love: a top-ten list.

This post is brought to you by the letters L, O, V, and – surprise! – E.

Here’s what I love, in addition to my sweet little family of Fresh Scratch who are all still sleeping and will be so happy that Mama has busted her bum to make sure their day is super awesome…ahem! These are truly in no particular order:

1. Author Sophie Kinsella. Her hilarious books, which are totally Brit-Lit, provide the perfect escape. Her characters’ antics and escapades are totally screwball and full of major coincidences, and they get me hooked on page one every time. And they make me laugh out loud, which is always a winning combo. Her latest, Wedding Night: A Novel, comes out soon!

2. A morning roll from The Bread Peddler, our holiest of bakeries here in Olympia.

3. Chai tea with lots of kick.

4. The smell of white California Basmati rice. Dry. Every time I fill up my emptied Mason jar from the bulk bin, I stick my nose in and inhale. I wish there was a perfume that smelled exactly like it. If you know of one, please tell me. I try to turn Teensy-Weensy on to this time and time again, since she loves everything I love, but she just says, “That does NOT smell good. I don’t like rice.” Really?

5. While we’re on smells, one of my very favorites is the slight hint of blackberries that you can smell here in very late summer. On any given walk outside, especially in the woods, I love that smell of blackberries warmed by the sun. It makes me wonder where the hidden bramble is that has not yet been picked. And it reminds me of playing in the woods as a girl with my cousin Evie. Sigh. Truly one of the things I love the most in life is that smell.

6. Hey, why don’t we keep going with the smells? I love the damp smell of a western Washington morning in the summer. If you live here, I hope you know what I mean. That earthy, woodsy, slightly salty smell? Kills me. It reminds me of riding to The Evergreen State College with my dad in the summer to drop my step-mom off at work. She’d always get in his old 454 station wagon and immediately flip the visor mirror down to put on her lipstick. Then that good smell of morning would end when he fired up that old car…

7. This clip. Oh. My. Gawd. My husband and I watch it now and then and laugh so hard we can’t breathe! Please, please, please enjoy it today! You will laugh your buns off. It’s totally appropriate, by the way.

8. “Downton Abbey.” Not just the show and the costumes and the Dowager’s cutting remarks, but the shots of their home from the outside at night. I think Mr. Fresh Scratch is going to start making me pay him each time I say, “I love the shots of their house at night!” while we are watching it.

9. Putting my kids’ clothes that they’ve just outgrown in the box to hand down to someone else. I know this is fundamentally wrong, as we don’t want them to grow up, but I love the space it makes for new things to be loved. I know, I’m weird.

10. Pre-Pinterest and Pinterest. Pre-Pinterest is what I call my compulsion to “clip” from magazines and then glue these clippings into labeled blank books – Entertaining, Travel, Gardening, etc. Again, I know, I’m weird. But it brings me no end of happiness!

Happy Valentine’s Day! Happy Heart Day! Happy Friend’s Day!

I hope someone makes it special for you. And I hope that someone is y-o-u. Make a list of what you love. Tell me what’s on it. Pick something from it and enjoy it. Because you know what Ms. Whitney Houston said about “the greatest love of all,” right?!

xo,

Mrs. Fresh Scratch