Mr. Naked on the Roof guy selected the letter “c” for me, with which to compose a creative list of coveted cravings and celebrations and… well, my ten favorite things that start with the letter “c”.

Alliteration has its limits.

In no particular order, I give you:

1. Cookbooks. I love them. I have a fairly large collection of them. See?

I covet more. Particularly a couple of Barefoot Contessa books. I’ve just recently come to realize how great she is. Sometimes I come late to the party.

2. My Canon camera. We have this one and I LOVE IT. It’s so flexible, and relatively easy to use once you mess around with it for a bit. Now, to get all the lenses I covet.

3. Clouds.

I appreciate them more now that I live in the desert. There’s either steel grey skies ready to rain, or bright blue cloudless skies. There’s usually very little in between around here. When I lived back east I used to lay for hours out in the yard, finding shapes in the clouds. I haven’t done that in a long, long time.

4. Steamed Clams.

I only get to eat them when we happen to be on the coast (this pic was taken in Oregon). Throughout my childhood, “steamers” accompanied every lobster dinner we ever had. They’d be soaked in brine and cornmeal so they could eat and plump up before cooking. I’m told my mother used to even eat the raw. Not something I have ever braved, nor do I plan to. There’s always a bit of sandy crunch to them, too – it wouldn’t be the same without a little grit.

5. Cottages. I don’t know if it’s the romantic side of me, or the love of old, unique, non-standard archetecture, or the love of history, or the desire to travel to Europe, or all of the fantasy books and stories I’ve read throughout my life. I’ve just always LOVED the idea of living in a cottage. I mean, look at this. Who wouldn’t want to live somewhere like that?

6. Chocolate Cake. I’m not sure I even need to qualify this one. It’s a no-brainer.

7. Color.

My favorite color is blue. My living room is painted a deep vibrant red. I’d love to paint the rest of my house in vibrant colors, but I think Calvin might protest. He likes things more subtle. I don’t know, I guess I’m tired of desert colors – most of the time I’m surrounded by a variation of beige, brown, more beige, and more brown.

8. Susan Cooper. She is the author of a series of books that I read and re-read and re-re-read during my adolescence, “The Dark is Rising”. From what I can recall, that series was my first introduction into the fantasy realm. It’s an absolute sin that Hollywood totally disrespected her work and the series with this piece of shit.

9. Cats. Particularly, these two:

10. Calvin.

He’s damned hot. Sexy, even. And charming, when he wants to be. And my best friend. And my favorite person. And did I mention hot?

———-

As requested, a picture of the starfish necklace Calvin got me for Christmas:

Our Christmas Day lobster dinner was a lot of fun. We had a full house, which is just how we like it for the holidays. Everybody stuck with the tradition of showing up in their pajamas, which was funny because we didn’t remind anyone. Marie and Michael spread the word just fine:

The table, set for dinner:

Calvin, cooking the lobsters (the puppies are in the cage to keep them away from the BOILING WATER OF DOOM):

Cooked lobsters:

You can’t look at this picture without your mouth watering – all of this bacon went into the baked potato soup:

The very busy stove – rice pilaf, melting butter, baked potato soup, and boiling water to top off the lobster pot:

Almost everyone showed up before 3:00, and we didn’t have dinner until almost 6:30. Everyone shot pool, played darts, gabbed and gabbed and gabbed, watched some TV, indulged in some Christmas Beverage, munched on appetizers, and kept pretty well occupied observing the whole Lobster Killing Process. We stuffed ourselves nearly sick, then after dinner we all played Rock Band.

My kind of Christmas. We hope you all had YOUR kind of Christmas, too!