Careful Combinations

If you ever want to know the secret to quilting, ask Winona Ryder.


And if you can't get a hold of her just watch How to Make an American Quilt. Skip ahead to the very last scene where she says:

"In quilting you have to choose your combinations carefully. The right choices will enhance your quilt. The wrong choices will dull the colors, hide their original beauty. There are no rules you can follow. You have to go by instinct and you have to be brave."


Ain't quilting just like life? Or at least just like relationships?


You know how some combinations of people make you feel like a little church mouse? Or even like a tiny spec of dust on a little church mouse?


And then other combinations of people make you feel like the universe really does have a place for you. Somewhere out there. (Beneath the pale moonlight.) And maybe that place includes a room with a view. (And a laundry room that doesn't flood.)


This is how I felt a few days ago when I spent three hours over lunch with some of my writer friends who were gathered together to bask in the light of the lovely Melanie J, who was in town for a book signing.




She's on her 2nd book, peeps! Holy. Cow. (No disrespect to my son intended.)


Here is the photographic evidence (which also doubles as a magic button you can click on to purchase her latest ditty.)




Don't get me wrong, I'm not promoting it. Yet. I will probably read it first before I start forcing you at gunpoint to purchase it.


(I've got ethics, yes I do! I've got ethics, how 'bout you?) (Cue jazz hands.)


So anyways, upon Melanie J.'s arrival some of us word nerds met at this cool, hip, happening joint in Provo called . . .




That's right. I said, Communal. But no worries, there were no hippies or polygamists present. And the food wasn't served on lunch trays.






Wait. I just noticed the food was served on lunch trays. But cool, hip, happening lunch trays, right?


But enough about lunch. There is a moral here. A definite moral here. Choose your combinations carefully. That's alls I'm sayin.

Wait! Can I say one more thing though?

Isn't it the best when you get to spend time with good combinations of people?

And also good combinations of shoes . . .

and bags.



And can I also just say that if I was one of those people-who-need-people kinda people, I would have really needed to be with these people this week. And I would have really needed to hear some of the things Melanie J. said over lunch. Whodda thought a famous author could be so humble and vulnerable, plus generous with her words, even though she eats at hippie restaurants and sports chic purple toenails and CA bags!?

LY Melanie J!

P.S. Ink blots and claw marks become me, eh? Hopefully I'll be hot when I'm an antique.