Things I like

Dear Diary,

So, well, the RD for Rocky decided that since it wasn't posted ahead of time, he wasn't going to enforce the headphones rule.  He did make a point about courtesy, and not yielding the path, which I totally agree with.  Still: music.  Happy.

DP and I joke about this person who is consistently negative.  This person complains constantly about every little thing in a mean-spirited way, and frankly, I'm stunned she hasn't given herself a heart attack yet.  DP refers to this person as "a cranky old man" even though she isn't that old.    

It would be easy to rummage through some of my blog/diary entries and get the impression that I'm a negative person because I use this as a way to complain, whine, and bitch at times.  In truth, I'm actually a pretty cheerful person.  There's a lot that makes me happy.  I had a rough beginning, as an adult, and so there's a lot of things I don't take for granted.  There are things that I smile about nearly every day, certainly at least once a week, and here is a short, and by no means complete, list:

1. I love it when I put my key in my car, turn it, and it starts.  That still makes me happy.   I also love it when I flip a switch and lights come on.
   
2. I enjoy watching kids, even the ones having meltdowns.  It's interesting.  I feel bad for the parents, but for now: Hmm.  Interesting.  I had a kid in my office last week have a meltdown, complete with banging on the door and screaming HELP when his mother wouldn't let him leave my office.  She was exhausted.  His tiny sister was holding her hands over her ears.  I was intrigued, and taking notes on the meltdown. Hmm.
   
3. I love my house.  When I walk in and see the mountains out the back windows, I feel like the luckiest person alive to live here.  It's like living in a blind all the time, or one of those nature centers where they have tinted glass so you can sit in them and watch the birds nearby.
   
4. I love that moment in a morning run when I come up over a hill on a trail, and it's not quite sunrise yet, but the city is spread out beneath me, with lights still on.
   
5. I love that my clothes go on easily these days.
   
6. I love diet mountain dew mixed with diet cran-grape juice. I drink it all day. Yeah, it's full of chemicals, but I like chemicals.  I detox over the weekends.
   
7. I love that nearly any piece of information can be found on the Internet nowdays.  I'm slowly purging my house of old textbooks, cookbooks, and other reference works as a result, opening up more space.  If I have a power or internet failure, I could call DP, who has an iPhone, and once she lectures me on how many times I've mocked her iPhone, she'll give me information I need.
   
8. I love my friends.  They funny, smart, interesting, motivated.  I'm amazed I get to call them my friends. 
9.  Of course it goes without saying, of all of them, I love Sweet Baboo the most.  He's kind, funny, smart, and he takes good care of me, all my anxious, hyper, asthmatic bits.  Best of all, we often think the same things at the same time, which is handy.
   
10. I love New Mexico.  I love the arid, sweeping vistas; starry skies, and painted cliffs and mesas.  It's spoiled me, I think.  I go to other runs that are beautiful, and I'm all, meh, pretty, but so is my back yard.  Only Colorado impresses me more, but I don't want to live there. 
    
11. I love Albuquerque.  I have my pick of places to run: through the woods next to a river,  or up a trail to the top of a mountain, or through hills, or through hills and woods, or just through the city on a bike path - all of these within 15 miles of home.
    
12. I love my dog.  I'm not a dog person, but I like her, all smelly, licky, wiggly parts of her.  She loves me back, even when I'm not in the best mood.
    
13. I love my mailbox. For nearly 20 years, I just had community mailboxes, but now I have my very own mailbox, with a little red flag and everything.  It's true.  Bliss!
    
14. I love that they have curbside recycling here.
    
15. I love moments when a kid stops by my office grinning, and says, hey, remember me?  I'm discharging soon! and I have to squint and try to remember the kid because they are so totally different from the angry, profane kid that I met three months' earlier who screamed at their parents in my office, or who was slouched in a chair in the psych ward of the local hospital.
    
16. In fact, I love just about everything about my job.  I feel needed.  I feel respected.  I feel like what I do matters. I have an office, and a convenient parking space, and a Walgreens across the street, and a good sushi restaurant nearby.  What else do you need?
    
17. I love the turmeric-colored scarf that Baboo bought me on one of his trips.  It would be impossible to explain how much I love this scarf. I never wear this color, but this scarf, I wear it as often as I can without becoming that woman who, you know, she always wears that orange scarf.

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