Eat Pray Love

Just when you thought it was safe to go in the literary blog waters.

I finished No Country for Old Men and commented pretty heavily (for me and this blog.) I want to see the movie, but not until it comes out in DVD. I can't imagine any movie ever being better than a book, and with the prices of the cinema, I'd much rather sit at home on the couch with my honey and a bowl of homemade popcorn, and our goofy dog scrounging for the stray piece of popcorn.

Then, at the urging of my oldest, I went out and bought Eat Pray Love. I was reluctant. I mean, this is an unabashed chick read. But she said she wasn't going to stop hounding me until I read it (though she wouldn't lend me her copy.) She said that I reminded her of the heroine. She keeps referring to me as a "free spirit." She also says the heroine is like her, too. Of course, I've known my oldest and I were two peas in a pod since she was little, but I'm only her dad, so what did I know?

I also bought a New York Times and the latest issue of No Depression, plus asked the clerk to put the stuff in a bag. This is like buying tampons for your girlfriend.

But I did crack the book quick, and here's where I opened it:

"When I was growing up, my family kept chickens. We always had about a dozen of them at any given time and whenever one died off--taken away by a hawk or fox or some obscure chicken illness--my father would replace the lost hen. He'd drive to the nearby poultry farm and return with a new chicken in a sack. The thing is, you must be very careful when introducing a new chicken to the general flock. You can't just toss it in there with the old chickens, or else they'll see it as an invader. What you must do instead is to slip the new bird inot the chicken coop in the middle of the night while the others are asleep. Place her on the roost beside the flock and tiptoe away. In the morning, when the chickens wake up, they don't notice the newcomer, thinking only, "She must have been here all the time since I didn't see her arrive." The clincher of it is, awaking within the flock, the newcomer herself doesn't even remember that shs's a newcomer, thinking only, "I must have been here the whole time...."

This is exactly how I arrived in India."

Well, that's not exactly true about chickens, since I do know what I'm talking about since I did raise chickens for a long while, but I can see why Al might identify with this free-spirited heroine. The heroine's father raised chickens; her father raised chickens.

Okay. This is going to be an interesting read. Sue says I'm adorable. Al says I'm like a heroine in a popular novel. It's everything I can do to hang onto my manhood. Sue also says I'm hot, so I guess I'm okay on that point.