1. The Sun. Which is to say, sunbathing. Which is to say that yes, in about three years I’m going to look like a Slim Jim  (I used to say ten years, but living in this desert climate is accelerating the process). Or, moving to # 2, perhaps a Pudgy Jim:

2. Cheese. Pretty much all kinds of cheese. I’m not a snob.  You want to slap some Kraft American Singles on a saltine? I’m as happy with that as I am with the stinkiest, expensivest, smells-like-old-feet cheese you can find.  An ideal dinner for me would be some crackery type object, a few slices of some kind of dairy product, and maybe some tomato or avocado.  Deeelish.

3. Jujyfruits. Those sticky jelly candies in the shape of “fruit” that come in colors seldom found in nature? Love ’em.  In fact, jujyfruits are one of the primary reasons I go to the movies. Yes, this kind of candy sticks to teeth, dental work, and the roof of your mouth, but that’s a small price to pay for the sugary bone-jarring rush that eating an entire box will produce. Not that I’ve ever eaten an entire box. I’m just saying that if one did eat an entire box, one might be almost wobbly kneed from sugar.

4. Twitter. Like I’ve said, I used to have a facebook problem, but twitter cured it. I tried to cure my twitter problem with tumblr but I think I’m too old and unhip to tumble. Plus with both tumblr and flickr all I can think about is what happened to the damn “e?”  So it’s just twitter twitter twitter. 140 characters AND you get the E.  What a deal.

5. Bacon. Or, as we call it chez moi, meat candy. Why yes, that’s right, I do live in a Muslim country, which means I have to do the walk of shame in the grocery store: in the back, to the pork room.  You’d think there’d be a whole line: pork room, porn room, likker room.  But nah, it’s just pork. And bacon tastes all the more amazing for being vaguely illicit. (Doesn’t everything? I swear, if I could make my kids think that green vegetables were illegal, they’d be downing broccoli like there was no tomorrow.)

6. Gin and tonics. I love a glass of wine, and a neighbor in our building makes seriously brilliant fancy cocktails (French 75 anyone?), but the G&T is like the black of liquor. Goes with everything, always appropriate, never goes out of style. If linen trousers were a drink, they’d be a G&T.

7. Nice sheets. I’m a high thread count snob. I don’t go quite as far as ironing my sheets (although I have to say that sleeping on ironed sheets is a truly significant experience), but a high thread count matters. I can spend hours wandering through the linen sections (of Marshalls, TJ Max, and Filenes–because I love high thread count but I’m also cheap).  Last December, shopping with my sister in the big boxes of New Jersey, I found some gorgeous blue sheets, the color of ink or deep oceans. Bliss. Makes me sleepy just to think about it.

8. Singing loudly in the car. I have a terrible voice. I couldn’t carry a tune if you put it in a basket for me. So when I’m alone in the car, I bellow sing. I figure if I sing loudly enough, the horrifying Abu Dhabi drivers will hear me coming and not ram into me.

9. Cookies. I can resist chocolate, cake, pie, ice cream. But pretty much any kind of cookie spells death to my waistline. I think it’s because a cookie doesn’t require commitment. You can have just one…and then one…and then one… You don’t have to sit down with a plate and a fork; you can just stand at the cupboard and graze.  And grazing, as we all know, is completely calorie free.

10. Shampoo. The water that comes out of the taps here is desalinated, which, after a while, helps one’s hair to resemble something closer to hay than hair.  Or at least that’s what I tell myself as I cruise the aisles of fancy-shmancy shampoos. My latest obsession, other than Kiehl’s Amino Acid shampoo (which smells deliciously of coconut), is Phyto, from France. After using their shampoo for color treated hair, I totally look like the model in their ads. (And no, I received no product swag as a result of this post. Dang it.)