Tuesday Morning Coffee Catch Up

Good morning all! It’s been a busy, chaotic few days and I am taking a minute to sit and enjoy my coffee this morning. This mug is from an actual PI business near me, and they would occasionally do work with my cousin’s law firm. When I worked there regularly I fell in love with this mug and took it home. The coffee today is my favorite, Post Alley from Seattle’s Best. Last week we were drinking 6th Avenue Bistro Blend and while it was good, it still couldn’t replace Post Alley in our hearts. We are very serious about our coffee I guess over here.

We started painting our bedroom this weekend! I am so excited about it! It has been a long 20 years of me not liking the color and wanting to paint it but never ever actually doing it. Now we are in the process and I am so impatient for it to be done, but things take time if we want them done right. Billy ended up having to put three coats on to cover the deep blue, even with primer, and since we had the extra paint, added a fourth coat. He plastered, he sanded, he painted the walls, the ceiling, the doors. I painted the trim, two coats. Today the trim goes up and by tomorrow I think we will be in our room again. I’ll make sure to share some photos! For now, this is how we are living…Wyatt loves that we are “camping” all in that room. Lol.

On Friday though before all the madness began, my cousin (the one I mentioned above – his name is Brian) and I went to a “Spooky Shop” at a local used and new bookstore. They opened fairly recently and neither of us had been there before. It was really neat, and I enjoyed hanging out with him. We have been close our whole lives, more like siblings than cousins, and lately we have been making efforts to get back together again. The whole pandemic thing and all put sort of a stop to that for a bit.

Brian is a whole foot taller than my five foot one so it was handy to have him there to get the books down from the high shelves for me. I ended up buying just two this time around – a Sherlock Holmes book, and a book of poetry for Wyatt.

I have a whole folk post percolating in my head. Maybe when the room refresh madness is over I will be able to get to it.

Saturday night we celebrated October with a fire at my brother’s house. It was a perfect night, complete with cider and apple pie. I had to drag Billy out of the bedroom and his work, but he needed a break, and he was happy I forced him to stop working for the night.

My life would not be complete without a nature story. After Wyatt’s physical therapy – which he rocked like a rock star – I was getting in the car and noticed a praying mantis, looking pretty dead but fully intact. It was in the parking lot and I couldn’t bear the thought of it getting run over. I know, I am super weird but things like that bother me. Anyway I scooped it up with my Kroger receipt, and put it in a bag I had in my car and took it home, having no idea what I planned to do with it. Probably just dump it in the garden honestly. When I took it out of the bag though, I thought I saw it twitch. I thought I was crazy. Then I remembered the night before had been so cold, and maybe this mantis had just been too cold to move. So I put it in a butterfly enclosure on the porch in the sun to warm it up safely. And fifteen minutes later, it was moving around. However it is injured, so I will just let it live in the enclosure I guess until it no longer is alive, then dump it in the garden.

And that is it for this morning! Enjoy your day everyone!

My Sunday-Monday Post

My Sunday Post is hosted by Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer
Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz
It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date

First, let me say that I am thinking of everyone who has been affected by the Hurricane. What a terrible situation and I am praying for everyone who was in its path.

This past week was full of work – school, housework, and all the prep needed to start painting our bedroom. How did I have so much in that room? I am flabbergasted. It was a good opportunity to reconsider it all and make choices about what is actually going back in.

We did do some good stuff too – a field trip, watched Hocus Pocus 2, a fire and adult beverages at my brothers. All in all, a pretty solid week.

Read Last Week:

Sheets – what a very different, emotional read than what I was expecting. I absolutely loved it though. I am still working on Invisible Women but it is good so far.

Reading This Week:

Winterset Hollow caught my eye a few months ago and I wrote it down to read this month, October. I am not sure about it honestly – sometimes straight horror books are too much for me these days. However, I am curious about it and I am looking forward to reading it. Hopefully in my newly finished room tonight, but we will see how far Billy and I get today.

Posted Last Week:

My Cozy Fall Shopping List

Spooky Cinema Season: Hocus Pocus

Talk With Me Over Tea

Friends’ Fall Day Trip

Homeschooling Journey: John Henry, Clementine Hunter, and West Virginia

Watching and Listening:

Billy and I never watched the LOTR show darn it. Maybe this week. We instead watched McDonald and Dodds Season 3 – wow that first episode was the best! We started the Chelsea Detective but decided we want to wait on it for winter watching. We also tried out Recipes for Love and Murder and decided we weren’t interested at this time. Maybe later. We obviously had a weird week of tv.

I spent the week catching up on the podcast Your Own Backyard with Chris Lambert. He has been covering the trial of Paul and Ruben Flores, who are being tried for the murder/disappearance of Kristen Smart in 1996. I listened to the podcast earlier, pre-trial, and it is seriously one of the best podcasts I have listened to. Lambert is an amazing investigative journalist, in my non-expert opinion, and the podcast actually helped to propel this eventual arrest and trial of the two Flores men. I am waiting for the newest installment, which covers the last week of the trial, as the closing arguments are this week. No cameras or video recordings are allowed in court due to some of the sensitive witness testimony. Anyway, I could go on and on about this case. I have lots of opinions and feelings.

And that is it from my corner of Michigan!