Didn't rain today, though it was cloudy. Managed to get out of the house a bit, and that helped me feel a lot better. Went into Saline with the kids. We visited a great little gift/toy/book shop called the Calico Cat. The kids enjoyed looking at all of the stuffed animals, and visiting with the two pretty and friendly cats who live in the store, Callie and Duchess. We then went to the best ice cream place in the world, Cold Stone Creamery. They make the ice cream fresh each day. You pick a base flavor, and then they mix in extra ingredients. I got white cholcolate ice crean with Oreo cookies and chocolate chips mixed in. Steven got French Vamilla ice cream with Oreos, gummir bears, and Reeses's peanut butter cups. Bill just got mint chocolate chip. Dan got strawberry ice cream with Nestle's crunch bar.

Afterwards, I took the dog for a walk, and bought fresh peaches from the orchard across the street.

Continued cleaning and doing tons of laundry. The water heater had such a bad leak that the concrete of the bathroom floor is still soaking wet. I set up a dehumidifier, and am hoping that it will help...I have never seen concrete become saturated with water like that before...

Cold Mountain

Finally caught up with this one tonight on dvd. It hit me in a completely unexpected way...

I was born very late to my parents. I am still in my 30's (for a little while longer ) and my father served in World War II, and his father served in the Spanish American War. My other grandfather was born something like the 16th out of 17 kids in his family, and was a World War I vet...his father tried to serve in the Confederate army but was rejected due to a bad lifelong limp from a childhood injury but one of his brothers died at a young age in a Union prison camp...so my parents were not far removed in time or generations from the Civil War in Virginia back in the mountains...

I just wanted to say that the oral history I grew up with from them closely matches some of the events shown in the movie. The civilian population was terrorized by men who "supported" one side or the other, but who more or less took advantage of the chaos of the war years to rape, steal, and murder. When I was little my father showed me a place near Iager, West Virginia, where one of his ancestors was shot down in the middle of the road by some of these vigilantes/terrorists -- whatever you wish to call them. The people promised to shoot anyone who took him away for burial - he was supposed to be some sort of example -- but one of my female ancestors buried him right there in the road where he was killed...this man left behind his pregnant and unmarried sweetheart, who was the direct female ancestor of my father's mother...the road still runs right over where his grave supposedly is...

What happened in the mountains of the South is not a particularly well known or proud piece of American history. A lot of innocent people suffered greatly.

As for the movie, there wasn't enough chemistry between Law and Kidman for the love story to work for me. However, the friendship between Kidman and Zellweger's characters was portrayed very well. And the scenes of the innocent suffering were very well done, and, if the oral history passed down from my parents has truth in it -- very authentic.