January 23. Day 23. Happiness is ...

I pretty much never hand write anything. Shopping lists, appointments, letters, cards - almost all written communication is done with a keyboard or a touch screen. And yet I have an almost obsessive love of stationery. It fills my heart with joy (touch screens also deliver a fair amount of pleasure but that comes from a different part of the brain, I suspect). So while other back to school chores are just that - chores - the trip to the office supply shop is not. That is something to be savoured. Row after row of things you can write or draw on or with. It doesn't get much better than that. Today was stationery supply day for me and just about every other mother in Brisbane if the crowds in the carpark and at the checkout were anything to go by. Why every parent would choose the first day of bucketing down rain in about a century to undertake this task is anyone's guess but my ark joined those at Office Works this afternoon for what I shall call the pencil pilgrimage (as distinct from the pink pencil of pleasure which is how we refer to the dog's nether regions when he gets aroused although I'm sure the two are probably related in some way).

So that "chore" is now done. We are school ready. All I need to do now is keep Drama Teen away from the supplies until he walks through the school gate. That may be easier said than done. He may be a digital native but he shares my love of things that write. I mean, really, it may be old school but who doesn't love a colouring pencil or a highlighter?

* No new pencils were harmed in the taking of this image, which is my visual representation of the weather conditions when we did our stationery shop.

** The idea of submerging pencils in mineral water for visual impact is hardly my own. I stole it from others wiser than myself after seeing it on some photo blog some place. I would credit the creator if I knew who she or he was.