Today's picture - Lucy in the sunshine

 

Grace Kelly - Trying To Figure It Out

I so love this.

Bank of Dave | Official Trailer HD

I'm here with a movie recommendation. It is on Netflix in the US, but I would think it would be on Netflix in England also as it is an English movie, set in Burnley. I read that part of it was filmed there but it was mostly Bradford, Leeds, Wakefield, and London. I began watching knowing absolutely nothing about it. If you like to do that, you can skip the trailer! Anyhow, it is a wonderful movie.

Today's pictures - sunshine

After about nine days of dark, cloudy weather we have sun today. The blog header picture was taken yesterday, and here is the same view today.

 And if you look closely, you may be able to see the smoke coming out of the chimney, against the blue, blue sky.

Book List 2024

January - 5

1. The Murder at the Vicarage - book 1 in the Miss Marple series

by Agatha Christie

mystery 1930

Kindle

2. The Body in the Library - book 2 in the Miss Marple series

by Agatha Christie

mystery 1942

Kindle

3. Hilda and the Troll - book 1 in the Hildafolk series

by Luke Pearson

children's graphic novel 2010

print

library book

4. We Don't Know Ourselves

A Personal History of Modern Ireland

by Fintan O'Toole

nonfiction 2021

print

5. Trouble in Triplicate - book 14 in the Nero Wolfe series

by Rex Stout

mystery 1949

Kindle

February - 2

6. The Second Confession - book 15 in the Nero Wolfe series

by Rex Stout

mystery 1949

Kindle

7. Felsengarten

Our Mountain Garden

by Mrs. Theodore Thomas (Rose Fay)

nonfiction 1904

print

library book

March - 3

8. Three Doors To Death - book 16 in the Nero Wolfe series

by Rex Stout

mystery 1950

Kindle

9. Dead Presidents

 by Brady Carlson

nonfiction 2016

print

10. In The Best of Families - book 17 in the Nero Wolfe series

by Rex Stout

mystery 1950

Kindle

April - 2

11.  Spring Rain - book 3 in the Gardener's Chronicle trilogy

by Marc Hamer

nonfiction 2023

print

12. Curtains For Three - book 18 in the Nero Wolfe series

by Rex Stout

mystery 1950

Kindle

May - 2

13. Asleep 

The Forgotten Epidemic That Remains One Of Medicine's Greatest Mysteries

by Molly Caldwell Crosby

nonfiction 2010

print

14. Murder by the Book - book 19 in the Nero Wolfe series

by Rex Stout

mystery 1951

Kindle

June - 3

15. Mr Rosenblum's List 

Or Friendly Guidance For The Aspiring Englishman

by Natasha Solomons

fiction 2010

print

16. American Bloomsbury

by Susan Cheever

nonfiction 2006

reread

print

17. Triple Jeopardy - book 20 in the Nero Wolfe series

by Rex Stout

mystery 1952

Kindle

July - 4

18. In My Time Of Dying

How I Came Face-To-Face With The Idea Of An Afterlife

by Sebastian Junger

nonfiction 2024

print

library book

19. Corps of Granite

Glimpses of New Hampshire's CCC Camps

by Robert W Averill

and Kris Pastoriza

nonfiction 2024

print

library book

20. Prisoner's Base - book 21 in the Nero Wolfe series

by Rex Stout

mystery 1952

Kindle

21. The Golden Spiders - book 22 in the Nero Wolfe series

by Rex Stout

mystery 1953

Kindle

(Probably some of the July books were in August)

September - 1

22. The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians

by James Patterson and Matt Eversmann

nonfiction 2024

print 

library book

October - 2

23. Three Men Out - book 23 in the Nero Wolfe series

by Rex Stout

mystery 1954

Kindle

24. The Black Mountain - book 24 in the Nero Wolfe series 

by Rex Stout

mystery 1954

Kindle

And a Happy New Year!

 I've always loved John and Yoko's Christmas song, and particularly these lyrics:

"And a happy New Year. Let's hope it's a good one, without any fear."

Why "fear"? Just because it rhymes with year? I don't think so. Artists are geniuses at coming up with just the right words. There is so much fear everywhere. Wars, climate, politics, and more personal fears about one's life.  

We have had some months of fears. Tom had a fall and had to go down to the hospital where Hazel was born ten years ago. They needed to check him out because of concussion and brain bleed (aren't those awful words). This happened on August 30th. He came home on September 1st. While he was there, it was discovered that he has a heart ailment called "a-fib" and then later found out he has high cholesterol. One wouldn't expect a vegetarian of 52 years to have such a thing, but the past few years he has eaten a lot of fat - cheese and butter particularly. Probably this is stress-related from issues dealing with his mother's old age. 

I went online and found out how many grams of saturated fat he should have in a day. It was miles less than he had been eating. He began mindfully living by those grams, and has lost a lot of weight. We won't know for a while if it has done good with the cholesterol numbers. Apparently there are some kinds which are genetic, rather than caused by diet. 

He had a stress test for the a-fib and found that his arteries are not clogged. That is such a relief. He only has to take an aspirin a day to deal with it. The cholesterol medicine comes with warnings for most everything on earth, but I am ignoring them hoping the eating less fat will make a difference. 

He definitely has post-concussion stuff. The problem is that we think he had three before this, but he was never unconscious as he was in August, and we never thought much about them. Now, knowing what we know, there were side effects. He is working hard to rest more, and walk, do qigong, and meditate each day. Slow and steady wins the race, we hope. 

All this is why I have written even less lately than before. The days have been sometimes exhausting. 

I am really going to try to write more in 2024. I have continued to read your blogs, though not often commenting. I want to be a blogger again.