Category Archives: Mysteries

2026, Family, Fantasy, Mysteries

The Box

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Prologue.  Before YA and I went to St. Louis for my mom’s service and to clean out her condo, my middle sister mentioned that we should keep an eye out for Nonny’s wedding ring. She had stopped wearing it a few years back (due to her arthritis) and apparently it was now missing.  When we arrived and stopped at my sister’s house, she talked about it again.  Over the course of the next 24 hours, it was clear that she has also told everyone else in the family about the ring being missing. 

Everybody looked all over the “normal” places and one of the funnier parts of the week was all of us, one by one, discovering the plastic bag in the closet labeled “Wedding Ring”.  Unfortunately we all had our hopes dashed one at a time as it was discovered over and over again that it was an old quilt in the wedding ring pattern.  Shoot.

On Tuesday, in the back corner of a closet, we found “the box”.  It was a security box – a little surprising since it probably cost more than we figured Nonny would spend.  We were pretty sure we had all of Nonny’s important papers so were a little perplexed as to why she had a high-level security box.  It took us quite a while to find the keys as we had made quite a mess of her condo, emptying out drawers and closets to start sorting into piles of “toss, keep, donate”, and in that time, we had a whole lot of wild speculation going.  Were we all adopted and the papers were in there?  Witness protection proof?  Secret bank accounts?  All most all of us (there were ten of us in the condo at that point) were thinking we would find her wedding ring.

This is what we found when we opened the box:

As a non-believer, I was a little hesitant to unseal this envelope so my nephew pulled it out of the box.  He was a little wary as well.  There was one piece of paper in the envelope:

What?  Wars, Vaccumn (sic), David Surgery, Dorothy, Sunday School.  What?  Two hours of discussion.  The list was obviously made two and a half years ago.  That’s when David’s first surgery happened and was when Dorothy, her neighbor across the hall passed away; we think that wars, David and Dorothy were ideal candidates for God to keep an eye on.  But vacuum and the Sunday School class?  And why this single sheet in this single envelope labeled God and locked by itself in a very secure box?  I mean, Nonny was an inveterate list-maker.  We found several of them while we were cleaning but none of the others made the box.

During our talks, we came up with more wild ideas about why, why, why.  I won’t go into all of them here but I’ll tell you mine, simply because it got the most laughs.

Sometime in the future, 10 people (all strangers) will be staying at a fancy spa on a little island in the Caribbean.  Beginning the first night of their stay, two of these folks have envelopes delivered to their room.  In each envelope is a notecard with the word “wars”.  At breakfast, they all scratch their heads about it, but then later in the day, both folks are found murdered.  And of course, the only boat has been disabled and no one’s phones can get a connection off the island.  Too far to swim to the nearest island.  One the second night, two more folks get an envelope with a card waying “vacuum”.  You guessed it… both those folks are found dead during the next day.  The remaining six folks have one day to figure out the clues before the next deaths….

Any better thoughts?  Do you have a lock-box?  Will it be a mystery to your heirs?

2026, Family, Fantasy, Food, home, Mysteries

A World Gone Mad

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Gravity, the 5-second rule, Murphys Law, chocolate is a food group, the toast will always land buttered-side down, oatmeal raisin cookies masquerading as chocolate chip cookies are sent by evil entities to usurp happiness.  These are givens.  In addition YA doesn’t like farm eggs and YA doesn’t like my recipe for deviled eggs.

Farm eggs.  I adore Ben’s farm eggs.  Rich, full flavor and then there are those deep golden yolks.  Bring them on!  Unfortunately YA isn’t always sure about “new” things and the farm eggs fall into this category.  She hasn’t said exactly but I think it’s the color of the yolks.

Deviled eggs.  While in theory YA likes deviled eggs, she doesn’t like my preferred recipe.  I’ve mentioned before that I am a Miracle Whip gal.  YA has grown up into a mayonnaise gal.  It I make the eggs with some Miracle Whip and some mayonnaise and give it a good dose of mustard, she will sometimes have one, but not always.

So after Ben delivered eggs on Sunday, I immediately boiled up a few and made deviled eggs.  When I asked YA if she was interested, she said no, so I made them my favorite way – Miracle Whip, mustard, pickle relish, salt, pepper.  And because they were farm eggs, they were stunning looking – more golden and orangish even than the header photo.  I ate some immediately, had some for breakfast on Monday (they were marvelous on toast with strawberry jam) and was looking forward to the last of the batch of breakfast yesterday.

Lo and behold – when I came downstairs, the container that had held the remaining four halves was empty and sitting in the sink.  SHE ATE MY DEVILED EGGS!  Even though I had made her least favorite version. 

So now what?  I feel like I need to re-write all my life expectations.  What’s next… will the toast fall butter side up?

Any universal truths that have let you down?

2026, Mysteries, TV, Uncategorized

Bingeing Vera

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The British drama Vera starring Brenda Blethyn ran for 14 seasons and I watched every episode from beginning to end in the last five days of my BritBox holiday subscription.  Binge-watching has its drawbacks and it’s with what you notice because you’re seeing it quickly in succession.  Here’s what I found:

Backstory.  You’ve heard me say that I don’t like it when the main character has so much back story that it takes episode after episode to unpack it.  It’s a bit easier when you’re bingeing because the episodes come one after the other; it’s not as drawn-out but still.  You never really do figure out her clearly dysfunctional childhood story. 

Team Development.  She says repeatedly that her family are her colleagues but those colleagues must get whiplash as she alternates between thanking them for good work and then excoriating them for not getting the job done.  She can be really mean.  And if anyone barks back, she goes deadly quiet and puts them “in their place”.    In 14 seasons Vera rejects almost all overtures by these colleagues, from not wanting to be a godmother to never going out for drinks with the team.  Once she had dinner with her sergeant’s family – just once.  She doesn’t seem to know anything about her team and their lives outside the office despite years of working together.

Repeat dialog.  What are we missing?  We’re missing something.  Something is missing.  This dialog usually happens about ¾ the way through each episode.  Every episode.  I suppose if you weren’t binge watching, you might not notice this.

Lying.  Every single person who is interviewed by Vera and her team lies.  All of them.  Not just the murderer, not just the shady person who has motive but isn’t the killer, not just the neighbor down the street who heard the shots… all of them.  Usually by the end, they have all recanted their lies.  It makes you wonder if there is something in the water in the UK.

Perry Mason theory of killer identification.  Decades ago, my dad and I came up with this theory —  any character who is on screen or has dialog more than three times, but doesn’t really have any strong tie to the story usually turns out to be the murderer.  And you can’t usually figure out the motive ahead of time.  My dad and I would shout out who we thought it was and IF you could come up with any sort of close motive, you got extra credit for that.   Anyway, that leads to my Vera theory of killer identification.  There is almost always one main motive path: corrupt financial business, past returning to bite you in the butt, blackmail… all the regulars.  But you can throw most of these out; all the time spent tracking all this down is wasted because the murderer is almost always someone very close to the victim, not connected to that motive and it’s almost never pre-meditated.  The son, the daughter, the mother, the father, the wife, the husband, even the best friend.  And just like those Perry Mason shows, you won’t always get the motive until the very end.  Vera has a very annoying habit of looking at something given to her by her team (usually a piece of paper or something on a pad) and charging off without letting us, the audience, know what has just been discovered.

Anyway, I’m making it sound like I didn’t like the series or the characters.  I actually did.  In fact, in the second to the last episode, one of her team (Kenny) got clobbered and I thought for sure he was done for and I got really upset.  SPOILER ALERT… Kenny survives the attack but we don’t know that until the next episode.  The jury is still out whether I would have enjoyed it more or less if I had been watching it weekly for years rather than watching 14 seasons in five days! Guess we’ll never know.

Any series you’ve been enjoying lately?  Bingeing or not?

2026, Automotive, books, Family, Mysteries, Travel

Road Trip Reading

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I’m rarely without a book at hand.  I always have a CD in the car, CD player also in my studio.  Libby on my laptop.  Libby on my phone.  STACKS of books in my bedroom (library books in one place, my unread titles in another).  Even when traveling, books come with me; my packing list on the computer has books as a box to tick.

Even though I didn’t think I’d have any time for reading on this trip, I brought books.  No books on CD in the car with YA but I had my laptop with Libby, had my phone.  STILL brought books with me. I did make a conscious effort to bring things on the lighter side…

    • The Mysterious Affair at Styles (CD) by Agatha Christie. I’ve read this before but all my BritBox the past two months stirred up a desire to read a few of her early works again.  I’m actually almost done with this.  Maybe I can do an errand by myself today to finish it up!
    • Serial Killer Support Group (Book) by Saratoga Schaefer. I haven’t started this yet but it’s called a “dark, witty debut” about a young woman trying to solve the mystery of her younger sister’s murder.  Hopefully the “witty” is true.
    • Family of Spies (Libby) by Christine Kuehn. This is non-fiction; written by the author when she discovered her dark family roots. I’m about half way through this one; although it’s not a feel-good subject (spies during WWII), it’s written pretty much as a straight-forward history.  I think the author was putting some emotional distance between herself and the story.
    • Dangerous Davies: The Last Detective (Book) by Leslie Thomas. I also haven’t started this one yet but I have seen the first three episode of the TV series thanks to BritBox.  The TV series was a little on the lighter side so I suppose the book could swing either way.
    • A History of the World in 12 Shipwrecks (Book) by David Gibbins. This is the last of the “listicles” books that I picked up for Blevins Book Club.  I was trying to cram it in two weeks ago and then the snowstorm happened, so I haven’t picked it up since.  I’m about 1/3 of the way through.  It’s not nearly as good as I was hoping.  Writing is a bit dry and I was hoping for much more interesting photographs.

Of course, the chances I’ll finish any of these (well, maybe the Christie) is pretty slim, but where reading is concerned, hope springs eternal.  A bit like the cat and the grocery bag from Duck’s Breath Mystery Theater!

What do you like to read when you’re traveling?

2026, Art, Food, Music, Mysteries, Songs

Went To a Bar

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A few weeks ago, here in Winona, there was an event at the Two Fathoms Brewing, a bar-and-grill downtown, on the river. Here’s the press release:

Silent Auction & Benefit Show for Winona Sheltering Network
Sunday 2:00 – 5:00 Free Event, All Ages
[Music by:] Ironstill; Mike Munson; Sheep for Wheat

When I got there around 3:00, the place was packed – standing room only. I got a lucky seat when a person sitting beside my friend Cherie left for the other room, where the Silent Auction was taking place. I eventually stood in a long line for a Cold Milk Stout (really a delicious thing – look it up).  It had been a year or more since I’d been to Two Fathoms – it hosts weekly Beer Bingo, weekly Trivia Night, live music on weekends, and a monthly Karaoke, et al. Best, though, are the monthly Jazz Jams on a Sunday afternoon – with the local H3O Jazz Trio and an open mic;  each month a portion of the proceeds go to a different local cause. Here’s a photo to give you the “flavor” of the place…

I enjoyed some of the changes that had been made in my absence – they’d relocated the bar, which left more central space for the stage. But since the noise level made conversation close to impossible, we just listened to the music and WATCHED people – best people-watching I’ve done in ages:

– people seeing each other and hugging, or just being delighted to reunite
– lots of little kids, some in tutus and other fancy dresses
– a guy in the corner talking to his friend, holding his mug and a baby
– so many different ages of people, and everyone seemed in a good mood
– a singer pauses to announce that there’s a pizza looking for a home – can anyone please claim this pizza???
– and the pizza smelled SO good..
–  felt good to be among these people; everyone there was in support of the Sheltering Network
– there were great silent auction items – “knocked it out of the park”, someone said – and they raised around $12,000 for the WSN

 When was the last time you were in a bar? Or attended a fundraiser?  Was it enjoyable?

Where is your favorite place to “people watch”?

2026, Art, home, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Scrappy Do

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My neighbor Don once asked me about how I keep up with supplies for my paper crafts.  I think I snorted.   I’m pretty certain that if I didn’t buy anything else ever (except for tape, which I go through at a prodigious rate), I could keep making cards until I’m 105.

You’d think that with stacks of paper, I wouldn’t be so stingy with it.  I keep almost every scrap, unless it’s thinner than 1/2”.   There are two plastic bins in my studio with paper scraps – one is for solid-colored cardstock and the other is for patterned paper.  Both these bins are full and I spend a bit of time sifting through to see if there is something I can use rather than cut into a new piece of stock/paper.  I try to keep it organized, but many days when I’m straightening up after I’ve crafted, I just toss the scraps into the bin willy nilly.

That means that a couple of times a year, it’s time to sort out the scraps.  I go through each bins separately; solids get divided up into colors (blues, greens, purples, etc.) and patterns get laid out by pattern type and/or season (stripes, dots, floral, Halloween, etc.)   At this point I usually jettison a lot of the smaller pieces, especially the patterned stuff.  The header photo is what it looks like (this is the solids).

This whole process takes about an hour.  It’s not hard by any means and I can’t say that I actually enjoy it but it does feel quite good when it’s done.  And I don’t have to think about it for another six months or so!

What do you have that needs periodic organizing?

2026, books, home, Kids, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Rocks & Hammers

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Not quite sure where I got the idea to read And Then We Hit a Rock by Greg Buenzli – it had a catchy title – sometimes that’s all it takes.  Greg and his family bought a catamaran and sailed around on it for a year and a half.  Four stars. It would have been five stars if the good stuff / bad stuff had been more balanced.  It was about 90% the bad weather, the things that broke (legend!) and other things that went wrong; only about 10% (most of it in the last 10 pages) of why it was a good experience.  An OK read, just not as good as it could have been. 

The reason I’m telling you this is a warning.  Do not attempt any home improvements projects right after finishing this book.  It’s cursed.

Now that YA has finished painting all the hallways, she’s been at me to re-hang all the pictures.  I was ready; I had purchased some new picture hangers, I’d sorted through the photos and stacked them by where they should go, I’d dusted everything off.  No worries – I’ve certainly hung pictures before.

It was a nightmare.  If it could go wrong, it did.  Hallway is just dark enough that everything I dropped (repeated little nails, anchors) needed the flashlight to find it.  I only dropped the hammer once – the only luck of the day was that it didn’t land on any of my toes.  Two photos had to be re-hung because I just did a bad job the first time.  The wire on the back of one photo ripped off after it had been on the wall about 15 minutes. The box with the various tools was right underneath it at that point or the glass would probably have shattered. Also the number of tools kept expanding as I went along. Level, hammer, pliers, painters tape, scissors, flashlight, ruler. And have I mentioned my poor fingers?  Mashed, crushed, banged, pounded, beaten, whacked, smashed, bashed, battered…. I’ll stop now.  Suffice it to say I hung 17 pictures and bashed a thumb or finger at least 20 times.  I did try using a little pliers to hold the nails, but it wasn’t very effective.

I couldn’t bring myself to do the destination photos that go down the stairway after getting the upstairs done; hopefully I’ll have the nerve tomorrow.  Maybe 24 hours between me and the cursed book will make it not so painful!

Ever read a cursed book before? Bashed a finger recently?

2026, Business, Food, Kids, Mysteries

Derby Delights

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YA and I actually have a lot in common.  I probably mention the ways we are different more often than not – makes for better stories sometimes. 

Anyway, we both really like the Derby cookies that they make at Great Harvest Bakery.  Chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, pecans (plus all the other good cookie ingredients).  And they are huge – really too big to eat one a day, but yummy enough.

Great Harvest doesn’t make the derby cookie very often.  They make four or five cookies a month but for some reason they only make the derby a couple of months during the year.  At the beginning of every month, both YA and I scour the bakery’s monthly newsletter to see the monthly cookie listing.  I was expecting that we wouldn’t see our favorite until May.  I don’t know much about the Kentucky Derby but I do know that it’s in May.  YA was the first to see the newsletter this month and when I asked her how many I should get (the packages of six are a much better deal), she responded, two now and then maybe two the end of next week and two more at the end of the month.  She figured we can freeze any “overage”.  Like the two of us can’t eat 36 cookies in a month.  Snort.

Anyway, I obediently went up to Great Harvest today… ended getting three packages because once you purchase a certain amount at the bakery, you get a discount.  Did the math quickly in my head (and had the math confirmed by the bakery clerk) that buying one extra package of cookies actually made the price go down a bit.  Win/win.  I put one of the packages in the freezer for now. 

The capper to this story is that when I bought all these cookies and bemoaned the fact that the bakery doesn’t make them very often, the clerk concurred and also said that since the base of the derby cookie is the same as the base of a couple other cookies, we can special order our favorite on any month those others are made.  Which is most months.  Wish I had known this any time during the last several years!

Will you watch the Derby this year?  Will you wear a fancy hat?

2026, books, Fantasy, History, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Surfing Queen

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Halfway through my BritBox “gift”, I have not yet developed a British accent, but wouldn’t be that surprised; the majority of the voices I’m hearing these days are British (or Australian).

As you can imagine, I’m getting my fill of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie.  It’s been years since I saw all of the Jeremy Brett/David Burke episodes.  I do think they are my favorite.  No offense to Benedict Cumberbatch/Martin Freeman or Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce but the Brett/Burke are more accurate to the original stories.

I’m a little hit and miss with Agatha Christie.  Some of her stuff I can’t get to because it’s “Premium” and some of the stuff I’m finding is just dreck.  But I’m getting enough.  “Why Didn’t  They Ask Evans” was excellent and I’ve watched a lot of David Suchet as Poirot.  One of the most fun things was a documentary that followed the Christies on a worldwide trade mission trip around the world in 1922-23.  Archie Christie was on the trip as an assistant to the British envoy and the Agatha was part of the mission to support the support.  Although her first book (The Mysterious Affair at Styles) had been published two years earlier and was a huge success, she still wasn’t the wildly famous author she was later to become.

The best tidbit in the documentary was that Agatha Christie learned to surf in Muizenberg, South Africa during that trip.  In fact, she is believed to be the first Western woman to stand up on a surf board.  She apparently adored surfing.  This is an excerpt from a letter to her mother:

“Oh, it was heaven! Nothing like it. Nothing like that rushing through the water at what seemed to you a speed of about two hundred miles an hour.  All the way in from the far distant raft until you arrived, gently slowing down, on the beach, and foundered among the soft flowing waves.”

There were also trips in her life to Hawaii, where she again spent time riding the waves.  It’s wonderful to think of Agatha as young and vigorous, since most of her fame came after this and most of the photos we see of her are from her older years.

Makes me hope that some of my favorite authors have a secret life that we don’t know about.  Maybe John Scalzi has swum with dolphins.  Maybe Andy Weir has time traveled to another planet and back.  Maybe Naomi Novik has flown dragonback.

What fun facts would you love to know about your favorite authors?

 

2026, books, Family, holidays, Mysteries, TV, Uncategorized

BritBox vs. Libby

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For the holidays, YA gave me a marvelous (albeit completely unnecessary) gift:

Since the discovery that I could get Libby to work through my hearing aids, my reading has been up a bit and I was happy when I had hit 14 by January 31.  I was thinking that maybe it might be a banner year.

Another gift that I received this year was also an unnecessary bit of fun.  When I visited my friend Susan in Madison last year, one of our conversations was about television and all the shows we liked.  I mentioned that I loved a lot of the British shows that I could find and that I wished BritBox wasn’t so expensive; I’m just not willing to pay anymore for tv in our house than I already do.  When I opened the envelope from Susan, I expected a gift card; it turned out to be a coupon for two months of BritBox paperclipped to $22 cash.  I laughed and laughed.

I launched the two-month gift on February 1st.  I took the book counter photo yesterday morning.  Not one book added since January 31.  That’s because I am flippin’ LIVING on BritBox – part of my psyche says I should get as much seen as possible while I have this two-month gift.  Death in Paradise (Season 15), Vera (just a few shows…on the edge of too dark for me), Ludwig (the whole first season – can’t wait for Season 2 later this year), Hamish Macbeth (only a couple of these), Poirot – Death on the Nile.   I’ll stop here.  So far I haven’t wandered off the murder mystery path, but I’m sure I will eventually.  

It’s actually really enjoyable since I’m pretty good at skipping shows I don’t like.  Heaven knows there are enough available.  I turned off Riot Women 10 minutes in; ABC Murders lasted about that long as well.

Truly the only regret I have about having this two months is the hit it’s taking to my reading.  Truly, if it weren’t for cds and Libby when I’m doing errands in the car, I wouldn’t be reading at all!

Do any of your hobbies/past-times fight each other for your attention?