Collected Thoughts

When I returned to Virginia, I turned on the heat in my house for the first time this season. I love the way it smells as it comes through the registers, all warm and good like Christmas. It makes me want hot tea or hot chocolate and heart-warming movies or books.

Microfilm can get really, really boring. I can't wait until I only have to read it for twelve hours a week instead of twenty. It has it's moments-- it has made me incredibly happy and incredibly sad (to the point of tears)-- but mostly it's very dry. I think when I cut back on my hours per week I will both find the microfilm more enjoyable, and feel more up to reading books for my thesis. I miss my thesis (even though I read another book for it on the plane to Albuquerque).

There isn't enough time to get everything done that I need to get done. Someone needs to add more hours to the day. Why haven't they gotten on that one yet?

I went to the eighteenth-century kitchens today because it's the first Tuesday of the month-- that means it's the day Jim makes chocolate! I really miss working in Foodways, especially on days like today when the weather is sunny and cool. It was the perfect weather for making chocolate. And the chocolate smells so good as it's pressed into liquid and I miss those mornings of chocolate shell tea, and sometimes burning my fingers on the cooked nibs as I shelled them because they were always so hot, but it not mattering because it was freezing outside and I wanted the warmth. And sometimes Jim would give me cooked cocoa nibs and I would dip my finger in the sugar so that when I ate the nib it wouldn't be so bitter. And the other mornings of actual hot chocolate with cinnamon and nutmeg and the Foodways chocolate which is the richest you'll ever taste. The best part of Foodways was feeling like I had done something everyday-- I had created something material-- something of the present but also intimately connected with the past. Whether chocolate or potato balls or Spanish eggs or syllabub, I made it with my own two hands. I miss that.

I am wearing my new black boots today with my new dress and I feel so happy. The outfit combined with the Governor's Palace grounds (the English gardens and the hedge maze) also makes me feel a slight bit Victorian/Alice in Wonderland/Secret Garden. It's a nice feeling, like anything can happen because I might be in a storybook half of the time.

Life can be uncertain and trying, but also exciting and sweet.

I'm at a point where everyday I wake up and can't wait to find out what will happen, for better or for worse.
All I know is that I want to live.