My word for the year is “control.” Now that I‘m retired, my goal for this year is to take control of my time and set up routines for all the things I‘ve wanted to do all these years but never had time for. I‘m looking forward to it! #JOURNALINGPROMPTS

Kicked off the new year with this library book. I‘m 12% in on my Kindle and don‘t know what the hell is going on—and I love it! It grabs you by the throat right from the beginning and it hasn‘t let up yet!

Here‘s to a year of love, happiness, and lots of great books! 🎉📚❤️

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!! Here are my bookish gifts from my lovely family! In the top left picture, the squares are coasters with Shakespearean quotes. The middle picture is showing the Pennywise shelf insert. The grey bag in the bottom left picture is a book pack! My family really gets me! 😁❤️🎄🎅🎁🤡🎈

My Christmas present from my son and future daughter-in-law! She made the stained glass suncatcher! 🤡🎈🎄🎁🎅❤️ She‘s definitely a keeper! 😁

As a witty news anchor, I returned to my small town for the holidays, inherited the magical bakery, and fell in love with a sugar confectioner! Which is very convenient, what with having to run the magical bakery, right? Free labor (he‘ll work for love, as any good Hallmark boyfriend will)! 😂😂🎄🎅🎁

I missed the question about the fictitious movie title, but since I‘ve seen Home Alone a million times (who hasn‘t?), I‘m pretty grounded on the details. I went and looked at the “25 Interesting Facts” and was surprised that Joe Pesci carried his method acting to the point of actually biting a child! That seems a little intense.
#TTT #TakeThreeThursday

I‘m sticking with S, @CBee , so my word is splendiferous, which is like splendid on steroids! 😂 #WeirdWords #WeirdWordWednesday

We do not care that we had to get up at 5:30–Christmastime is fun at high school! The children were line dancing between the tables at lunch; the art department turned a bank of lockers into the cutest advent calendar! A fun time was had by all, and tomorrow‘s the last day before Christmas break! #wdncw #WeDoNotCareWednesday

Happy Birthday, Miss Austen! Thank you for sharing your amazing talent with the world (and for giving us Mr. Darcy)!! ❤️❤️🎂🎁

I‘m late but wouldn‘t dream of missing #TakeThreeThursday! I missed the Elf question (am hanging my head in shame) and the Disney one (I‘m okay with that). I love lots of Christmas music but some favorites are: Mariah‘s classic (please don‘t hate me!), “Please Come Home for Christmas” by the Eagles, “O Holy Night” by Celine, and “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” by the Boss! 🎄🎁🎅
#TTT @dabbe

The fact that I can look out the window between 7 am and 4 pm and it is that—MY window! Or that I even have a window to look out of. For most of my teaching career, I had no windows in my classrooms. But now I can wander to the window and look into my backyard and revel in the fact that I‘m no longer tied to a job! I am deeply appreciative and will never take it for granted! ❤️
#MajicMonday

I do love looking back and finding joy in my week! Here are my five joys:
1. We finally got a taste of winter weather! (48 is cold for us!)
2. It‘s our first trip in our RV since July!
3. Got my Christmas nails!
4. Started getting my Christmas stuff out although I haven‘t gotten my tree up yet—that‘s waiting for me when I get home. (This is our RV tree 🎄).
5. Fire pit on a cold day with my furry blanket! There‘s nothing better!
#5JoysFriday

We‘re in Galveston for Dickens on the Strand tomorrow! It will be my first time to partake of this annual Victorian Christmas festival. Regrettably, I don‘t have a Victorian costume, but I did bring my “Dickens put the lit in literature” shirt! 😂

Fun quiz, and obviously I‘m no expert on Santa Claus! I was surprised to find that he apparently is Greek? Also, that the comparatively small country of France sends Santa more letters than the US! Did anyone else know that he became Canadian? I guess I can see it—I believe it snows a lot there. 🤷‍♀️🎅🎄🎁😁
#TakeThreeThursday #TTT

I like this image because it provides a veritable cascade of ghoulish words! And there is NEVER a wrong time for the macabre—NEVER! Actually, it is quite de rigueur to celebrate our more ethereal friends at Christmas—quite a number of classical authors produced Christmas ghost stories! It was a Victorian tradition. 🎄🎅🎁👻
#WeirdWordWednesday #WeirdWords

We might have gotten a Books-a-Million in our neighborhood . . . 😁

So many things!
1. First and foremost, CHRISTMAS! 🎄🎁🎅
2. Christmas gift shopping—gift-giving is my love language.
3. Christmas movies!
4. Christmas music!
5. Seeing my far-flung children come home!
6. Some cool weather—finally.
7. Reflecting on the past year and setting goals for the next. I know that‘s January, but you have to make the actual decisions in December.
#MajicMonday

A little late, but Thanksgiving isn‘t here yet, so maybe it still counts. 😁 I think that I actually have more skill as a guesser than as a Thanksgiving scholar! Three of my favorite Thanksgiving foods are 1) cornbread dressing (I make it with chicken), 2) a Spanish baked corn casserole which I copied from a cafeteria restaurant we frequent, and 3) pecan pie (actually, all pie—I rarely turn down pie)! 😁🦃🥧
#TTT #TakeThreeThursday

I‘m not sure it qualifies as a project, but it has been years in the planning, so I‘m counting it! We took our first long (5 weeks) roadtrip this summer—7500 miles! We drove from Houston to LA, up to Oregon, over to Utah, then New Mexico and back home. We loved it and hope to make many more trips!
#MajicMonday

I don‘t read many romances (I overdosed on them as a teen and developed a severe allergy 😂) but Emily Henry‘s humor won me over. She just expressed my relationship to math over my entire academic career in one sentence: “I feel like I‘m back in high school calculus, random bits of equations and numbers drifting around me nonsensically: there‘s some kind of meaning there, but I do not have the right brain to interpret it.” She nailed it! 😂

1. I finally started Slewfoot.
2. Added this beauty to my growing holiday decor collection (to my husband‘s despair)! 😂
3. Got my first paycheck as a sub! It‘s a lot smaller than my teaching paycheck but I got to sleep past 5 am often, so it‘s all good!
4. Got a puzzle tabletop to start tackling my huge “retirement puzzle” collection!
5. Subbed for a debate class and they were delightful! ⬇️

#5JoysFriday

Yay, Christmas challenges! These are my three favorite Christmas movies:
1) A Christmas Story
2) A Christmas Carol
3) Christmas Vacation
🎄🎁🎅
#TTT #TakeThreeThursday

Onomatopoeia! You gotta love it! ❤️❤️
#WeirdWordWednesday #WeirdWords

We do not care that we have to get up at 5:30 tomorrow and Friday to sub. It‘s only two days and then it‘s back to more civilized hours! We don‘t have to do it every day and that‘s priceless!
#WeDoNotCareWednesday #WDNCW

All the seasonal scents—vanilla, caramel, pumpkin, hot chocolate, and also Christmas scents of pine, bonfires, cranberry, and pomegranate.
#MajicMonday

I hope I‘m not too late! This was really fun! Thanks @PuddleJumper for all your hard work! 🖤🎃👻
#HauntedShelf #RestlessSpirits

When confronted with things such as rodents, bugs, or predators, then yes, face-to-face, I‘m scared of them! The ironic thing is that while I‘m not afraid of horror movies and books, I AM afraid of the settings where those horrors take place—the woods (I think I would lose my MIND if I had to spend the night alone in the woods), basements and attics, cornfields (NOTHING good EVER happens there!), and creepy cemeteries! 😱
#TLT #ThreeListThursday

We do not care that our promised three-week sub job between Thanksgiving and Christmas fell through. I was already wondering what I had been thinking to accept! Who wants to be tied down every day during that magical season? We do not care that that money would have helped with Christmas expenses—time to be less materialistic! 😂 JK—I‘m still giving gifts! 😁🧑‍🎄
#WDNCW #WeDoNotCareWednesday

One favorite is when my husband and I were young newlyweds and, with a large group of friends, we‘d go hit the haunted house attractions. Back then (the eighties) these were not as popular as they are now, so those long lines didn‘t exist, and it only cost about four dollars to get in. We had the best time! So many creative scares, but usually always ending with that fan favorite, the masked guy with the chainsaw! Good times! 😂👹👻
#MajicMonday

Yay! I made top 2%!! But horror is my jam, which is why I couldn‘t pick just three books. 😁 Sorry, @dabbe ! Just FYI—A Short Stay in Hell is not traditional horror. It is a very unique story that will burrow in your head and stay there. One truly horrifying aspect of the story are the numbers (I hated math!) as you try to comprehend the staggering calculations of infinity. 👻👹🧛🏻‍♀️🧟‍♀️💀 #TLT #ThreeListThursday

I don‘t know if anyone has stumbled across this one before, but I just love irony! 😂
#WeirdWordWednesday #WeirdWords

Portland, Oregon is 2,249 miles from my home on the Gulf coast of Texas. The farthest I‘ve been on the East Coast is Salem, MA, but it‘s only 1,800 miles. Love them both! ❤️
#MajicMonday

This doesn‘t include my reading hours or readathons, but I‘ll add them in the final total.
#HauntedShelf #RestlessSpirits

These are a few of the ghost stories that I read recently and really enjoyed! 👻
#SundayFunday

I‘m reading one chapter a day of Martin Chuzzlewit with a group and it‘s awesome! It allows us to do a deep-dive analysis on each one, which highlights the literary elements of the story. I‘m re-listening (is that a word? 🤷‍♀️) to Diavola because I loved it the first time around and it is holding up! I‘m hoping to finish up The Terror, which has been super-creepy (ice horror freaks me out!), and possibly start the Grady Hendrix! 🤞
#WeekendReads

We just dropped my son off at the airport 😢, so I really need to reflect on joys right now!
1. My son was here from Oregon all week!!
2. We got to spend time with family and visit an awesome museum and historical home.
3. I had a delicious brown sugar iced coffee in downtown Houston!
4. My aunt had us over for gumbo and she‘s an excellent cook!
5. I was gifted a What We Do in the Shadows bag!
#5JoysFriday

10 pts per question/answer
10 pts per guess
25 pts for correct guess
#HSCluedo

10 pts per question/answer
10 pts per guess
25 pts for correct guess
#HSCluedo

Okay, I‘m going to give this a shot! #HSCluedo #RestlessSpirits

10 pts per question/answer
10 pts per guess
25 pts for correct guess

I didn‘t do too badly (well, from my waistline‘s viewpoint, a smaller number would be better! 😂) but I think having been around for a while helps. Do they even still make some of these candies? I remember them but haven‘t seen them in decades! Anyway, it was a sweet trip down memory lane! The pictured candies are my faves. Thanks, @dabbe ! ❤️
#TLT #ThreeListThursday

I missed #WeirdWordWednesday ! My son is visiting from Oregon so my normal routine has been thrown to the winds. Anyway, I ran across this gem in the tagged book and found it fitting for this challenge. #WeirdWords

I love the unique history, culture, and diversity of Texas. Houston abounds with cultural attractions like the theater, symphony, and museums. The shops are amazing and abundant. The Houston medical center is world-renowned, a fact that I appreciate as I age! I also have learned over my own travels that we are a food destination, and deservedly so—the food is varied and scrumptious! The climate and scenery are terrible, though. 😂
#MajicMonday

They are not book characters, but they are fictional! I love my Sanderson sisters and Marvel‘s Scarlet Witch! 🖤🖤

This week, mine is from my dog, Oliver. Oliver: We do not care that you had to pause your movie just ten minutes ago to let me out—it‘s time to do it again. We do not care that once we get outside, we spend an inordinate amount of time just staring at nothing or smelling one spot in the grass while you wait impatiently at the door. We do not care because that is the price for having fur babies! 😁
#WDNCW #WeDoNotCareWednesday

I love the sound of this word, and also that I am able to work it into conversation upon occasion! 😁
#WeirdWordWednesday

As a child and a young woman, I collected dolls. As a teacher, I have an addiction to office supplies. I‘ve retired but still find myself irresistibly drawn to colorful college-ruled composition books and rainbow packs of gel pens! It‘s a compulsion! 😂 I also collect jigsaw puzzles (I finally have time to work them!), seasonal decorations, and literary dolls and action figures. And, of course, books, the lifelong collection! 📚
#MajicMonday

Some more of Mark‘s humor! 😂 #WhatTheDickens

Mark Tapley is such a great character! I love his sense of humor! #WhatTheDickens

Okay, horror is my favorite so I couldn‘t pick just three! 😫 The tagged book is my favorite out of all of them, though. Being a devout Stephen King fan, I think It and The Shining would be the next two. Hooray for Halloween prompts!! 🎃👻🧟‍♀️💀🧛🏻‍♀️🕷️🖤
#TLT #ThreeListThursday