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omg chance painting!!!!
I got a package in the mail today from Leah Moore, for whom I drew a silly little comic recently (which I’ll be posting soon, in fact!). It contained a watercolor sketchbook and a dip pen and ink and I thought AW YOU DARLING! and said AW YOU DARLING! to her on Twitter.
“Have you looked inside the sketchbook yet?” she asked.
“NO!” I said, “LET ME GO DO THAT RIGHT NOW!”
“I’ll wait,” sez she, and I ran downstairs to open the sketchbook and inside was THIS!
OMFG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG *INCOHERENT SQUEEING*!!!!
It was painted by a friend of hers, Al Davidson, and I swear I haven’t stopped squeeing since I opened the book and found it. OMG. It’s SO BEAUTIFUL and that was SO KIND of her! Of them! OMG! *falls over*!!!
Also, now I totally have to do more art. I’ve got dipping pens to try (a terrifying thought!) and the new pens Ted got me for Christmas, and just yes! I must art!
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we have amazing friends.
this morning i came home from dropping indy off at school and ted, looking very emotional, said, “come into the kitchen and see what our friends have done.”
a little befuddled, i went into the kitchen, and there saw a large box and thought, “oh! yes, one of them said they would send a few–” and somewhere around that point a started to realize that there were two large–*large*–boxes, crammed full, and…
this is…i just…i don’t even know where to start. they organized a care package of Food We Can’t Get Here, in the wake of Mom’s death. a dozen people helped put it together. people across the whole the united states, from alaska to boston and everywhere in between.
i have literally never seen so much bakers’ chocolate at once in my life. not even at a store. (the lady who bought it cleared the place out of it. <3) you can't get crisco here at all, nevermind in giant tubs. this will last us forever. i used to eat that kind of cereal when we were in alaska, and missed it terribly when we moved here. people sent me some for a while, but then i got used to other stuff, but someone (i suspect mary anne) *remembered*. i will be bringing one (or 1.5) of the ENORMOUS BOXES of mac&cheese to my sister Deirdre, whose boys love Kraft mac&cheese with... well, all the love of 11 and 13 year old kids. :) and i'd just used the last of the chocolate chips we had, and now we have bags and bags of POSH ones. and one of my oldest friends sent me a hug, in the form of this beautiful, beautiful scarf that she made:
i’ve been wearing it all day. ted and i have been pretty much crying all day. every time we go into the kitchen it just starts again. we are so overwhelmed. so grateful. so thankful. so amused because OH MY GOD IT’S JUST SO MUCH!
i had pop tarts for breakfast, of course. <3
we don’t really know how to say thank you. we’re just stunned and grateful and feel so, so loved. ♥ ♥ ♥
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oh, *wow*
I have the most amazing readers and friends in the world. Oh my goodness. I just received a package in the mail filled with incredibly warm snuggly crocheted things: fingerless gloves, a shawl, a shrug, and neck warmers. Oh my gosh. So, so snuggly. So cuddly. I will never take this shrug off.
And the *stitching* on the shawl! Oh my gosh! You can just sink your fingers right into it.
Joliene, who sent these, exhorts me to stay warm and healthy with these items. I think that is a very, very good idea. ♥ :) :) :)
ytd wordcount: 39,100
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new typing gloves!
I received these in the mail today!
They’re from my friend Rachel, to whom I had sent some books, and although she owed me nothing at all she asked if there was anything she could knit for me. Not being a fool, I said if fingerless gloves weren’t too much of a pain, I could ALWAYS use another pair of cosy gloves for typing in cold cafes and the like. She asked what colors I liked, and I said teal particularly, and she said she could do that, so I was kind of expecting the teal ones, but the beautiful orange ones are a total unexpected bonus pair! I don’t want to take them off! #beams happily
In other news, I actually got the new year off to a good start last night, and wrote about 600 words on a short story I owe to someone. I also serendipitously found the obvious and perfect title for it while looking up something else. I’m disproportionately pleased by both of those things. :)
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Happy Anniversary!
It is, as near as I can tell, 20 years today that I met my friend, RP partner, and cowriter Sarah
EkstromPalmero (one of the good things about old friends is you get to keep using their maiden names decades after they’ve changed :))I can actually pin this down to a day because I started playing TwoMoonsMUSH, the online text-based role play game based on ElfQuest, *immediately* after I got back from my first visit to Ireland. Sarah was one of the very first people I met. She was playing the book character Treestump, and I was irrationally terrified of interacting with the character. She played him very well and although I retained my general terror of interacting with book characters for some months before getting over it, it wasn’t because she was scary as a person.
Over the years we’ve written millions (literally millions) of words of role play (or fan fiction, if you wanna call it that) together. We’ve written books together. We’ve had fights and made up. We’ve worried people at Disneyland by discussing murder techniques (for books!). We’ve brought out the best (and no doubt the worst) in each other. We’ve seen each other through boyfriends and breakups, marriages and mischief. I doubt, twenty years ago, we *really* imagined we’d still be friends this far down the road, but I’m awfully glad we are.
Here’s to another twenty years, mon ami! <3
