Good morning, y’all. It’s cold, in fact, it’s so cold, the politicians have their hands in their own pockets. The high today might get to 40 degrees, but I have my doubts. I checked the Coca Cola thermometer on the outside of the Rec room and it says 14 degrees. Promises of ice from the Whiz O Meter may be well founded.
In light of the impending Icepocalypse, I’m going to have Mulva double up on her grocery run to the Walmart. We can’t afford to run out of Vienna sausages in a crisis. We can always melt snow for water, but we’ll need something to maintain the fat stores in our bodies to keep warm. It’s hard to find another food that’s over 75% fat, that tastes as good as Vienna sausages. If you cut them in half and put them on a Saltine lathered with mayonnaise, they’re extra good.
Well, my day took an unexpected turn for the worse when I found out we were babysitting the Bread brood tonight for date night. I’m guessing the Right Reverend Dale E. Bread felt like babysitting was part of the services guaranteed here at TackyToo. Now that I’ve extracted one month’s rent, from the six the Reverend owes me, I guess he feels entitled to the “platinum level service”. I jest, it helps with my anger management.
Truth is, Mulva has once again jumped in as Cupid. Seems like Sunday is Valentine’s Day. Since the Right Reverend is working three shifts now at The Full Gospel Original Church of God, Mulva felt like he wouldn’t have time to properly woo his wife, Alva, on the big day. The Bread’s have seven children, so I think they’ve been able to find the time for “woo” under a lot of circumstances. But, once again in the spirit of “Christian charity”, we have taken on the responsibility of keeping the hellions from destroying themselves, or others, for a few hours. The “golden rule” is hard work, y’all.
For this week’s date night, and in keeping with our PG audience, I chose a movie that I thought would keep the little ones interested. I was also in hopes that seeing the Antarctica might make us all feel a little warmer. I chose the “March of the Penguins”.
The “March of the Penguins” is a 2005 French documentary about the Emperor penguins of Antarctica. It was a big hit with everyone in the Rec room. Most of the Bread brood stayed awake for the whole showing, and there were minimal questions asked. In fact, I found that I was supplementing portions of the dialogue to help the children grasp the importance of both parents, and in particular the father, in child rearing. I wish that I could say that I had diabolically chosen this movie to use as an example for the role of a good father, but I’m not that smart. It was just serendipity.
The children were fascinated with the penguins, and they are beautiful. The kids seemed delighted to know that penguins were birds that swam, and laid eggs. The whole story of the penguins breeding cycle was laid out for the audience in a beautifully filmed piece of art. It was just beautiful, and fascinating. Fortunately, the concern we all have for the melting polar caps doesn’t hit you until after the movie.
The movie won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2005. It did phenomenally well at the box office, and is the second highest grossing documentary of all time. There is also a second documentary that the crew did, “Of Penguins and Men”, documenting the making of the movie. The film crews worked in temperatures that daily went to 75 degrees below zero. The crew would dress in six layers of clothing to work outside for only three hours a day. They did this for over 13 months while filming the movie. I think I need to stop my whining about the cold.
Well, the Right Reverend and his Mrs. got back just in time to see their eldest, Devin, begin fashioning a hangman’s noose from the Venetian blind string. Well, like the daddy Emperor penguin, I kept them safe on my watch.