I love the memory of the soft red socks I used to own. I love sea glass. I love the feel of lip balm after I have applied it with the middle finger of my right hand and then rubbed the excess into the palm of my left. I love the word "balm", but not when I can hear the L too strongly. I love vintage tin wind-up toys, especially if they are birds. I love old, wooden desks, because their drawers sound soft when you slide them in and out after all the years of wear. I love going through old bibles in second-hand stores to see what slips of paper and notations were left in them. I love that I still remember the smell and humidity of my maternal grandmothers' house when it was full of people and there was a big supper in the oven. I love the smell of old, musty books with yellowed pages. I love that when you slow down Alvin & The Chipmunks and Smurfs records, they sound like country-and-western. I love how the Christmas wrapping paper from the 1960s that my paternal grandmother was using in the 1980s sounded as we carefully unwrapped it to save it for another year. I love the old tires attached to antique baby buggies. I love feeling the rails to see if a train is coming to flatten our pennies.

I love chocolate covered doughnuts filled with venetian cream. I love strong, hot coffee in the morning before work. I love the feel of a spoonful of brown sugar in my mouth, especially the little crunch before it melts on my tongue. I love putting a wide slice of orange peel over my teeth and smiling a big, orange smile. I love toast. I love the look of those flat, circular confetti sprinkles, even though I do not like to eat them. I love buttered spaghetti with salt. I love how root vegetables make me feel full and satisfied. I love the bright taste of pea pod shells after they have been peeled. I love dusty raspberries right off the bush. I love the feel of kiwi fur on my chin. I love the sound of an avocado pit when it rolls across a hardwood floor. I love eating buttered popcorn and washing it down with a tall glass of ice cold 1% milk. I love the feeling of bun dough squeezing through my fists to make perfect spheres.

I love it when Onion crawls under the blankets to cuddle with me in the morning. I love that each of Onion's feet has one black toe and that it is a different toe on each foot. I love the wookie noises Oskar makes when he sits on my shoulders and butts the back of my head while I put on makeup. I love how my old cat, Pepper, used to hang from the chains on the cuckoo clock to make the little bird pop out and tweet repeatedly. I love that little vole that got so used to me at the bus stop one day that we could spend a good while eying each other up. I love raccoons. I love bandicoots, simply because they are called bandicoots. I love the wild red fox that let me pet his head when I was thirteen. I love the bear that did not eat me two years before that.

I love the crunch of empty snail shells into soft sand under bare feet. I love the long, golden sunshine that makes everything glow just before the sun drops down below the western horizon. I love how the sound of poplar trees' leaves in the wind is like shallow water rushing over stones in a fast stream. I love the feel of grass in the yard when it has been left to grow long enough to seed. I love the insane vibration against my lips when I whistle through a blade of quack grass held between my thumbs. I love how snow has the squeaky sound of crushing styrofoam beneath my feet when it is particularly cold out. I love that ice crystals in the atmosphere magnify the appearance of the moon so that you can see even the part that is in Earth's shadow. I love the soft slapping sound of lake water against the canoe when I am lying in the bottom. I love the sting of my knees burning in the sun. I love tree stumps that are the right height for sitting down. I love picking through all the old string and gum wrappers and whatsits woven into vacant, found birds’ nests.

I love that crazy guy who is sometimes on the bus who has a laugh that actually might fit the word "chortle". I love my hands. I love that crinkly, sleepy look that the Palinode gets around his eyes when he leans in to kiss me and he is putting his whole heart and soul into it. I love that so many of my friends are filled with so much creative energy and pour it into so much music, art, clothing, writing, learning, and crafting. I love the softness of hugs from women with large breasts. I love super-localized colloquial terms shared between groups of friends. I love that the people I know on Twitter are slowly but surely killing my cynicism. I love it when people have Fred Flintstone feet. I love that everyone wants to be loved and has to work so hard to learn how to give it away to others, because we have to fight so hard to get there, and it is the fight that makes us realize how important it is and why we should. I love that the more love we find and give, the more there is lying around all over the place, like when you recognize someone for the first time, and then they are suddenly everywhere that you are.

I am a participant in Blog 365.