Tag: bar harbor

Take Time For Fun Before You Run Out of Moments

On Thursday, my co-podcaster, Shaun, and husband guy, takes over the blog.

He’s adorable. I hope you’ll read what he says even if he does occasionally sound like a surfer dude from the 1990s or Captain Pontification. And no, we don’t always agree. 🙂

best podcast ever
Shaun

Spring is almost here folks! Here in Maine, in Bar Harbor at least, the vast majority of our snow is gone and it is steadily getting warmer. To me, this is cause for great celebration. You may want to know why I am celebrating the arrival of spring.

Well simply put, I do not like winter. I was born and raised in southern Florida and I am not into winter sports at all. Nor am I into freezing my butt off when I want to go outside. To top it off, I am very opposed to layers of clothing covering my body, and we all know that layering is the way to stay warm. It creates quite a conundrum for me.

However, there are many benefits to living where we live. We don’t have nearly as much traffic to deal with. Our town has literally two traffic lights and I believe that there are three total for the entire island. We don’t have long lines to wait in anywhere, except during tourist season when our small-town logistics are overrun.

Also, it is incredibly beautiful here! Carrie and I don’t spend nearly enough time enjoying our natural surroundings. We are working on changing that. We have recently adopted a pseudo-selfish outlook of taking time for ourselves in order to have smaller but more frequent moments of fun and happiness before we run out of time to do stuff that we want.

You know what being able to have some fun does for you? It makes you happier. You know what happens when you are happier? You have a higher likelihood of spreading some of that happy around and being kind to other human beings!

So, folks, take some time to do for yourselves. Carve out a few moments or a few days to do something that you want to do. Something that makes you smile and makes you feel refreshed and energized.

Then share it!

You don’t have to share your activity (although that would be awesome) but share your newfound happy. Share your reinvigorated heart and smiles. It doesn’t cost you anything to try and give away some of your joy. If you do it right, it won’t even cut into your joy savings account because doing something for someone else should make you feel good enough to replenish whatever you gave away.

Try it!

Now go love someone and remember to always Love Your Way Through it!

Peace,

Shaun

LET’S HANG OUT!

HEY! DO YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TOGETHER?

MAYBE TAKE A COURSE, CHILL ON SOCIAL MEDIA, BUY ART OR A BOOK, OR LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST?

Email us at carriejonesbooks@gmail.com

HELP US AND DO AN AWESOME GOOD DEED

Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness on the DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE podcast and our new LOVING THE STRANGE podcast.

We’re sorry we laugh so much… sort of. 

Please share it and subscribe if you can. Please rate and like us if you are feeling kind, because it matters somehow. There’s a new episode every Tuesday!

Thanks so much for being one of the 263,000 downloads if you’ve given us a listen!

One of our newest LOVING THE STRANGE podcasts is about the strange and adorably weird things people say?

And one of our newest DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE episode is about fear setting and how being swallowed by a whale is bad ass.

And Carrie has new books out! Yay!

You can order now! It’s an adult mystery/thriller that takes place in Bar Harbor, Maine. Read an excerpt here!

best thrillers The People Who Kill
The people who kill

It’s my book! It came out June 1! Boo-yah! Another one comes out July 1.

And that one is called  THOSE WHO SURVIVED, which is the first book in the the DUDE GOODFEATHER series.  I hope you’ll read it, like it, and buy it!

The Dude Goodfeather Series - YA mystery by NYT bestseller Carrie Jones
The Dude Goodfeather Series – YA mystery by NYT bestseller Carrie Jones

TO TELL US YOUR BRAVE STORY JUST EMAIL BELOW.

You Don’t Need Good Fences to Make Good Neighbors

When the first giant tree from a neighbor’s yard fell into our fence and demolished a lot of it, I didn’t post about it. There had been a horrific tornado in another part of the U.S. that took so much property and killed so many. People were hurting and grieving and to post about our event seemed more than a little tone deaf.

A fence didn’t matter much.

Trees-1, Fence-0

But what did matter was that our neighbor (we don’t know him very well) came over as soon as he heard and helped remove the tree.

We didn’t have to argue about responsibility. We didn’t have to beg him to help. We decided he could take care of the tree, and we’d take care of replacing the fence.

The fence is important because our big white dog Gabby is a Pyr and Pyrs roam. To be fair, Gabby only roams in straight lines and directly to Acadia National Park, but still. We’ve barricaded our back porch for when she needs alone time.

Gabby

Soon, I hoped, our fence would get repaired. Shaun ordered the panels, but winter happens and snow comes and goes and so do horribly frigid temperatures.

“You’re never going to fix the fence,” I said.

“I will,” he said. “When it’s time.”

“I bet that some other random tree will fall and you’ll be all, ‘Aha! I didn’t fix it yet for a reason,’”  I said.

He muttered something the way spouses do sometimes. Since I want to stay married, I didn’t ask him to repeat himself.

But this past weekend, during a big windstorm, another neighbor’s tree spiraled into our back fence and yard killing one of our three-year-old fruit trees and taking out more of the fence.

Trees – 2, Fence – 0

“Oh,” I said, “the poor trees.”

It bashed another tree. We aren’t sure if that one will survive. If it does, we’ve decided to call it the miracle tree.

Shaun just got grumpy while I mourned. But then that neighbor (a totally different one) who rents his house, found out, came over with a small, borrowed chainsaw with just enough gas and chopped up the other trees. We stacked them on the first neighbor’s property (with permission) and ordered another fence panel.

But the thing is? We were all lucky. All those trees could have fallen on people or structures or dogs. All those neighbors could have been punks and not helped. But instead? Instead, we got to know our neighbors, work alongside them, and that’s pretty awesome. We were lucky in so many ways even though those trees took out our fence.

And the thing is that if it wasn’t for Gabby’s need to roam? I might rather have that fence taken down—all the way down. The saying is good fences make good neighbors, but I call poop on that. Good actions, kind hearts? That’s what makes good neighbors. I learned that a lot this past month and I’m so glad it’s true.

But here is the book . . .

It’s called THE PEOPLE WHO LEAVE and it’s the latest installment of the Dude series. Shaun (the husband) and I are currently arguing about whether it’s the last installment. I say yes. He says no. Feel free to weigh in if you’ve been reading it.

WHAT IT IS ABOUT

A heartbreaking and romantic must-read thriller from New York Times and internationally bestselling author Carrie Jones brings a Maine teen’s past into a terrifying present.

Jessica “Dude” Goodfeather’s mother walked off and left her and her kind stoner dad when she was just a little girl, but after a mysterious email leads to some serious questions, Dude and her friends realize that her mother might not have willingly abandoned them after all.

The third book in Carrie Jones’s exciting Maine mystery series forces Dude to grapple with the ghosts of her family’s past so that she can finally head towards a hopefully brighter future.

Join New York Times and internationally bestselling author Carrie Jones in the third book of the Dude Mystery Series as it combines the excitement of a thriller with the first-hand immediacy and quirky heroines that Jones is known for.

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