A Grandmother Begins the Story (4 stars) on New Years' Day. Their reviews will be appearing on Books I Think You Should Read soon. 

I'm excited to have started Damaged Beauty: Joey Superstar by Margaret Gardiner in a print book, and Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix on my kindle. So far I'm really enjoying both of them.

Three Good Things:

1. Food! Manhattan Deli & Grille has opened on the first floor of the office building where I work (or maybe it's next door? Really close!). Before, we had like pop-up kitchens twice a week, or needed to pack a lunch or go get something. When you only have a half hour for lunch, there is not much time to make a decision, so I usually just didn't eat. Which was fine. But now there's a full kitchen, with breakfast, or lunch stuff with real fries, and even a Starbucks counter! It's definitely a good thing for our office.
2. Legos! We're about halfway done with the poinsettia that I thought we would do Christmas Eve. LOL I did the first bag, and then my son sat down to do the second bag and found the pages I'd missed for the first bag (whoops!). I did the third bag this morning (with very few extra parts, so I think I did it right this time). 
3. Out of the 100 or so holiday cards we mailed, only two came back! One, I mis-wrote the address (should have been 100, not 1000), and the other, they must have moved. Statistically great not-return rate ;)

Three Goals for this week/month/whatever:

1. The last couple weeks have contained holidays (Christmas Eve/Christmas Day, and then New Years' Day). While I've enjoyed leaving the office after eight (or less!) hours, it will be good to work until I've finished a bit more, and earned a lil overtime pay. This week I'll probably work 9 - 10 hours on Monday through Friday, and then hopefully put in six hours on Saturday, if I can get a few team members to join me. 
2. Finish our Lego poinsettia, obvs.
3. Get some more stuff cleaned up in the office. The last couple weeks have also been different since hubs and the kids were home, and I was usually at work. So more than once, hubs has asked for my stuff to leave general areas, and it got thrown in a random heap in my office. So, one step forward, three steps back. Hopefully I can at least get it back to where it was before break in the next week or so.

Sunday Salon/Sunday Post - December 29, 2024: Just Cheese.

For those of you following along, last week at work was not as bad as it could have been, and this week is on track to be tolerable. Sometimes that's as good as it gets ;) The family has tried to get me to participate in all the things, but I'm a homebody with less free time than the rest of them. It's going okay. Christmas Eve they really wanted to go out ice skating like they did the night before Thanksgiving, but someone accidentally asked my opinion, so we stayed home, made personal pizzas, decorated cookies, and played family edition Cards Against Humanity. It was fun, and we all enjoyed ourselves. For New Years' Eve, one of the kids said they wanted to stay home, so I grabbed onto that. LOL I have to work during the day, but I'll give the kids my credit card to go get whatever appetizer ingredients they want, and we can stream a ball-drop from somewhere, play some more family games, and try to stay up until 2025. They both have the option of inviting a friend or two over, but I refuse to say I'm hosting a party. We're hanging low-key, and others may join us.

In the meantime, I'm posting my last Sunday Salon and Sunday Post for 2024, with Readerbuzz and Caffeinated Reviewer. Hope you'll play along and visit some of the other great sites that post regularly.

What I'm reading this week:

As intended,  I finished December Dread (4 stars) and This Book Won't Burn (5 stars) last week, and have now started A Grandmother Starts the Story (my last review book on kindle from 2023) and Love and Death in the Sunshine State (a print review book which is a bit older, but I received in a pile quite a while ago).

Three Good Things:

1. As I stated already last week, my kids are truly amazing. They really whipped the holidays into shape this year. I got more gifts than the last two years, and I highly suspect the kids were behind this. Of course, it isn't all about the gifts, but it sure is nice to feel noticed and appreciated. 
2. I got out and did things this week! Really, I prefer to be home, but it seems to make everyone else happy when I get out and visibly enjoy life. Friday was a work bestie's last day at the job, so we went to the bar across the parking lot for a bit after work, then hubby and I joined a couple other local adults for dinner. Last night, I went with hubby to his high school band reunion. Several of the band kids didn't necessarily want to re-visit people they'd graduated with, but definitely their band friends. So, they set up a multiple-year band kid reunion. It was fun.
3. I finished two of my holiday Lego sets already! I got three all together, and so far I finished the exclusive set-with-purchase bookshelf/reading nook that I may have started my shopping in November to make sure I got. I gifted the rest of the 'required' order to get my bookshelf, and gave it to the kids to wrap for me. I got it put together and displayed on my book shelf yesterday. They also picked out one of the three-in-one sets for me (the unicorn/seahorse/peacock), and I put the peacock together on Christmas Day. I still have the Wildflower Bouquet (and the Bonsai tree I got last year) to put together when I have a day to chill.
   

Three Goals for this week/month/whatever:

1. I've got a few holiday gifts still to put into use - my jelly-fish lamp will be displayed where my actual fish tank used to be in the dining room, and my new jeans need to be washed before I'll wear them. Hopefully I can wrap up these two tasks today and get to enjoying all my new goodies.
2. My daughter said she actually wants to make New Years' resolutions, so I think I'll try to see what I have around to make that an activity for all of us on New Years' Eve or New Years' Day. Vision board stuff, or the giant post-it note paper, or containers and slips to add to it. I dunno - I'll think of something that I most likely already have the crafty stuff for so we can make it fun.
3. I actually want to finish the last two books I'm reading. I will not meet my Goodreads goal (gonna adjust that down for next year), but in the short-term I should be able to finish up these last two.

December Dread - Book Review

December Dread by Jess Lourey
Publication: November 26, 2024
Pages: 268 pages
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars ☆☆☆☆
Sweet Spark: Mira James and Mrs. Berns are sure to be an epic ongoing mystery-solving duo.

While this is apparently the eighth book in the Murder by Month Romcom Mystery series, I was originally looking for a holiday time/theme book, so it was my first read. It read fine as a stand-alone. Some other reviewers mentioned that previous books in the series took place where Mira and Mrs. Berns live, instead of Mira's hometown, which may have helped, as the characters were all new.

Mira is a great unexpected heroine who is just living her life, but apparently keep stumbling onto murders which generally progresses to her being caught in the evil crosshairs of a murderer. Mrs. Berns seems to not necessarily value her own safety, and a friend with a target on her back is fine. She leaves where they live to join Mira in her hometown as she ends up seeking the Candy Cane Killer.

The book was quite enjoyable, and I laughed out loud at a few parts, like her extra 'assignment' in her PI class, and some of her adventures as a fictional character on a dating site as they tried to lure the killer. And Mrs. Berns is the sort of old lady that I hope to someday be. The story earned 4 out of 5 stars and was a great cozy, midwest mystery. 

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my electronic copy of the book. Receiving the book for free did not influence my opinions or my review. 

Sunday Post/Sunday Salon - December 22: Merry Merry, Happy Happy

I'm enjoying a tiny bit of holiday time with family today. Unfortunately, my work schedule gives me Christmas Eve & Christmas Day and then New Years Day off (from an office Monday - Friday schedule). Oh, but I worked yesterday to try and get stuff a lil manageable for due dates with only three working days next week. Ugh. Luckily I don't hate what I do. I think tomorrow will literally be the worst - we'll have a Monday of intakes after two days off, and a Friday of sends since we need to send stuff due Dec 23, Dec 24, and Dec 25. Oh well.

I'm taking a break from the chaos to join in for Sunday Post with the Caffeinated Reviewer, and Sunday Salon with Readerbuzz. 

What I'm reading this week:

I'm really enjoying December Dread and This Book Won't Burn. Also a great mix for me - a cozy killer mystery as I go to sleep, and a rage-inducing social justice story the rest of the time. Life is good.

Three Good Things:

1. My kids are awesome. There is no way I'll get all the things I want to done in time for their Christmas, but they'll be fine. They're actually my biggest helps, too.
2. Two days off this week - obvs!
3. Plans this weekend. Hubs and I are going out with another couple on Friday, and then Saturday is his high school band reunion. Should be fun!

Three Goals for this week/month/whatever:

1. I'm really hoping to get the wrapping done during the day on Christmas Eve instead of late into the evening. 
2. Still to come today, I'll get some cookies baked after our family trip to the mall. I give the kids money to get presents for hubs and I, and then hubs and I just hang out in a bar or the food court and let them loose to shop. I'm also planning to do several loads of laundry so we're good for the week. Then, cookies. But not staying up too late since I have work in the morning.
3. I want to finish the two books I'm reading this week so I can start new ones. I won't make my Goodreads goal for the year, but I'm fine with that. Just want to finish these two and maybe one more before New Years :)

Sunday Salon/Sunday Post - December 15, 2024: You Will Be Found

Wrapping up my third Michigan Thespian Festival (as a chaperone). This was easily the most emotional, as my daughter is a senior, which made it a definitive festival for her as well. All the high schoolers have the opportunity to meet lots of other thespian high schoolers from Michigan, see a couple shows produced by Michigan high schools live on stage, take lots of fun workshops about acting, dancing, singing, and technical theatre stuff (lights, sound, makeup, costumes), compete for ratings called 'Thespys' (if they are inducted to the Thespian Society), and meet colleges and compete for scholarships (for the high school seniors - $41 MILLION dollars in scholarships were offered/awarded). If it sounds like a lot for two days, that's because it is. We were in Lansing all day Friday and yesterday, and we got back on our school bus late last night, so today has been a day of rest. I wish every high school extra-curricular had a festival as awesome as this is.

It has taken me all day to get to my computer, but I'm chiming in for Sunday Salon with Readerbuzz and Sunday Post with Caffeinated Reviewer. 

What I'm reading this week:

I just got my holiday review up for Christmas with the Queen (4 stars), and finished Side Effects are Minimal (5 star review coming soon on Books I Think You Should Read). I just started December Dread by Jess Lourey on my kindle, and my print copy of This Book Won't Burn by Samira Ahmed. This Book is an ARC, but not on my review list, so I suspect I won it from the library? So far they're both enjoyable.

Three Good Things:

1. I think I got most of my holiday shopping - INCLUDING stocking stuffers - done on my extra day off on Thursday. I had taken Thursday and Friday off for the ThesFest, then only needed Friday, so I did my errands/laundry/tasks on Thursday so I didn't really 'miss' anything while I was gone Friday and Saturday. It worked out really well. 
2. We're moving desks this week! It's supposed to be Tuesday and Wednesday. While I'm fine where I'm at, a change sounds kind of fun. I think the re-organization that is motivating the moves is going to end poorly, I'm not a decision-maker and just along for the ride.
3. Hubs just got me a new Grinch outfit! It's spirit week at work this week, and while I have a pair of Grinch PJ pants, Monday is holiday PJ day, and Tuesday is Grinch or Santa day... Now I can use both! ;) My new outfit is black sweatpants that say 'Grinchy' on them with a picture of the green guy. I also got the matching cropped shirt (which will be layered on this ole body). Unfortunately, we saw the matching zip-up hoodie on the way out. Grr.....

Three Goals for this week/month/whatever:

1. While most of my holiday cards are well on their way, I still have a few addresses I asked for and received via Facebook after most of the cards were mailed. I need to sit down and address that last dozen or so and get them on their way.
2. I would LOVE to start wrapping instead of waiting til the last minute. My 13-year-old has also offered to help, if I can sort out some things that aren't his. Hahahaha,,,
3. As you saw in my 'good things,' I think my shopping is done. I really need to sort through it all and see that both kids' piles are equitable, and the amount of goodies I got for stockings will fit the bill. Circling back, this would be much easier if I had cleaned my office as I stated I planned to months ago. But here we are, in a very messy office now with piles of packages added to the mix.