Can I Get a Witness??

Okay, so I actually wrote this entry a long time ago...when Happy first moved to Virginia, but, I am finding that I need to post it again. Because I need it. Because some things never change. No matter how hard we try to make our lives better, there are just some characteristics that are inevitably unmovable.

Leave it to Chicken to pin point exactly what I need to help me through this time of transition with Happy leaving. I really, really, REALLY miss her! (Especially now that she is pregnant and I cannot be there for her. I was holding Flower the other day, and she was sleeping peacefully in my arms and I remembered how Beckie looked when she was a baby so I started to cry...) Chief and I gave Chicken the Women's Devotional Bible as a gift one Christmas. She just got a job as a nanny for two boys over the summer, and while she waits for one of the boys during his tennis lesson, she has been reading through the devotional. She came across two that she gave to me to read today, and I just wanted to share one of them with you.

I am a worrier. No doubt about it. I keep telling my kids and BDILE..."when you have children of your own someday, you will understand why!"

I don't ever remember worrying about ANYTHING until I had kids. I never cared if anyone liked me or wanted to be my friend, if I had a job or if I had a boyfriend; but then I had BSE, got married and the girls came along. (Yes, in that order) It seems like over night, I became this "worrier". (Too bad I didn't become a "warrior"! Prayer Warrior, that is! :~) ) It's hard for a worrier to pray. Worry distracts me. It can consume me. It makes me cry uncontrollably, and it makes me "think" too much. It depresses me. Worrying makes me worry more. :~) Chicken handed me her Bible and said, "Mom, you need to read pages 588 and 873. Have a good day and I'll see you when I get home!" And out the door she went. She thinks she's so smart!! :~)

Anyway...one of the devotions (page 588) is by Hannah Whitall Smith. She talks about the beauty of Lake Tahoe. It's 23 miles long, 10 miles wide and so deep that a line dropped 1,900 feet does not touch bottom. It lies 5,000 feet above the ocean. It is said that the Lake lies so still and clear, the eye can penetrate 100 feet into it's depths! She talks about the beauty of the snow capped mountains which surround the Lake, how peaceful and restful it is there. (God is an incredible decorator, isn't He??) She writes: "In the pressure of the greatest responsibilities, in the worry of the smallest cares, in the perplexities of life's moments of crisis, we may have the Lake Tahoe rest in the security of God's will. Learn to live in this rest. In the calmness of spirit it will give, your soul will reflect, as in a mirror, the beauty of the Lord; and the tumult of men's lives will be calmed in your presence as your tumults have been calmed in His presence."


I know this may not seem fitting, maybe it does. Maybe I just needed to write it out again. I am just worried. Stress at work...my house...my kids...my grandkids...Chief...me. I cry all the time. I am not really depressed...must be menopause...because (even though I am VERY late) THAT'S not happening. There, I guess I said it. Late. Scary, isn't it?? Please don't laugh at me!

I am always telling my students that if they are in a situation they cannot control, why worry about it?? Why can't I take my own advice??? WORRY IS JUST WASTED ENERGY!!!!

How not to worry? I leave you with this scripture:

"My heart is not proud, O Lord, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with it's mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, put your hope in the Lord both now and forevermore." Psalm 131

AND: "Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning, great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, 'the Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for Him'." Lamentations 3:22-24

Can I get a witness????? Anywhere????

"And the hits just keep on comin'..."

OMW!!! I KNEW I loved movies, but this is ridiculous. Seriously. I definitely have an obsession. Maybe I need help. Okay...this is what I did, I started writing out the movies I love, and then I just decided to Google "The Top 100 movies of All Time" and take a look. OMW!! I had listed over 200 movies... then I thought, do I really LOVE them all???? So, I narrowed it down the best I could and here it is...I decided it would take me forever to list MY top 100 at the top, so I just put my top faves in bold...ABSOLUTE FAVES bold and italicized. And forget alphabetizing...I DO have a life (as mundane as it may seem), even though it looks as if all I do is watch movies. Of course, there's Idol, Lost, Medium, ELR etc. etc. etc. Have a ball...

1. To Kill a Mockingbird (my ALL TIME fave!)
2. A Time to Kill
3. Panic Room
4. Step Mom
5. Cheaper by the Dozen (1950)
6. Casper
7. Now and Then
8. Independance Day
9. Miracle Worker BOTH of them!
10. One Magic Christmas
11. The Wizard of Oz
12. Casablanca
13. Gone with the Wind
14. Some Like It Hot
15. Singin' In The Rain
16. Psycho (The Original)
17. Star Wars (all of them)
18. On the Waterfront
19. Vertigo
20. All About Eve
21. Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs
22. 2001: A Space Odyssey
23. The Grapes Of Wrath
24. Mr. Smith Goes To Washington
25. The Maltese Falcon
26. Schindler's List
27. Pale Rider
28. North By Northwest
29. The Bridge on the River Kwai
30. Face Off
31. The Others
32. Midlight Lace
33. The Graduate
34. It's A Wonderful Life
35. Annie Hall
36. The Adventures Of Robin Hood 1938
37. The Yearling
38. Old Yeller
39. High Plains Drifter
40. Bambi
41. Life with Father
42. Our Town
43. Yankee Doodle Dandy
44. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
45. On the Town
46. Going My Way
47. Jezebel
48. McClintock!
49. The Mummy
50. The Mummy II
52. White Christmas
53. Top Gun
54. Dumbo
55. Samson and Delilah
56. Gaslight 1944 (this is the SECOND one!)
57. I Remember Mama (ahhh...the Norwegian in me)
58. The Little Foxes (with Bette Davis)
59. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (good book, good movie)
60. Miracle on 34th Street
61. The Spiral Staircase
62. Rear Window
63. Brigadoon
64. Dial M for Murder
65. Mister Roberts
66. Holiday Inn
67. The Quiet Man (ahhh..the IRISH in me!)
68. Beauty And The Beast
69. White Heat
70. Rebel Without A Cause
71. Mildred Pierce
72. The Shop Around The Corner
73. In the Good Ol' Summertime
74. Sleepless in Seattle
(all three of these movies are similar in content and very good!)
75. A Star Is Born with Judy Garland
76. A Star is Born with Barbra Striesand
77. State Fair
78. Wuthering Heights
79. Lost Horizon (1937 and 1973)
80. Little Women 1937 with Katherine Hepburn
81. Little Women 1949 with June Allyson
82. Little Women 1994 with Winona Ryder
83. Top Hat
84. Dark Victory (oh my word...a Bette Davis GREAT)
85. The Thin Man
86. Meet Me in St. Louis
87. Laura
88. The Haunting (1963)
89. Father of the Bride with Spencer Tracy
90. Father of the Bride with Steve Martin
91. Interview With a Vampire
92. The Fly with David Hedison
93. Oklahoma!
94. The African Queen
95. An Affair to Remember
96. 12 Angry Men
97. Anastasia with Ingrid Bergman
98. The Ten Commandments
99. War of the Worlds (1953)
100. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
101. My Fair Lady
102. West Side Story
103. Funny Girl
104. Inherit the Wind (God vs. Evolution!)
105. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
106. The Sound of Music
107. The Innocents (1961…almost rated X for a kiss!)
108. Elmer Gantry
109. Breakfast at Tiffany's
110. Mary Poppins
111. The Nutty Professor with Jerry Lewis
112. All the President’s Men
113. Hair
114. Norma Rae
115. Kramer vs. Kramer
116. The Sting
117. Young Frankenstein
118. Raiders of the Lost Ark
119. Ordinary People
120. The Breakfast Club
121. The Princess Bride
122. Terms of Endearment
123. When Harry Met Sally
124. Rain Man
125. Stargate
126. Take Me Out to the Ball Game
127. A League of Their Own
128. Signs
129. Contact
and because I used a line for my title, I certainly cannot leave out:
130. A Few Good Men

Okay...I REALLY had a difficult time deleting movies from this list...feel free to add any you like best, in case I haven't covered them here!! The list is by no means exhaustive! I do love Disney, and Gene Kelly movies, and Christmas movies, but really felt I shouldn't list them ALL here...you get the idea. Not a fan of gorry nasty bloody movies either. You tell me...what are YOUR favorites?!?!!? And did I list ANY of them here in MY top 130??? :~)

This must be somebody's list of the the 100 books everyone should read. It was fun going through this b/c I do love to read and I don't do it as much as I should. Well, 1 at a time. The ones I’ve read are in bold. The ones I want to read (or have started and abandoned) are in italics. I've left alone the ones that I'm not interested in.

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (J.R.R. Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (J.R.R. Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (J.R.R. Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (J.K. Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (J.K. Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (J.K. Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King) and I am weird...I really love his stuff!
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (J.K. Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams) I actually HAVE this book!
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (George Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible Okay...DUH, I'm a PASTOR'S wife!
46. Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Charles Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Scott Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (J.K. Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davies)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Victor Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Helen Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence) I have heard this is really good...maybe this summer
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (John Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) I have not read this, but one of my students did a review on it for me!
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In the Skin of a Lion (Michael Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (William Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

Feel free to add your own faves. I'm pretty embarrassed that so many of these I've not read. This list is by no means exhaustive... and I am sure that the books I would add would never make this list of super-readers! Too bad...I'm adding them anyway! :~)

A Wrinkle in Time (Madeline L'Engle)
The Pink Dress (not sure who wrote this...I can't find it anywhere)
My Side of the Mountain (Jean Craighead George) This is a true story
Blue Willow ( Doris Gates, Paul Lanz)
The Velveteen Rabbit (Margery Williams)

Okay, I am sure you've noticed that these are children's books...BUT...easy and actually quite good. Try it, you'll like it!

Also...pretty much anything by Max Lucado. Frank Peretti. Looks like I may be alone with those authors, though!

OKAY...THE MOVIE LIST IS ON THE WAY!!!

I'm sorry you had to find out this way

Well, it's been a good run here at my school...but it's over. Yup, you read that right. Me...Mrs. C, gone, kaput, Sayonora, out for the count... okay...let's just say retired. It's better than fired...even though that's kind of what it was. Mr. T brings me into his office and says, "you know, this is really hard for me. We're friends. And we love you here. And there is just no easy way to say this. We will not be offering the Journalism class next year. At least not in it's present format. You sent an e-mail to Mrs. Admin, and I'm sorry you had to find out this way."

I am cool. Calm. Collected. No...REALLY, I am almost leaping inside that this decision of to return or not to return is being made for me. I have been struggling with returning to school since my surgery last May, and now I know the answer. I get to stay home. I won't need to wake up at 6 am anymore unless I WANT to. At the beginning of this school year, I sat in his office pouring my heart out to him that I feel I have just lost the passion for Journalism...not that there was really a PASSION, but my creativity in this area was waning. I just couldn't come up with another new curriculum. I have had 7 different curriculum and 8 was just not coming to me. I was struggling big time!

And let me tell you this, the arrogant, mindless drivel that spills out of the mouths of some of my students is exacerbating the desire to leave this once beloved place. I just want to shake them. Or slap them. (Maybe on the last day of school.) They think they are smarter than any teacher they encounter, and that is very troubling to me. What happens when they get to college and work with Phd's and Professors??? Knock 'em down a few pegs...ya think??? Not that I won't miss the ones who really want to learn and write and express themselves; I certainly will. Although as I was told (with that half-smile, half-chuckle that tells you "take this as a joke, but I'm really not kidding") after our first paper came out in October: "This school does not have freedom of the press. This school does not have freedom of speech." No, duh. You know, the old commercial: "Never had it, never will?" Antiquated, archaic minds. Difficult. And glad to be leaving that stressful thinking!

Now, worship...that's an entirely different story. When I decide to let all my students know that I will not be back next year, I will tell them first. Because they deserve it, and I will miss them the most.

I wonder if they will miss me?