mugs

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Good Things

Let us try to drag ourselves out of this funk, shall we?

(My husband’s theory is that I am down in the dumps because I am procrastinating a task and that once I complete the task the scowling clouds will suddenly lift from around my ears and the sun will shine. He’s probably right. But let’s write a blog post instead, shall we?)

  1. Daffodils. On Swistle’s recommendation, I bought some daffodils. $1.49 for ten stems from Trader Joe’s. (Versus the $3.99 my local grocery store was asking for theirs. Seriously? $3.99? That seems… egregious.) My pink Valentine’s Day carnations were starting to look a little peaked (and no wonder – when I threw them out, there was not a SINGLE DROP of water in the vase… whoops!) so it was nice to swap them out for some fresh flowers. And the bright yellow injects some much needed cheer into my dreary grey kitchen.

Daffodils

  1. Cat mug. My husband got me this mug for Christmas and I love it. It is a replacement for my old favorite mug (which was, if you’ll remember, my husband’s, and had grown so faded from near-daily use that my husband had to gently reclaim it as college memorabilia) and it’s HUGE and has cats on it. I smile every time I use it.

 

Cat mug

I can’t find the exact cat mug he bought, so we can’t be mug twinsies, but Amazon has a lot of good options, if you too are in the market for a cat-related beverage receptacle.

1. Meow Cat Lover Mug 2. Smiley Cats Ceramic Coffee Mug
3. Grammar Correcting Cat Mug 4. Preferring Cats to People Mug

 

Ooooh Etsy has some cute cat mugs, too.

1. Cats in Boxes Mug 2. You’re Stressing Meowt Mug 3. Cat Silhouette Mug 4. Yoga Cat Mug

Somehow I have gotten off track. What can I say? I drink tea every day and having a mug that I love is critically important to my happiness.

  1. Cat Slippers.I got these as a birthday gift from my daughter. Carla came up with this idea all by herself and my husband helped her order them. They are cozy and soft.
Cat slippers

Egads you’d think after nine years of blogging I’d be a better photographer.

 

  1. Dreyer’s English. My dear friend and mentor sent me this book as a surprise. I love books about grammar and usage and I have only just cracked the cover on this one but am already enjoying it.

    Dreyers English

    The cover of this book is made out of a material that makes my skin crawl. I can’t stand touching it. Normally the cover is on my floor. But I braved the awful texture just to recover it for you, Internet. Otherwise, the book is just… black. Much clearer which book it IS, with the cover on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  1. Artichokes. I don’t really know when “artichoke season” is, but it seems to be happening right now. My local grocery store has piles of beautiful, enormous artichokes for $3 apiece, and they make for a delicious lunch. Plus, it seems to me that someone (the grocer?) has gone through and snipped off the sharp part of each leaf, which makes preparing them (and eating them) much more pleasant. I’ve been going through one or two of these bad babies a week.

 

 

There now. Let’s sit back and bask in our newfound good mood. (And do share what’s bringing a smile to your face today, too, won’t you?)

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Favorite Mugs

Swistle did a post today on her favorite mugs. A post I found fascinating, and so I have followed suit and am posting about MY favorite mugs.

(Sidebar: I was JUST THINKING about writing a post about my favorite mug this morning! Because of a different Swistle post, about using the good stuff. Because I keep worrying that my favorite mug is nearing the end of its life, and yet I keep using it because I love it. NOT using it would keep it safe, but I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it.)

Back to the NEW Swistle-based topic.

My favorites are “favorites” based on two criteria: 1. Sentimentality and 2. Size.

Here is the line up, with “most favorite” on the far left and “regular mug for comparison” on the far right.

IMG_3239.jpg

Mug 1: This is my all-time favorite mug. Every time it is dirty, I feel a little pang of wishing I could use it. (The pang isn’t painful enough to prompt me to hand wash it, though.) It is my husband’s, if we’re being technical; everyone in his major at college got a mug like this. All of his classmates’ names appear on the back side of the mug. It’s fun to point out my husband’s name to my daughter. The mug holds about 2 and 1/8 cups of tea-with-milk. I like it because it reminds me of college and my husband, and meeting my husband. And plus there are the names of several old college friends on it, too. But I also like it because it holds AMPLE tea for beginning my day, and because it’s well-proportioned: the handle is a good size, the mug is nice and tall. Love it.

Mug 2: This is my next favorite mug because it has pictures of my daughter on it. When she was not even six months old. So tiny! Plus, my husband “made” the mug for me (via one of those upload-your-photos websites; he’s not a secret potter), which makes it additionally special. It holds only about 1 and 3/4 cups of tea-with-milk, but that’s adequate. The enamel? paint? glaze? of the mug is wearing away from the interior, which makes me a little concerned that I’m ingesting dangerous compounds each morning, but not concerned enough to retire the mug.

Mug 3: This is my next favorite mug because my husband got it for me for Christmas one year, and also because it’s HUGE. It holds nearly 2 and 1/2 cups of tea-with-milk. My one criticism is that it’s a little unweidly: the body of the mug is so big and squat and round that I feel slightly in danger of dropping it. And in fact I slosh tea out of this mug at a far greater rate than I do out of any other.

Mug 4: This is my backup mug. It holds about 1 and 3/4 cups of tea-with-milk, which is fine but not great. It’s a good proportion. But there’s nothing terribly sentimental about it for me. Once again, it technically belongs to my husband; it was his souvenir from Zurich. But he doesn’t use it so I do.

Mug 5: This is one of the mugs that goes with our everyday china. It holds about 1 and 1/4 cups of liquid. I NEVER use these mugs. My husband does, and so do guests when we (rarely) have them. But it’s a little ridiculous that we have TWELVE of them. Oh well.

I will be CRUSHED when Mug 1 and Mug 2 break or disintegrate. I love them more than seems natural, really.