Conversely (see previous entry), here’s a post about some of the things I love about my mom. I was just inspired to do such a list because I’m cleaning my apartment (yes, it does happen!) and one of the things I found was a St. Valentine’s Day card Mom sent me this year. It was the only card I got for V-day, and I appreciate the thought she put into deciding, “Hey, I bet my daughter would like a card on Valentine’s.” She reads this blog, so, um, hi Mom! Thanks!

• She sends me cards for my birthday and random holidays. I love getting little cards because they’re such a nice surprise in the mail. I’ll be shuffling through crap mailers and junk mail, when out pops this pretty envelope and I know right away that Mom’s being sweet again. :)
• She puts quotation marks around “lots” of stuff. I think this is one of her little quirks because I usually don’t see a need for the quotes, but there they are anyway, hanging proudly around her letters. For example, in the V-day card, she asked me to eat a big “chocolate” for her. I have no idea why “chocolate” is quoted, as if it were some secret word meaning something entirely different, but I think it’s cute anyway. Maybe my mom’s actually a spy for some secret organization, and she’s trying to see if I’m also a spy by using codewords that only a fellow spy would know. …Oh crap, what if I’ve just given away her secret??
• She gets excited over the weirdest stuff. Seriously, the woman can get a bag of fish poop delivered in the mail and be tickled. She’s big into plants, like that’s-her-only-hobby big into it, and so she orders all kinds of things that are apparently useful with houseplants. Fish poop, as I like to call it, and fish emulsion as those stiff companies like to call it, is one of those things.
• When I come home for a few days, she offers to fix me anything I want to eat. I can’t get off the couch to fix myself a sandwich, because she’ll make it for me and also bring me a coke, chips, and fruit salad to boot.
• She put up with little kids for nearly three decades. That’s deserving of my respect just because little kids can get effing annoying after only a few hours. Most parents only have to deal with their own kids for a few years before they grow up into less annoying creatures, but my mom was an elementary school teacher before she retired and therefore had to deal with all kinds of icky children day in and day out.
• We have matching rain boots. When I ordered my multi-colored, flowered rain boots online and brought them home for a rainy weekend, Mom fell in love with them and wanted her own pair as a Mother’s Day gift. I had to oblige her, because picturing my tiny mother stomping around out in the rain, making sure her babies (read: plants) get enough of a bath, was just too cute.
• To this day, she won’t let me do my own laundry. Whenever I come home from college, I always bring a lot of dirty clothes with me, because I love doing my laundry for free in machines that don’t do a half-assed job. I’d be perfectly willing to wash my own clothes, as I don’t mind doing it, but Mom always makes me deposit my basket beside the washer and dryer and then leave it alone. She takes it over from me and actually stops me if I try to wash things myself. Maybe she’s overly protective of her machines, or is worried I’ll do tiny little loads and waste water, I don’t know, but it’s nice not having to do the laundry myself.
• She used my waterbed at home as an incubator for her sprouting plants. She apparently set her seed trays (which she assured me wouldn’t leak) all around my toasty waterbed one winter in order to help the seeds germinate. Some parents convert their left-the-nest children’s rooms into offices or spare bedrooms, but not my mom: my bedroom becomes a plant nursery when I’m away.