things which have been making me happy of late:

[faeriemaiden]

• Loose leaf rose tea. I just bought two ounces of it at an imports store in Pittsburgh -- it's black tea with rose petals and a couple of other ingredients that were on the big cannister but are not on the label, phooey. At any rate, it is delightful and I feel as though I am in a fairy tale when I drink it. (I love rose flavour -- it tastes exactly like roses smell! Not that this is surprising, but roses smell like flowers, like drinking them would be like drinking perfume. NOT SO. And I know rosewater was the mild flavouring of choice before vanilla became readily available, but it's still unexpectedly delightful.)
• SARAH BEING HOME FOR THE NEXT WEEK and the shenanigans that are sure to ensue. I went with Father Mark and Rebecca to Pittsburgh to fetch her yesterday, and then we played a gig at the coffeeshop to... almost no-one but Julie the barista and our siblings and my sister's Sunday school teacher, but we had fun, and Sarah does a cover of the Dresden Dolls' "Sing" that makes my heart hurt in the best possible way.
• Acquiring three pairs of stockings for a dollar fifty at Ross and a soft cream-coloured pair of fingerless gloves for a dollar at Rue 21. I'm strangely tempted by a pair of fur-and-cable-knit earmuffs that never would have appealed to me before I started exploring mori-girl fashion, curses!
• Waking up to cats nearly every morning -- Bartholomew has taken to curling up near my chest instead of at my feet lately, but the other day I woke to Bart curled against my ribs to the right and Willow to my left, effectively pinning me to the bed.
• Peter S. Beagle's Tamsin, which I loved the first time I read it in November, and when I picked it up more recently to re-read it felt like coming home, which is always a sign of a personal classic. It is a thoroughly excellent book, and so full of things I like! -- close female friendships serving as the emotional centre, weird English folklore, well-written conversational first-person narration, history, and a terrifically prickly heroine. I have an immense and achey soft spot for prickly heroines, because they resonate with me the most, and as much as I relate to the life-enhancing, wonder-hungry ingénues, it's the prickly, difficult, well-meaning girls who are mine. (If you write a combination of the two that works, I automatically love you forever.) 
• Things Leandra says. Matter-of-factly, as my kettle begins to whistle: "Nini, your tea is screaming." Sternly, to people who scold her: "Don't talk to me like that!" To Heidi, as Heidi ate out of a box of cookies she bought: "We can be twins!" How? "We can both eat those cookies!" To a woman at church who was baby-talking her in a cringe-inducing manner that wouldn't suit an infant, much less a four-year-old: "I am going home to enjoy some delicious cake." Singing in the voices of our cats: "If you're happy and you know it, pounce a bat!"
• A package of delights from Kyra -- many pairs of cosy and ridiculous knee socks, books, geeky trinkets, and a glorious owl t-shirt, among other things. (Kyra, the USB robot fills me with joy, because I totally need more USB ports, what with managing to destroy my sound and my touchpad and so filling two out of three ports with mouse and external soundcard. Also the moustache sticker is on my guitar case now.)
• A mysterious Thing To Come from Charis, who is making things for someone every month of the year, and I am the February Someone.
• THE SUN. It has come out a few times this week. I AM EXCITE. PLEASE STAY.
• The Civil Wars' new album Barton Hollow, which is a fascinating mixture of foot-stomping countrygrass (mostly in the title track) and chamber folk, and features intertwining male/female vocals, a.k.a. my favourite thing.
• My hair, which is at the moment mostly candy-apple pinkish red.
• Fringe and The Vampire Diaries: ladies being amazing on my screen every week! 
• The long leather coat I found for twenty-nine cents at Goodwill a few weeks ago, and the feeling I get when I stride about with it billowing around me. Or bicycle about. On a bicycle, I feel like a superhero, or a witch.
• BULLET POINTS!
• Okay, I think there's dinner now.
• I DON'T HAVE A PROBLEM
• I CAN STOP WHENEVER I WANT TO
• LOOK LOOK LOOK BULLET POIIIIINTS