I was waxing my way through Summer Pierre’s fab blog called An Accident of Hope (gotta love it), when I mired down in the post “30 Things I Feel Oddly Passionate About.” Of course that got me to wondering, what would be tops on my own list of odd passions? Of course I’m passionate about my family, art, respect, and a crucial pair of gladiator sandals from Anthropologie, but those hardly qualify as odd. And I’m passionate about things like open cabinet doors, spiders skittering towards my legs, and combing my hair before answering the phone, but I’m just going to go ahead and file those under OCD. When it comes to the quirkiness that makes me me and makes you you, what are the defining idiosyncrises? Shall we give it a look?

1. There are certain songs that MUST be danced to! Cases in point: “Love Shack” and “Do You Love Me?”

2. Dancing and love should always be unabashed.

3. Cooking is the most fun when done in groups. Remember The Four Seasons? (Adultery optional)

4. Smashed and reconfigured stuff. There’s cool treasure in parking lots.

5. Looking through someone else’s eyes.

6. Travel. Anywhere. Now.

7. The freedom of silence in a land where you don’t know the language.

8. Eye communication. Even when you’re only determining the ripeness of a pear, the connection is almost like sex.

9. Opening my arms and my breath and my soul to a sudden breeze.

10. Gregorian Chants, The Prayer Cycle, Todd Rundgren, Sonya Kitchell, and Reel Big Fish singing “Come on Eileen.”

11. Watching trees whisper.

12. Peeling paint finishes that bare layers of color indicative of past lives, particularly in rural Greece.

13. Flowers. Shape, hue, scent, impermanence.

14. Thich Nhat Hahn.

15. Quentin Compson.

16. Color, and the absence of color.

17. Clean bodies on clean sheets.

19. Panera’s Tomato Basil Soup with Asiago Cheese Croutons, which they have made the horrendous error of discontinuing for the summer season. Who doesn’t think “tomatoes” in summer???

20. Kitties pummeling my tummy while I watch the Food Network.

21. Riding around with my top down. Car top. Hah.

22. Menopause! Why, why why?

23. Overthinking 🙂 Of course I don’t call it that.

24. Ruth Gordon in Harold and Maude: my idol for 37 years and counting.

And you?