Lists.

Lists act as either motivators or monsters in my day to day life.

I've never experienced a love/hate relationship with anything like I do with lists. Having a list of "things to do" over the summer agitates me often; yet, I love making lists and getting to cross off an accomplished task. Do you write down easy and hard tasks on your list like I do? That way you can quickly do and check off a lot of the easy things and you feel like you've been more productive than you really have.

I have decided I like fun lists. And to make up for my entire two months of not celebrating anything on the Simple Side, I figured I could make a very condensed list of all the simply wonderful things I have seen and celebrated:

1. The other day I ate stringed cheese. The strung way though. You know, the way you used to eat it when you were a kid; peeling off each individual strand and dangling it into your mouth. That's before you became a busy adult and had to start swallowing the cheese stick whole.

2. It's June. I'm pretty sure I saw someone driving down the highway a few weeks ago with a giant Christmas Tree strapped to the top of their car. I had to admit to myself that I have felt the urge to celebrate Christmas in June before. I hope, if a Christmas urge was what that person was experiencing, that they acted on it.

3. Whilst dogsitting I walked by my neighbors house and found my neighbor with a hose in her hand, graciously spraying a gang of ducks that had decided to congregate in her front yard. Every time I walk by that house now, the sprinklers on and the ducks are playing in it. I hope they get the ducks a slip and slide soon- I'd love to see that.

4. Lake encounters. On an all too boring day, I spontaneously decided to kayak across the lake, float down a river, and dive into the latest "must read" book. I floated peacefully and closed my eyes to embrace the beautiful stillness.... until I realized I had to go to the bathroom and really didn't want to embrace nature in that way. So I paddled back. On another not so exciting day, I found myself worn out after an unwilling visit to the workout center. I'm trying this new thing lately, where I try to do something spontaneous or new to make each day different from the last. I pulled up to the lake, threw off my socks and shoes, and ran with my limbs flailing clumsily in all directions and fell into the mirky water. It was beautiful. 5. Reading Children's Literature with my closest friends. Honestly, this one's going to get it's own blog post some day. But for now, I have to plug it. It's life-giving. And freeing. And laugh worthy. Go try it.

Treks.

Any Treky's out there? I grew up a Star Trek junky thanks to my dad's sci-fi obsession. Being empathetically driven, I thought it was ridiculous Spock's species, the Vulcan's, were robbed of emotion. To live without emotion- no thanks. I thought it was cool that the badges the Enterprise crew wore on their out of style space uniforms, served as walkie-talkies. My number one desire was to fly like Peter Pan, but I always thought a good substitute to flying was to stand on the Enterprises' transportaion deck and sl0wly disappear to find myself on some other ship or planet. I wish travel was that easy.

I trek a lot in life and with all the traveling I do, I secretly wish someone would invent a transportation deck (My other secret wish is that I'll get a letter from Hogwarts informing me I need magical schooling... my owl must have gotten lost, I'm still waiting for my letter). Today it's a roadtrip from California to Texas. A grueling 19 hour drive.

I look out my window and see flat. Did you know the terrain is different depending on which road you take from California to Texas? The road there is much prettier than the road back. Times ten.

Like I said, it's flat. On the celebration side of treking, I've decided terrain is a lot like breakfast food. And I love breakfast food. Sprinkled donuts specifically (in case you ever want to buy me one). Southern California resembles waffles. Hills and valleys. With smog for syrup. What I see as I look out my window is a pancake. Flat land- with no chololate chips or blueberry lumps. Just flat.

Yesterday my traveling companion and I took a little detour to the Grand Canyon. It's probably against Simple Side rules to compare one of the wonders of the world with breakfast food, but if I had to try... it kind of looks like granola with a big hole in the middle. So if you ever find yourself on a road trip, wishing the world would start spinning faster so you could get to your destination sooner, just start picturing the terrain around you as breakfast food... or try to invent a transportation deck. Both are acceptable and both tend to make the time go by faster.