Joie de vivre

Just a minor cleaning up of the friends list - I've cut a few abandoned and/or no longer used second journals, and people I never hear from or who unfriended me first.

If I cut anyone who'd rather stay on, just leave a comment. :)

I'm so happy to have more then three icons again. =D I could not resist LiveJournal's offer of an extra two months if you bought a year's paid account: and so I did, with a little technical help from savetheolives, who once again has come to my rescue, brandishing her always-on internet connection.

(After all, she'll be here in about ten days, so I have say nice things about her, on the off chance she'll change her mind and take a flight to Italy instead.)

So I've made a whole lot of new ones and picked the best; I've resurrected my Hope icon, although thankfully I don't feel the need for it as much as I did in the anxiety-laden days which I devoutly pray are gone; and I even borrowed (or stole, depending on how you look at it) a Sicily icon from savetheolives, which I think I will use mostly on posts where I rant about Things.

Parenthetical note, without the parenthsis: my favorites, I think, are the East of the Moon and West of the Sun icons. I read one of Tolkien's earliest poems, where the beginnings of the Silmarillion are faintly seen, and fell in love with the first few lines:

East of the Moon, west of the Sun
There stands a lonely hill;
Its feet are in the pale green sea,
Its towers are white and still,
Beyond Taniquetil
In Valinor.

So now I have a paid account for a year and two months. It seems strange to think of it as being that long. In 14 months I'll be 21. In 14 months I could be...living somewhere else. My life could be entirely different. It's all very odd to think about.

But instead of looking forward, today I'm looking back. Today is the six month anniversary of when I started this job. ( how my life has changed )

Last night I had a dream. Every so often I have one of those very intense, vivid dreams, and I wake up thinking it really happened. The mood of those dreams follow me for days, sometimes. I've been frightened to death by some of them. But this one....this one was beautiful. Someone told me some of the sweetest words I think I could ever hear, and made me feel so wonderful. I woke up full of joy--even after the momentary disappointment when I realized it was only a dream. I've spent the day floating on air, feeling beautiful and loved, and I'm not sure even yet that it didn't really happen. I hope, I pray, that someday it will be Real. If a dream can do this to me, what must the reality be like!