A most frustrating day today at work.  Thank God I can come home and put those things behind me.  When I first began my weblog I only knew that I wanted a place just for me.  I'm not a writer.  Not a poet.  Not an artist.  I don't play a musical instrument or sing anywhere but in the car when I'm all alone.  But I love beautiful things.  I love the written word, spoken and whispered words, verses and paintings, lyrics, colors and musical rhymes.  I love sunsets and snow, the sound of a kittens purring and the voices of little children.  I love old things, old books, architecture, antiques and old people.  This is the place for saving the things that give me pleasure, make me laugh, or sometimes cry.  These are the images and words that comfort me and softly color my nights.

6:38:07 PM     

Sweet Caroline

Littlest niece, Caroline...Age - 1 yr. & 8 days.  Picture taken New Year's 2003.

6:14:25 PM     

Real

The Velveteen Rabbit was read to me as a little girl by my Granny B.  She lived with us for about four years before her death, and always sat in the same rocking chair in our small living room, typically with the same quilt top in her lap that she'd been stitching together for what seemed like an eternity.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse.  "It's a thing that happens to you.  When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful.  "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse.  "You become.  It takes a long time.  That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.  Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.  But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real, you can't be ugly except to people who don't understand." ---The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

Today, I know what is Real.  And it's ok to be loose and shabby.  After all these misplaced years, someone finally understands...

5:23:19 PM     

54 little bars of Camay

12:57:26 PM