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Stuff I Like

  • Hot coffee
  • Discarded feathers, especially from turkeys, ravens, raptors and gamebirds
  • Apple trees
  • Thunderstorms
  • maps
  • Winter Solstice
  • Looking at the moon and stars
  • Campfires
  • Cool mornings in the summer
  • Barely-warm sunshine you can feel on your face on some days in the winter
  • First sips of coffee in the morning
  • catbirds
  • Ravens
  • Bears
  • Horses
  • Dogs
  • fish
  • Monarch Butterflies ( Tiger Swallowtails, too)
  • Hummingbirds
  • Bees and bears, and other things that don’t back down easily.
  • eating outside, especially breakfast
  • Overgrown thickets
  • Hickory trees
  • Mexican food
  • Trains
  • Mushrooms and onions sauteed in good butter
  • places where people gather in the kitchen to talk and drink
  • Good sharp pencils
  • Pretty girls out for a walk (esp. the ones that smile at you as they go by)
  • Fleece pullovers
  • Crowded kitchen tables
  • migrating Canada Geese
  • The way grouse will wait until you walk over them, so that they can flush behind you. Scares me senseless every time.
  • Dark Chocolate
  • Sweet Tea
  • Stout
  • Rooms cluttered with books
  • The smell of bread baking
  • Sushi and sake
  • Big front porches
  • Sleeping under a tin roof when it’s raining.
  • The next-door-neighbor’s propensity for wearing short-shorts pretty much all the time
  • Mockingbirds
  • Sleeping with the windows open when it gets to be late September
  • The first night you crawl in bed underneath the heavy quilt that was packed away all summer
  • Feeding grapes to someone new
  • Maps. Especially old ones
  • The smell of bread baking
  • Late night walks
  • Getting good and lost in a new city
  • Airplanes, especially old DeHavilland Beavers.
  • Airplane hangers, and the old guys that always congregate in them
  • Bicycles and old motorcycles
  • Indian Summer
  • My grandmother’s old crazy-quilts
  • Dessert before dinner
  • Especially when it’s ice cream
  • Women and girls who smile and laugh easily
  • Back rubs

Stuff I Don’t

  • Mosquitoes
  • Cats, except for barn cats
  • The fact that I can’t draw, paint or play a guitar
  • Other people’s cell phone conversations
  • Overcooked food, especially steaks (exceptions for green beans, collard greens and kale)
  • Dried out Sharpies
  • Traffic
  • Tight clothes (On me, that is)
  • Crowded restaurants
  • Milk Chocolate
  • Unsweetened Sweet Tea
  • Watery beer
  • Cluttered rooms
  • The next-door-neighbors noisy AC unit, especially when I’m sitting on the back deck
  • Discovering my book is at the other end of the house when I want to read
  • The first time your realize that someone that you once shared a life with has moved on
  • Overly loud people in quiet places
  • Airports
  • Toll Booths
  • People who drive when they could easily walk
  • Crowded supermarkets
  • Running out of wine

This list has been compiled over a lifetime. There may be duplications and contradictions, and it is most certainly subject to revision at my whim. I contain multitudes, and I’m prone to flakiness on occasion. Life is messy, and so is my list.

-r