My favorite things

While I was editing my post about Dan Brown's newest novel, I realized that I use my blog to criticize too many things. After reading my blog, you might surmise that the only things I really love are my husband and gourmet tortillas. And sometimes my kids.

It is true that I am bossy and kind of a know-it-all; I try to suppress those instincts, but I'm not often successful. The most unfortunate aspect of being a know-it-all is that sometimes I really do not know what I am talking about, even when I think that I do. This trait is useful when I have to take care of four kids by myself. It's not so fabulous when I want to sound intelligent. Or humble. Or teachable.

Here is what I love:

1) Audrey makes faces at me. She randomly looks up at me with a silly face. She also loves to blow kisses at me. She calls me "Mama mia" and I call her "Audrey mia." Harry Potter is her imaginary friend. Nick Jonas was her first imaginary friend. She has good taste.

2) Zach is curious. Sometimes he wonders why brothers can't marry their sisters. (Yeah, I told him the reason is because their kids would be sick. How do you explain genetic issues arising from in-breeding to a five-year old?) Sometimes he wants to know what the king of the ocean is, or the lake, or a different ocean. Or what happens when you sprain your ankle. How do you use crutches? What happens if you forget to put your crutch down when you take a step? He has a crush on a girl named Eva from his class. He is already betrothed to a girl named Josie. At least, Josie is convinced that she is going to marry him and have babies. Josie is 4. And slightly precocious. And pretty adorable, too. Zach thinks he might marry her so that he can inherit her four brothers.

3) Ainsley is graceful and has been ever since she was a toddler. She is one of those few fortunate souls who can spread their arms in a pose and have their hands end up in the most beautiful position. (Whereas I have spent countless hours looking at my hands and feet while I do step aerobics to make sure that they are doing what the instructors' do.) Ainsley has self-confidence and is very affectionate. She is a fast reader and has determination to match Neil's. It just has to be her idea and what she wants to do.

4) Sydney is beautiful and smart. She talks about computer hackers and anti-virus software, irony, and basketball all in one conversation. Sydney is not a sprinter but she can run like a gazelle if she is given the space. She enjoys climbing trees. She likes to hang out for hours in the top of the two-story magnolia tree in our backyard. Sydney makes her free throws and lay ups as often as the boys do in basketball practice even though she is not nearly as adept at using her fast-twitch muscles as they are. She gets that from me. Syd plays the cello and the piano. She is currently teaching herself "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" on the piano.

5) I love having a washer and dryer upstairs. It makes doing laundry much easier. You wouldn't know that by the pile of laundry on the hallway floor right now. Sorry. It will be gone before Neil gets home.

6) I love shopping with my grandmother. We've been good shopping buddies since I was in fifth grade.

7) I love to catch up with my friends on Facebook. It is beautiful for me to see the wonderful ways their lives have turned out. They are all such great people!

8) I love my parents and in-laws. They each bring meaning to my life, all in different ways.

9) I love my husband. He is the best friend I've ever had. I am looking forward to relearning what it's like to be married. What do people do with so much free time? I could guess, but that would be TMI.

10) I love little babies. They make my heart rate drop. I could hold babies all day long. Whining eighteen month olds, not so much.

11) I love to read. My super hero power is speed reading. My claim to fame is that I read the final Harry Potter book in it's entirety in one day. I bought it at 0800 and finished by 0200 that night. I also read the entire Twilight series, all four books, in five days. This is what I do when I don't feel like doing anything. Now that Neil is coming home, I might have to find the discipline to do things I don't want to do instead of reading a book: sweeping out the garage, cleaning out the computer closet, cleaning my room. Shhh, don't tell Neil.

12) I love Coke in a glass bottle. Who doesn't? It's always worth the calories, except for right now when I am trying to get ready for Neil to come home. I do love my husband more than bottled Coke. I just have to remind myself of that sometimes.

13) I love laptop computers with wireless internet. Especially our Apple. (Sorry Dan.) It is the ultimate in luxury. And laziness.

14) I love taking pictures with my wide angle lens. I enjoy editing the pics to change the color, etc.

15) I love beautiful clothes. I wish I dressed like a chic business woman every day. Today I have been wearing my workout clothes all day. Not quite so chic.

16) I love having a suntan. I am meant to have a tan. I can get an amazing tan even when I wear SPF 30. I have never used a tanning bed.

17) I enjoy running. I prefer to run outside because my mind is a little less A-D-D than when I am on a treadmill. Good music is a must. I won't say I love running because really I'd rather be reading about Edward Cullen or Mr Darcy.

18) I enjoy step aerobics. It's kind of like dancing. It's less tedious than running on a treadmill.

19) I love the song "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor. It's the song from Rocky. They played it every year at Camp Ozark on the way to the Final Challenge-the big sporting event. I can remember walking down the big hill to the song. To this day I run faster when I hear that song. Who doesn't? My kids like the song, too, and pretend to play Rock Band to it in the car. They pretend to play the drum, cello, electric guitar, and violin.

20) I loved Camp Ozark. I am me because of the time I spent there. First and foremost it taught me an appreciation for older boys. In all of the years I spent at Ozark, I had three friends that were boys, while everyone else there seemed to have boyfriends. Instead I spent all of my time hanging out with the good looking college-age boys who were counselors. At Ozark, there were dances all the time and the counselors were not allowed to dance with one another. So, the second thing I learned at Ozark was how to dance. What could be better than two weeks spent dancing with college boys? In fact, one of my favorite counselors was still running around A&M while I was there. He was all, "You're getting what? Married?" I did learn a thing or two about Jesus. And did some hard things, like swing from a rope between two trees and shoot skeet. And was introduced to Build a Mountain. And tore my ACL going over a hurdle in front of two hundred people. They all thought I was crying because I was embarrassed about falling in public. As if.

21) I loved being in Drama. I loved the magic of the theater. I didn't love running over my toes with a full-size set on metal rails. As a freshman in high school I heard a boy named Edward sing and decided right then that we would be friends. Of course I couldn't say "no" when he asked me to do drama with him my senior year. I had no idea what I had signed up for, but I loved it more than anything I did in high school. Somehow I ended up in charge of the boys' dressing room. I remember being pulled into the dressing room while they all ran around in their tightie-whities. I had the good sense to close my eyes and run for the door while I laughed my head off. I wish I knew what Edward was doing now.

22) I love being warm. It keeps me in bed longer than is needful in the mornings.

23) I love to sleep and when I can't sleep, to daydream. I make up novels in my head. And eventually I fall asleep.

24) I love Milk Duds, Hot Tamales, Chocolate Chip cookies, Peanut M&Ms, and Oreos with milk. Thankfully I love my husband more than candy, so I've been laying off of it. For the most part, I don't love ice cream. I do enjoy Baskin Robbins, but only Mint Chocolate Chip and Chocolate Sundaes with nuts and hot fudge sauce. Who can justify that many calories more than once a year? Donuts. Shipley's. They are Kryptonite.

25) I love Jane Austen. How did someone with such relatively limited life experience write such amazing books? She is the Gold Standard.

26) I love Luby's Restaurant. Comfort food on so many levels. As is Guadalajara's. Really, there are 5 Mexican food restaurants across Houston and San Antonio that I cannot live without.

27) I love fast cars and loud music. And open roads.

28) I enjoy Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. I know, I'm a hater.

29) I love to write more than I ever thought that I would. I can remember learning to write in seventh grade. The teacher made up skip lines for editing and revising. We had to highlight the beginning of each sentence to make sure they didn't all start with "I". Strunk and White makes sense to me now. In tenth grade, I could spout it back to my teacher, but I had no idea what I was talking about. Writing my blog is one of my few hobbies. Reading is not quite a hobby, but more of a time-wasting, reality-escaping pursuit.

30) I enjoy correct grammar. I enjoy linguistics. If I had taken Linguistics in English before I took it in Spanish, I would have had a 3.75 gpa in college. (3.746 doesn't sound as impressive.) This isn't to say that my grammar is always correct. It is easier to read someone else's writing and see where they could have chosen a different word or placement or verb tense. This is an example of where I don't know as much as I like to believe.

31) I enjoy learning. I loved studying languages in college. I specifically enjoyed learning about other cultures, different lands, their geography and history. I got good grades in college because I studied what I loved. What to do from there? More school?

32) Lastly, I enjoyed learning to analyze poetry in college. I do not read poetry for pleasure. In fact, I think I wrote a poem in high school entitled "Poetry is for Fruits." Nice, I know. You wonder now, as do I, how I ever graduated. I attempted to do research in college because I thought that would teach me how to critically think about and analyze information or ideas. Unfortunately, I didn't learn much doing this research except that some of the kids professors changed the numbers so that their research worked into the paradigm they had suggested. Luckily for me, I saved one semester of French poetry and two semesters of Spanish poetry for my Senior year. That is where I learned how to think outside of the box. That is where I learned to analyze, to make associations, to let my mind wander until I found something that made sense. The way that I read scripture comes from reading poetry. I ponder what I'm reading and then I try to think of places where I've read that phrase before or read about the same principle. Then I try to find a way that they relate. This also influences the crazy ideas that I come up with on my blog.

Thanks for reading about the things that I love. I hope to sound less cynical and mean-spirited.

Also, my book du jour is China's Megatrends: 8 Pillars for a New Society. I am learning about how the Chinese people view their government, economic system and society in relation to where they have been and where they will head in the future. I can't decide if they are selling "China Kool-Aid" or if it actually makes sense. I think for a moment that it makes sense and then I remember the National Geographic Article I read about all of these problems with human rights violations, poverty, unemployment, and environmental issues. How can these facts be compatible? The author makes a good point when he says that China has come farther in a shorter amount of time than any other superpower in history. Or than any other developing nation, for that matter. So maybe we shouldn't look at China through the lens of our two hundred years of evolution, policitally and economically. It is similar to looking at the conquistadors worldview through the lens of our global community. What had we done in the first thirty years after the Revolutionary War, or even the Civil War? Compared to China since 1977, not much.