This morning I interrupted Ross in the middle of a shave because I had to pee before I left to meet Anya in Teele Square. As he walked out of the bathroom he showed me, proudly, the shape he’d fashioned his hair into for fun and I admired it (please understand, the boy needs to be encouraged to develop hobbies, so I take what I can get). Closing the bathroom door came the sunny remark, “You can take a picture of me, if you want!”

I did indeed want. Two pictures, in fact. Then I left the house to see Anya’s beautifully soothing and bright office space, shared a delicious lunch and equally delicious conversation with her, and finally wandered over to Magpie where we browsed the shelves and I valiantly continued to resist the temptation to break my “no unnecessary purchases” rule.

When I returned to the house later in the afternoon after a few errands, I made this with Ross sitting next to me on the bed offering helpful comments. He was slightly perturbed by the use of the word “assault,” but in the end he had to submit to my strong sense of artistic ownership.

When I was done with my creation I sampled the Kimchi Soup with Tuna Ross had made while I was gone, and it was significantly less unappealing than I had imagined. Score!

Since then we’ve been doing a bout of purging: making bags of clothes to donate, recycling reams of old papers, sorting CDs into “keep” and “throw” and “sell” piles, and putting all of the stuffed toys we own (not a pathological number, but more than you would perhaps expect two mature adults to have accumulated—I blame it on the fact that when I was 21 I lived with Sean) in a very sad little box that says “Stuffed Toys: 25 cents each” on it. It doesn’t seem as if we’ve made that much of a dent, but I know every bit of progress is helpful. Having made ourselves quite ill from inhaling dust for two hours, we are both resolutely committed to a life of refreshing simplicity from now on; it’ll be interesting to see how long that lasts. I think it might actually take though—I’m slowly getting used to just looking appreciatively at objects I covet and walking away instead of feeling like I have to own them.

In other news, I’m about to send off my 27th Bookmooch package, which makes me really pleased. I love it when things just work.

I hope you’re having a fabulous weekend, lovelies. See you soon.