So - you think you're patriotic with your "America - Love It Or Leave It" tattoo and your "These Colors Don't Run" bumper sticker?

Compared to the folks in central Indiana, you're a commie atheist pinko:

  

That's right - that's Miss Liberty out there on the front lawn of this home between Upland and Roll (that's "Roll" as in "rhymes with ball", not "Roll" as in "Roll Tide"), Indiana. Patriotism is alive and well in America's Heartland.

Row after row of frozen cornfields, day after day without sunshine, bitter biting winds and a lot of really nice corn-fed folks, and no HOAs to say "No, you can't have a Statue of Liberty in your front yard" - that's Indiana. I understand that they also play basketball.

We've met some new friends here - the kind that you want to take with you when you go. However, "go" is exactly what we're going to do - every time I step outside, I miss Arizona. I miss Colorado, as well - in Colorado, it snows, but it's not cold, and the winds don't blow like this. Here, it's been snowing every day for the last eight days, and it's stayed below freezing - but you see how the lawn doesn't have any snow on it? It's a freak of nature, I tell you...maybe it hasn't actually been snowing - maybe the snow fell a week ago, and it just blows around and hangs in the air...

Tomorrow morning, if all goes the way it is currently scheduled, we'll wake up in beautiful New River, AZ - it might be raining this weekend, but that's OK, because in New River, rain is enough of an oddity to be interesting. We'll turn on the fireplace and huddle up in the big leather chairs and pretend to be "cold" as a novelty, and then run around outside in shorts (it's been around 75F down there the whole time that we've been gone) and laugh and laugh and laugh.

(I say that - however, we're both really tired, Ethel much more so than I am. We might just sit inside our house and rest - I might watch some Buffies - and stay horizontal until life reasserts itself way down in our bones and causes us to stir about. I won't really know until I get up tomorrow)

The title of this post is also the name of a song by John Prine - he's a country singer. You can tell that because his last name actually has two syllables - it's pronounced "Pri-un" (I don't know how HE pronounces it - that's just the way that I heard it, growing up) I've been giving Ethel fits lately, as I woke up the other morning with "Sweet Revenge" by Prine in my head -

"I got kicked off of Noah's Ark
 I turned my cheek to unkind remarks
 There was two of everything, and one of me..."

...which is actually a description of the opening scene of Muppets From Space. I think I'll watch Muppets From Space when I get home.