After considering this statement often and at length and for months, I have officially decided that it is True and not just Excitement: I awaited the release of this book with more emotion than any of the Harry Potter series.

I can’t remember if the preorder happened before or after this video of the author reading the first chapter. I know that watching this video (and the one he did later on, of the second chapter), just about wrecked me… with its John-Green-is-awesome and all that.

I cried like a baby reading Looking for Alaska, so I’ve been equal parts elated and scared that this new one was soon to arrive in the mail.

My signed copy arrived in the mail last Saturday morning, and I’ve only cracked the spine to check for a hanklerfish (nope / that doesn’t make sense to anyone probably) and to do the without-even-thinking-about-it-take-a-whiff thing that I do with books.

I don’t really know how I am going to deal with a teenage cancer patient named Hazel, because based on real life (which this novel is not based on), I can guess how it ends.

But the Hazel that I love is sound asleep, and I have two cold beers in the fridge and a hundred other things I should be doing, including but not limited to: dishes, laundry, Work work, Etsy work, phonecalls, knitting stripes to add to the Valentine’s day blanket that I started for Hazel LAST YEAR and have resurrected from the Pile…

instead, I’ll go read. Almost always the superior choice.

Listening: Nick Drake pandora

I need to learn how to blog again.

Four days ago Hazel and I had a self-proclaimed snow day – the streets were sheets of ice and seven busses weren’t able to run, but they didn’t call school for our county. I stayed home from work, and she from daycare, anyway. One of those days where I am extra-grateful for my job. Now it’s almost sixty degrees, and yesterday she and her little buddy, Xavier, made “snow angels” in the pea gravel at the playground, with no need for outerwear / hats / gloves.

I’ve ventured into the worlds of air plants (so weird and impossible, inspired by these open-faced christmas balls that I bought on clearance for fifty cents each.) And the world of green smoothies (so far mostly spinach and celery and avocado, with some berries thrown in, a little juice, some chia or flax seeds… whatever leftover fruits or veggies are in the fridge… so far I haven’t had one turn out green because I am still playing it safe with my spinach : berry ratio. Two giant handfuls of spinach is my max.) Only a few days in, and I have markedly higher energy levels, which is much needed after two months of limping along, nursing some now-mild shit-in-my-throat illness that may or may not be whooping cough (apparently it’s going around? Hazel never got what I had?)

And I made a Pinterest. God help me.

Listning: Nick Drake pandora

…notify me by email when this is back in stock!

I wrote a WV Etsy gift guide, in case you are in need of any last-minute gift ideas :)

(While you shop there, Hazel is currently pretending to shop in Target [kitchen] for her baby [stuffed dog]. She is buying treats. There are even automatic doors.)

I made a bunch of these little ephemera packs for Sunday’s benefit music / craft show… scalloped circles, hearts, umbrellas, airplanes, and circles all from fun patterned papers. Perfect for collage, scrapbooking, journaling, gift enclosures, dressing up packaging, or… um… toddler pilfering.

This is where I work. Well, I do a lot of work – Etsy work, taking care of another human work, but this is my Job. That pays the Bills. I am always happy and grateful to be able to do this work… always. Even when I am sitting across from some fifteen year old whose teenage experience in 2011 completely confuses / saddens / sickens / baffles me. Lucky me, eh? But, seriously, thank god in heaven that I was a teenager pre-texting-and-facebook. And that I spent my teenage years in the smallest of small towns. Never thought I’d say that one so certainly. But my kids, all fiftyish of them, are completely amazing for all sorts of reasons, but one in common: they are surviving high school in 2011.

(Yes, this all makes me very terrified for my daughter, and I just try to ignore that because she’s only two.)

Anyway, on Sunday evening this is happening:

I’ve been spending lots of time (partly afforded by the fact that this week has been Sick Week in our little yellow house) making goods for a craft table whose profits will entirely benefit MAYSP. Other people are making fun stuff, too. I can’t wait to see it all together! A sneak peek…

…are the nearest thing to heaven that I know.

And they are not green, but blue, as seen through this lovely instagram filter. I’m teaandlaundry, and I’m an addict.

Hay-z is three years old in about a month. This will be our view from her party, if the weather cooperates. She has long loved birthday parties, but has never put too much (voiced) thought into her own. She has requested “chalk, crayons, Ella, Xavier, Morgan, black balloons and black cake.” Auntie Megan has already taken care of the first. I have high hopes for some of the others. I can indulge some Snoopy-colored balloons (to complement her Snoopy-themed invites, of which I’ve completed steps 1-3!) I have other cake ideas that are hopefully so exciting she’ll forget she asked for a black one. Does anyone out there happen to have the retired 1960s Wilton Snoopy cake pan? :)

Nothing makes this kid happier than birthday parties. And when you ask her how she got so tall, she says “workin’ for Chuck.” The ideas are pretty much directing themselves… :)

1.) Trashpicked a functional 27″ flat screen TV
2.) that magically made Hazel capable of requesting a cartoon other than Charlie Brown’s Christmas (aka, “Snow Snoopy”) for the first time since June
3.) and then I felt my first earthquake. I live in West Virginia, people. I have to say, I would not complain if that happened again – a gentle little rumpling of the floor under my feet, mild enough to make my Mama-made silver spoon wind chime do its thing, but not enough to wake up the dog. A wonder of nature. A little bit magical. Not a pleasant experience for all, but confirming with friends down south all the way to New York and London, Ontario, that we all felt the same thing… an immediate “did you just feel that?” text from an hour away… well hey. I can’t complain about something making our scattering seem much smaller.

…some things growing from the cracks in the sidewalks in a two block radius. Touched, pondered, smelled and named by miss Hazel in between collecting a bag of rocks for Uncle Ben and Megan (I’m not sure why) and rejecting every “banana pine cone” available for the taking. I am totally blowing up your instagram feeds, I know. The statute of limitations on keeping a gifted bag of rocks from your niece is like, two visits later when she brings you enough other things to forget about the rocks, right?

Black-eyed Susans (I think), thistles, lemon balm, and snow on the mountain. I’m currently trying to get a cutting of the snow on the mountain to root, I’m pondering some acquisition of lemon balm (but I don’t know how – root it in water? dirt?), and I just got some cosmos and bee balm seeds (and sunflower-seed-harvesting lessons) from my neighbor. Yip! Happy birds, this winter.