10 things.

This is a chain-blog-post that I was inspired by from News With Nipples at  http://newswithnipples.com/
I tell you 10 things that I love, and all my legions, nay hordes of regular commenters may even tell me ten things, or one thing, or whatever, that YOU love.

1. Books. I just love books way too much. I read when I feed the kids – I read when I watch tv – I read while I mend things (I’m quite good at holding books open with my toes). I have a book on a bookstand in the kitchen, and look up and read a paragraph here and there while I’m doing something easy, or a sentence here and there in between chopping!
I get a massive buzz finding a book I like in an op-shop. My first date with my husband was to a second-hand bookshop. I cannot go anywhere without a book in my handbag. I don’t even buy handbags without making sure that they will take a trade-paperback or hardcover.

2. I love food. I love reading about it (natch) and cooking. I like mixing spices. I like the smell of frying onions. I like the slipperiness of roasted capsicum. I like punching down dough for pizzas. However I am stupidly picky, so I try to be adventurous in my limited range. I like feeding people and seeing them go back for seconds. (Or, you know, feeling perfectly satisfied with firsts.)
I like writing recipes in the most ridiculously verbose and purple way that I can.

3.*Warning – Self-Pity Alert*
I love silly in-jokes that go on way past their use-by date, although that partly comes from feelings of always being a tag-along and not ever part of a ‘gang’…so in-jokes kind of make me feel like part of one. *sigh*

4. I love looking at my kids when they are asleep, they look so sweet and calm, with their thick eyelashes fanning over their round cheeks, and their hands curled up. And they are so lovely and quiet then, and not making a mess. Does that make me sound as though my ideal kids would be ones in some sort of museum display?

5. I love listening to my kids singing and humming along to songs. Especially when they are singing along to things like Bruce Molsky or Mumford and Sons in the car. So cute! “Oh, Man is a Guinea-Pig’ is a superb example of their versions of songs.

6. I love telling people my brother was asked to do an audition for Circus Oz. It makes up for all the brothers and sisters who regularly get public service jobs. (Of COURSE I am proud of you all too. REALLY.)

7. I love compliments. I like being told I am a good cook, or a good singer, or a good writer, or like the one I got today…
“Don’t even try to come up against Rhiannon in a head-to-head piratical eloquence showdown.”
How good a compliment is THAT.
I like giving compliments too. People should be appreciated!

8.I love the fact that my husband can fix nearly everything. (As in, repair, not ‘I’ll fix YOU.” kind of fixing.) Him too. I mean, I love my husband too, not just his fixing abilities.

9. I love watching birds. I don’t go anywhere specifically to see them, but if I am in Woy Woy and I see some pelicans on lightposts, or cormorants and darters and egrets on the waterfront, or swarms of ducks –  (Yes – it may not be the correct collective noun, but you try eating a pie on the waterfront, and you will see what I mean) it makes me happy. I was pretty stoked once when I was crossing the footbridge on the road into Woy2 and I looked down to see a cormorant diving – I got to watch it swimming around and nosing into weeds and rocks, underwater, directly below me. Awesome!
I like hanging out clothes on my deck and seeing sea eagles soaring past. I like hearing whipbirds and butcher birds. I even love hearing Koels at 2 am on sultry summer nights.
I live visiting Canberra again and seeing crimson rosellas and grass parrots.
I don’t actually like birds indoors though – they smell funny and get tangled in people’s hair and poo everywhere.

10. I like houses, inside and out, and towns and cities in which not everything is new and shiny. I like seeing old painted ads, old sandstone churches reflected in giant shiny glass skyscrapers. I like cast iron lace and wide skirting boards. I like shabbiness. I like waterfronts that look a bit rough and tarry. I like furniture that looks as though a few generations have used it and battered it a bit in the process. I like verdigris’d copper roofs. I like lichened tiles.

What about you?