cornucopian
My plate has something of everything: turkey and spicy beef, mashed yams and herbed potatoes, cranberry sauce, broccoli and Brussels sprouts, and a slender wedge of potato pashtida (a Jewish/Israeli frittata/quiche type of food, cooked here without a crust). Apple cider is served for drinks, and for dessert there's some of the sweet corn bread that was baking while we ate dinner.
countenance
Infants can look more solemn, critical and perceptive than the adults around them.
cupcakes
While gift-shopping at a bookstore I see cupcakes everywhere: cupcake calendars, cupcake recipe books, cupcakes on cards. Maybe there's always been a plethora of cupcake products, and I haven't noticed. Now they leap out at me in shades of pastel lavender and dark blotchy chocolate, kittenish pink and creamy white, sporting sprinkles or periwinkle candles.
offshoot
We leave the paved path by the lake and go down a muddier offshoot; damp and soft, it coils past rocks and crackling bushes with berries.
orthography
I love the painstaking way they spell and write, focusing intently on each letter as if they realize how vulnerable language is to error and miscommunication. And each word they spell correctly is a door springing open.
refraction
My new glasses seem to have finally made peace with my brain and eyes.
salvaged
She uses scrap paper, old shoeboxes, felt, string and other odds and ends for her crafts projects; things that her family might have thrown out become the cards and presents she gives them on special occasions.
