tuesday's happinesses

-getting up early while the house is still quiet

-a bonfire

-the car heater in 2 degree weather

-coffee with an old friend in a diner that looks like a train car, listening to the conversations of the bearded, plaid-wearing men at the counter

-bookshops and gift certificates

-my sister's kitten

-chocolate-covered, candied orange rind

-scraping wallpaper, which is oddly peaceful and satisfying

-the nearly full moon

-scar stories

november happiness

We put up Christmas lights around our front door. The air is crisp. (such a lovely description. i always think i want something else, because that is overused. but really it's perfect.) There was frost on the leaves in the driveway yesterday. Every year I get more excited about Thanksgiving.

Sometimes I can't do things.

And sometimes, can I realize that is what makes life beautiful?

I'm not ready to see it that way
and to understand it differently than
that the walls, when they come nearer,
mean that I am growing
until I break them open, free myself from their narrowness

- Klee

Reason to believe

One Morning In Maine

I just got back from a lovely few days with my family in an A-frame house on a lake in Maine. I've always had the impression, from driving through Maine on my way to Nova Scotia, that it was all ugly fields and little rest stop buildings made out of lincoln logs, but this spot was really gorgeous. We were tucked back behind a campground, completely secluded from the rest of the vacationers, and just a few minutes drive from the ocean. It was only a few days but it included some of my old favorite things, as well as a few new favorites:

-Skinny dipping with my sisters late one night in delicious secrecy

-Entire family dance parties

-Lots of photographs

-Around-the-world ping-pong

-The ocean

-A photo shoot on a rocky shore (while a real photo shoot went on not too far away)

-A canoe on a lake

-Endless laughter and inside jokes

-Reading the Harry Potter series aloud to my little sisters, and eventually my whole family

Today...

...One of Regina's beautiful new songs is playing in my head.

Rain, rain, go away