18.1 Hat - Easter recap

 

Endless Days

Easter was delightful. There were lemon Kit Kats, a super fun egg hunt, my niblings tolerating my "pretend you like each other" as the camera was aimed at them, a birthday cake, and too many squishmallows to count. 

We have not yet had time to go through the camera and figure out if I took any decent photos, but let me leave you with two hilarious photos that I took on my phone. 

My husband was wearing his sunglasses inside. Why? No one knows. I thought that was hilarious.

My FIL's wife has this creepy (very large) rabbit and we all sort of avoid the entire room where it lives. This year I decided my SIL and I should have our photo taken with it. It's so creepy. My SIL and I were joking that we should definitely include this one on our 2024 Christmas cards. 

Favorite memories (in no order):

Joking with my nephew about his idea of parachuting people out of planes above their final destination cities when they have to fly over them for connecting flights

How some of the oldest niblings were the last to find all their hidden eggs

When a bunch of the kids were having a concert in the piano room (this isn't as pretentious as it sounds - my FIL's wife is a semi-professional musician), I was chatting with one of my nieces at the kitchen counter as we both kept slamming pound cake and leftover egg casserole

My BIL talking to me about whether or not he should read the newest Robert Galbraith even though he just finished The Ink Black Heart. 

Oh! Good accidental segue (good job, NGS). My BIL has been newly promoted to a judgeship. His investiture is in early May (I will not be able to attend; hopefully my husband will be able to). What gifts does one get a new judge?!

 

I have seriously considered a personalized bobblehead, but I'm not sure it could get here in time. His wife has vetoed any gavel-themed items. Maybe some socks? A snarky journal? I have never had this particular challenging gift-giving occasion before and probably never will. I have to live up to my gift-giving reputation! (I'd never actually give this to him because he's a lovely man who I've never heard swear, but this candle made me laugh a lot.)

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How was your Easter? What would you buy for a newly minted judge?

17.1 Hat - Blogging Through the Years

You may or may not remember that one of my "fun goals" for the first quarter was to photograph the sculptures of cows around our town. I have literally only managed to photograph one, but maybe I'll  somehow manage to get done in March. Anyway, this is one of the photos of the cows! This is the Guernsey, if you were curious.

A lot of the sculptures in our town get scarves and hats added to them during the winter. I've heard that it's so if someone needs warm outerwear, they can take it off the sculptures, but I don't know if that's true. I think it's just adorable. 

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Kyria recently wrote a post (and then Stephany did it, too!) about her history with blogging and I thought it was fascinating and absolutely stole all these questions from her.

When did you start blogging and why? 
I was super lonely when I was in graduate school, so I started a blog as a way of venting about my life and just getting into the habit of writing non-academic nonsense for a change. I started blogging in September 2004, so I'm coming up on my 20th anniversary.

What was your first blog post about? 

It was about allergies?  Oh, boy. Riveting post, I'm sure.

What is your most used label and why? 
Books. No matter what else is going on in my life, I write about books. 

What is your most viewed post? And why do you think this is the case?
A book review about a popular Julia Quinn historical romance novel. I think it's because I am critical of the book that is quite popular? It's so close to being a good book, but sort of glorifies marital rape and I'm not on board for that. 

Do you answer comments on your blog? If so, what method do you use (email, post on blog)? 
I used to not answer comments on my blog because I assumed no one would ever come to blog twice. In the last year or two I have been answering the comments in my comments because I do sometimes go back and see how my favorite bloggers respond to my comments. I don't kid myself that I'm anyone's favorite blogger or that they will return to see what I've written, but if someone takes the time to write something to me, I think it's nice to acknowledge that I've read it and appreciate it. 

Do you go back to see if a blog post that you commented on got replies? If so, how do you keep track? 
I sometimes do go back, but mostly I just wait for another post from that blogger to appear in Feedly and then I'll read the responses to the previous post while I'm reading the current post. I'm sure I miss some this way, but it's the only system I have. 

What blog that you still read now have you read the longest?

I think it's Suzanne's blog, Life of a Doctor's Wife. I feel like there was a while there when it seemed like the two of us were the only ones still blogging. I remember her writing about how uncertain she was if she wanted to have a baby and now the hypothetical baby is double-digit years old!

Do you post on other forms of social media regularly? If so, where?

A lot of photos that end up on the blog were originally photos I took for Instagram. You can find a link to my Instagram on my sidebar. Other than that...I have a Facebook account, but don't really post much there. I'm FB friends with my boss, so I'm cautious over there!

I do not link my blog to any of my social media. A lot of people in real life have no idea I blog or, if they do know, they don't know what it is or how to find it.

If you talk about people in your real life, do you use their real names? 

Nope. Except for my friend Tabetha who I have, oddly, decided doesn't get a pseudonym. I've known Tabs since SECOND GRADE. We were SEVEN. 

If you could get paid to blog no matter what you are writing about, what would your focus/theme be? 

Books. Books. Books. All the books. With occasional mentions of my pets.

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What's the blog you've read the longest? 

16.1 Hat - Three Weeks

There were three really good weeks. I finally had a job. My volunteer position was finished. There were some stressors in my life, but I really felt like I was in control and things were going well. I signed up for a sewing class. I started considering vacations for the summer. I was looking at training classes for the dog. Things were great.

But things are not great anymore. My mom recently got sick. Things are currently looking okay for her medically, but there are complications. As some of you may remember, my mom lives in a tiny home on my sister's property. (For more on this/to refresh your memory, see this post.) The other thing is that my mom is a hoarder. She has been for my whole life and there's nothing that going to stop a woman in her sixties from changing her ways. I get this. But when my sister said, "mom's sick and I need you to help me clean out her house," I knew it had gotten bad.

This is what I found. 

By the end of the weekend, I had taken dozens of giant totes out of the house, had a huge blowout with my sister, cried buckets of tears, and honestly had only spent two hours with my mom. My sister, who as you may remember from the previous post about tiny home living, has a tendency to hold grudges, and as she kicked me out of her house and told me to never come back there again, I knew that I was straight fucked. Sure enough, she wouldn't let me see my mom to say goodbye. 

The cabin is actually quite beautiful and I swear to you that a single person should be able to live here comfortably.

But look at the work that I had done before I was banished.

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So, no, my friends. I am not all right. My mom is quite sick, I don't know if the home health care workers will allow her to live like this, and my sister won't let me see my mom. When I texted my mom, she basically told me to go home and let my sister cool down. My mom is super angry with me for taking away all her stuff (it's a hoarder thing - I get it). 

And I am trying to compartmentalize and do what I have to do at work and at home, but I am unable to sleep, am crying at the drop of a hat, my mom is not responding to my texts anymore, my sister has blocked me on her phone, and the only one who is talking to me at all is my brother-in-law, who I'm ready to canonize at this point because he should not be in the middle of all of this. 

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For those of you with any doubt about where all this is going to go, I will be doing an incredibly deep cleaning of my house ASAP (the totes under the bed WILL be organized) and numbing my feelings with vinegar and lots of trash bags.

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I think this is the last of this I will talk about in any great depth. It's personal, painful, and putting it here in my safe space feels like a betrayal of what I use this blog for. So, for the next while, just know that I'll be writing book reviews, running CBBC, talking about my cat and dog, but there's more under the surface than it may seem.  

I'm not going to allow comments on this post because any kindness from all of you might cause me to collapse into a pile of weeping mush. This too shall pass and I will be back to my regular programming discussing walks about town and complaining about how the sun hasn't come out in a week.

15.1 Hat - Happy New Year!

Happy new year! Woot woot! We survived another rotation around the sun. (That's the thing, right? I literally never understood the Earth spinning around its axis versus traveling around the sun and which was day and which was a year and you could show me eight bazillion of those dioramas of the solar system and I will never understand.) I'm sure you'll all be thrilled to know that it was cold, snowy, and windy yesterday, so I spent most of the day curled up on the couch with my cat and a book and only venturing outdoors to walk the dog and frantically try to find a hat for this post. 

It was this or a Christmas inflatable and I think we're all over the inflatables, right?

We were in bed by ten o'clock and my big plans for my Monday off are to take the dog for a bath and figure out how to renew a prescription.  

I lived for a brief period of time in a small southeastern city in Michigan when I was between undergrad and grad school. I dated a guy during that time and his family did New Year's Eve UP. Everyone dressed up, they had those silly headbands and beads to wear, party poppers, and they had an old vinyl record player that they used to play old skool jazz standards. They cleared an entire room of their house for a dance floor and we would eat fancy hors d'oeuvres, drink sparkling wine/apple juice, and dance until just before midnight when everything would turn quiet and there would be a reverent silence as we watched the ball drop on their giant late 90s television (on mute, of course, because it was QUIET). Then we would pack up the leftover finger foods, drag the furniture back into the emptied room, and go home before the madness came with closing time.

But I had never before, or ever since, been awake at midnight on NYE. Even in college when I was vaguely worried that the world was going to blow up when the computers had to deal with 2000, I just went to bed. 

I do like the extra day off, though.

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How are you celebrating the new year?

14.1 Hat - Purple Forever, I Guess

I swear I won't do this for any other prompt, but let's see if we can keep this hat thing going.

This is in a display at the student union at the university where I work. One of the school colors is purple, but there is literally no explanation as to the importance of this hat in the display.

Let's hypothesize, shall we?

1) Regalia (the stuff worn at formal academic ceremonies, like graduation - the gowns and the hoods and the cords and the like) used to be a lot more western than it is today?

2) This used to be more of a rural campus. Maybe it was a rodeo champion's hat?

3) It used to be part of a uniform for something like the marching band or a different sport? 

What's your hypothesis? What's up with this hat?

13.1 A Year of Hats

Happy National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo)!! Welcome to new readers as well as all my regular bloggy friends. 

I just finished a yearly project. Each day of the month I posted on a pre-determined theme. During the month of November, I'll post a collage of all my photos on the daily theme from the past year. The theme for the first day of the month was "Hat."

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As I started making these collages, I wondered to myself if any of them would omit Hannah and/or Zelda. Hannah makes an appearance here, albeit not wearing a hat in any of them. Poor Zelda was left out. 

Craft- My favorite hat!
Frosty - I have beefs with Frosty the Snowman displays.

Happy New Year - The dalmatian appears again!

Cold Snap - Hannah's frosty muzzle is too cute.

Dream Getaway - In which I went to the botanical gardens in the middle of winter.

On a Hot Tin Roof - Still snowing in April and boy was I mad about it.

Trick - Sculptures of children without eyes are super creepy.

In the Books - This may be the most important of all of the posts - this is the first time I started looking for the word HAT in BOOKS. Now it's my thing.

Sorting - I still laugh at this meme.

The Last Three Days - We had a big storm and lots of trees came down.

Definitionally - What is a hat anyway?

A Trip to Costco - Christmas decor in September and NO Halloween decor. I'm STILL grumpy about this. 

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Hannah count: 3

Hat count: 15 

Public art installation count: 4

Artistic renderings of animals count: 6

Me being me count: 2

Sign count: 2

Book count: 1

Blaze orange count: 1

Obviously, I think In the Books was the most influential of these posts, although I like the sheer bravado of the Craft post in which I thought writing about hats for a year would be a good idea. 

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Lena Milking a Cow by Carl Jensen (bronze, 2005)

I couldn't resist another hat photo. Or maybe I'll post a hat photo on the first of the month for the rest of my life because it pleases me so much. 

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Which is your favorite photo?

12.1 Hat - A Trip to Costco

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the first day of the month is "Hat."

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Can we all just celebrate the fact that I am on the last month of writing about these prompts?! Woot woot!

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I assumed when we went to Costco yesterday (YES! on a Saturday! it was a madhouse) that there would be decorations for the spooky season and I would be able to find a witch's hat or something. Ha ha ha! Joke's on me, I guess, because now Costco is selling Christmas stuff and TOO BAD IF YOU WANT HALLOWEEN, NGS. 

There is nothing more mortifying to my husband than me telling him in the middle of the store that I need to stop to get a photo of a hat. He's officially done with these prompts, too, I tell you.

Minor complaint: A week or two ago, I went to our local Walgreen's to pick up a prescription. While I was there, I thought I'd grab some Halloween cards for the niblings. It was mid-September. Yo. ALL THEY HAD WERE THANKSGIVING CARDS. I can't even with this anymore. Pretty soon I'm going to have to cut pumpkins out of construction paper because there's no way it would have occurred to me in August to buy Halloween cards. I'm just not that on top of things. Just like how we breezed right by the Christmas crap at Costco today because that is THREE MONTHS AWAY.

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I promise to update this post if anyone in our neighborhood posts spooky decorations with a hat.

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Are your stores already selling Christmas decor?  What is up with that?

11.1 Hat - Definitionally

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the first day of the month is "Hat."

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Illustration from Supercerdo (Bitmax & Co. #2) by Jaume Copons and illustrated by Liliana Fortuny Arnella

What makes a hat a hat and not a cap? 

Is a turban a hat? A hood? A snood? A hijab?

It gets pretty philosophical around here when I try to define for myself what exactly a hat is. 

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Happy Labor Day weekend, my American friends (and Happy Weekend to my international readers, of course). We are off to the great prairies of America for the annual family reunion/COVID superspreader event and while my regular posts will be scheduled through the weekend, I will otherwise be dark in Bloglandia.  

10.1 Hat - The Last Three Days!

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the first day of the month is "Hat."

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I know you are all bored reading about The Storm that went through our town, but I have to admit that since I spend so much time outdoors, I am still seeing the effects and it has been Super Exciting. And, as you know because I've complained about it a million times before, there is a lot of Other Construction happening and so taking Hannah for walks has seemed adventurous. 

So there's a lot going on in the City and I had to laugh when I saw their update on social media yesterday morning. Too many updates! It's all happening!

Anyway, I am not a regular hat wearer in the summer. My husband always wear a hat because he is bald and skin cancer on your scalp is no joke. But for the last couple of days I have been Hat Lady. I wear the straw hat in the yard and I wore the Buff cap when I went for a run yesterday. Hats all around!

And I'll leave you with a shot of my running trail from yesterday morning.

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Have you worn a hat recently?

9.1 Hat - Sorting

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the first day of the month is "Hat."

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I first saw this meme years ago, but it still makes me giggle. Hard times for the Sorting Hat. (If you don't understand this meme, don't worry about it. It's not important.)

Do you wear a hat when you ride a bike? (I do.)

Do you wear a hat when you work in the yard? (I sometimes do.)

Do you wear most days? (I do not.)

Do you have a favorite hat? (I do.)

Do you compulsively look for the word hat when you read books? (I do.)

8.1 Hat - In the Books

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the first day of the month is "Hat."

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I spent the last few weeks collecting a bunch of quotes from books I was reading that had the word hat in them. I was thinking about how one of the first words I learned in Spanish was hat and how weird that is (like why hat before dress or pants or whatever?), but as I started looking for it, it seems like it appears in most books.  So I guess it's a noun that does come up regularly in speech.

It was such a fun thing to do, too. It felt like a scavenger hunt while I was reading and it was a good time. 

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I promised you more creepy kid sculptures from around town. 

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The wizard on his T-shirt's half-hidden beneath the table, so it looks like he's just a decapitated, pointy-hat-wearing head. - Seven Percent of Ro Devereaux, page 130

"Then I'd wander through the market and look in some stores to buy things I don't need, like a hat." - The Stand-In, page 286

If she makes the hat-trick, maybe Parks will even start to relax a little around her. - The Girl with All the Gifts, location 3099

Four of the Old Ones stepped forward. The hedgehog-dwarf; two small, cloaked, manlike beings; a beady-eyed creature in a green hat. - Flame of Sevenwaters, page 409

I understand now why this took so very long to write - the painstaking research bleeds through in every paragraph, from the standard-issue fur-lined hats to the enamel mugs the laborers used to drink their watered-down tea. - Yellowface, page 28

...serenely sleeping princess could turn into a drooling, snoring ogre at the drop of a hat. - How To Fake It In Hollywood, location 2574

Fran had wrapped herself already in her scarf, parka, mittens, hat. - I Have Some Questions for You, page 157

She’s flanked by a middle-aged man in a Silver Belly cowboy hat and a teenage boy in army fatigues who looks a few years younger than me. - Trail of Lightning, page 1 (PAGE ONE! - This sort of ruined the fun of the scavenger hunt, if you know what I mean.)

I threw on two fleeces and a hat. - Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, page 72

He tugs his knit hat down over his ears. - The Starless Sea, time stamp 56:49 on the audiobook

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What's another word that you don't necessarily say every day, but is still common enough that you'd find it in most books?  

7.1 Hat - Trick

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the first day of the month is "Hat."

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Our town has several of these creepy sculptures of children just scattered throughout walking paths and parks. Why do I think these are creepy?

It's the soulless eyes.

Imagine if this was a real child?!  No, don't. Don't do that to yourself.

Friday's Hat Trick

1. Zelda has not been feeling well. She threw up at least once a day for three days and then she started having litter box issues before I finally called the vet on Friday. She continued to throw up some more and I do not want to discuss the state of her box, but I do want you to know that true love is holding down a resistant cat while you chop fur off her "sanitation area." ANYWAY.  I went to the vet's office to pick up some medicine that we have to give Zelda for a week. 

2. My husband's department was doing its annual awards ceremony and I went. We brought cupcakes from the local bakery and I went from group to group chatting with everyone and laughing at one of my husband's co-workers who literally wore stained cargo shorts and a sweater with a ripped arm. (Just for comparison, my husband was wearing a suit and tie because it was an awards ceremony. I was wearing a dress!) 

3. We went to the grocery store for our regular Friday date night. 

While there is nothing super special about any of these events, it was notable that I did not wear at a mask at the vet office, the university, or the grocery store. I had a mask with me in case I got uncomfortable, but I think I'm officially moving on. If you had told me in March 2020 that it wouldn't be until April 2023 that things were "normalish" again for me, I think I would have lost my mind.  But here we are. 

My next challenge will be eating a meal in a restaurant. Can I do it?  I'll report back in 2024. Ha!

6.1 Hat - On a Hot Tin Roof

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the first day of the month is "Hat."

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I literally just complained about the snow, but it was in the sixties yesterday with thunderstorms and there's snow forecast for today, so I'm just going to quietly cower in fear over the weather over here and not talk about it again until May. If you notice that my photos go from snowy to whatever grey nonsense Hannah is posing in above this, just pretend spring in the Midwest makes sense.

Moving on.

I always thought the expression was "hat on a hot tin roof," and it wasn't until verrrrrrry recently that I learned it's actually "cat on a hot tin roof." I guess the latter does make more sense, but when you hear things as a child, they do stick with you, don't they?

Can you believe Easter is next week? It's early this year, but not crazy early. Sometimes Easter is in March. It just seems like it showed up this year, unannounced. Hey, NGS, get those cards in the mail and get prepared. Easter is coming! Why didn't you prepare better?

I like Easter. In our non-religious family, it wasn't anything special, other than my parents hid Easter baskets for us and we got to go look for them. I have fond memories of this. My husband's Catholic family, though, they do Easter right and I always have a good time at Easter brunch, so I am excited for that.

Happy April, everyone! What are you looking forward to this month?

5.1 Hat - Dream Getaway

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the first day of the month is "Hat."

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What's your dream winter getaway? I always dream about being on a beach on a deck chair, wearing a sunhat, reading a murder mystery novel, with the sound of the waves crashing against the shore. In this dream, I am alone and there is no one else on the beach with me. I also don't have to worry about sunscreen, itchy sand, or the threat of high tide taking my prized beach spot.

I have been attempting to recreate some of this dream this winter. The warmth of the greenhouses at the botanical gardens I visited, reading a book under a blanket alone in my house, sometimes playing ocean noises on a white noise machine.

4.1 Hat - Cold Snap

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the first day of the month is "Hat."

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(Not a complaint, but a bit of a conundrum. Twelve months on the theme of "hat" is going to be tough.)

Yesterday was glorious. Sure, sure, it never got above zero all day, but the skies were blue, the sun was brilliant, and Hannah deigned to go on a walk with me all the way to the park and back. Look at the snow and frost on her muzzle! Look at how OVER photographs she was. Look at my ridiculous winter hat. Also, note that I am wearing my Craft hat under the knitted hat because it is cold, yo.

What a majestic beast. She doesn't like it when I pull her coat up over her ears and tell her she's wearing a hat. She's shakes her head and lets her ears out even though you know she's losing like 50% of her body heat through those things. 

I see photos of other dogs and they let their owners put hats on them. What's going on with girls that they're so protective of their ears?! 

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Do you layer hats in the winter? Do your pets let you put hats on them? Do you like playing in the snow?

3.1 Hat - Happy New Year's!

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the first day of the month is "Hat"

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This dalmatian has come up before recently. It lives in front of our fire station. Pre-Hannah, I was always amused by what types of accessories someone put on the dog. For years, it was a Green Bay Packers kerchief. But then the fire station was renovated and the dog went away. In the meantime, we adopted Hannah and then sometime last fall, the freshly repainted statue was in front of the fire station again. Hannah didn't like it and it took a bit of time for her to be comfortable walking by it again. Imagine her absolute freak out when she saw it wearing a scarf and a hat. *heavy sigh* Two steps forward, one step back.

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In other news, the church bells tolled for a full fourteen minutes last night at midnight. I was absolutely delighted to be awoken by this, as you can imagine. (I'm mostly including this here as a reminder for myself for next year to go ahead and put in ear plugs on NYE.)

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Zelda the Cat threw up her breakfast this morning. No hairball. We decided to wait until noon to give her more food. She immediately started screaming because she was hungry. At ten, she threw up again. No hairball. We waited until two in the afternoon and gave her a tiny bit of kibble. She immediately threw up again. No hairball.  When do we have to give in and call the emergency vet?  Why does this always happen on a weekend or a holiday?

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To see what Bestest Friend has to say about the theme of the day, go visit her at Too Legit to Quit.

2.1 Hat - Frosty the Snowman

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Every day we will write a post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the first day of the month is "Hat."

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I have a small beef with many inflatable Christmas decorations. Before I begin my rant, I'd like to take a minute to do a brief update on Hannah the Dog. When we first brought her home in 2019, she was scared of everything. That first Halloween and Christmas we spent avoiding entire blocks because the decorations were terrifying to her. I will never forget her tucked tail and how she tried to hide between my legs when she saw a display of multiple scarecrows outside the local museum. The fact that I can get Hannah to stand in front of an inflatable that is so much bigger than her is just a testament to how much braver and bolder she's gotten.

Additionally, Hannah's results from her latest neurology appointment were formally read by the radiologist. When I spoke with the neurologist at her original appointment, we were cautiously optimistic based on Hannah's behavior and the neurologist's brief look at the scans, that we'd get a "stay the course" report from the radiologist. In a direct quote from the neurologist "it practically takes an act of Congress for the radiologists to report improvement in discospondylosis," so we weren't expecting anything other than "no new sites of infection."

Instead, what we got was "this patient [Hannah] shows no signs of discospondylosis" No signs. None. Both the vet and I were THRILLED. This was beyond our most optimistic projections. You guys. The vet is having us taper off her medications and if all goes well, Hannah will no longer be on antibiotics or anti-fungals by May. The vet said I can just "enjoy her" and let her do whatever dog things she wants to do.

I took her on a really long hike that same day. I let her off leash and she ran around and got really muddy and ran into my legs so hard she left a bruise. I took her to the dog park on the Friday after Thanksgiving and let her play with other dogs. She doesn't have the stamina she used to have, so we're slowly working our way up to longer walks and more time playing with other dogs and sniffing off leash, but SHE IS A REAL DOG.

 Back to holiday decorations.

Frosty the Snowman 

Was a jolly, happy soul

With a corn cob pipe and a button nose

And two eyes made out of coal

That is the song. We all know it. So why do people insist on calling generic snowmen, like the one in the above photo, Frosty? He's has a carrot nose, not a button. there's no pipe, and while his eyes may be made of coal, I doubt it. It's not Frosty, it's just a snowman. In a top hat. But it's obviously NOT a magical hat because if it were, my small town would have made the news when this snowman (not Frosty) became animated.

End rant.

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To see what Bestest Friend has to say about hats, go see her at Too Legit to Quit.

1.1 Hat - Craft

It's NaBloPoMo!  Lots of people are writing a post every day this month. Go visit San's site if you want to sign up. I'm doing it.  And, ahem, I guess I'll be doing more than that!

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From June 2014 until June 2015, my best friend and I did a blog project in which we wrote a blog post on a pre-determined theme every day. I was just visiting her last weekend and she had this scheme that she wanted to do it AGAIN, so here we are. We're going to do it.  I'm scared. Don't worry. I'll still try to post book reviews and the like, so occasionally I'll post more than once a day, which sounds just...crazy.

We wrote the number 1-31 on a piece paper and generated nouns with a random generator and here are our topics.

1. Hat
2. Entertainment
3. Direction
4. Information
5. Drawing
6. Reflection
7. Contact
8. Art
9. Location
10. Judgment
11. Stranger
12. Complaint
13. Failure
14. Control
15. Volume
16. Instruction
17. Method
18. Winner
19. Library
20. Message
21. Decision
22. Safety
23. Atmosphere
24. Family
25. Relationship
26. Moment
27. Priority
28. Meaning
29. Song
30. Depression
31. Activity

I'm not sure why one of these nouns couldn't be "dog" so we could write stories about our dogs, but here we go. Day #1. The theme is hat.  

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My favorite hat is a Craft hat that my husband bought for me before we were even married. I wear it all the time.

I used to have some pride. Now I just pose by every metal sculpture I see.

It's got some windproofing, fits my tiny head, and looks cute. I wear it in the fall, under my big hat in the winter, and in the spring. It's a three-season hat. 

Do you have a favorite hat? Have you ever posed in front of a sculpture of a bison?  

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If you want to see what Bestest Friend did with this prompt, check out her blog at Too Legit To Quit.