Step aside, Fraulein Maria.  Brown paper packages tied up with string are excellent, but there are other things that take the cake.  Including, well, cake.  My list of favorite things also includes feelings, events, political treatises, and it can change with a turn of the wind.  In light of the holiday season kickoff, here is what’s currently on offer:

A freshly cleaned litter box, and the cat’s agreement to finally use it…two days later.

A Korean market with a plethora of guavas and cactus pear – even if I first had to get fully naked in the baths next door, with my friends, to discover it.

Friends who remain your friends, even after you have been fully naked together at Korean baths.

Sniffing my t-shirt collar multiple times, with the joyful discovery the rancid smell during Boot Camp is someone else.

Remembering to eat potato chips out of a bowl, not mindlessly reaching into a bag, and then foolishly setting the bag next to the bowl.

Stopping the living room scuffle between the pets before the cat ate the dog.

My new lip liner!  And yes, it leaves me looking exactly as I did before I put it on.

Thanksgiving dinners that allow dogs, even when one of them christens the brand-new kitchen with some pee.

The jewel box keepsakes given to each of us on her eightieth birthday, with her simple handwritten wish: “Blessings, Grandmother.”

The knowledge that I may not live until eighty, but I will have enjoyed a lot of pie.