Whiskers on Kittens

It's no raindrops on roses or brown paper packages tied up with string, but here's a list of my current favorite things.

The salty scent of the ocean fog brank rolling in. I've lived along the coast for so long that I'm immune to the daily sea breezes. i don't notice the salty air unless I've been inland for six months or the fog comes in. A few other scents I love: LA in spring, when the rain washes away the smog and the citrus trees bloom; chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven; split pea soup; woodsmoke. I actually like the scent of forest fires. I haven't been threatened by a fire yet, so that last one may change.

Steve Lopez. Points West. LA Times. This is why we have a free press. The man may not actually be a genius or a virtuoso, or even a saint. But he's a muckraker, a populist, and he doesn't accept easy answers or platitudes. I love a man who can spring a scale on the insurance commisioner candidate running on a weight loss ticket, live for a week on Skid Rowe, or battle raccoons in Silver Lake, and live to write entertaining and thought-provoking accounts of it all. My impossible dream? The T.R. Roosevelt / Steve Lopez no holds barred interview. Steve writes about life in Los Angeles, but his columns have implications for us all.

Lemon Cream Pie Ice Cream. Cruncy sweet pie crust; puckery lemon zest; creamy ice cream. A scoop of summertime. I don't buy the "seasonal flavors" excuse. A certain ice cream store who shall remain nameless hasn't mixed up a batch of lemon cream pie ice cream in 7 months solely to spite me. Or maybe the employees are hoarding it for their own enjoyment in the backroom.

Arts and Craft Stores. You thought I was a shopoholic with an unhealthy craving for shoes and purses? Hah! Maybe so. But I don't make special trips to the shoe or purse stores. (We don't actually have a stored devoted solely to purses and handbags here, do we? Somebody get on that, please.) I do, however, make speci9fic trips to the craft stores, and I can spend hours wandering the aisles. The paper and paper and more paper. The doodads and snarfblatts that glued onto all that paper. The paint. The ink. The cute llittle stamps. The shiny beads. The scented candles. The little boxes begging to be decoupaged. the fuzzy yarns and gazillions of shades of embroidery thread. And the books upon books of inspiration. Yeah. Craft stores are definitely among my favorite things. This must be how men feel about automotive and hardware stores.

Cats. I'm a cat person. One cute and furry little whiskered animal is just as good as the next, right? Wrong. Rodents are cute. Dogs are good for a run on the beach, but all that doggy enthusiasm and pack animal mentality get wearying after awhile. Cats cuddle when they want to cuddle, and swipe at you when they want to be alone. I get that- it seems perfectly reasonable to me.

PBS. From string theory to Mystery, and little old ladies lugging around antiquies from the garage sale down the road, I love it all. Heck, PBS even makes the Hindenberg entertaining and educational. Frontline is yet another reason we have a free press. Do I really want to watch 21 scantily clad young ladies battle it out for the hand of one uncomfortable looking quasi-noble? Only if that battle is set against the intrigues of 15th Century Italy or the court of Catherine the Great.

Carpeted flooring. I'd been wanting hardwood floors for a decade, and then I got them. What a pain. I thought, "never again." And then I lived without even the hardwood floor. My landlord finally put in carpeting three weeks after we moved in. I now have a carpet and a door. I am satisfied. I will never complain about substandard housing again. Cross my heart and my fingers.