Picture-Mad

Ignoring the long queue of serious things to be written about in my text editor, including the question of how one gently demolishes all of the invisible and unexamined rules one finds oneself living by and blogging by (including one about writing about serious things) — or at least how one examines and sorts out the ones worth keeping — I share with you images of things making me happy today.

[Not happy today is that I am still struggling to figure out how to format pictures into blog entries in a way that is not so completely gawkwardly ugly. Long sigh. I appreciate your patience with this...]

Starting with the notebook thing. I have a favorite notebook to write in, one I’d found at Target. I just counted, and realized I am filling my seventeenth of these notebooks, and I only have three blanks left on my shelves, which had left me mildly panicky, because this hardboundness, the dimensions, the line spacing, were all PERFECT and Target stopped carrying them, and I was quite sure that I would run out of notebook and never be able to write again. So it was with great joy yesterday I discovered, yes, the same dimensions, the same everything, the same notebook, but now, with graphically arresting covers (and nasty little stickers proclaiming their environmental friendliness):

Also happiness was picking up a dress Raven had given me as a gift for Ayyam-i-Ha, and this isn’t a great photo because of that self-portrait with a flash where my face should be thing (and ooh, is my mirror streaky? I’ll be right back after I go grab the windex):

But it also poses for you with the also-joy-inspiring, lovely early birthday present that I got from Jenny, a beautiful chickenwire beaded purse, like the one she gave away on her blog, only this one has personal touches just for me:

They just need somewhere fancy to go out to together. Which will wait, perhaps, until I have a husband who is recovered from a hard’s week travel and not sick, and there is a babysitter on hand so that fancy will also mean unaccompanied by the minors.

And while I am busy being delighted with early birthday presents, I share with you the quilt that arrived yesterday wrapped around a chapbook and the readings I am anxious to go spend this morning doing as soon as I post this, from the unreliable narrator. I think I will hang it as soon as I figure out a gentle way to do so, but for now I sit and pet it, it having a lovely tactile quality, and making me smile broadly every time I glance at even the image of it.