A good friend (Julie! Thanks for being a reader and supporter!) sent out an annual letter called, “A few of my favorite things” and I thought that was a great idea. So here are some of my Favorite Things about the season, and if you hang in there for the whole post there's an awesome song at the end!

• My daughter and all the kids’ college friends home for the holidays—kids I remember, but with more piercings, spouting poetry or chemical formulas, pale as salamanders and eager to get to the beach.
• A really big pile of rubber slippers by the front door once again.
• My dog wearing antlers!

He never has had much dignity.

• Christmas songs and music at church—standing in a row with my family and singing those timeless songs shows me a little window into heaven. Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.
• The fridge stuffed with food for the Christmas dinner—it’s fun to challenge myself to try and fit anything else in. I love me a holiday fridge.
• Lilikois falling off the vines—like untimely Easter eggs, passion fruit collect in the grass waiting for me to make scrumptious pies, jam, sauces out of them this time of year.

Lilikois, untimely Easter eggs waiting to be picked up!

• Going snorkeling in the rain. Something about the patter of rain all round as you swim through the warm ocean—bliss.
• Playing tennis with my daughter, working up a sweat, in my tank top…while the rest of the world digs snow out of their driveways. I grew up in Hawaii, so it wasn’t until I lived in the Midwest for seven years that I really “got” this one.
• Smells—non-native Christmas trees, fragrant as they die for the cause of festive in my living room. Baking lilikoi pie. The Christmas ham. Wet dog—oh yeah that goes in the NonFavorite Things list.
• Lights—everywhere, all the time, the tackier the better. I prefer them nonflashing, however—a seizure is not festive.

This post just wouldn't be complete without my NonFavorite Things about the season. So here, for your edification:

• Working on the holiday with depressed clients. Sometimes I catch their blues like a cold and cry my way home. Holidays are unhappy for a lot of people, unfortunately.
• Wrapping presents. I seem to have no spatial awareness and my paper is always too big, wadded clumsily around the gift or cut too small, leaving the gift hanging out the ends. Oh well, it’s the thought that counts, right? Right. It’s become a running family joke.
• Those extra holiday pounds. Cwap. Directly related to some of my Favorite Things like the Stuffed Holiday Fridge.
• Crowds, and shopping. Walmart the Saturday before Christmas? Just call it the 9^th ring of hell. I’d rather pay too much and wait too long by ordering online.
• The credit card bill in January.
• The “12 Days of Christmas Hawaiian Style” playing everywhere you go. Arg. I can only take so many “Beeg fat peeg.” Scroll down for the excitement of a uniquely overplayed Hawaiian tune.
• Shopping—oh, yeah. Already said that.
• Homemade gifts that don’t get done in time. I’ve been working on a crochet afghan for the Hubby all year that’s still only two feet wide. Now I have to go SHOPPING! Nnnnoooooooo…..
• Christmas cards from people I don’t hardly know or remember—Terminix? Really?