Things I love

Taking a cue from Snowbrush, one of the newest bloggers I follow, I am going to do a two-part series: one about the things I love, the other about the things I hate, just in time for Valentine's Day (when there is some serious love and hate going on.) I was going to do my Hate post first, since I wanted to save Love for the week of Valentine's Day, but my last post was, how shall I say, a bit vitriolic? So I shall save my hate for next week. I'm sure you all will survive.

Also - I wanted to thank everyone for their very kind, very respectful comments about my last post. There were people who disagreed with me (which I love) but did it in a very mature, understanding way (which I also love) and for that I thank each and every one of you. I turned on comment moderation because I was afraid someone was going to spoil the party by leaving some hateful, over-simplified, politicized comment on the post, and holy crap, no one did. So this week comment moderation is back off because you guys don't need a babysitter ;)

Let's get this party started.

I love summer evenings on a porch, with a chair swing, and an ice cold glass of pink lemonade, watching the sunset.

I love the soft, rope hammocks that are tied between trees.

I love ice cream sandwiches, year round.

I love Christmas lights in July.

I love drinking hot chocolate in bed.

I love getting hand-written thank-you notes in the mail.

I love honesty mixed with kindness. Anything else I feel has an agenda. If you're too nice to tell the truth, you're just worried that the person isn't strong enough to handle the news. And if you're mean with your honesty, then you probably don't actually care about helping someone out, just feeling better about yourself. Either way, it's not honesty for the right reason.

I love chocolate. Seriously. LOVE.

I love kittens, and I love cats, but I love kittens more. Except at 2 am when the kitten has decided to try and eat my face.

I love comic books, cartoons, animated movies, and anything else that makes me feel like I'm eight again.

I love playing. Take that any which way you want to, but there it is. I try to play every single day of my life, keep a playful attitude, play games and sports and music, play jokes, play jump-rope, whatever. Every day I try to make room to play.

I love my mother. I love the way she laughs, the way she smells when I pull her in close for a hug, the way she has the same dark sense of humor that I do, the way she frowns when she's thinking hard. I love every single thing about my mother, so much that it hurts.

I love clean sheets. I am a sucker for clean sheets.

I love being warm. Not hot, mind you, and definitely not chilly. Just...warm. The only real proof I have that I'm a girl is that my warm-o-meter hovers somewhere between 75-77 degrees and after that I'm either too hot or too cold.

I love driving, though LA is trying to rip that one out of me as hard as it can. Suck it, Los Angeles. You can pry my love of driving out of my cold, dead hand (dead at the hands of a soccer mom in an SUV on a cell phone, probably.)

I love patriotism and religion when they are used for the express purpose of spreading love. I do not like them much when they are used to propagate fear, but you can check next week's post on hate for more details on that.

I love other people's babies. They are cute and when they poop or throw up I get to hand them back.

I love thoughtfulness, kindness, patience, gratitude, and compassion. I am trying to recognize and nurture these qualities in myself.

I love short blog posts. Alas, I'm not very good at keeping them short.


and last but not least, I love this picture so much:


It's a hamster attempting to eat spaghetti. OH THE STRUGGLE OF EPIC-NESS.

(photo credit: I got it from here)

I hope everyone has a very (love-filled) Valentine's Day!