three reasons you should envy me

Three Reasons You Should Envy Me

1. My Christmas shopping is done and my gifts are all wrapped.
2. My cards are all written, sealed and stamped.
3. #1 and #2 don't really count because I have some surgery coming up, so I had no choice. This is the one that counts though: I didn't have to cook dinner last night. As a matter of fact, I went out to eat...with my best friend...before we joined 1300 (I kid you not) other fans for "An evening with Anne Lamott" in Lancaster, the last stop on her 12-cities-in-12-days "Small Victories" book tour.

 



Anne Lamott writes about friendship, families and faith with wisdom, humor, and downright irreverence.

 

Anyone who reads her books surely must love them as much as I do. Still, I never imagined I would encounter such a huge crowd at a book signing. My hand goes numb at the thought of autographing all those books--enough to boost her over the proverbial wall and onto the New York Times best sellers list this week. Which is where she belongs.

 

Here are a couple of delicious nuggets from the book:

 

"Where can we begin, in the face of clearly not having been cherished for who we are, by certain tall, anxiously shut-down people in our childhood , whom I will not name? How far back does the sense of provisional welcome go?...The reality is that most of us lived our first decades feeling welcome only when certain conditions applied: we felt safe and embraced only when the parental units were getting along, when we were on our best behavior, doing well in school, not causing problems, and had as few needs as possible."

 





www.jokideo.com

 

"What had happened that turned my parents from the bright young things who fell in love over literature and wine to a cheerless woman and man who after dinner took their books and glasses to opposite ends of the living room, connected only by the lily pad of children on the rug between them, lost in homework?"



 

"I was learning the secrets of life: that you could become the woman you'd dared to dream of being, but to do so you were going to have to fall in love with your own crazy, ruined self."









 

"Having a good dog is the closest some of us are ever going to get to knowing the direct love of a mother or God..."

 

 

 

I have read and loved all of Anne Lamott's books, but in this one I think she nailed it, and I'm only halfway through.

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"One day I will find the right words

and they will be simple."

~Jack Kerouac~

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Wishing you a happy Thanksgiving this week. The kids are coming...the snow is coming. I wonder who will win?

jan