Potpourri Post

Every so often I find myself overwhelmed with the ideas I have for posting on my blog. I love to photograph my knitting and spinning activities and my flowers. I love to travel to interesting places (and to me almost any place in the world is interesting) and take pictures when I am there, wherever there is at the moment. I love to read and share my thoughts about the books on my reading list.


People write lists on their blogs and invite me to participate in telling the blog world what makes me happy or what I want to do before I die. And I think about my answers, about where I want to go, what makes me happy.


Sometimes people send me awards and that makes me so happy that I smile inside and outside all day and into the evening and when I show The Professor, he smiles back at me indulgently.


Last week Mary at The Writing Nook gave me this Excellent Blogger Award. I smiled and smiled and thought about what I could say about it. You may not believe this, but I really am a little shy about receiving awards like this. There are so many, many blogs out in cyperspace and it amazes me that people ever click on the name Willow's Cottage and come over and visit me and read what I write and they actually come back a second time and read and comment. Wow! It makes me so happy!


Mostly I write and post photos about what interests me (see above). So I am truly pleased that others find my blog interesting, too. Thank you, Mary!

Today Anne at nikkipolani gave me a blog award, too. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! She said she likes to read my posts about places I visit and photograph. Thank you, Anne! I suppose I have just assumed that people like to know about the history of California because I am interested in it. It's normal for me to want to know everything about where I live, like I think it's normal to talk about roads, directions and maps. This is not just environment and heredity. It's my personality: a few years ago at World Impact, our staff read the book Now Consider Your Strengths and took the accompanying test as part of our training in understanding each other and in learning to maximize our strengths in our particular positions. Not surprisingly, one of my top five strengths is Context--I enjoy thinking about the past to understand the present by researching its history--and another one is Input--the craving to know more, to collect and archive all kinds of information (important or unimportant, it's all interesting to me!).

This afternoon when I went to the mailbox on my way into the house after working later than usual at school, I found a hand written envelope postmarked from Georgia! I received a lovely note and card from artgirlATL! I brought the letter in and looked at it and smiled. I laid it on the counter, but I didn't open it. I wanted to cherish the moment and prolong the anticipation as long as possible. Finally, after The Professor came home and looked through the mail, I opened the envelope, carefully using a knife to slit the top and not mess up any part of the sweet drawing on the back. Thank you, Heather!

So. What makes me happy today? A blog award, a letter from a friend! A phone call from MamaMia, an IM message from Kiti. A total of 10,000 steps on my pedometer because I walked more at school, walked to vote, walked through the nature park. Happy, happy, happy. I hope you have had a happy day, too.