There's no magazine I've ever revered so much as Victoria. Like everything else I treasured in my teenaged years it disappeared around the year 2000. However, I was too distracted with school and other issues even to notice. In fact, I had stopped buying it.
In October I found all my old issues at my mother's house and when I started reading them again, the old magic returned to me-- all my dreams of how I would dress and decorate my home "when I grew up." Well, I now know how unfeasible it is to serve my sugar lumps with silver tongs and wear lace-covered blouses everyday, not to mention trying their recipes, which call for things like artichokes and truffles, yet I think my home and person still do a good job in preserving the Romanticism of Victoria.
I have a little under two years' worth of Victoria issues. I am going back and re-reading them, on the correct month. Not only can I remember all I felt and all I did at that time, I become overwhelmed with the same romantic optimism and desire to make myself and my home beautiful.
In the words of Victoria, I did take a "jaunt" last night. I was blessed with two precious hours of daylight. I didn't waste any time getting to the wetlands. That is what I'm missing. That's what makes the winter months so hard for me this year. I took in the low-angle sun with pleasure. I studied the brown and gray world it has become. It's amazing how in spring, a number of ponds will appear in those barren grassy basins, and ducks and frogs will show up like they were always there. The cattails will spring up. There is nothing I love more than sitting by the marsh; that would be a fantastic place to be bitten by a snake, however.
Adieu, I'm going to read Victoria and finish my PG Tips.