The Glad Game

My friend, and fellow blogger, Lauren, tagged me to list 6 of my favorite things. I'm excluding family and friends because my gratitude and joy in them would easily fill my list. So in no particular order...

1. Playing in Orchestra. I feel so lucky that I found this group of kind people to play with. It is the perfect fit for me and my place in life right now. Our conductor often "lectures" us on the merits of other community orchestras and how we need to do better to reach that calibur but for now, I am perfectly content to be with this group. Maybe someday I'll reach that next level and actually get paid a bit to perform, but for now I'm just so happy to be making music every week. Right now we are playing some pieces that I am really enjoying so I come home from rehearsal feeling like I really accomplished something.

2. Italy. I feel happy just thinking about the beautiful country and people and I have fun daydreaming about where I'd like to live there. Sometimes I want to be like the Under the Tuscan Sun lady and live the village life in Tuscany. Other times I long to be back in Milan and would love to know what it feels like to live there as a regular citizen. And then there is balmy Sicily... which brings me to my next point...

3. Warm weather. I am still a California girl at heart. Every year come Thanksgiving I start to miss the state where I was raised. I still expect Christmas to be a bit warm, jeans and a t-shirt weather. Ridge feels sorry for me that it never snowed at my house when I was little. I don't feel sorry for myself at all. I'll take the sunny skies over snow any day. I know there are trade offs, the smog gets so dense and the air so dirty in California while here it is dense with trees and it smells like the mountains. Seattle's summer is beautiful, perfect temperatures. I suppose a winter home is the best option. Now where to get that kind of money...

4. Going on walks. I love going on walks, pushing a child in the stroller and enjoying the day. That is one of the reasons that not having sidewalks around here irks me so much, being outside and enjoying the neighborhood should be relaxing but it isn't when you are worried that someone is going to swerve into the street while a car is coming. I wonder if Laine will be patient enough this spring to sit in the stroller all the way around Green Lake. We'll see.

5. Going out to eat/having someone else cook for me. It is perfect bliss to have someone else worry about what is for dinner and take care of the dishes. Good company makes it all the better.

6. Reading a great book. Isn't it the best when you find a book at the library and it is a surprisingly good read that you don't want to put down for anything until you finish it? Even sleep isn't as important as finishing one, two, three more chapters. I'm not reading one of those right now, but I have gotten to know the characters enough that I want to see how the story ends. I'm in charge of organizing our ward book club and we have recently come under fire by some members of the ward for a couple of our recent selections that some people found offensive. The last book we read was quite wild for church standards but we didn't know the content. One member thought she had read it but she had read something else by the same author. I think it was hard for all the regulars in the club not to feel judged because we are all seeking the same thing, to find a great book to read and then to discuss it together as friends. It all got resolved but not until after a fairly tense discussion for Relief Society standards. Why do books cause so much controversy?