The scent of a flower. A summer fruit. The ancient art of Tarot. Frisky puppies. These are just a few of our current obsessions. Check them out…and then tell us yours!

Marla Cooper

Right now, I’m totally obsessed with the jasmine growing up around my deck. It’s in full bloom and it smells delicious. Just opening the window fills my house with jasmine-scented breezes, like the world’s best candle without the danger of melting my computer keyboard (which I did once, but that’s a whole other story). I also know it won’t last, so I’m trying to enjoy it as much as possible. Every day, I’ve been dragging my wooden steamer chair out to the lawn so I can sit there and write while drinking in the fragrance. And then every evening I drag the wooden steamer chair back so that it doesn’t get soaked by the sprinklers. (Maybe I should figure out the schedule the timer’s on; it would save me a lot of work!)

---

Lisa Q. Mathews

I’m usually what you might call a serial obsessionist. Right now, though, I have several passions firing at once (probably because I have a manuscript deadline). So, in no particular order: I am doing both obedience and agility training with my 6-month old Golden Retriever pup, two nights a week. Farley, it turns out, is plenty agile already, and I am…not. My big plan was to exhaust him  leaping see-saws and running tunnels, but the only one panting and dropping to the rubber-matted floor is moi. Next up: doggy swim team. I’ve also been glued to The Bachelorette (you go, JoJo!) and Red Sox baseball (you’ve seen Fever Pitch, right?), reading heist books, and scarfing Pepperidge Farm Gingerman cookies with chasers of ginger-lemon tea.

---

Kellye Garrett

A better question might be “What am I NOT obsessed with?” As you know from past posts, I love all things reality TV. I’ve been reading way too many P.I. and police mysteries lately. (If you haven’t read Rachel Howzell Hall’s Detective Elouise Norton series, do so immediately.) My niece and nephew turned 2 this week, which has made me even more obsessed with them than usual. But if I had to choose something that might surprise people, I’m a bit obsessed with Tarot cards. I consider myself an advanced beginner, meaning I’m not brave enough to read for strangers, but I secretly love it when a friend asks me to read for them. I have literally spent hours reading up on card meanings, joining Facebook groups and searching for that perfect deck. I’ve bought several decks and gave a few of them away quick before I finally found my two perfect ones: The Golden Universal Tarot Deck and the Eight Coins Tattoo Tarot. They’re both Rider-Waite-Smith clones.  (If you know what that means, you’re probably just as obsessed with Tarot as I am.)

---

Ellen Byron

Cherries. Cherries, cherries, cherries. I have no memory from my youth of any particular interest in cherries. But about twelve years ago, when our daughter was four, I read an article about cherry-picking in the Leona Valley, which is near Palmdale, California. For ten years, this became a treasured family activity – at least for me. Not so much for my husband, who was behind the wheel for an hour and half, driving in the high desert on a road populated by motorcyclists with death wishes and yahoos in pickup trucks.Our daughter is now sixteen and a day trip with her parents is currently her definition of punishment, so we haven’t gone cherry-picking in two years. I miss it terribly, but it did leave me with a passion for cherries that always kicks in at this time of year. In fact, why the heck am I writing right now when I’ve got two pounds of Bing cherries calling to me from my fridge?!

---

Readers, what are YOU obsessed with right now? Share in the comments section below!

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to Chicks on the Case and never miss a post. Just click the button on the top right side of this page and let the fun begin!