Random memories

So things are still very much day to day.  I could say a lot about how things about going now - how work is driving me crazy when I couldn't care less about it, how it's starting to feel like people are now expecting me to be okay, etc.  Instead, I'm simply going to jot completely random things down about Mom - things she said, things we did, things she liked.  There is a ton of "trivia" that I want to remember.

• She liked plain potato chips only - nothing flavored.
• We both had a distaste for overly flowery, overly fussy ("frou frou") things and would jokingly mock them when out shopping with each other.
• Jimmy Buffet was one of her favorite musicians.
• "Happy Feet" was a movie she loved - even to the point of getting a stuffed Mumble.  I can remember the day it came out on DVD because she had been waiting for it.  I had gotten it for her a lunch as a surprise and had it ready to play when she walked in her door that evening.  She had had a bad day at work and when she heard the movie playing, she thought it was a commercial, remembered the release, and wanted to go get it.  It was fun watching her realize I had it for her.
• She drank her coffee black.  Her Mother's Day gift this year was a Keurig coffee maker, which she absolutely adored.  She often told me how much pleasure it gave her, for which I'm grateful.
• She screamed in the theater during the original showing of ET (when the government agents were searching the house in space suits.)
• She knew how to sail and how to fly a small plane.
• She would fearlessly jump into projects, just like her father did, especially ones of the DIY variety.  Where I'd want to go look things up, do test cuts, and the like, she'd already be applying a saw to things.  
• On a related note, I gave her a couple of power tools she had wanted one Christmas.   The joke thereafter was that I never thought her favorite presents would be from Black and Decker.
• She collected elephants - but only the ones with their trunks up, as she had been told those were lucky.
• She'd always sneeze in multiples.
• When she used my first name and a shortened version of my middle name together, something fun was up.  If she used the full version of both, I was in trouble.
• Peanut butter was an absolute staple for her.
• She hated unloading the dishwasher.
• Keeping a pretty lawn was important to her because it had been important to her parents.
• She hated driving in the rain and didn't like it when I did it, either.
• She'd go through cycles of letting her hair grow out to her shoulders, then cutting it short, and then letting it grow again.  It almost, but not quite, matched the seasons.
• She loved to read and we shared our fantasy collections.
• She liked her fried eggs sunny side up.  I like mine hard, for which she coined the term "frambled" at some point when I was little.

Not a lot for now, but it's been good to think about her.