These were sent in by my friend, of her now deceased hamster, Pikusz. She was going to take photos of her other hamster, Chuey, which is also the daughter of Pikusz, but she sadly passed away just a week after her father. She was only a year old, which is young for hamster years. (I don't think she died because she missed him. They were kept in different cages or they would bite eachother to pieces. Parents and offspring don't show affection for one another.) Anyway, I like her creativity.

Just in case you're wondering, Chuey was brown and white, and not an albino as well. I think she's a mix of her father and mother, Pika, who was dark furred.

This morning the world was pale, the sun blotching out the periwinkle sky with a delicate orange. The blinds were shut, and through chinks of the neighborhood around me it was the same suffocating calm as when it snows. The clouds were downy gray coupled with rainy weather, and that was the reason it appeared so, but it put me into the mood for winter.

The thing I was really looking forward to this coming December were the Christmas songs; my radio station rolls them out 100 percent: sweet lullabies, fun tunes, extraordinary symphonies, you name it. Yet not one of them compares to “Carol Bells”, the version without words. It is powerful, exhilarating and powerful. Just listening to it makes me nostalgic of the yearly holiday fest.

I truly believe every song compares to a story. I began reading “Inkheart” by Cornelia Funke, and I related to the part where she compares books to memory keepers. The main character, Meggie, explained that printed words bring you back to the experiences you had while you were reading them, the sights, sounds, your emotions. Well, I think songs are like that too. I only have to listen to a song that I heard a year ago only to introduce me to a younger version of myself.

As I was exiting school I glimpsed a high-school girl wearing a jungle floral book bag just ahead of me. It was a black-lined sketch, forming white tessellations of exotic fauna, blossoms and canopy trees, and was expertly shaded in with vivid hues.

I recalled my friend that had bought last year a similar bag, designed of geometric shapes and the stray arrow or circle. She brought a plastic bag of colorful permanent sharpie markers everyday to school, zipped up in its the front pocket. She asked us to color it, and kids from our cohort were fighting to get a chance to seize a marker. I shaded it during lunch break and even during an assembly. I believe that I put in the most effort of everyone to color within the lines, and the most accurately. Day by day all the blank spots were filled, until the bad resembled a messy blue-green aurora combating a sunset.

Afterwards she let me take markers and make extra patterns on the shapes, so I hatched stripes, and polka dots. Then, she requested me to etch silhouettes of Mickey Mouse. She had a strange affinity with him; a girl drew him paired up with Minnie on her birthday card, along with a caption: “Mickey loves Minnie!” When I questioned her about it she replied it was an inside joke.

When we finished decorating it, it looked sloppier than before; later she privileged us to sign our names with markers. The day I decided to sings mines she left the plastic bag at home. Instead, I scribbled it in the far left corner of one of the straps in pencil. I was surprised when she brought the book bag this year. When she cleaned it I expect my name washed away.