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The holiday hoopla is over and done. All fine and well and good. It’s a New Year. We’re moving on. Already, resolutions made and broken. Such is life.

And now, the COLD spell begins. I saw a headline in my Google feed this morning containing those dreaded, winter-month words, polar vortex. Yikes! I remember well, those frigid days and weeks, from just a few years back.

Ah, well. Bring it on, I say. We’re Iowans, Midwesterners. We can handle a few frozen temperatures. We’ve got Netflix and Hulu and Apple + TV. There are LOADS of books on our shelves and downloaded to our Kindles (and we know where to get more). There’s the Internet! Streaming! Painting tutorials: watercolors, Bob Ross, acrylics! We’ve got quilting, reorganizing, Sudoku, baking bread, crock-pot lasagna. Take-out, for crying out loud.

Knife sharpening!

The miraculous wonders of YouTube….

Yeah, we’ll manage alright. That doesn’t mean we have to like it.

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I’ve just finished reading Anne of Green Gables and could barely get through the last page, as I cried and sobbed, knowing I’d reached the end. What a wonderful book! Anne is my hero, as is L.M. Montgomery for writing such a heartwarming story.

A few years ago I read another classic I’d not ever picked up before, Little Women, an utterly charming read.

With that in mind, I’ve ordered a couple more that I passed up in my younger days: Charlotte’s Web and are you there god? it’s me, margaret. I’m eager to read them!

I adore these amazing classics. Others that I have read include Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Rebecca, The Age of Innocence and Watership Down (really enjoyed that one).

Books make me happy. Readers, what books have YOU loved?

Here’s to inspired reading, everyone!

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My Kindle overfloweth.

The upper cabinets of my computer desk are neatly adorned with books – lovingly sorted by collection, color and genre – but my lifelong compulsion to continue in the acquisition of these cherished avenues of escape have required that I stack books horizontally atop the vertical alignments. Floor space in our sunroom, relaxing reading haven where I sit next to bright, open views of birch, Chanticleer pear and a hodgepodge of bird feeders, serves as a display vehicle for books in baskets beneath a funky woven bench I bought at auction some forty years ago. They serve as solitary sentinels guarding the small, seldom-used television in the corner. They hover alongside the swivel rocker where I sit on cozy chilly mornings, a hot cup of chai close at hand.

Bookshelves reside in nearly every room of our house.

I’m susceptible to enthusiastic book reviews and recommendations. My Amazon cart almost always contains a new selection (or two or three) to serve as buffer the next time something really ‘necessary’ requires purchase, a means to scoot our total amount adequately higher in order to bestow free shipping.

I hesitate ever so slightly, shrug as if to say ‘what the heck’ and click the Buy Now button.

Have I gone mad? Certainly, I’ll never read all these books, these journals, these poetry collections. Will I? Is that even possible?

Sigh.

My baby sister chides me for my book purchases, preferring to check out her books from a library. I get it. Books are expensive. You finish reading one and then what? With so many books in my queue, it’s doubtful a re-read hovers as even a remote possibility.

But books are lovely. They give me so much pleasure. They are – yes, it sounds both strange and cliche – like old friends. Even the electronic versions provide no small degree of sublime satisfaction.

This cat is unlikely to change. I’ll continue to read, to acquire, to covet more and more and more. What can I say? I do love me some books!

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I came. I saw. I journalled. And I continue to do so, joyfully.

Actually, ever since I retired earlier this year – March 15th, the Ides of March in case you’d like to tuck that date away to commemorate my one-year-anniversary come 2018 – I’ve been doing a lot more writing in my journal. Or journals, rather. I keep a small one in my purse, one in the wicker tray I use to house all my reading materials for bedtime perusal, one in the car, one in my going-to-Barnes-and-Noble backpack and a spiral-bound notebook that I originally started for writing Morning Pages. I’ve applied my own twist to the practice, however, writing whenever the heck I feel like it during the day – I call it my Daily Pages – and writing anywhere from just a paragraph, maybe a page or two or even the prescribed three pages (or more), in longhand, to explore whatever it is I want to say or express or document as to what’s going on in my life.

Recently, I purchased a set of multi-color fine-tip markers to jazz up, enliven, highlight and otherwise amplify my reading and writing experiences. Yellow highlighters are also quite useful, maybe not so much for journaling but certainly for noting key passages in the books and magazines I collect (not unlike the typewriters I once accumulated over the years but that’s another story). If the written word is part of the equation, so too are these brown laser-enhanced optical wonders located mere inches from my hairline and any colorful means possible to capture and celebrate the beauty and inspiration and joy I so delight in when I am both reading and writing.

Some may chafe at the suggestion but I enjoy looking back every now and then, re-reading the journals I’ve written, gleaning clues sometimes as to what year we went to Mackinac Island (2012) or whether we hosted Thanksgiving in 2015 (we did). It is often amusing to read about how annoyed I’d been over something that had happened at work but my self-righteous indignation provides no clues whatsoever as to what the offending situation actually was and I’m left to guess as to what I was even referring to. Must have been really important, eh?

As much as I enjoy keeping a journal now as an adult, I’m surprised I never kept a diary as a young girl. I do recall owning one and I’m sure I wrote a few entries here and there. Some women (perhaps men too but I can’t speak to that) still have every diary and journal they’ve written in since they were kids. I think that’s nice. While that’s not an option for me, I’ll do the next best thing and save (and cherish) the ones that I do have and will continue to write – and read! – as long as those two brown apertures of mine are still blessedly able to do so. Write on, peoples!