Joyful, Joyful

The photo prompt for today is "Joyous" and I wish I had a photo to illustrate it.  The best I can do is this less than joyful picture of Lacie.

However, it is a joyful day after all.  While I seem to have come up against a protective wall around Peach and have not been able to speak with her since the day after Bob's stroke, the family does post snippets of status updates on Facebook, so I learned that they took him off the ventilator this morning and hoped to get him up walking this afternoon.

This is such a HUGELY joyful thing.  From the reports we were getting at the beginning, and with no feedback whatsoever, we were all prepared for the worst, but I am feeling cautiously optimistic and downright joyful this afternoon.  

If I were to take a "joyous" photo, it would have to be one of the dogs at mealtime, but that's impossible since my hands are busy at that time.   However, if I could take that picture, it would look something like this:

The dogs saying "Hurry up!" and "faster!" are both Polly (who, I'm pretty sure, can be in two places at once).  The next dog is Lizzie, eliminate the next dog but the "Cool It" dog is definitely Sheila.   The other dogs are convinced that in the middle of mixing up their food I'm going to forget to actually feed it to them and are constantly leaping up to remind me, where Sheila, the Wise, knows better, calmly goes to the other room and sits and patiently waits to be served.  (I am definitely her "servant," however!)

The mail did bring joyous stuff, though.  I joined something called a "Composition Journal Swap" on SwapBot, where you keep a journal for a couple of months (minimum of 50 entries) and at the end you send it to your partner.   I was very proud of mine.  It had lots of theater programs, and surprises like postcards and stickers and other fun things.

 

But until I received my own journal from Linda in Georgia, I had no idea the possibilities.  The book was big and thick and stuffed with unbelievable things.

And the content!  My word. Look at the variety:

There are lots of pages of her thoughts, but wonderfully decorated pages, brochures from attractions she likes, a couple of letters written to me personally, stamps, postcards, theater programs, bookmarks, newspaper articles, and even a DVD of a movie she likes and a CD of Christmas music.

I literally had a joyous time going through it all and discovering the surprises that each page held.  I want to do another Composition Journal again...and make it more fun for the recipient!!!