It was this kind of day.

Yesterday, I was just plain tuckered out from driving 250 miles and then enjoying my wonderful Lexington friends' dinner party, which featured an abundance of homemade Schezuan food and delicious wine. Tonight, I find myself not entirely in love with the idea of writing very much, something I can only attribute to having had an excellently long and full day of reading, eating, shopping, and photographing. Part of me wants to read three more pages of my book about mesmerism and then fall fast asleep, but part of me wants to write. I'm going to indulge the latter part.

Usually, I try to be at least a little veiled when I tell you about people I know and/or love. But it's tough to veil the extraordinariness that's happening down here in Kentucky. My Lexingtonian friend is having a baby, and she's close enough to due that she can say, "Feel here!" and we can pat a knee, or a bum, or a foot. She is rounded and luscious and absolutely gorgeous. You can't even imagine how gorgeous this woman is. I'm just trying to bask in the glory beaming off of her this weekend. I'm like a little moon. With a camera.

Today, after she had a nap after our Japanese lunch (and I can't stop to sing the praises of raw fish right now, but know that I would, I would), we went out to find clothing for the rest of her pregnancy. Of this trip, I will show you one image, simply because of the bizarre baby portrait topping it off. I know that a baby wrangler was involved in this shot:


Actually, because I have no self-restraint, I'll give you one more image from the trip--partly because it encapsulates the thing that such abundance of tiny clothing does to me. I stood fingering one of these little blue hats and thinking, oh, this is the sweetest thing. I wanted to have one. Not a child, mind you. A little blue hat. To put on a sweet child. I don't particularly want to have my own children, but I would like to be able to spend more time with the sweet children my beautiful friends are having. And to put little blue hats on them.


This shopping trip was one major order of business for today. The other major order of business was a multi-stage photo shoot whose results I will work with in the photo lab when I return to Gambier. May I say that you all should be so lucky as to have such a beautiful pregnant friend as I have.

And what things we have to look forward to as spring streams northward. My mother said to me the other day, "The redbuds will be blooming when you get to Kentucky." And indeed she was right. But I think she kept reminders of the dogwoods to herself so that I'd have the pleasure of discovering their blooms when I got here.


And even dusk looks prettier over a house of friends.