{"id":5055,"date":"2025-10-22T15:10:36","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T19:10:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/?p=5055"},"modified":"2025-10-22T15:10:37","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T19:10:37","slug":"this-and-that-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/22\/this-and-that-5\/","title":{"rendered":"This and That"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Life has been full of a lot of nonsense lately. Who needs work and bills and laundry, and endless errands? And the cooking; why does my family insist on eating every day? And where do they put all the food? And why is it all so expensive? Also, why doesn’t my life have more cake in it? I could handle the nonsense if there were more cake. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This morning, my husband had a doctor’s appointment and then we went out for breakfast. It was very nice. We had time to chat without adult children wandering through the room constantly. I’m not sure how our two kids seem to always be home and wandering through the living room every single time we want to discuss anything, but they manage it. They don’t pay particular attention to our conversations but it is a bit inhibiting when we are trying to discuss things like a potential move. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve been reading a biography of Mark Twain. It is written by Ron Chernow. It is interesting but, boy, did Mark Twain say and do a lot. I am 900 pages in and not done yet. Whenever I read a biography I end up wondering whether it would have been better to keep my illusions. People are such complicated messes. Twain was a writing genius but he had no head for business at all. He was a devoted husband but left the care of his chronically ill daughter to others. He was prejudiced as a young man but made great strides as he got older. I’ve learned a lot about books he wrote that I have never heard of and it is a fascinating book but 1000 pages is a lot. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had a friend from Illinois visiting us a week or so ago. He and my husband have been friends for almost forty years and I have known him for 35 years. We haven’t seen him in ages because he has been caring for his mother. We had an absolutely lovely time with him. He is like another brother and always understands things. It is wonderful when you can see a friend after years and still pick up where you left off. We went up to Lake Erie and he and my husband went to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park and we all chatted like mad. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As you all know, I absolutely hate summer so I am reveling in the current weather. I was able to wear a sweatshirt today! I can drink tea without sweating! It is the perfect weather to bake! I took my favorite ugly afghan out of the closet! The leaves are so pretty! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think I am going to try knitting a sweater. I bought the yarn for it last winter but never got around to it. I have knitted a fair number of shawls, hats, and scarves so a sweater seems like the logical next step. I’ve picked out a pattern that also has a YouTube tutorial which should help. We will see how this goes. I hope I end up with something wearable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve been having trouble keeping up with this blog and I definitely have not been doing a good job writing book reviews. I’ve decided I am simply going to write nonsense posts like this to just get back in the habit of writing again. Hopefully, that will lead to more structured posts in the future. I do miss it but there is always so much going on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What has been going on in your life lately?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Life has been full of a lot of nonsense lately. Who needs work and bills and laundry, and endless errands? And the cooking; why does my family insist on eating every day? And where do they put all the food? And why is it all so expensive? Also, why doesn’t my life have more cake in it? I could handle the nonsense if there were more cake. This morning, my husband had a doctor’s appointment and then we went out for breakfast. It was very nice. We had time to chat without adult children wandering through the room constantly. I’m not sure how our two kids seem to always be home and wandering through the living room every single time we want to discuss anything, but they manage it. They don’t pay particular attention to our conversations but it is a bit inhibiting when we are trying to discuss things like a potential move. I’ve been reading a biography of Mark Twain. It is written by Ron Chernow. It is interesting but, boy, did Mark Twain say and do a lot. I am 900 pages in and not done yet. Whenever I read a biography I end up wondering whether it would have been better to keep my illusions. People are such complicated messes. Twain was a writing genius but he had no head for business at all. He was a devoted husband but left the care of his chronically ill daughter to others. He was prejudiced as a young man but made great strides as he got older. I’ve learned a lot about books he wrote that I have never heard of and it is a fascinating book but 1000 pages is a lot. We had a friend from Illinois visiting us a week or so ago. He and my husband have been friends for almost forty years and I have known him for 35 years. We haven’t seen him in ages because he has been caring for his mother. We had an absolutely lovely time with him. He is like another brother and always understands things. It is wonderful when you can see a friend after years and still pick up where you left off. We went up to Lake Erie and he and my husband went to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park and we all chatted like mad. As you all know, I absolutely hate summer so I am reveling in the current weather. I was able to wear a sweatshirt today! I can drink tea without sweating! It is the perfect weather to bake! I took my favorite ugly afghan out of the closet! The leaves are so pretty! I think I am going to try knitting a sweater. I bought the yarn for it last winter but never got around to it. I have knitted a fair number of shawls, hats, and scarves so a sweater seems like the logical next step. I’ve picked out a pattern that also has a YouTube tutorial which should help. We will see how this goes. I hope I end up with something wearable. I’ve been having trouble keeping up with this blog and I definitely have not been doing a good job writing book reviews. I’ve decided I am simply going to write nonsense posts like this to just get back in the habit of writing again. Hopefully, that will lead to more structured posts in the future. I do miss it but there is always so much going on. What has been going on in your life lately?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5056,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life-lately"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5055"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5057,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5055\/revisions\/5057"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}