This is a Story About Thursday

As long as I can remember is as long as I have hated Thursday. (Well, not quite, but that doesn't come until later in the story.) Thursday was as long as I could stand of a week before it was Friday. Friday wasn't the weedend proper, but it tickled with anticipation of the weekend. Thursday was drab. It wasn't ticklish, and it only mocked the fact that it wasn't Friday yet. Furthermore, Thursday was piano lessons with Mrs. Brown*, who made me cry on more than one occasion, smelled musty, and ate a tootsie pop during one lesson in the most awkward manner known to man. (Who cuts off the stick and puts the whole thing in their mouth anyway?) She was small framed, gray haired, about infinity years old, and probably still is.

Then one year at college my roommates and I decided to go to the campus latin dance every week. It was on Thursday. Suddenly and had something to look forward to on Thursday. (That is the part where I started to stop hating Thursday). When I left college and stopped dancing I would still feel all dance-y on Thursdays and it wasn't so bad. But enough Thursdays without actually dancin' it up and the dancy feeling sort of wore off.

Just when Thursdays were starting to feel sort of drab again, Thursday hit a stroke of luck. One Thursday one September I started dating this really great guy. A week later, Thursday again, he smooched me for the first time. It wasn't long before we were married. And so it was that Thursday won a teeny little place in my heart.

It is Thursday again. It has been a wee bit more than 4 years since those important Thursdays. It's been even longer since I've been dancing. After 4 years of fairly ordinary Thursdays they are starting to feel a bit run of the mill again. As a matter of fact today felt an awful lot like one of those old "I hate Thursday" kind of a Thursdays. I decided I had better do something about it because frankly, I sort of liked it when I liked Thursday. And thus, I give you, Things I Like Thursday. Yeah, it's got that cheesy alliteration thing going for it, which is one of those things I don't really know how I feel about (is it cute, or just hokey?) but it's not my fault that Thursday is such a downer of a day, and what better to remedy that with than things I like. I'd like to say that I'll be doing this every Thursday, but let's face it. I'll probably forget. I also don't really want to make it one of those things where I feel obligated to write eleven things, or keep it to just three or something. This is a celebration of things I like. That's it. I'd love to hear about what kind of things you are liking too, so um...tell me. What do you like?


 Here's what I like.

*Soweto Gospel Choir. Ok, this is pretty nerdy, but one of my old roommates and I used to make all these brilliant plans to travel, mostly to Africa. The Soweto Gospel Choir came to our college that year and we went to the concert together and it was stellar. I mean Stellar with a capital S. She posted "Thina Simnqobil", a song of theirs, on my facebook today and it really lifted my mood. That is one thing I really love about most music I hear that comes from Africa. You cannot listen to it and not feel better.

* Eva Cassidy's Wade in the Water. In my head I got from African to Gospel, which is a pretty natural succession, and this song in particular stuck in my head. It is a great song, and Eva is magical. If you don't know about her you should go listen to anything you can get your hands on that she sings. I mean it.

*Trying new recipes. I just like exploring what new things taste like. Today  I made a pumpkin bean soup that turned out to be super easy and a nice warm thing in my tummy. I added a decent amount of lime juice to my bowl as it recommends serving it with lime wedges and I'm a bit of a lime addict.

*Limes. See above.

*Our futon. We have been living here for 2 months and just got something to sit on other than folding chairs. We had this magnificent(ly) old loveseat in our old place, but for lack of space we left it behind and decided we would just look for another second hand sofa. Well, we got here and the apartments made us all paranoid about bed bugs so we didn't want to get something used unless we knew where it came from, plus around here you have to be careful about finding something that comes from a non-smoking household. We don't really have the budget for a new couch, and we didn't want to get something new since odds are good the kids would just thrash it. So we've been without for 2 months and I was getting pretty sick of it. I convinced Martell to let us check out some couches on craigslist, and the day before we were going to go look at our options I got an email from a woman at church about a futon they were trying to get rid of to anyone who wanted it. For free. Hooray! I love having something to sit on. I love that it's not a camp chair. I love how much more put together my living room feels now. It is a thing I like.

Ok, now it's your turn. Tell me what you like.

*I thought seriously about changing this name to protect the innocent, but as it happens, I forgot to before I published this post. Also, I kind of figure that "Mrs. Brown" is not likely to be distinguishing enough for anyone to  stalk her or anything creepy. Since, you know, she's still infinity years old.