Tiny Birthday Transformation

My dear bird, today I want to share with you some changes at the blue house, and the incredibly hard work we’ve been up to. First, do you see that beautiful doll house above? A dream come true.

Here is the whole thing, so you can see Olivia Serril’s artwork on the left:

For months I’ve dreamed of adding a dollhouse Little Free Library to our home, one where we move the rats around and they experience Christmas, birthdays, stories, etc. And below, we’ll house our own stories about the rats and their lives. Yes, rats. Those will be the dolls, and I can’t wait.

My son and I already have a collection of stories about rats and oh, hey, I sent a story off to Holiday House to see if they would consider publishing. Do you know what that means? Four months of waiting to see if they like it and, if they don’t, you hear nothing at all.

I have a list of these kinds of publishers, all beautiful ones, and to each one I’ll send a card of this story or that, and we’ll see what we can.

I listen to this podcast by a financial advisor and she says, “Start a business. You are your business,” and then she laughs, I joke not, at raising $11,000.00 a month, saying she does that, basically, at the snap of her fingers now, and I think

“Who are you, mystical beast?” She must, surely, be a unicorn.

Owning my own small business, I can tell you that I snap my fingers and I have the same wonderful, beautiful, steady amount of clients that I had before the finger snap.

And she says, “Start with you. If you have no idea, start with you.”

All I have is my collection of children’s stories, so I finally did that thing where you face rejection and, like paper ships, send something out into the world.

And then you have to pretend that you have it.

Wouldn’t that be a good dream? Here it goes: they call me. And email. And they say, “We want this. And also it won a Newbury Award. And you won. You won at life.”

You are not the failure that you thought you were, lovely. YOU WON.

Add that story to my collection of silver knives and the lottery ticket and the trinkets around the house. YOU WON!

Maybe I could win, you know? I do win sometimes. I really do.

Have since I was a child. Won a jacket. Won a bottled water service to our house. My mom was like, “What is this?” When suddenly a bottled water truck was delivering five gallon buckets to our house. I was in middle school.

“I won this,” I said.

We put them in the pantry.

It happens. We can all be winners.

So this dollhouse is my Little Free Library Rat House. I’ll fill you in on the details as we make it. Popsicle stick floors. Dried flowers. Things rats would like. Antique trinkets. Crow treasures.

Sometimes winning is a state of mind.

Look at these rocks. This wasn’t winning.

I moved this whole freaking pile, OK, I moved many, many wheelbarrows full of rocks from this pile into our backyard.

It was hard labor, and I also laid down that black cloth and cut it, and felt so winning and proud. And I was doing things because the other person wasn’t allowed to lift things for fear of splitting stitches from surgeries so here I was, DOING IT.

Because we are elevating things here, and we need beauty in our lives, and the backyard was a mud pit BUT WE ARE RECLAIMING IT

from this guy:

Every load of rocks I moved, I despaired over the happiness in my life and the loss of it.

You feel, when you do things on your own, pride.

But sometimes while doing it you rue the day you started, and your life in general, and wax about your life being wasted.

That was me, moving this rock pile, lamenting life and my deck of cards just then.

The pendulum swings. Here’s the song we’re working on:

He plays everything more beautifully than I ever could, and that’s OK. His name is David and he’s a joy to our lives, and always tries to make me play old, Jewish folk songs. I record things sometimes because, after he leaves, I forget what he said and where to place the fingers and what we were even doing, anyways, like a dog turning its head to the side saying “what?”

That’s me at the piano most of the time.

“What?”

And I want to share one small thing, again for Christmas. This year, the teachers at my son’s school are getting

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo

Am I crazy for worrying about what to gift them now?

Maybe. It’s always a lot for me and there are a lot of staff to give to, and I just want to give, give, give.

Here, for you, my favorite lemon, olive oil cake recipe.

And to avoid the stress of having no idea I will, once again, gift

beautiful mugs, coffees and teas that they like, and this book

One apiece

We loved it so much we began it one night and ended it the next

and cried through so much of it