Deep Thoughts With The Chicken Lady

A bunch of randomness:

I love living in a small town.  It means that people know you, and care about you, and even people who don't know you care about you.  Like friends who bring you soup and hot Kool Aid when you're sick.  Or friends who come over with "fun drinks" and molten chocolate cakes to celebrate your birthday.  Or random employees who show up at your door with the driver's license you left on the counter after getting something notarized.  Small towns ROCK.  We might not have a Target.  Or a Starbucks.  Or really anything for that matter.  But we have love and that's all that matters.  Oh, and we have sunrises that continue to make me so thankful I don't live in the city anymore.

View out my back door circa way too early.

Today was the Feast of the Holy Family.  We joked all day that we are a "Family Trying-to-Be-Holy."  We went out for breakfast with our nasty colds because the cleaners were coming and we had to be out of the house.  The food tasted really delicious because I didn't have to make it.   And I was happy there was another kid there who sounded like he was hacking up a lung, so I didn't have to worry about us getting HIM sick.  Then we ran to the orchard, where the girls had an impromptu date with the playground there, and Ken and I stole some moments of peace.  (We've been cooped up in the house with the girls pretty much non-stop since Christmas, so it was a welcome outing.)  The fresh air felt delightful.

After nap time, we watched "Little Women."  You'd be horrified to know that I have never read the book.  There, I admit it.  But my daughter has read it twice now (overachiever!) and has been begging to watch it.  I ordered it on Netflix, and it came in perfect time this week, with all these sick cranky children around.  And it arrived...cracked! (Anyone else starting to think Netflix is a total scam??  Every time we get a movie, it's either cracked, scratched, or skips at least once!)  On Demand saved the day, though, and we had a lovely afternoon.  I've seen the movie at least five times, and for the first time, am no longer a member of "Team Laurie."  I have been converted to "Team Friedrich" but I won't lie, it still does prick me that Jo refuses Laurie's marriage proposal.  (And does it bother anyone else that then he marries AMY?  Come ON!)  And I cried again when Beth got the piano.  And I cried again when she died.  Such a good, good movie, and it was so awesome to get to watch it with my own little women.

Christian Bale!

I'm really looking forward to January.  I like making New Year's Resolutions...even though they are usually over and done with by February.  I have special plans for 2012, but I'll post more about that later.  I also really love two saints whose feasts we celebrate in January: John Bosco and Elizabeth Ann Seton.  As a former teacher, both of these "educator" saints really speak to me.  I also love the fact that we live where Elizabeth Ann Seton walked and prayed and taught.  She was a wife, a mother, a teacher, and perhaps one saint I feel like I have something in common with on those fronts.  We will probably field-trip-it over to her Shrine this week and do the whole movie/tour thing.  It's quite awesome.  We'll also get "A Time for Miracles" from Netflix.  (Ughg, I can't tear myself away from them!)  And I just like John Bosco...not really for any particular reason, but I just love a saint that can take mean, nasty street boys and turn them around and teach them about God.  Because who would want to do that really?  A saint, that's who.

The "holy conversation" at dinner was whether the movie "Little Women" was better than the book or not (clearly a one-sided argument since only one person, aged 8.75, has experienced both) and whether your own floaters in your drink are really that bad.  I mean, they are your floaters, after all, not someone else's.  Keepin' it classy over here.