Folded towels. I know it's stupid, but I can't help it, and I will come out of the towel closet right now, and say I love a well-folded towel. When my husband gets to the dryer before me and folds them first, I wait until he's not looking, then refold them all because he doesn't care about towel-folding and I do, and I know it's too trivial a thing to even mention. But I can't bear to see edges showing, and I like them to be all the same size when folded, all stacked neatly on their shelf. When I go to someone else's house and use their bathroom and see towels like that, I think WOW--now THERE'S good towel. I know it's odd, I know it doesn't matter how towels get folded, but I don't care...a well-folded towel just makes me feel good inside, like all's well with the world. Maybe I've been possessed by a demon who's a fan of Martha Stewart, who knows? But meanwhile my towels look gooooood.....

Weird, or perhaps not: the day you ask this is the very day the final paperwork arrived from my mother's estate. She's been gone over four years now, with my father, brother, and oldest sister, all my grandparents and aunts and uncles, every one. Now the house I was born in, grew up in, and went back to every Christmas, is gone as well. I miss the feel of it, the smell of it, the return to childhood every time I stepped through that door. It was hard, but I said goodbye. Home is where the heart is. I've got a sweet husband, three kids, and enough good fortune to keep me smiling... my heart's fine. Home's right here.

I studied Literature at college, so I have whole passages and epic poems carved into my brain: Tennyson's Lady of Shallot, Poe's Raven, Goethe's Der Erlkonig, and a dozen of Rimbaud's poems, I can rattle them off for you... then of course I still know almost every song that hit the charts during my growing up years between 1970-1985, and as a parent I know all the Disney songs too, and very likely all their screenplays as well ("Once upon a time there lived...")

 
What I wish I could learn by heart? Mobile phone numbers for my husband and daughter, so I wouldn't need the speed dial in an emergency. Doctor appointments...what I'm supposed to be doing today. Where I put my glasses. All these passwords I need for the computer.... oh boy. The 40's have their moments. Unfortunately, I'm forgetting them all as they happen.