fairy tales

Fairy tales. Worlds of magic and mystery and miracles exist in those tales. They beckon you to enter in and experience the wonder for yourself, all over again. When I was younger, I used to read the "Fairy Books"--those collections of tales that always featured a color. For instance, the "Blue Fairy Book," or the "Green Fairy Book." If you've read them or seen them, you know that they aren't about fairies who were blue or green, but named for the color of their covers. Inside the books would be tales of dwarves and singing barnyard animals and ogres and, yes, even fairies.

At times more gruesome at times than what Disney would portray (I don't remember Cinderella's step-sisters cutting off their heels or toes in order to fit the glass slipper in the movie, like they did in the book!), the stories presented an alternate world in which good was rewarded and evil was punished and words of wisdom were hidden among childhood tales. Reading them felt like how the world really should be.

I'm currently reading Keeping a Princess Heart: In a Not-So-Fairy-Tale World by Nicole Johnson. It's a new direction for me to head ... when I was very young, I did, indeed participate in skirt-twirling contests with my kindergarten friends, but when I reached the double digits (all 10 years of it!) I started to lose interest in bangles and ruffles and avoided the color pink at all costs. Slowly, but surely, I've begun regaining my inner lost girly-girl who somehow became jaded and guarded over the years.

But the book is not really about being a girly-girl and wearing a tiara on your head each day. Actually, it's more an allegorical reminder about how to keep the balance between dreams and reality--how not to lose hold of the beautiful hopes for the future while living in the frantic pace of the present, which, all things considered, is excellent advice for me and any other person who has big goals on hold.

So, in the spirit of my inner princess, I'm going to commit to doing something: I'm going to take at least 30 minutes this week to make some calls and talk to local printers for some general information on costs and procedures, and then I'm going to work on at least two actual designs for Ruby Red. And then I'm going to write a to-do list on this blog for additional practical steps towards realizing my own personal fairy tale--the one in which this princess not only spins straw into gold, but also beats Rumpelstiltskin at his own game and ends up making a profit in which to buy her own castle in which to live happily ever after "even when there ain't no prince" (to quote Joy Williams).