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…
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…
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…
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…
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….
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 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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
I really love personal stories. As you probably know, I’ve been on a medical memoir reading binge for the last few months. Memoirs in general really scratch my “personal story” itch, of course, because memoirs ARE a personal story! But inside these medical memoirs, my favorite parts are the patient stories. I love to read…
I don’t know if this is a universal experience, but it’s pretty consistent for me: when I am feeling really mad or really sad/discouraged, at that moment, I find myself thinking that I will feel this way forever. Like, “I will never calm down from this. I will never feel ok.” I feel pretty silly…
I can’t think of a whole lotta things I’ve bought that I’ve regretted. This is probably because I tend to think very long and hard before I buy something (sometimes too long and hard!) If you had asked me this about ten years ago, I might have said, “this house”. We sold and bought at…
I don’t know if “doubt” is the right word, because I feel nearly 100% sure about this. So, there is a company I recently heard of, called Black Oxygen Organics. It’s an MLM-style company, and basically, they sell glorified dirt. Their products are made from “fulvic acid-rich mud”, found somewhere in Canada. They say, among…
This is probably because of the family I grew up in, but I generally think that I am capable of almost anything I put my mind to. I don’t think my parents said this in so many words, but it was sort of in the air in my childhood home; this idea that with effort,…
When I first read this prompt, I took it to be asking, “What feeds your soul?” Then I wondered if it was instead referring to actual food; but since soul food is a particular Southern cuisine, I discarded that idea. So, what feeds my soul? faith encouragement from other Christians reminders of truth from fellow…
I do not even know where to go with this prompt; the options are endless! For starters, my inspiration for what? And even if I choose a “what”, then there are multiple sources of inspiration for that “what”. Maybe I’ll start with something more specific: what’s a source of my inspiration for blogging? The dictionary…
Hmm. How about a bulleted list? some typos/grammar issues (like when people write “viola” instead of “voila”. It makes the sentence so funny! Or when a sign says something like: We sell “fresh” food. Taking the quotation marks literally makes the sign humorous.) really bad singing really bad instrumental music (like some of those middle…
There are exceptions, of course. But generally speaking, I read a devotional out loud to Mr. FG (New Morning Mercies). I do not pay attention that well when someone reads to me, so it works better if I’m the reader. Then one of us prays (we alternate days). After that, we either go for a…
Helping people. No matter which personality profile I use (Enneagram, Myers-Briggs, etc.), I always end up in a category that likes to be a helper. Sometimes my personality type is actually called “The Helper”. I’m not a take-charge-and-lead type of person (too much responsibility!) but I do get a lot of joy out of being…
As you all know, I’m working on getting my nursing degree, with the thought that I’d probably like to work in the NICU, labor and delivery, or mother and baby care. However! I want to stay open about what type of nursing I will do. I know that it can be hard to find openings…
I wish that I could be good at being spontaneous. I am really, really, really not good at spontaneity. And this is even more true if the spontaneity is coming at me from someone else. Sometimes, even when it seems like I’m being spontaneous, I’m actually not. For instance, sometimes I “spontaneously” suggest an after-dinner…
I feel frustrated when people take things too personally by putting the worst construction on someone else’s words or actions. If you’ve barely seen someone all day, you could say, “Wow, that person ignored me all day.” Or you could think, “Wow, this person was so busy, I barely saw them today.” ____ In another…
Sometimes these prompts are not enough to warrant a whole post, so here’s a roundup of some short ones! How my career makes me feel Gonna go with blogging here: it makes me feel happy. The fact that I can sit here in my house and type things that make a difference in other people’s…
