An Incomplete List of Things I Like

I have to give credit where credit is due: Ivyfree over on LiveJournal did this and it just struck me as a wonderful exercise in love.

• I am, of course, crazy about Crash, the dog and the cats (in no particular order!)
• I find satisfaction from the smell of Rosemary hand lotion (heck, I just like rosemary in general - love to cook with it, too), and Crash doesn't mind indulging me in the pleasure
• Discovering a good book is fantastic... returning to a good book is like lunch with a dear friend
• Watching my friends' children grow up has become less bittersweet, and I find that as they get older they are more interesting - and interested in the world around them to the point that the talk incessantly. It drives their parents crazy, but I'm thrilled to take them on for a day a couple times a week, whenever they let me
• I am rediscovering the world of music again for the first time since I was in college (thank you iPod) and am reveling in the old LPs Crash is digitizing for me. I am slowly, and with joy, reconstructing the good parts of my childhood
• Roses. I haven't said anything about my garden and the 32 rose bushes. Ahhhh, bliss...
• Working with my hands - I miss having time to get out in the garage and work with my hands, solving woodworking problems and the like
• School... ahhh, the second highest passion in my life right now. LOVE. IT. Keeping my mind going strong is almost sexy it's so much fun.
• A good night's sleep ::looking at tonight's timestamp:: Yeah. Not tonight, but I do love a drool-on-your-pillow night's sleep.
• Knowing that I have friends who will call if I am sick... and on whom I can dote and fuss if they are ill (I just wish that some of y'all were in the same zip code, yanno? Even the same area code would be nice!)
• The computer age... in just so many ways. I can honestly say it saved my life. (more on that another time)
• Reading and collecting - in no particular order - from a very eclectic mishmash of books: women's advice manuals (including sex advice manuals) from previous centuries to present; Nancy Drews and Hardy Boys (not the shiny-hard-covered or the paperback ones, but the ones I grew up with or earlier - the ones with dust jackets get extra points!); Ohio history books; Tennessee history books; American history books (emphasis on any era of manufacturing and industrial history, and, the 1900s-1939 time period); children's classroom and home study readers from any era up to about 1975.
• Mocking the local mockingbirds in the Spring when we first have the windows open. I whistle back at them for hours. I know, I know, but it's really neat to know I can communicate with a wild being in this way.. and really hard. Have you ever tried to mimic a mockingbird??
• Sapphires
• Studying or napping on a rainy day
• The sound of Crash's violin
• The community that is our church, and the ministers who help inspire us on our paths
• Cooking with items fresh from our garden. Need to do a garden this year - last year was a bust with me in the hospital, and recovering from the multiple hospital stays... and then the fridge was out when the figs came in, so cooking up something with figs was pretty well out, too. Better luck this year.
• Slipping into fuzzy socks, slippers and my toasty jammies when I come home from school these days

There is so much more... I'll continue this another time, but this is a good start.

Comments

[uuMomma]

This reminds me of an exercise I used to have my students do (when I was teaching rudimentary writing at the college level). To help them identify the things they were passionate about (so they would then have easy access to things to write about), I had them do two lists: 10 things I love; 10 things I hate. I haven't done this in forever. Look for a list on my blog soon! (It feels really good to make that list, doesn't it?--first not the last.)