these are a few of my favorite things

Today is Saturday. Here in "Kentuckiana" (and have I mentioned just how much I absolutely HATE that term? ) it is a beautiful day, almost too warm to have the a.c. turned off, but not quite. Birds chirping, light breeze, cicadas buzzing (we have a lot of those here apparently), and well, you get the picture.

I have already made lunch, set out the items needed to make our favorite "Nathan" muffins, showered, graded a few papers, balanced our checkbook, and done a load of laundry. Why all the productivity? I have absolutely NO idea.

Today as I was opening the windows to let in the light and breeze, I was reminded how much I absolutely love late summer weather. Normally, where I'm from this came in mid August, but I don't mind it happening in September. I've always said the perfect temperature is a sunny 73 degrees with a light breeze. Perfection.

This got me thinking about a few of my other favorite things. For some reason though, I was first distracted by the list that popped into my head of my least favorite things:

- having 42 cents left on a gift card to Starbucks and not feeling like I can use it because I'll be spending more of my own money than is necessary, but also knowing that otherwise that 42 cents will go to waste
- balancing my checkbook and being off by roughly 15 cents or so. What the heck?! And spending half an hour figuring our I wrote 12 instead of 21 or something equally ridiculous
- not quite having enough whites to justify doing a white only load
- places that make husbands work on Saturdays when their wives are home (PS update on Brent's job situation: waiting to hear from church, in meantime took job at Dick's Sporting Goods)
- turning on the radio and hearing the last little bit of a news story and really wishing I had heard the rest of it

... you get the picture.

Luckily though I was able to bypass the negative and came up with a few of my favorite things:

- getting a phone call yesterday that said, "We're on the way to the hospital to meet Beth and Eli!" (No more news yet)
- Sitting in a coffee shop with a new book purchase and cracking the spine to read the first few pages
- having a half an hour to take my time in the shower
- getting to that last paper after the first 105 are graded
- having a clean house
- Brent's cologne
- knowing how to spell the word cologne
- long conversations with old friends who have kept in touch
- waking up without an alarm clock
- this song by Sara Groves that I can't listen to without getting goosebumps and tears and excitement (and in particular these two beautiful/powerful lines: "I see the slave awaken to the value of her soul..." and "I see the young girl huddled on the brothel floor; I see the man with a passion come and kicking down that door..." ) Take the 4 minutes to listen to it!
- chocolate raspberry mocha (Seattle's Best)
- Burt's Bees chapstick
- My camera

and of course

- brown paper packages tied up in string.

(If you felt like this was a pointless post, it probably was unless you watched the Sara Groves video)