Little Bliss and the Big Dictionary

Sounds like a book title, doesn't it? Yeah, I'm really good at those, just not the whole book so much. Ahem.

So, two things I want to share with you today. I finished my little sculpture (for the most part, a couple of adjustments still necessary), and though I have obviously learned some things about working with this material--that it has a tendency to crack as it dries, namely--I like her. She makes me smile. I'm calling her "Little Bliss."
I like how, in that last shot, the counter top in the kitchen (consistently the only place in the house with enough light to take decent pictures) makes it look like I took her to the Sears portrait studio.
The other thing is this tableaux I discovered upon waking today--the dog and the dictionary on the back of the couch where Annabelle usually hangs out when she gets up, inevitably before I am ready to drag myself out of bed. I was aware that she often perused this big, illustrated, encyclopedic dictionary, but this was the first time I really noticed her bookmarks. One says just "my place," and another says "abstract painting," and the last one says, "Christina's World." I don't know how to say how these markers filled me with love and admiration and the hope that as I release my as-yet-home schooled girl a little bit more into the world next week that she comes back the same in some ways, in this way.