Seven Super Happy Things

#1. Having almost enough quilt blocks done to put together my first full sized quilt. This is one block. I will use black fabric with white polka dots to border each block, creating a kind of frame. I think that's the only way you can unify a bunch of mismatched blocks into something cohesive.

#2. Getting small packages from good friends in the mail. Look what Bitter Betty sent me! She made one very like it for Alice last year and I coveted having a tiny smoking deer. It's part of a swap...uh, I guess I better get my ass back in my studio and make her the wish box I have all planned out in my head. Jesus, isn't it adorable?! (By the way, this is the first stuffie I have ever owned!)

#3. French girls named Clothilde. Don't worry, I haven't become a francophile lesbian. But how can anyone not be happy looking through such a wonderful little cookbook written by an insufferably cute French girl with one of the world's best names? I'm not supposed to buy any books for the rest of my life due to poverty, but I slipped two weeks ago. OOPS.

#4. Winter vegetables, most notably: potatoes and onions. There must be a thousand ways to cook these two fabulous foods. They make me think of dirt, winter, cozy kitchens, comfort, stamina, skiing, dry falling leaves, the smell of every one's evening meals wafting out onto the street where I can inhale deeply as I walk home from somewhere else. Doesn't every one's meals begin with sauteing onions in a pan?

#5. Winter squash from my own garden. This specimen is a gorgeous Buttercup squash that we baked and ate with butter, salt, and pepper last night. It was the first time I've ever had Buttercup squash and it was WONDERFUL. Rich, dry, orange (full of vitamin A), sweet meat. With the added bonus that I grew it myself. Isn't it pretty? Doesn't it make you feel happy that such pretty things can grow in our back yards?

#6. Brand new scrub sponges. I love the moment my old sponge becomes so yucky that I must throw it away and break open a fresh one. I admit that I am a bit sponge crazy. My sponges never get more than two weeks old. After that they become smelly and ragged and I can't bear the thought of them touching the dishes that will hold my food that I will put in my mouth. I'm not particularly germ-phobic, but in this one respect I may be a bit freakish. I also won't offer to wash your dishes when I'm at your house if your sponge is grey and smelly.

#7. Miracles make me happy too. Corn bread is the only thing I make that Max will eat. He doesn't request it very often, so when he does I don't let flies settle on the request. As I mentioned in my last post, I have been out of white flour and last night Max asked for cornbread. My favorite tried and true recipe calls for white flour, not wheat. But whole wheat is what I had. I made the recipe anyway. It did turn out a little bit more dense than I like it, but moist and pretty tasty with butter and honey.