Late in January, Diane at bardessdmdenton tagged me with the Very Inspiring Blogger Award:

Here are the rules:

* Display the award logo on your blog

* Link back to the person who nominated you

* State seven things about yourself

* Nominate 15 other bloggers for this award and link to them

* Notify those bloggers of the nomination and the award’s requirements

As before, I’ve been struggling with the first rule. (Is it normal that my words dissolve into a mist of confusion and dismay when I try to describe myself?) Last time I talked more about cars than about myself, and this time I’m going to talk about furniture.

1. My favorite pieces of furniture are bookshelves. I have five sets of shelves in my office, one in the living room, and two in the guest room.

2. I keep my grandmother’s sewing machine in our living room, where it makes an excellent end table.

3. When I was about nine years old, Mother moved my great aunt’s antique vanity into my room. She told me to take very good care of it. Then, because I was nine, I put stickers on the mirror. I also broke a section of the trim. After Mother died in 2011, I brought the battered vanity to Virginia, scraped off the stickers, and repaired the trim. Now I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t need an antique vanity, but I can’t quite let go of it.

4. The first piece of furniture that my husband and I bought together was a very heavy coffee table. Every few years we move it from one side of the living room to the other, and somehow the simple act of moving it makes it look like an entirely new table.

5. After we bought our house, we spent the entire first summer staining and finishing a kitchen table, six chairs, an enormous chest of drawers, and a storage bench. I will never again buy unfinished furniture.

6. It took the cats eight years to destroy our first couch. They perfected their technique near the end, and our next couch lasted less than three years.

7. When selecting new furniture, bedspreads, or blankets, my primary concern is whether or not the cats will approve.

As for the final two rules, many of the blogs I follow do not participate in awards. So, instead of continuing the chain of tags and notifications, here are links to a few of my favorite recent posts:

“Poetry in Prose” – Delancey Stewart

“A Walk with Gratitude” – Life in the Bogs

“Murmurations” – Jean Ryan

“A Bald Eagle Hunts a Duck” – For the Love of Clouds and Nature

“Deer tracks” – Wood and Field

“Still” – Lynn’s Creativity Post

“February Photo Theme: Waterfalls” – Walter H. Smith

I’m delighted that Diane tagged me with this award, in part because it gives me another chance to recommend her wonderfully lyrical book. I reviewed A House Near Luccoli here, and you can read more about it here.