You were going to get another photo, but after editing it, I realized our stair treads were all scuffed up and not at all attractive, so you get this one instead: Maggie Rabbit and Olivia on Easter Sunday.
Suddenly, Maggie – who previously seemed on the petite side to me – looks huge!
Well, yesterday was an extremely windy day and today looks like it will be, too. So I can’t do anything outside because of pollen/wind. The wind was so bad yesterday that Don even commented on it. And we’re going down to freezing tonight. We are now two days from the beginning of May but it feels like March.
I want to scream.
I’m trying to stay positive and I do, for the most part. But to be perfectly honest, there were some tough stretches yesterday. We also have a fire danger warning because of the combination of dry air and high winds.
I am enjoying the latest Michael Connelly – gosh, it’s so wonderful to know that you’re in good hands. As I’ve read everything he’s written over many years, I know that I will immediately be immersed in the plot and that the writing will be so uniformly excellent that I can just sit back and go with it. I read a big chunk this morning and, given the weather forecast, I’ll read another big chunk this afternoon. I got an email yesterday afternoon saying that the other books I reserved are in, so I’ll drive on over to the library later this morning and pick them up.
These writers – Michael Connelly, Louise Penny, Susan Hill, James Lee Burke, Deborah Crombie – are like old friends. I trust them and I’m never disappointed.
The Carolina wrens: I still think the wrens were scared off by that trailer bird house tipping forward. I don’t see any activity. But I have often heard another wren on the porch. This Carolina wren has a higher pitched song. Late last night, I started to wonder if he’s made a nest somewhere on the porch. The only place I could see that happening is in the pots that contain my now-dead lavender from last year, which are right outside the picture window in the den. I know the wrens will make a nest just about anywhere. I’m going to investigate – carefully and quietly – later today. Another sleuthing expedition!
No news yet on Country Living. I mean, really, it’s April 28th and the May issue isn’t on the stands? The newest issue is usually out at least two weeks before the start of the month. Given the state of magazines in general, could there be problems at CL? I hope not. Even though it’s not my favorite magazine, we need print. Digital just doesn’t cut it. Just as a three-dimensional book feels absolutely right in my hands, so does a three-dimensional magazine. Since this month marks the sudden end of Martha Stewart Living in print, things seem a bit ominous.
Added to original post: Verna wrote to relay this information: There’s an April/May issue and a May/June issue, which comes out on May 29th. I believe Dee Dee mentioned this, as well. The editor originally said “May issue” but perhaps she meant May/June. I will try contacting her again (though she never responded to my first request) to clarify that. If it’s May/June it will be another month until we see it.
Update on the update: Just heard from Sarah – “Hey Claudia! So sorry, I missed your first email. Our May issue ended up becoming our May/June issue. It will be out later in the month — 5/24. Please get in touch closer to then and I’ll mail you a few copies!” Okay. We have an answer!
Okay.
Stay safe.
Happy Thursday.
Great authors…I have an audio book going from Netgalley…I am visual, but I do this when cleaning which is too often really…I have a Netgalley/Ipad book going reading…I have a Kindle/Ipad/Netgalley book going…and of course the ever present paperback for the beach…It doesn’t bother me to read several at once…after teaching so many subjects at once, it is easy to remember and fun…I usually only have one visual and one audio going at once…I am so thankful for Netgalley sending me hundreds of books free…the library here is not like the one in Indy…and buying books is seldom in my budget anymore…we do have a little tiny used one room bookstore that my daughter, grand, and I frequent when they are here…take care…hope you get to be outside more…my friends are texting me that they are having long winters…I am thankful that is not happening here…
I used to get a lot of books from NetGalley when I was reviewing and they still contact me, but since I tend to avoid reading books on my iPad, I don’t request them. But you’re right, they’re very generous! You get to read a lot of new books that way.
Stay safe, Brenda!
I have a feeling what you’re seeing is a link to a post of mine. My egg cups often come up in google searches.
P.S. If they used three of your egg cups…there was a picture online of three when I typed in Country Living egg cups…said Mockingbird Hill Cottage…
Can’t find them anywhere – did you just type it into a Google search? Or on the site? If you could send me the link, Brenda, I’d be very grateful
xo
I tried but couldn’t send it…you must be right…it was your site…sorry…I will look for the magazine again though…
Don’t worry, Brenda. I just found out from the editor that they changed the May issue to May/June and it won’t be out until May 24th.
Thanks so much!
xo
Hi Claudia! Maybe solved…CL subscription shows April/May issue came out 3/15 and June issue comes out 5/24.
Maggie and Olivia are absolutely adorable. They look like fast friends.
We had a nice warm day yesterday, but the cottonwood trees are releasing their cotton and it was so thick it looked like snow. No going out in that! Ugh.
We have a robin constantly bonking his beak into our window as he sees his reflection and is defending his territory from that big strong male. My husband chased him off a few times but I will have to put a streamer up today. Hopefully he wins a sweet female soon.
Have a lovely day everyone!
Except that I have the April issue and it doesn’t say April/May and the editor told me it was for the May issue, not the June issue. Maybe she meant that it comes out in May? I’ll try to contact her again.
Poor robin!
Stay safe, Verna!
First of all, Maggie’s a doll! And I hope the Wrens are nearby, if not in the trailer.
Re: Country Living — I went back into my email and found this so I am going to bug them too…I’m glad you got your answer. This was in reply to my message after my check was cashed in JANUARY. I will bug them again.
Thank you for contacting Country Living Magazine. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. We have received your email regarding a missing issue(s) on your
account.
Your subscription will begin with the May 2022 issue. Please allow until April 1, 2022 for delivery of your April/May 2022
issue.
If you have not received your magazine at that time, please contact us and your subscription will be extended, or the issue replaced.
If we can be of further assistance, please let us know. To ensure your
future concerns are handled in a timely fashion, please include all
previous e-mail correspondence.
Thank you,
Donabelle
Country Living Magazine Customer Service
CLGcustserv@cdsfulfillment.com
Maddening! I hope you get your first issue soon, Jeanie!
Strange, I think, that they decided to combine May and June – at the last minute. Hmmmm.
Stay safe.
I feel uneasy (and helpless) about the loss of print magazines. Gosh, I remember when I was in high school, and I couldn’t wait for Mom to bring home a Woman’s Day or Family Circle (or the little TV Guide!) from the weekly grocery-shopping trip. In even earlier days, there was of course the amazing photo spreads in LIFE magazine; always National Geographic, which a neighbor would give us when she was thru with it; and I was so smitten with the Betsy McCall paper dolls that came with my mom’s McCall’s mag when she’d sometimes have a subscription. Of course the Sears catalog at Christmas was a big event; all the toys, and dolls! And I ‘lived’ for another teen neighbor’s Seventeen magazines when she’d decide to give me her discarded stack.
There was such a big deal about everything going to a Kindle back in the day and then, lo and behold, it was discovered that a lot of people still like a hardbound book in their hands (or a convenient paperback, like on vacation!). I got all kinds of grief from my techie friend (and the same from a cousin of mine) of how I was contributing to the loss of trees, etc by continuing to buy books. But I’ve said it before, at least with his one daughter who was raised with a keyboard and a mouse, even in her college years, I don’t think the girl could make her own signature; her writing was only in childish block letters (mega-smart person otherwise).
I notice during the past couple of years of pandemic, when so many TV-news programs’ guest experts/analysts would come onscreen from offsite (still do from home today), it’s often the ‘older’ ones who have bookshelves laden with books behind them in their residential background, such as a home office or home library; but the younger-aged guests being interviewed use their bookshelves to display art and photographs; no books. I’ve made note of this time and time again.
Our County newspaper has become a thin, rolled thing; and they’ll no longer throw the paper on your driveway now on Saturdays. Wow, I hadn’t heard about Martha Stewart Living going away; it and the Oprah magazine have been around for awhile. Good Housekeeping, too. I hope this doesn’t happen to Reader’s Digest for which I have a subscription. I still subscribe to six magazines, one of which is CL. I feel the annual subscription rates are VERY affordable on lots of print magazines still hanging around. (Although I’m not getting the high-end stuff like Architectural Digest, if IT is still hanging around.)
I love (said sarcastically) how ‘they’ just expect everybody to be living their life online. I refuse to sit hunched over a phone or a computer on a table; to me, it’s not relaxing-reading; and, in the case of a good shelter mag, it’s supposed to be relaxing; I don’t want to be squinting at a small screen. But I guess these publishers can tell the tale due to their diminished circulation. But ‘online’ isn’t everybody else’s world. I still get quite a few paper mail-order brochures-catalogs and even with those businesses of which I have years-long familiarity as their customer, those catalogs in my USPS mailbox are often what prompt me to order; I’d otherwise not just be surfing their retail websites online. They need to dangle a carrot!
My husband says majority rules, so I guess shelter mags and the like will go the way with rotary-dial phones. Every day, I absolutely keen/YEARN for life as it once was; at least my life.
Even so, I try to remember certain ‘helps’, like the ability to type out and proof a letter I’ve typed, then just effortlessly print it out, whereas ‘in olden days’ it was a manual typewriter, God forbid the typos. But I feel like other things have gotten more complicated with technology (guess you have to take the good and the bad of it); and, wow, more than once, I’ve been somewhere like a doctor’s office where their ‘system’ is down, and talk about problems: Like the mammography machine which failed due to some computer glitch, just as it was smashing my breast; had to abandon the whole thing and go back the next day. Not anything ANY woman wants to go thru. (I hope it doesn’t happen for THIS year’s mammo; it better be fully repaired!) Or my primary-care doctor’s office last week, when their entire computer system malfunctioned (busy office with five physicians), couldn’t troubleshoot the problem, had to cancel all appointments and the office actually was forced to close for two days. When, in other years, their paper manila folder/patient file was very handy, right there in front of them, with all the doctor’s notes. But I guess this kind of inconvenience is justified because a computer has in so many other ways made the exchange of medical info and billing and research and shared info so important for medical staff.
I couldn’t complete a (ridiculously complicated) item return/refund with a phone operator yesterday because their system was slow (‘sorry, I’m having technical difficulties’), then crashed. I was told to call back, their hands were tied. This is NOT good customer service from a somewhat-major online retailer! Nowadays without computer capability, everything just stops, so on the one hand it really puts us in a corner.
An aside: Your weather is a real head-scratcher, Claudia! If it makes you feel any better, we’ve had a few days now of ultra-hazy, humid weather to where you can’t see the distant horizon at all. I was in Malibu yesterday and the ocean wasn’t very blue. I guess the sea takes on some kind of reflection from the watery-gray sky.
(For some reason out of nowhere and for the first time, our foster dog decided to be an unruly car-traveler; it was so bad that my husband had to sit with him in the backseat, essentially hold the dog in place, and I-Vicki got to drive the last 15 miles home for all of us; so, I’m now investigating protective car crates for large-breed dogs, protective in that it would keep him from storming the front seat and causing a driving distraction like he did yesterday [he previously, all 65lbs of him, stood on the console between the two front seats and broke it, so we’ve now lost a cup holder forever!!], but also for him and his life, so that he’s not a loose ‘projectile’ thru a windshield if we were to get in a car accident.)
Another aside: Covid cases ‘up’ in my area of Southern Calif. Gulp. I guess to be expected after the holidays of Easter and Spring Break. One of my doctors told me yesterday that she-herself got Covid after being triple vaccinated. Thankfully, she didn’t get too sick; she’s young (age 33). And she’s off to Europe for a delayed honeymoon next week; just gonna take the chance for safe travel in what’s still a pandemic (after delaying the wedding a year due to Covid; then delaying the honeymoon for another year due to Covid; people just get tired of putting their life on hold [in her case, wanting to start a family sooner than later due to her age, and knowing that future international travel could be complicated with a baby, so do it now, don’t wait any longer!]).
My; how I ramble. Anyway, take heart; your weather is bound to be perfect SOON, Claudia!
Covid cases have been up here in the northeast for quite a while. We still mask indoors. And outdoors, if we’re wary about something.
Don and I have long talks about the balance of technology and things like books and magazines and music. Steve Jobs and the iPhone and iTunes have been extremely detrimental to musicians and composers. Record stores are no more. Too many chains and conglomerates. Too much ‘virtual’ and not enough REAL. Sigh.
Stay safe, Vicki.
Ahhhh…too cute – Maggie Rabbit & Olivia were color-coordinated for Easter ! Nice! I am like you; I will miss the demise of paper, in-the-hand magazines. I used to love Early American Life back in the day and kept many of the issues for years. When I eased more into a BOHO look now in my ‘later’ years, lol, I kept Flea Market decor mags for ideas. I don’t get mags now except once in a moon (due now to the OUTRAGEOUS prices of them), but when I do its likely a Flea Market / Vintage decor type mag. Oh I hope this weather breaks – its ridiculous.
It wasn’t planned that way. They just happened to be wearing those colors.
I love Flea Market decor – not because I’m Boho – I’m not – but because I love vintage and repurposed and that sort of thing.
Stay safe, Dawn.
Kind of ominous that CL is combining months seemingly unplanned. It’s a shadow of its former self. I remember getting my first issue of CL in the early 90s and I was just in love with it. My favorites have been CL, Cottage Living, Flea Market Style under Ki Nassauer and Martha Stewart Living. All gone now except for CL and now I’m wondering if it’s on its way out. Pretty interiors on Instagram are just not the same.
I yearn for so many by-gone things too!
Louise, All is not lost- I still receive Martha Stewart Living and it still has lots of articles and recipes in it. Just got the one for this month!
Enjoy!
Betsy
Betsy, the current issue of Martha Stewart Living is the last. It was announced by the publishers recently. I suppose you’ll still be able to go online and read articles, but there will be no more print versions of the magazine.
xo
Claudia
I thought the same thing, Louise. I think most print media is suffering financially and trying to figure out a way to keep going. It makes me very sad.
Stay safe.
I too really miss getting the paper form of my magazines. You can only look at the screen for so long! I remember when my magazines would come in the mail and I could grab a drink(a Diet Coke) and look at them for a few hours. One of my favorites was Cottage Living. It did not survive very long, but I still have all the copies I kept. My chore for today was to start going through stuff in my office/craft room and get rid of what I don’t need, which is a lot! I feel your weather will start getting better. It has to warm up sometime! Well, back to my purging. Take care!
I LOVED Cottage Living. I kept most of my copies, too.
Stay safe, Deb.