Don't Like and Do Love. A List.

The Don't Likes:

• Automatic doors that hesitate so long that I almost run into them.
• When I'm too stupid to realize the automatic door is 'slower' than I am.
• Well-dressed people who ruin the look with a bad attitude. 
• The mean thoughts I have about those people, like hoping they trip and fall while I'm watching. 
• Parents who let their bad-assed kids loose on the public, and then act as if you were the one who advised them not to teach the little monsters how to behave.
• Other shoppers who hog the aisles with their carts, then get pissed if you bump into it while trying to pass.
• Shoppers who pretend to be deaf and blind when you are trying to pass them in an aisle.
• Adults who never use the words/phrases "Thank you", "Excuse me", "Please", "Hello', "Sir" and "Ma'am".
• Children who aren't being taught the above words/phrases.
• Men who don't hold doors for women. 
• People who find the above statement sexist or anti-feminist.
• Drive-through coffee service when I can't just request cream to add for myself.
• Weak coffee.
• Coffee so strong that an entire bottle of creamer won't mellow it out.
• Men who wait for a woman to make the first move.
• Women who scared men out of making the first move.
• People who think a man holding a door for a woman is a 'statement' of some kind.
• Sloppy kisses. Unless it's from a dog.
• Kissing a dog. Of any kind.
• Not being able to cancel obligations at the last minute without appearing rude.
• Cancelling obligations at the last minute.
• Fake apologies.
• Making fake apologies.
• Morning breath so bad that hazard lights ought to start flashing with your first words.
• Mistaking someone's long, thoughtful stare for flirting.
• Flirting with someone you only thought was flirting with you.
• Getting halfway through a manuscript before you decide to change a character's name.
• Seeing descriptions on social media that could mean anything.
• Not understanding exactly what it means to be a "brand specialist" or "life optimizer".
• Having someone who lives in the shadows and stalks your online profile.
• Wondering if that person is masturbating to your profile pic.
• Trying to take a cute-but-not-whorish-looking profile pic.
• Trying to look attractive, serious, intelligent, fun and un-posed in a profile pic.
• Trying not to capture glass-cleaner streaks or runs when you take that bathroom mirror selfie.
• Getting stuck in a check-out line behind a person who bought everything that needs a price-check or that they have a coupon for.
• Not having one of the coupons for the same thing you have in your own basket.
• Having hair that only behaves the way you want when you aren't going to be seen by one damn person you care about.
• Not feeling well and not being able to explain why.
• Drinking coffee on the patio and swallowing something that could have been a lump of powder cream or the baby spider you saw earlier.
• Not being able to find that baby spider anywhere near where he was before.
• Not being able to make yourself throw up the coffee.
• Thinking about that nasty, unidentified lump every time you drink something for the next week.
• When I visit my toddler nephew and he's so busy playing that he pays me no attention at all.
• Having nothing to write with or on when you have an idea for a story.
• Damn near hurting yourself to get to pen and paper and forgetting the idea you had.
• When the idea you had really sucks snot once you get it written down.
• Writing what is possibly the most eloquent thing ever to leak from your brain only to read it over and think, "Meh."
• When you're so broke you can't pay attention.
• Finding a great sale on a product you've been wanting at the time you're brokest.
• Being broke. Period.
• When you've re-arranged all your bills so that you have lights, food and gas, and then reading news about someone who bought diamond-encrusted nail polish.
• Knowing that, if you could, you might also splurge on diamond-encrusted nail polish.
• Spending forty bucks on something frivolous to cheer yourself out of the blues, then realizing you forgot a bill that's due.
• Returning that frivolous thing so you can pay your bill.
• Realizing that you don't really miss the frivolous thing you returned.
• Buying a lipstick that looks so good  in the store only to realize, once you get home, that it makes you look a little scary.
• Doing the same thing with an outfit, only the outfit makes you look scarier. Or desperate, or cheap, or, maybe, just sad.
• Realizing you can't wear the same cute clothes at fifty-something that you did at twenty-something - or even at forty-something.
• Realizing that maybe you should never have worn some of the clothes you did.
• Wishing you had a "significant other" only because you want someone to have sex with, and you're too good for one-night stands.
• Wanting to have sex and having no one to have it with.
• Wondering if that last item was grammatically... what?
• The term "significant other". 
• Wondering if that term makes you the insignificant one.
• Kissing with no sex.

The Loves:

• Kissing with no sex.
• Having really pleasant conversations with someone you'll probably never ever see again.
• A whole day to do whatever you want.
• Knowing what it is I want to do for a whole day.
• Watching a comedian that makes me laugh so hard my stomach hurts.
• When I visit family and my toddler nephew runs screaming for the door the minute he hears my voice.
• That big, nasty chocolate-and-slobber kiss I get on my ear from my nephew.
• Having a really cute stranger flirt with me, even if I'm never going to see him again and there was no chance that, if I did, anything would come of the flirting.
• Waking up too fast because I think it's a Monday when, really, it's Sunday and I can go right back to sleep.
• Making a CD of that one really good song so I can play it on loop and dance like a maniac if I want to.
• Dancing like a maniac to that one really good song.
• That first perfect cup of coffee first thing in the morning.
• Any cup of coffee first thing in the morning.
• When I wake up with breath so fresh that I wish I had someone to roll over and kiss without throwing their body into shock.
• That one special guy friend I can talk to about any and every thing.
• That one special guy friend who makes me feel beautiful and isn't going to ever (say he wants to) sleep with me.
• Reading a book so good that I adopt the characters as imaginary friends for the rest of my life.
• Writers who write so well that I swear I can hear them telling the story inside my own head.
• Falling in love with the characters I write about.
• Remembering something about a loved one that makes me break into a big smile.
• Knowing that there is a person out there who is going to meet me and make me fall as in love with them as they will be with me.
• Hope.
• Dreams.
• Goals.
• Beating the odds.
• Being here.
• Being me.
• Having so many more "Loves" that I will have to continue this at another time.

Peace

--Free