my little sister/model mariam in a quiet corner of an art museum. 

I like the quietness of early January days. My nails are sparkly-gold and my fingertips are chilled from the cold draft slipping in through the windows. Instead of gaining it, I somehow lost weight over the holidays (oops), but today I ate my weight in cookies and good hot tomato soup and cheese bread. The majority of the day has been spent sorting and organizing photographs and planning in preparation for a book that I'm putting together (more on that later). Going through photos from the past year obviously means lots of reminiscing and nostalgia. Those are well-deserved feelings, though: 2012 was such a full, amazing, rich, spectacular, wonderfully heartbreaking year. But gosh, I am excited for 2013. It's going to be filled with a lot of lasts and a lot of firsts, too...and maybe I'll finally get around to doing all those things that have been tacked to the I'll do it later list. I'm going to be honest: I think 2013 is going to hurt, but a good kind of hurt. It's the kind of hurt where you have to do hard things and go through hard situations, but can still be content in the midst of it because you're growing and you know it's not going to last forever.
So far, though, the new year has been good. We rang in 2013 with a dance party (my whole family did the gangnam style dance in the living room and yes I got it on video), a movie, some karaoke (no I did not participate because I have a fear of microphones), and cheers when the clock struck twelve. And yesterday we went down to the river and watched people participating in the Polar Bear Plunge, a two mile race that involves dressing up in crazy costumes and jumping into three pools in below-freezing weather...hence the name polar bear. It's very entertaining to watch, and props to the people that did it, but you couldn't pay me to participate. ;)
The sun has now set and the book needs to be worked on, so I'll catch ya on the flip side. Hope your year is off to a marvelous start!

ps in case you're having a bad day, here's a picture of a little cutie named Lilly tanning on the beach a few months ago. You're welcome.