Favorite Things

I decided to make a list of my favorite things. I think it goes without saying that my family would top the list, but here are a few other things in no particular order:

~The state of Indiana: I loved growing up in the Hoosier state, small town USA. You could drive down highways that cut straight through corn fields and watch big combines in the fields. Children grew up learning the difference between green and red depending on whether their fathers farmed with John Deere or International. The air always smelled clean (unless you were on the one stretch of Hwy 19 that goes right by the hog farm) and the grass was soft under your bare feet. I wouldn't really appreciate that small thing until years later when I couldn't walk barefoot through my FL yard without getting a foot full of stickers.

~Cousins: I have a ton of them! At one time I counted 123. Of course I have my favorites, but they are all special to me. Part of who I am today was shaped by growing up part of the "Kingery cousins". Add to that group Mike and Kim from the Reed side of the family and you have met a large portion of my heart. Maybe it is because I do not have any siblings, but my cousins mean the world to me.

~Books: As much as I love going into a crisp, clean Barnes & Noble, heaven on earth to me is an old, dusty used bookstore. I can spend hours rummaging through the stacks, my fingers trailing along the book spines. I've been known to sit right down on the floor and read. Libraries don't offer me the same pleasure. They want the books back when I'm done with them, and that is not something I can do. I fall in love with my books and I have to keep them. I'm not even really very good at loaning them out to people.

~Photographs: My home is filled with pictures of people that I love, both family and friends. Years ago a tradition started with my cousin Brian. Each year at the family reunion we have our picture taken together. It started as a joke after a comment I had made as a very young girl, but it blossomed into a yearly ritual. Now I have a visual timeline of Brian and I growing up over the years and it is something I treasure.

~Movies: I love to go to the movies by myself. I can pick the exact seat that I want (middle section, last few rows, middle seat in the row) and immerse myself in what's on the screen. No one is going to lean over and ask me, "what did he just say?" or "do you think it's odd that no one went to the bathroom in that scene?" For two hours I'm alone in the dark without a care in the world.

~My Eric Clapton CD "Chronicles"

~Homemade Strawberry Ice Cream

~St. Clair Glass

~A very large bolt given to me by my uncle from when he worked on the railroad. Obviously there is a story here, but I will save it for another time.

~Kissing

~Hydrangea

So there is a glimpse into a few of my favorite things. (how many people now have Julie Andrew's voice floating through their mind singing "raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens...")