He's a Will Do Sort of Guy Weekly Link Round-Up

I'm still on house arrest and still healing. It's wonderful to be able to ease into my old routines because I'm feeling better and have more energy. There's nothing much interesting to talk about. Reading. Knitting. Watching the hummingbirds. *yawn* So I thought I would praise the most important person in my life, my husband Denis.

The face that brightened my hospital stay.

I never thought I would marry. I was never much interested in the whole matrimonial thing, but when I encountered this Englishman, my preconceived notions took a nosedive. There's something to be said for a first marriage at the age of forty-seven. I had my head screwed on straight. I knew what was truly important to me, and I knew the personality traits in others that meant the most to me.

Of course, there was a learning curve involved. The house of one now contained two and someone else's opinions had to be taken into account, but that was relatively easy. Denis made it easy, probably because this was his second marriage so he had a better idea of what to expect.

We've had so many adventures together, and I'm looking forward to many more.

The hospital fitted me with a "pic line" (a mini-catheter) in my upper right arm before I could come home. I had to inject myself with antibiotics every morning, and you can see in the photo the line-up of what had to go into my arm. Denis walked past one morning and watched me for a few seconds. I could tell he was a bit squeamish about it, so I did my antibiotic thing a little earlier so he wouldn't have to see. I also timed the dressing change on my leg for when he wasn't around because that made him even more squeamish. (My leg looked like something out of a nightmare-inducing sci-fi movie. It was awful! It actually looks like a leg now, thank goodness.)

But you know what? If I'd needed Denis's help with injecting the antibiotics, if I'd needed his help changing the bandages on my leg, he would've been right there, doing what needed to be done. (He'd helped me once with my leg when it was at its worst, bless 'im!)

I love this wonderful man for his intelligence, for his sense of humor, for his sense of adventure, for his can do/will do attitude. I love him for so many things. But I also love him for his compassion. He is, without doubt, one of the most caring human beings I have ever met.

Do I know how lucky I am? You bet I do!

Now let's get out to that corral. Head 'em up! Moooove 'em out!

►Books & Other Interesting Tidbits◄

• Why we will always love The Masque of the Red Death.
• Those "little green army men" will soon feature female toy soldiers.
• Inside a new effort to change what schools teach about Native American history. 
• A student has discovered a secret acrostic in Milton's Paradise Lost. 
• Why some people become lifelong readers. 
• The Library of Congress, in conjunction with Poisoned Pen Press, is launching a Crime Classics book series.
• The Golden Age detective fiction renaissance.
• How Reese Witherspoon became the new high priestess of book clubs.

►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄

• How ancient DNA can help recast colonial history.
• Beautifully preserved Iron Age artifacts are being found under Norwegian glaciers.
• Misidentified Roman "pendants" were actually women's makeup tools.
• The Church has sued a metal detectorist over the spoils of a huge Viking treasure hoard.
• Mudlarks unearth the past on London's riverbanks.
• Viking invaders brought armies of mice with them.
• Video: Inside the cave of the ancient Jaguar God. 
• An old lady discovers a Renaissance masterpiece in her kitchen.

►Channeling My Inner Elly Mae Clampett◄

• Komodo dragons have skin that looks like chain mail. 
• A rare polka-dotted zebra foal has been photographed in Kenya.
• A human chain guided four trapped dolphins out of a St. Petersburg canal.
• North America has lost nearly three billion birds since 1970.
• Iceland's seabird colonies are vanishing, with massive chick deaths.
• The man who "invented" the labradoodle says he created a "Frankenstein."

►Fascinating Folk◄

• Craig Johnson on the enduring popularity of Longmire and its deeply human characters.
• Women scientists were written out of history, and it's Margaret Rossiter's lifelong mission to fix that.
• A new biography spotlights Jo Bonger, the sister-in-law who helped rescue van Gogh from obscurity.
• How Madame Tussaud built her house of wax.

►The Happy Wanderer◄

• Live like Lady Mary Crawley with a one-night stay at Downton Abbey.
• A twelve-stop road trip of Frank Lloyd Wright's most surprising designs.
• Bakehouse Close, an alley off Edinburgh's Royal Mile.

►I ♥ Lists◄

• The twenty best campus novels, ranked.
• Four new words in the Merriam-Webster dictionary and what they say about 2019.
• Top ten novels about burning issues for young adults.
• Ten British crime dramas to die for. 
• Thirteen gritty mysteries by Dagger Award-winning author Reginald Hill.
• Forty banned books you should read.
• What books will we still be reading in ten years?
• The magic of Maine's thrillers.

That's all for this week! Don't forget to stop by next Friday when I'll be sharing a freshly selected batch of links for your surfing pleasure.

Have a great weekend, and read something fabulous!