“Every good love story has another love hiding within it.”

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Waiting for the snowplow to drive by so that I can get my nephew's recorded book in the mail. I miss him terribly these days. I am long overdue for a visit.

In other news: I put buttermilk in my coffee this morning. Distraction, you evil cohort. I am about to finish filling out my faculty enrichment grant and with luck, I will have contest entry fees and postage enough for the season.

I am still high on the Arctic Zero. Coffee is their best flavor, though Vanilla Maple with kosher salt or luscious Trader Joe's raisin medley and rum extract makes for a fine faux Haagen Das Rum Raisin.

I am driving us all crazy with the color swatches. The living room is not going to be apricot and the kitchen moves from a color called soft drizzle to a creamy honeydew mix. I never thought I could drive myself crazy with the range between Fresque and Pure Periwinkle or that now, evil Martha Stewart has a color called tin that is the softest buff aluminum you ever saw. See? Madness! Here is a taste of Rainwater:

Here is a cool vintage kitchen in many of the colors that I have to work with in mine. And here is room in a shade of blue that I adore and that M just cannot like. These are our challenges: color and food incompatabilities. There are worse things.

But I got a great new set of photos from a student at my school and upon posting one at facebook, I feel like I am right to think that it would make a great author photo. Too bad the new books aren't making the rounds or getting much love when they do. I forgot how much patience the process requires. Still, it must be done. I think of Julianna Baggott's output, she with her academic job, her successful marriage, her nom de plumes, her four kids, her so-much life squeezed into this one lifetime, and I am ashamed.

Speaking of: I cannot wait to get my hands on Bridget Asher's Provence Cure for the Broken-Hearted. The one quote from it has been really resonant lately with the new life, home and the way that I am so happy about my big old Bear's life too and that his daughter and his girls all are more love and happiness in my life, too. And M: well, some days M just stands for miracle or madness and most days it is both.