Thursday Thoughts ~ June 26, 2025

It’s Thursday at the newly painted Casa Carter!

Took a quick trip to Knott’s Berry Farm today. Did I mention that The Husband worked there as a performer for 39 years, recently retired, and we have lifetime passes with free parking? It’s about a half hour away, so it’s an easy drive. We sometimes go straight to the bakery and get turkey and cheese croissants. Yum! Then we walk the perimeter of the park to get in 6000 to 7000 steps. Along the way, we always run into friends and guests who want to say Hi to Cannonball (his stage name).

Here’s The Husband, being silly.

Me, with Snoopy and Charlie Brown.  Isn’t this the cutest image of Snoopy you’ve ever seen?!

Patchwork was very jealous that her brother, Junior, got his picture in the blog last week, so here’s one of her!

Normally, I dry my hair straight in the cooler months. When it’s got some waves and texture because I’ve let it dry naturally, you know summer has arrived. I call it my Mermaid from the Black Lagoon look.

Writing

Still rereading my book… I got a lot of reading/tweaking done yesterday when we were basically plastic wrapped in our house for the painting. Yes, we probably could have gone out but we wanted to be in the house for the cats ~ lots of noise, people walking around outside, and unfamiliar voices made it a little scary for them. Anyway, only about 40 more Word doc pages to go and I’ll be ready to send it out for beta reads. Be assured, though, there will be tweaking right up until I push the Publish button ~ LOL!

I’ve also downloaded a couple of Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) guidebooks about self-publishing and Joanna Penn’s Author Blueprint. Studying up on the self-publishing journey.

Reading

This week in paperback, I read The Spirit Moves by Carol J. Perry, the fourth in her Haunted Haven Mysteries. Maureen has inherited a beautiful but down-on-its-luck inn in Haven, Florida. Haven is a sweet little town that’s a ghost magnet. Also, it seems, like with all cozy murder mysteries, a magnet for murder. Maureen and her dog, Finn, once again get involved in investigating a death ~ an unpopular writer with a lot of enemies. For some reason, Frank Hubbard, the detective in this series, irritated the hell out of me in this book. I don’t remember him being so grating in the other books. But don’t let that put you off ~ it’s a good series with a host of fun peripheral characters, especially Lorna, the ghost Maureen shares her suite with. I also highly recommend Perry’s other mysteries, The Witch City series, that take place in Salem, MA. PS~Evie, the Pop Funko I use in my book pics, has a cameo in my cozy mystery debut!

In ebooks, I read Paws, Claws, and Curses by DeAnna Drake. Another cozy mystery, this one set in a small, Southern California town. Rebecca, who has just discovered she has a grandfather who owns an antiquities shop, is grieving the tragic death of her parents a month ago. She’s only been in town three weeks and she’s already found a dead body and rescued a talking cat. There’s a frustrating, hunky police detective and various characters that could be friends ~ or foes. Even though I thought Rebecca’s lack of true grieving for her parents didn’t reflect reality, I’m willing to read more in this series and hope we see more of Aneksi, Cleopatra’s cat!

Over the years, I’ve read several of Alice Hoffman’s books and I’ve liked them a lot. I read the short story, The Bookstore Sisters, a while ago. It’s about two sisters reuniting on the island where they grew up, running the bookstore their parents left them. This week, I read The Bookstore Wedding.  Oy, I don’t remember the first story being overly emotional but Wedding had me in tears for 70% of it! It’s a simple story about one sisters’ wedding but Hoffman makes it magical. Bring your tissues!

Streaming/Watching

I watched The Last Showgirl on Hulu. I’d been looking forward to seeing it and I thought the performances were outstanding but it was kind of a downer. Pamela Anderson plays Shelley, a showgirl in an iconic but out-of-date revue that’s soon to close for good. She’s been in the show since the 80’s and struggles with what path her life will take now that her era of beautiful costumes and fading adulation is ending. Her daughter rightfully has issues with Shelley choosing her career over her and her best friend, played to perfection by Jamie Lee Curtis, lays her problems at Shelley’s door. As the younger dancers in her troupe begin to move on to other shows with very different vibes than her treasured Parisian-influenced revue, she needs to come to terms with the sacrifices she’s made and who will be there for her when she removes the sequins and feathered headdresses. Too many montages of dreamy dancing and an imagined fairy tale ending between mother and daughter left me kinda meh.

I also watched Sally on Hulu, the documentary on Dr. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space. It’s very good. Encompassing her extraordinary intelligence, astronaut training, and life after space, it packs a lot of information into a little over 2 hours. But I spent a lot of time flipping off the screen ~ yes, I talk back and flip off the screen. A lot. Her treatment as a woman in the ‘70s working alongside men in what had evolved as a male-centric endeavor… Needing to hide her authentic self for most of her life – people outside of her very private circle did not know she had a female life partner for 27 years… While serving on the Federal panel investigating The Challenger tragedy, which revealed that NASA knew the O-rings on the vehicle would likely cause problems, her disgust and disappointment with NASA led her to quit the program… Even though there was so much unfairness in her life, her accomplishments, and contributions to science and, later in life, her work encouraging girls to pursue STEM careers, is definitely worth watching. Just make sure you have some privacy to cuss and fume!

Till next Thursday!