I’ve written before about how when I was 18, my family and I took a road trip from the east coast over to Banff, Canada. On one day of our trip, we took a hike at Lake Louise. It was July, but at the top of the hike up the mountain, it was so cold…
A time you felt out of place
When I get home, the first thing I do is:
I take off my shoes. I really, really dislike wearing shoes. And I’m not a fan of wearing socks either unless the house is really cold. So, one of the first things I do when I get in the house is kick off my shoes and take off my socks. I’m not quite sure why…
How important are clothes to you?
I think clothes are medium-important to me. If one end of the spectrum would be me wearing ratty sweats every day and the other end of the spectrum would be me dressed to the nines every day…I fall smack-dab in the middle. I do get dressed every day in the sense that I shower, do…
Have you ever been addicted to anything?
Have you ever been addicted to anything, or worried that you were? Have you ever spent too much time and effort on something that was a distraction from your real goals? Tellabout it. I have not ever actually been physically addicted to anything. Granted, I haven’t tried very many things that could become addictive! I…
Home Sweet Home
When you’re away from home, what person, thing, or place do you miss the most? Hmm. I’m gonna go with, “thing”. And that would be: my bed. I love, love, love my bed! It’s a king-size Luxi mattress and it is the most comfortable thing in the world. The Luxi lets you arrange the mattress…
What’s your learning style?
The prompt is a rather expanded question today: What’s your learning style? Do you prefer learning in agroup and in an interactive setting? Or one-on-one? Do youretain information best through lectures, or visuals, or simplyby reading books? In general, I do my best learning when I can see something. And I do my worst learning…
Are you good at what you do?
Uh, this is a very broad question because I do a lot of different things! I suppose in the U.S., we usually use this “what you do” phrase to refer to paid work. So for me, that would be blogging. I think I’m good at some parts of blogging and not very good at other…
The last place you went
At the time of this writing: to a funeral. The wife of Mr. FG’s youth group leader (from years ago, obviously!) passed away from leukemia, and since the funeral was held fairly locally, he and I both went. I’d met the youth group leader/pastor a couple of times before, but I had never met his…
A bullet you didn’t dodge
Shortly after we bought our current minivan (in 2012), Mr. FG’s company had a work party at Six Flags. We initially parked pretty far back, but at some point during the day, I had to go back to the van to get something. On the way, I noticed lots of closer parking places, so I…
A bullet you dodged
When Mr. FG and I were living in our basement apartment, we were busily saving up money for a down-payment on a house. We started looking in the year 2000, and as we shopped, we were starting to get concerned about how much home-buying was going to cost us. (Which is hilarious to me now…
A quote you like
“You don’t have to explain yourself to someone who has never taken the time to get to know you.” Sonia Sabnis This one is particularly useful for anyone who creates content on the internet. People sometimes will come across one post you’ve done, make a snap judgment about you, and then tell you how wrong…
Seven Wonders
Today’s prompt: Khalil Gibran once said that people will never understand one another unless language is reduced to seven words. What would your seven words be? Since I send 800 words out into the world nearly every day, I obviously would not be a fan of a 7-word vocabulary! But I think if I had…
How do you feel about 6:00 am?
Hmm. I would say that my feelings about 6:00 am are generally positive because it’s early in the morning, but not unjustly early. (4:00 am, for example, is an unjustly early time to wake up. I consider that night, not morning!) I love mornings. The fresh start to the day is lovely. And the long…
A time you were surprised at your reaction
Mr. FG is a lifelong Chicago Cubs baseball fan, but when we got married, he’d never been to Wrigley Field. And since we spent the early years of our marriage in a fairly penniless state, we were not about to take a trip there. At one point, though, when we were parents of three kids,…
The furthest you’ve traveled from home
Other than the U.S., I have been to Canada, though mostly in Ontario, which is not crazy far from the east coast of the United States. The summer after I graduated from high school, though, my family drove to Banff, Canada, which is an insanely long drive. So, that feels like the furthest I’ve traveled…
The last thing you searched for online
Well, I was shopping for clothes, which is pretty unusual for me. I get easily bored/frustrated/overwhelmed by clothes shopping, so I either don’t start, or I give up easily. And that is why I just wear the same type of thing over and over again…jeans + long sleeve tee + hoodie. That’s my cold weather…
Something I feel uncertain about
I don’t feel like this all the time, but every now and again, I think things like: What if I get my R.N. and then it turns out that I actually hate being a nurse? What if I hate having hours dictated to me after all these years of self-employment? What if I don’t actually…
Are you good at decision-making?
Well, as I so often say: that depends. But generally speaking, I don’t love the prep work required to make a decision, so I try to get to the decision point as quickly as possible. To me, the best decision is a done decision. I don’t usually take forever to choose a menu item, I’m…
A catch-up
Today is the last day for October prompts, and since I missed a number this week, I thought I’d do a rapid-fire post; short answers for a bunch of small prompts. Where I want to be in five years Well, I hope to be a nurse by then! And I will probably be an empty-nester….
Something that makes me feel better
Going for a walk outside! If I wake up feeling tired, out-of-sorts, and/or anxious, my inclination is to lie in bed and do nothing. But if I make myself get up and go for a walk, I almost always end up feeling better both physically and mentally. I know psychological experts say that physical activity…
My favorite dessert
My favorite desserts almost always have some combo of the following: butter sugar flour chocolate And preferably, the dessert has all four! This excludes a number of sugary things, such as slushees, milkshakes, popsicles, fruity candy, hard candy, gummy candy, Smartees, SweetTarts, and so on. Basically, I would much rather have a brownie than a…
Your favorite outdoor landscape
Boy, I’m not sure! I think there are a number of outdoor landscapes that I enjoy. I think the mountains are beautiful. But I think the same about wooded areas, valleys, lakes, rivers, oceans, and so on. I think I don’t particularly love a brown landscape….southern California is a little too brown for my taste,…
A menial task I don’t mind doing
Laundry! I don’t know for sure why this is, but I have a theory: for the first 2.5 years of my adult life, we lived in a basement apartment, where we had access to the upstairs washer and dryer for one day per week. This was a little challenging with two adults, but exponentially more…
Something I think people appreciate about me
Based on feedback both online and in real life: my cheerful nature. I may have written about this before, but when I was a preschooler, no one would have described me as cheerful. My mom, distressed about my life attitude, actually had me memorize verses from Proverbs about cheerful hearts. Ha. Perhaps it’s because of…
Something I do when I’m sad
Uhhhh, I cry. This seems like a pretty obvious answer, but I suppose there are plenty of people out there who don’t cry when they’re sad! On a spectrum that runs from “easy crier” to “hardly ever cries”, I definitely skew a little toward the “easy crier” end of things. This is particularly true if…
My favorite song right now
It’s one by Taylor Leonhardt, called, “Happy or Whatever“. I’d never heard of her until the most recent episode of The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, where her song, “The Bridge” was featured as the closing tune. I liked the sound of it, so I looked her up, saw that, “Happy or Whatever” was…
The last book you read
I just finished Crying in H Mart, a memoir by Michelle Zauner, which mainly focuses on her relationship with her Korean mom. This summer, it seemed like I saw this book everywhere, so I put it on hold at the library, and it has taken until now for my copy to come in. Luckily, I…
Something I like about this time of year
Ooh, it’s nice I got this prompt in October because this, to me, is one of the best months of the year! What do I like about October? The weather! October is a month where we often don’t need to run either heat or air-conditioning. The summer humidity is not around as much, but you…
Something I love to do in the evenings
I read this one and smiled at the first thing that came to mind: go to bed. I just really like to go to bed. I have never, ever been a night owl, even in my teen years. (A shocking truth: I went to bed at 9:00 pm and got up at 5:00 a.m. for…
Something you can really, truly enjoy
A little while back, reader Kristin commented on a post here and said she wished she was a person who could go through life really enjoying things; she said she thinks she’s too uptight to be very good at that. Kristin and I are virtual twins in a country mouse/city mouse way, so I resonated…
