This is a photo from last August, when the draft of my book was around 70,000 words. Soon after I had this printed and I took this picture, writing stalled. Badly. Very badly. For months.
But this week, I made a little real progress, and progress on "connecting parts", some of the parts that link together the great flash-of-inspiration scenes that are much easier to write than the nitty gritty stuff that pulls it all together. And that makes me happy.
Our 50 gallon, high-BTU output hot water heater makes me happy. It'll recharge in about 10 minutes if you run it out of hot water, and that's hard to do because it's huge.
I spent two high school years in a boarding school dorm where hot water was essentially rationed. It is such a lovely, sweet luxury to be able to take a blazing hot shower.
I found these glasses at a thrift store for $0.75 each. They've got "Nieman Marcus" printed on them in a tiny 70's-looking font. I would guess they were some sort of promotional item.
I love them. They're just the right amout of dated and dorky.
When I was single and thinking about getting engaged and married someday, I never wanted a diamond engagement ring. I didn't pick out a wedding dress years before I had a serious boyfriend or day dream about what flowers might be at my wedding.
I wanted to get married, sure, but I wasn't into all the frilly fuss and girly bother of it all.
But a diamond ring that is a family heirloom? That's an entirely different matter all together. It means something.
In 2012, Mad Musician and I made a little side trip to find the grave of his Oma, the woman whose ring is on my finger in this photo. I think of it as her ring, not "my ring." I feel honored to be the caretaker of this ring until such time as seems right for it to serve as an engagement diamond for someone in the next generation of this family.
If +Else Jordan+ could hang onto this beloved ring of hers through war, widowhood, poverty, Red Cross assistance, and a move from one continent to another, surely I can, with the help of God, bear what crosses have been given me.
I really mismanaged my time today, leaving me with about one hour and fifteen minutes to get three people packed up for a three-day business trip.
Which is what reminded me of a little thing that makes me happy. If you travel often (and we do; we put around 35 thousand miles on our cars each year) you really need to have packing cubes. They have made packing so much more pleasant.
As a veteran international traveller, I have previously poo-poo'ed such silliness, figuring you can pack a suitcase tighter without them. Which is true, actually, but only really matters when you're packing two suitcases for an international trip of over two weeks. For on-the-road living domestically, though, you simply cannot beat having items sorted into packages like this. Each person gets a cube for their under-things, which means the cube with the under-things can be taken out and put to the side of the suitcase while you're living out of it, leaving larger things, like jeans and sweaters, easily accessible without digging through a layer of constantly-toppling-over stacks of socks and panties. You can shove these cubes in vertically or lay them flat, and the stuff inside stays folded neatly. I always pack our PJs in one cube, packed near the top, so that our first night on the road I can just grab that and I don't have to unpack or dig for stuff in order to get ready for bed. And having different colored packing cubes mean I can easily double check that I remembered underwear and pajamas for each person.
What's more, as you can see from my photo, this brand, eBags, has their cubes sized just right to be nearly modular in many popular suitcase sizes.
I had everyone's stuff packed in about 45 minutes, leaving me just enough time to throw together this post. Yippee!
(PS: if you buy these, I find the medium and small cubes to be most useful for trips of 3-5 days. The large is good if you routinely pack several sweaters/sweatshirts for a longer trip.)
Putting the kitchen to bed is a happy thing.
I'm often exhausted after supper. I never want to go back in the kitchen and clean up. But I do, because doing up the dishes after supper is less miserable than having a huge pile of dirty ones facing me first thing in the morning. When the dishes are done and the countertops wiped off, the kitchen is ready for bed, and my work for the day is done. Mommy clocks out when the dishwater goes down the drain and the dishcloth gets hung up to dry.
It's a nice little ritual, this closing of the day. I like it. It makes me happy, even if the actual work of it does not.
My gardens. And raspberries.
That my living room is full of books, and usually looks about like this:
(The part I don't like is always having to move a pile of books in order to put my feet up, but I'd rather have that than no books in my house...)
You may remember my orange chairs.
They have a new home now. They live with my brother and his wife these days.
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