Hello.

 

Hi, I'm Annie.

Mother of 3,
spouse to G,
writer of things,
former batgirl,
sister,
daughter,
lucky friend,
and American
living in Australia.

Basic Joy = my attempt to document all of this life stuff, stubbornly looking for the joy in dailiness. 

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On my bookshelf
Annie's bookshelf:

Mama, Ph.D.: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic LifeMountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the WorldThe Sweetness at the Bottom of the PieThe Island: A NovelThe PassageSecret Spaces of Childhood

More of Annie's books »
Annie's  book recommendations, reviews, favorite quotes, book clubs, book trivia, book lists
On my mind
On my playlist

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Gallery

Just a collection of images that bring out the happy & hygge in me. 

More at my tumblr, Gather

and at my Pinterest pinboards

Entries in in search of good mail (2)

Saturday
Dec252010

Merry, merry

 

Wishing you peace + joy + harmony + laughter

With love from our family to you

(p.s. We ran out of cards this year. Next time we'll know better)

Friday
Jul102009

A Post post


postboxes from Flickr group, via Ministry of Type

1.
I'm reading Roald Dahl's biography Boy aloud to the kids and found it endearing that he wrote to his mother every week for 32 years, from the first week (at age 9!) when he was sent to boarding school until her death. She kept all of those letters (more than 600 altogether) in piles bound with green tape in the original envelopes. It makes me long for old fashioned mail. What will we do without lovely piles of letters to read through? Will our emails survive?

Resolved: I'm going to send more real mail.

2.
If you have younger kids, you might like this pretty wonderful card table post office. Also check out the felt mail and mail bags. I wish my kids still wanted to make believe. Or, for the grown-up version, how about this fantastic 1880 post office wall?

As a compromise, I'm acting on an idea I saw ages ago: putting mailboxes inside the house (maybe one per person near their bedroom?) for leaving notes and papers. Or maybe one or two of these great Swedish mailboxes would do the trick. Let the secret admirer/complaint department/compliments/wish making begin!

3.
Finally, I cannot look at the sight of those glorious red postboxes without a surge of affection for G. When I was in London for six months and he was here in the US of A he was a devoted pen pal. He called, wrote or recorded something for me on tape Every Single Day. I wasn't quite as good about the frequency of return post but those red boxes temporarily held many of my dearest thoughts and fragilest hopes, on their way to him.

I wonder if they're selling one of those on eBay? {Hmm. Just found this.}