The Cozy Mystery List Blog

Wow! It’s August already!

At the beginning of the summer I wrote about our daughter coming home for the summer to study for the Bar. She took the three-day exam at the end of July, and then immediately started the process of moving. It’s been a big summer for her!

We have spent the last week moving her to her first “official” job, – although as some of you know through this blog, she interned every summer during both her college and law school years. Our house has looked like a storage place since she came home to study. We had all of her bins from school out in our living room, with new bins upstairs that she used to pack her “childhood” things into. We had her rowing machine in our family room, and our dining room table housed her breakable things, in short, we have been in a sort of transition stage.

I woke up two days ago with this epiphany: This is it! She is moving on with her life, and from now on, she will simply be “visiting” us… a wonderful accomplishment for her, but not so great for me as her mother! Her bedroom here now houses only has personal mementos: high school newspapers from her years as a reporter and editor, U.I.L. awards, fiction she wrote, history and science papers and projects, all things that probably mean more to me than they do to her. (She’s still young, with the passing of time she may just find that those things do indeed matter to her!)

Her life is going just as she planned. She will be working in a job she truly wants, she’ll be able to see her college roommate who will still be in Austin for another half year, and she will be living close enough to our home that she can visit when she wants, but far away so that we can’t just drop in when we want. (She hasn’t said the last part of that sentence, but I’m not so old that I can’t remember what it was like to be her age!)

So, with her moving out – and on with her life – it will be a time for the rest of us to adjust to our new family structure. My husband and I will slowly convert into the role my parents held all the years since I graduated from college and moved on with my life. It’s a cycle that is inevitable, one which I would much prefer reversing, but unfortunately, in all things related to time, cannot.

I finally have experienced what some of you Cozy Mystery readers have talked about before! And what’s more, I agree with you!

I have to admit that until this month, I have always been selective with my Cozy Mystery themed books. I only read the themes I was interested in.

Let’s see:

I love British mystery series, so, of course, I tossed the British themes into my grab-bag of “Likes.”

Aha, I have always loved history, so that means I grab-bagged historical mysteries.

Animals? I simply can’t get enough of them! I’ll take Animals to go please, Alex.

Culinary mysteries? While I might not enjoy cooking or baking, I sure do love to eat! I’ll toss those cookies in my grab-bag of mystery themes, also.

How about vacations? Do I love seeing far-away places of interest? Who doesn’t? Throw those mystery books that take place in mysterious locales right into my overnight grab-bag.

Holidays, anyone? Who doesn’t enjoy their favorite holidays, whether the holidays are Thanksgiving, Halloween (paranormals, anyone?), Christmas, or Hanukkah.

Are you getting my drift? There really were very few themes that I absolutely could NOT relate to… until this month!

This month, I tried a new-to-me author who I absolutely knew I was going to enjoy, but who I also knew writes a mystery series based on a theme I positively cannot relate to. I knew that I could overcome this theme, since I had done my homework. I had paid attention to your comments and recommendations, as well as read all of the Amazon reviews.

However, I finally met a theme I simply cannot enjoy. (Since there are very few authors who write this particular theme, I’m going to keep the theme in my bag, as in trash bag!) Every time the author mentioned the totally boring minutiae of this particular theme, I lost interest. Unfortunately for me, the author mentioned this boring theme way more times than she needed. While reading (I should say “trying to read”) the mystery book, every time the author started rambling on (and on, and on) about the theme, she lost me.

I know that in the past I have talked a lot about, let’s say, Monica Ferris and her delightful Needlecraft Mystery Series. I now wonder what those of you who don’t enjoy cross stitching and needle pointing think when I drone on (and on, and on) about how much I enjoy this series.

What about you? Have you ever disliked a mystery series theme enough to make you avoid an author? (Please do not name specific authors. If you happen to forget, I’ll simply have to replace the author’s name with ***** or something just as descriptive.)

This entry has absolutely nothing to do with Cozy Mystery books, but it’s been a while since my last “rant and rave”. It has to do with squirrels, specifically those in my back yard!

I have to say, since Sprite has been gone, I have been  exhibiting “bird-lady” symptoms. I am the first to admit it. (Yes, “bird-lady” as in the “Feed the Birds” bird-lady in the Mary Poppins movie!)

Actually, I’m not quite that bad>>> yet. But I have become a little obsessed with my back yard birds. I started with just one (standing) bird bath, and progressed to one “main” birdbath, two bird baths that hang, and two squirrel-proof bird feeders. On top of that, I was known to throw raw peanuts out for the Blue Jays – as in several times a day! >>> What did I tell you? I was truly exhibiting some “bird-lady” symptoms!

All that, however, has become a thing of the past. I know I have written about the time a squirrel ate his/her way into our attic. Of course, that meant fixing the roof with both a roof repair company AND an air conditioning company that had to reattach some of the pipes that lead outside. That squirrel fiasco did not come cheap!

Unfortunately, the seeds the birds discarded to the ground (as well as the peanuts meant for the Blue Jays) were being enjoyed by our back yard squirrels. I was OK with this, as long as it was limited to just our back yard squirrels. But the word got out!

Last week, my husband noticed that our back yard squirrels had grown in number. We currently had seven squirrels coming over to our house for their daily calorie consumption. This may not seem like a lot of squirrels to those of you who live on wooded lots, but we live in a rather overpopulated subdivision, where you might see two or three squirrels frolicking outside on your drive home.

As much as it saddened me, I had to take down both of my feeders and one of my birdbaths. We have gone to just one platform-type bird feeder (from which the birds don’t discard any seeds to the ground), one hanging bird bath, and our “main” bird bath that can be used by the squirrels – since we are experiencing water restrictions again.  (Fortunately, now that we have our squirrel bafflers, I haven’t had to mess with the hummingbird feeders.)

We’ll see how all of this squirrel precaution plays out. Hopefully they will learn to forage for food. Yesterday my husband saw one of the squirrels dig out a peanut (meant for Blue Jay consumption ONLY), and I’m sure they have acorns buried all over the yard, since we have four large oaks.

Now that we’ve made it more difficult for the squirrels to lounge around in our yard, we’re hoping they “move on” and don’t take to gnawing on our house again!