happy is useful

I'm working on making up my "new" presentations for the new textbook we have in the intro class this fall. But also taking some breaks here and there.

I've....discovered the earlier-gen Pony tumblrs.

I admit, I avoid some areas of the Pony fandom, including a lot of the G4 tumblrs, because, well, a lot of people on tumblr are really, really big on "Rule 34" and that just makes me feel sad and squicked out because I go to Ponies to recapture some of the innocence I had as a kid before I knew about all that kind of stuff.

(Digression: when I was a very small child, I figured out "where babies came from." My mom had my little brother so I kind of knew about the biological fact of pregnancy, that the baby developed INSIDE mom, so no stork story would work for me. But what I figured was this: if a mom and a dad loved each other a lot, somehow God decided they were ready to have a child, and presto, the woman became pregnant.

Yeah, I had a pretty sheltered childhood and I think all the babies I saw come into the world were babies who were greatly hoped for and expected, so that's probably how my mind figured that out. Also the whole story of Mary (the mother of Jesus) probably influenced my idea of God saying "make it so" and the couple having a baby....I didn't learn the mechanics of procreation until I was ten, and I admit I was pretty weirded out by it for a good while after. Which is why I boggle a little when I hear of 12 year olds having kids)

Anyway. I like sometimes to hark back to that more innocent time. I don't know. I'm weird that way I guess. Sometimes I think I probably didn't enjoy my childhood enough and that's why I keep trying to go back as an adult and recapture little bits of it.

Anyway, I've talked before about enjoying Heck Yeah, Pony Scans, which is largely the collecting blog of one of the earlier-gen (mostly G1, the original ponies) collectors. Like me, I think she likes the whole innocence of the early-days thing, and it's a very family-friendly type of blog. More recently, I've followed a few of her links to other blogs:

Pony Guru: Pony Collectors Anonymous (including lots of "how to store and display" and also features on restoring or remaking damaged ponies. Back in my doll-collecting days, I used to occasionally buy the sad, cheap, slightly damaged dolls and clean them up and make new clothes for them and bestow new characters on them. Because I could. So I feel some affinity to the Pony Restoration posts.)

The other thing I like about these tumblrs is that by and large they are very positive - it's the "look at this cool thing I found, you might enjoy it" or "look at this clever thing my friend made" - there's relatively little snark, there's little infighting, and that's kind of a relief in the fandom world.

Most recently, I've looked at Princess Golden Light (I'm the Princess). Again, largely a collecting blog with a few comments here and there and some nostalgia.

But on one of the archive pages, I ran across this quotation, and I liked it (Actually, it was a post tag, and I hope she uses it more often):

"Not everything has to be useful because some things are allowed to just make me happy too."

(Later on, apparently a commenter pointed out that happiness IS useful, and I agree with that too)

But that does sum up a lot of things for me. Why I buy (and use) old linen dishtowels at vintage stores - it would probably be cheaper to get just a floursack towel at the wal-mart, but it's more fun to find one with a crazy vintage pattern on it, or that is salmon pink and green and so matches my crazy kitchen color scheme. Or why I like embroidered pillowcases. Or why I have such a shocking number of amigurumi ponies. Or why I seek out house-shaped teapots even though I never actually USE a tea pot because I never drink that much tea at a go. Or why I spend big bucks on Folio Society books when I could find cheaper paperback copies....life is short, I work hard, and it IS nice to have some things that are just there because they make me happy.

And looking at pastel ponies online makes me happy, too. Oh, I admit, I'd be horrifically embarrassed if a colleague or student walked in while I was taking a break at work to do it. But still. It makes things *better* somehow. I can't quite explain why.

A commenter on the Princess Golden Light blog remarked: "My day is always brighter whenever I see one of your posts and whenever I'm having such a horrible day I sneak on to your page and just look at all the pretty ponys and smile. Thank you so much for that."

And yes. That's part of it. It's a simple thing that can make my day brighter. Oh, I understand that for most people, pastel ponies wouldn't make their day brighter at all - but I think for each person, they can find that thing that does, and maybe hang on to it, and remember it on the tough days.