lucky (second) hand

Witness this small thrifting miracle (slightly out of season, but still). I have dreamt of having one of these traditional German candle pyramids on the Christmas table ever since first laying eyes on them sometime in the 1980's (in Bern, was it? or in Innsbruck?). They are soooo lovely. And sooooo expensive! Not this one though: it was staring at me for five full days from the window of our local Emmaus thriftstore (only open on Saturday afternoon, grrrrr!), and it then patiently waited for me to show up on Saturday (I was planning to queue in front of the store until it opened but as usual only managed to get there just before closing-time), and became ours for the very reasonable sum of 3 euros. Some bits have fallen off and will have to be glued back on, and baby Jesus (a girl, obviously) looks a bit like a snowman with a top hat, but you don't hear me complaining. In fact, I smile every time I look at it.

Another piece of second-hand good luck this week: I finally managed to locate someone who is willing to sell me their entire set of Kiddybips size S. Yes, we plan to travel the cotton road with this little one! And that's one item off my humongous list ("Since it would take us a little over a year to complete this list, and since the baby is coming in about 8 weeks, I think we might have to set some priorities", said Marc philosophically). So, only 243 items to go...

Marc left today; he'll be gone ten days and I miss him already. I don't think we've ever had ten days without any contact. Although we've agreed to think very hard about each other every day at 9:30 pm. Believe it or not, this makes all the difference. When Marc told Isabelle this morning that he was going to be gone for ten days and he wouldn't be able to phone her because there'd be no phone she said: 'Sure you can, pappa, just use your hand, like I do!' She truly gets it. It only took us what? thirty odd years? to figure it out...