Five Words

Joanna at The Fifty Factor, had a fun post the other day. She was given five words by another blogger, and then had to post what each of those words meant to her. In turn, she would give five different words to any other bloggers who were interested in playing along. The point is to get to know someone by their definition/interpretation of the words. Of course I was interested in playing! These are the five words Joanna gave me:


Music

I can't imagine a day without music. I listen to it anywhere and everywhere that I can. I enjoy singing along (badly) and dancing (also badly) and as long as I'm not disturbing anyone else, I like it loud. I also like to go to concerts and scream and cheer until I'm hoarse.

My taste in music is pretty eclectic. I spend most of my time listening to Alternative Rock and 80's music, but my playlist also includes Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, The Glen Miller Orchestra, Bach, Mozart, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Randy Travis, Garth Brooks, a little bit of rap and a little bit of jazz.

Music can have strong emotional connections for me, as well. Two songs, in particular, are difficult for me to listen to without getting choked up. I Knew I Loved You by Savage Garden is the first. It was popular at the time my daughter was in the NICU and I couldn't hear it without seeing her tiny little face in my mind. I'm sure it was meant to be a love song of the traditional sort, but the line "I knew I loved you before I met you" certainly applies to the way I felt about my children even before they were born. The second song is The Corner by Staind. I can't say for certain what the lyrics are supposed to be about, but they tell the story of my brother in law, Gordy, remarkably well. He was legally blind and spent most of his adult life moving from place to place. He had a pretty rough life but eventually found a house in a neighborhood that felt like home for him. He lived there for 10 months before being killed in a suspicious fire.


Horror

I love this one (Joanna, you know me so well!). The first person that comes to mind when I think of horror is my favorite author, Stephen King. I've read nearly every one of his books and seen all of the movie adaptations. My dad is a big Stephen King fan and got me hooked when I was a teenager. He collects the hard cover copies while I prefer paperbacks.

The Stand and It are my favorite books, but I'm hard pressed to choose a favorite movie version of one of his works. The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, The Stand, The Shining.....I really can't decide.


Home

I blog about my home often, so you know that home means everything to me. In the twenty years that we've been married, we've lived in four different places. Two of them were apartments and two of them were houses, but they were all "home" when we lived in them.

Home, to me, is more that four walls and a roof, it's about the place memories are made. The place you talk about your day, share meals together, sing, dance, laugh and sometimes cry. It's where nobody minds if you wear the shirt with holes in it because it's comfortable. It's the place that even the smallest victories are celebrated and the disappointments are made easier to handle with hugs and sometimes chocolate chip cookies. It's where everyone loves you just because you're you.


Growth

I had to give this word a lot more thought than the others. Really, the first thing I think of when I hear the word growth is the growth of my kids. I told you recently that my daughter sprouted up about 4 inches over the summer. My son is done growing, I think. He's 16 so I don't expect him to get much taller. He's 5'11" and weighs about 150 pounds. His growth is more in the form of muscle development. He works out a lot for football and can now press 500 pounds on the leg press.


Contentment

There are many things I don't have that I wish I did. An oceanfront home, millions of dollars, a brand new SUV, a new pair of socks for every day of the year (I love the feeling of new socks), a best selling novel.....I could go on and on. I may never have any of those things, but they're not all that important anyway. The things I do have, a happy marriage, two healthy children, a nice home....these are the things that matter and make me feel content with my life. Contentment is like happiness, it's not about having what you want, it's about wanting what you have. And I do.

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If you would like like to play along, too, let me know in the comment section or by sending an email to thisstopwilloughby@yahoo.com and I'll send you five words of your own! Be sure to leave me an email address to send them to!