Sweetness

This fantastic debut novel enraptured me, making my Friday morning quite enjoyable. Bradley's eleven-year-old heroine, Flavia de Luce, is admirably intelligent. Her deducing stream of thought, extensive grasp of chemistry, and delightful attitude in tricky situations had me cheering, "Yeah, Flave! You ROCK!"

Read it.

He's Home

So...this is LOVE.

Sunday morning, the bell rang, I opened the door and IT WAS HIM. Tangible, crooked-smile, I-could-reach-out-and-touch-him, HIM. He squeezed me sooooo tight when I hugged him--how did I survive two years without hugs like THAT?? He took me to church, gave me presents from Mexico, held my hand when we went on an afternoon walk. We sat on the curb and talked and talked and laughed and took this picture.

He kept his arm around my shoulder through dinner. He ate icecream with Nana, who told me later that he was "handsome and confident" and "our children would be beautiful." He danced with me on my doorstep before he left. He looked at me--and my knees got that hollow-boned, weak feeling--and he said, "Hey. I love you."
He fit right back into place in an instant, as though he was never an ocean away from me. His voice makes my heart cartwheel, especially when he's listening to my stories and he says mm-hmmm. I went to work the next day humming songs from Golden-Era Broadway songs and my cubical-neighbor Ilze said, "Please tell me why you are on top of the world today." Why? Because, you know what? I love him! I do. And he loves me! I'm not going to over-analyze or think too much or stress about the future. I'm just going to enjoy this sweet, charming man's pure heart, sexy smiles, and adorable train-of-thought (I could lay in his arms and listen to him talk to me all night long). And I'm going to love him back with reckless abandon.