i haven’t done a Quick Takes in forever and a day…

1. now that the presidential election is almost 2 weeks behind us, i can finally say…we are okay with the results. i mean, we’re not happy with the results, but what can you do?  wednesday morning, november 7th had a rough start. kenny and i woke at 4:00, saw the results, couldn’t go back to sleep, so we decided to finally start Season 3 of The Walking Dead so we didn’t have to watch the news, or read web sites about the difficult loss our country experienced the previous night (i realize that is a matter of opinion).

here’s the thing: i think the thing that is most upsetting is not that we lost a tough election…but the realization that your own values, and what you believe is really better for the country – poor, middle class and the rich – is very different than a slight majority of the rest of the country. i’m not opposed to change – i don’t fight change. it’s just hard to witness values held dear to so many being thrown away by so many more.

2. this week is tech week and opening night was last night for Peter Pan…the community musical that kenny is playing piano for and all 3 of our boys are in (along with about 50 other lost boys/girls in the Butler area). the show opened to rave reviews, rowan and sawyer have LINES in this production (and even get to talk to Captain Hook AND Peter Pan!) and adam just follows his friends around on stage and looks adorable in his little lost boy costume.  here’s proof:

3. I haven’t been able to be as available for tech week shows because of the rehearsals i’m holding for our very own show, A Christmas Carol. kenny and i started our own theatre company and have been advertising, holding auditions, and now rehearsing for our very first show at the same time as all this Peter Pan production.  it’s been a little nutty.  we’ve been able to keep it together for the most part and are enjoying the amazing experience we’re having with the start of this new theatre company.  our supporters and cast have been amazing.  more on this in a later post…

4. remember when we mummified a chicken back in september?  we finally dug it out of the layers of salt, dusted it off a bit, wrapped it in cloth and “buried” it in its own decorative sarcophagus.  again, here is photo-proof…

here is mummified chicken wrapped in one of the 3 coffins:

here is one of the drawings on the sarcophagus, so the gods will recognize the chicken in the afterlife:

the boys really wanted to bury it, but i snuck it in the garbage.  it was a fun experience to do…the boys learned more about mummies and decaying flesh than i could have taught them!

5. we’re coming up on my favorite part of the liturgical year: advent, christmas, and epiphany.  i know that our crazy schedule will only get more hectic as we enter the last month of rehearsals for our show, so i’m starting to prepare our family advent now. ironically, i think our schedule won’t allow us to truly celebrate and be a part of christmas until Christmas Eve (as we’ll be busy rehearsing and finishing the set and costumes and props and staging and…and…) just as our calendar helps us to do. the 12 days of christmas, beginning on christmas day, will really be cherished in our home, surrounded by family (two of my brothers and their families are coming in for closing night of our performance, so they’ll be there when our family crashes and puts our feet up for the first time since september)!  it will be a fabulous way to unwind from a stressful season.

6. kenny and i are running a 5k together on thanksgiving morning. i ran it alone last year, loved it and decided to drag my husband to it this year.  i haven’t been able to train as much this year, so i’m not going to go all out and try to beat my time from last year. i hope to just have fun, run along with kenny, and then drive home in time to put the turkey in the oven!

7.  i’m saving the best for last:  since moving to the country, i’ve been on a mission to find and see with my own eyes an owl in the wild. we hear them at night constantly – the great horned in the winter, the screech owls in the summer and fall.  last night, november 15th at 10:44 pm, i saw my first wild screech owl…as it FLEW INTO OUR WINDSHIELD a mile away from our house. we didn’t “know what hit us” – literally – but knew that it couldn’t have been anything but a nocturnal bird, and it was a bigger “thud” than a bat could make. we turned the van around, and sure enough, a tiny little owl sat…alive…on the side of the road, looking up at our car with the saddest, most human-like eyes, its head, tilted to the side. i was heart-broken. we could do nothing. our outdoor cat would have killed it if we brought it home (it was about 6-7 inches tall).  i’m trying to get over this…but it’s hard when the image of his sweet little face, and the boys’ reaction of “AWWWWWW! he’s so cute!” ringing in my ears.  what would YOU have done?