A Thought and a Story

I have two things to share today and they are in no way related. One is about this quote I have been carrying around with me for about two weeks. I was in the waiting area a few weeks ago at Alexa's dance class. I usually spend my hour grading papers as there is always a  never ending supply of those. For some reason on this day I had finished or had all I could take of illegible handwriting and bad grammar I don't remember which. I picked up a copy of O magazine off the chair next to me. Now I have never read this magazine before, but I started flipping through the pages. I came across an article about holiday giving. More specifically giving to excess. What really drew me into the article was that a portion of it was written by Elizabeth Gilbert. She is one of my favorite authors. Mostly because I feel our lives have run so many parallels. I reread her books often as if they are some type of manual that will tell me what to do next to get through life. At any rate I was reading the article when I came across a piece of advice she had been given. It said, "never give anyone more than they are emotionally capable of receiving, or they will have no choice but to hate you for it." Now I could go into a rather long explanation of why this little piece of advice jumped out to me, however even for me (a person who has been know to share some personal items in writing) it would be too much to share. Lets just say that I read it, and several parts of my brain clicked ah ha at once. So much so that I dug through my purse to find a scrap of paper that I could copy it down on. I have been looking at that piece of paper sitting on my computer table for weeks now. I guess I just wanted to write it down and remember it. It just made that much sense to me.
The other thing I have on my mind is a story. I guess it is actually moderately related to the previous sharing in that it is a Holiday theme as well. In the car yesterday the radio station played the song "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer". Now Alexa has been getting really excited that they occasionally play Christmas songs on the radio, so I turned it up for her. She was bouncing away back there listening to the song. Suddenly she said, "Mommy, I would play with Rudolph. I don't see why it is such a big deal. It is just a nose. Who cares what color it is." Now see... that is my Lexa all heart.