Recently I read The Good, the Bad and the Furry by a British author who is starting to be published in the States. It was very funny. The writer's father was very eccentric. (It was nonfiction, set in the British countryside.) At one point, the father had a toad living in his shoe. He kept a Post-It on the shoe to remind him. Then the toad moved out and another moved in. The father didn't like the second toad as much as the first. "Well, maybe another nice one will move in," the son told him. "It was all decided a long time ago, anyway." The father said, "You're learning!" He was a firm believer in predestination.

I really like the line, "It was all decided a long time ago, anyway." It takes the stress out of things.

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