julierichmond

I write a lot about my family, so I thought I should introduce them by telling you a little bit about what they love. If I included an accurate list of what they don’t like, (considering that these days we are kind of cranky, given the pandemic, and everything,) you would have to skip dinner to finish. Afterwards, you would be depressed; reading about stranger’s complaints is irritating and you might have more things to your list of what makes you unhappy.

Katy, my seventeen year old, loves data. She wants a scale for Christmas. She writes everything that she eats and tracks all physical activity on an app. She would like a thermometer for Christmas, but that’s just probably because she’s a bit of a hypochondriac. She loves “Call of The Midwife” and “Gray’s Anatomy”. When people ask me what she plans to do with her life, I tell them she wants to go into medicine, which I feel is accurate, given her viewing choices. When I ask her, she says she has no idea. I like my answer better.

Colin loves clothes, sneakers with resale value, cologne that is not sold at CVS, matching socks, and hoodies that cost $200, (I don’t think he calls them hoodies, but it’s too early to ask him, and you know what I mean). When we take a family picture, he looks like a model who we paid to sit with us to make the photo look better.

Sheldon, my husband, loves watching the weather channel. He likes cleaning out the refrigerator while announcing to all within a ten mile radius that he is cleaning out the refrigerator. He regards being stuck at red light as his own personal hell and he loves driving at 2 am when all the red lights change over to blinking yellow, but he also. likes being in bed by 10 so that he can watch the weather channel.

He also loves back rubs, and is sad that one of the casualties of being married for twenty years is I no longer give him thirty minute back rubs using expensive moisturizer. I need the moisturizer for my neck. On special occasions, I will scratch his shoulders if the angle from my hand to his itch doesn’t require I move or disturb Sophie.

Sophie is our dog. She has liver and kidney disease, so her passions these days are simple. She loves sleeping on the sofa on top of Sheldon’s bathrobe. She loves barking at other dogs, small children, teenagers, adults, and trucks from our back yard. If the weather is bad, she will stand in our living room and bark at our cat. Maybe what Sophie loves is the sound of her own voice.

She loves sniffing bushes, grass, and tiny corpses of dead animals, I think. If I sense she’s spotted a dead animal, I do not investigate, but pull on her leash until she follows.

Michael and Maurice, our cats, do not love each other at all, but since I spend so much time on everyone else, I don’t have much to say about them. Both like to have their bellies scratched, and will bite you when they have had enough.

Maurice only has three legs, and has a very large appetite. This probably won’t work out well for him, since he limited support for his expanding belly.

Michael likes to join Sophie and I on walks around the block. He doesn’t actually follow, he usually manages to stay about twenty steps ahead, and moves like he has somewhere to go, and we just happened to be out at the same time.

I love Megan Roup, from The Sculpt Society, and dance cardio workouts in my living room with Sophie watching. I love eating too much one day, and finding out the next that I lost two pounds. (This is rare, and I don’t have an affiliated link). I love the woods, stupid comedies, going somewhere with someone else driving, loud music, Spotify, buttery chardonnay, and my friends. I love being home and thankful we have a home, and enough to pay the mortgage each month.

I’m starting a job next week and working from my dining room. I love shade of blue on the walls of my dining room, which will hopefully inspire me to do great things. I’ve missed work, and I hope I love this job as much as working with students at Quincy College.

I love my family. This whole pandemic thing has allowed me to get to know them really well. After eight months with these people, it is a tiny miracle that my daughter talks to me, even when she isn’t building up to “Can you get me Chipotle”, my son doesn’t squirm when I hug him, and I am considering the possibility that maybe I should give my husband a damn back rub with moisturizer when he gets home.

Tell me what you love.