Bits and Pieces

I've had lots on my mind lately, but nothing blog-worthy. I've been thinking about a couple of topics that came up on a message board within the last couple of days, trying to sort and clarify my own opinion. Was Rudyard Kipling a white supremist? (No, not in the sense that it means today, although pretty much everyone in his time assumed that white men had a Christian duty to share their knowledge with the uneducated world, and that unfortunately usually got mixed up with their own cultural perspective of civilization.) Is Sunday School a bad thing? (I think I agree with Charlotte Mason that Sunday School should be there for unchurched children, but that children from Christian homes will generally get more out of sitting with their family listening to the pastor.)

We saw Andrew Lloyd Weber's Phantom of the Opera three or four times, we love some of the songs and the story is fascinating. For perspective, we also saw the old silent film version with Lon Chaney. In that one, Christine Daia seemed more of a mindless prop, easily swayed and awed by the Phantom. I couldn't understand why Raiul bothered to save her or what he saw in her.

We also saw Rogers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, the old version with Julie Andrews, and the first of the All Creatures Great and Small set that I got for Christmas. What a great series! It's got it all - fascinating characters, great British/Scottish/Irish accents, beautiful scenery, humor, and educational footage of animals.

Miss M woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Her first words weren't 'Good morning!' but 'My hair is in my way!' Before she even got out of bed. And then she was upset because her nose was stuffy. She was grouchy all morning. I finally put on a ballet movie for her, and it was peaceful for an hour! Maybe she's coming down with something - just in time to be sick when Mr. B and I hope to go out for dinner, just the three of us, for Valentine's Day (she'd be going with us.)

The diet is going fine, I'm enjoying some foods I haven't had in awhile while I was on the raw diet - peanuts, cereal, potatoes, beans, even salmon. I made up a two-week menu so I can do this mindlessly. My shopping lists are prepared, meals laid out, so I have no excuse. There's not really even any cooking required, the most complicated item planned is cubing and microwaving a potato. The basic line-up is fruit before breakfast, granola for breakfast, a salad for lunch, and some kind of properly-combined easy meal with a salad for dinner. It's mostly going okay. I'm starting to realize and accept that a lot of my tiredness is probably due to MVP (mitral valve prolapse) and that no diet is going to "cure" that.

Miss M has expanded her movie favorites. She has a small collection of ballet movies now - Don Quixote, Le Corsair, which is about pirates, Swan Lake, and the Nutcracker with Macauley Culkin, which is her absolute favorite. She also loves our Lassie re-runs, Milo and Otis (although she gets nervous during the more suspenseful moments) and now Cinderella.