Boy, this is a little bit hard! I’d say that my dining room is currently one of my favorites because of my new windows. The light from those is making me awfully happy! But that’s really more about the windows than it is about the dining room itself. Probably my favorite room is the bedroom…
AHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! No. I am quite un-spontaneous. Occasionally I will do something spontaneous, but that is certainly not the undercurrent of my life. I like to plan things. I like to prepare. I like to know what’s going to happen. I like to decide things ahead of time. In many ways, this is a very helpful…
That would depend a lot on the age we’re thinking of here. In my preschool years, I think “crabby” would probably be the top word. I don’t know quite why, but I went through a stage of being quite the opposite of cheerful. (At this point, my parents could never have envisioned me owning a…
Yes, twice (at least that I know of.) The first time was in 1998, when my car got rear-ended and my airbag didn’t deploy. I didn’t realize my nose was broken until years later, when I finally went to get help for my breathing problems. I had to get it broken again to fix it,…
I am the complete and utter opposite of a night-owl, so in my 42 years, I can only think of one time I stayed up sort-of all night. In 2009, my sister-in-law (Mr. FG’s sister) was pregnant with a baby who’d been diagnosed with Trisomy-18. Babies with T-18 often don’t make it to delivery, and…
Well, the obvious choice is a book about some topic related to saving money. I feel passionate about contentment and thankfulness too, though, so I imagine I could write at least a small book on the topic. I would never in a million years consider writing anything but non-fiction, though. I don’t like thinking up…
In my 42 years, there have been so many times that people have helped me! I could probably fill a book with stories. But I’ll pick just one. When I was pregnant (and sick!) with Sonia, I was struggling to keep up with housework + 2 kids + trying to keep teaching piano (a necessary…
I read this and thought, “well, this will be a bit of a list!” I don’t think of myself as an overly nervous person, but I can still think of a number of things that fry my nerves. being alone in front of a big group of people Singing in a choir or playing in…
As I was chatting about this with Zoe while I was looking over my list of prompts, I think I figured out a theme with things that drive me crazy: inefficiency/unnecessary slowness. There is some slowness that I understand; children do a lot of things slowly as they are learning, and that doesn’t drive me…
This is a little odd, but the first thing that popped into my head was: a camper, especially one of those huge stand-alone type (as opposed to a pop-up tent camper). Campers are so big and so expensive, and most people only use them for a small fraction of the year. The rest of the…
In the early 90s, my aunt, who had three young children, got pregnant with twins. She didn’t have hyperemesis, but she was, understandably, having a rough time. So for most of her pregnancy, my sister and I went over for the day once a week to help clean and do laundry and childcare. (A thing…
This goes with a time when I felt un-included and out of place. When Lisey was a baby, I went to a shower (bridal? baby? I have no recollection) and I felt extremely out of place. Most of the other moms there were older, much more well-off, and had kids that went to a private…
A list of my favorite smells would be so much easier! Sounds are going to require more thinking for me. my kids’ laughter the crunch of fall leaves under my feet running water in a creek or brook a knife slicing through fresh, crusty homemade bread the bubble of brewing coffee strings, especially a cello,…
Ever since I can remember, I always wanted to grow up and be a wife and a mom. However, one can’t exactly bank on that, because who can guarantee marriage? Or children, for that matter? So in terms of a career, I first thought that I wanted to be a music major (either in piano…
Let’s see. Cleanliness/order My mom is very neat and tidy; she does not leave messes and she cleans her house from top to bottom on a regular basis. I am not a very messy person, but compared to my mom, I am something of a slob. Punctuality My mom really, really likes to be on…
When I was growing up, my family didn’t really participate in Halloween, so I don’t have a lot to draw on here. I did dress up as Pippi Longstocking once, but I can’t remember much else in the way of childhood costumes. However, the last few years, Mr. FG and I have been doing couple…
My parents are not big beach people, so I don’t have a lot of childhood beach memories! My first recollection of the ocean is from a trip we took with my aunt and uncle. I think it was a day trip, and I remember being pretty amazed at how you could stand at the edge…
None. Well, basically none. I did do gymnastics for a number of years, but when my sister and I got to the point where the next step was to join a team and go to meets, we decided to quit rather than make that commitment. Other than that, I did no formal sports as a…
Generally speaking, I have pretty good feelings about hospitals and I think there are four reasons for this. One Nothing truly terrible has happened to me at a hospital. I’ve mainly been there to have babies or to have minor surgeries, none of which were for anything life-threatening. So, I don’t have any traumatizing memories…
I definitely do not love going to the dentist. On the other hand, I am not terrified of going to the dentist. I know some people basically have to be sedated in order to have their teeth worked on, and my distaste for dental appointments is not at that level (mercifully!) I don’t really know…
There are four of us, and I’m the second-born. In birth order, there’s my older brother, me, my younger sister, and then my younger brother. I am the most similar to my younger brother, both in looks and in personality. We look more like my mom’s side of the family, while the other two siblings…
Two times come to mind, actually. 1. Too much vinegar Several years ago, I tried a recipe from the ATK Quick Family Cookbook for fish in foil packets with rice, and I think there was a typo when it came to the vinegar measurements. It called for something like a cup of vinegar, and unfortunately,…
In the year 2030, my kids will be 31, 29, 26, and 24. So I imagine that I will be an empty-nester. And I will most certainly be done homeschooling; I’ve only got a few more years left of that. I hope to have my nursing degree long before 10 years are up, so hopefully…
Yep. In 1998, I was driving to a Saturday shift at Nordstrom, and I got rear-ended. My car got totaled and my nose got broken, but mostly I was ok. As evidence of this, my main memory is sitting on the side of the highway, crying and saying, “I don’t have money for a new…
Oooh, this is really not my favorite thing to do. At all. I know there are people in the world who adore the stage and who really come alive in front of an audience. I find this to be utterly unrelatable. It’s not that I’m a supremely private person (hello, I am a blogger!). It’s…
Math. Definitely math. For starters, I don’t enjoy math. Words are so much more fun than numbers! Plus, I’m not a detail-oriented person, and in math, there are a lot (a lot) of details. You miss one comma or bracket or negative sign and poof, the entire problem is wrong. Words are so much more…
Easy for me to decide: memoirs! No matter the genre I’m reading, I like it to be realistic. I’m not into sci-fi or fantasy; I want a story that could be real, even if it’s not. I also enjoy it if my books can teach me something or provide some useful takeaways. Memoirs happen to…
Not really! I think the closest I ever came to this was back in 1998. Mr. FG and I were at the mall one night, and Stevie Wonder came walking by. We left him alone, so I didn’t actually meet him. But there was a guy in the mall who realized who had walked by,…
I was 22 when I found out I needed to have my wisdom teeth removed. Aaaaaand I was pregnant with Lisey. So, my options were: wait until after she was born, get general anesthesia, pump and dump for 48 hours, and feed Lisey formula get the teeth out while pregnant, using local anesthesia Dealing with…
The official definition of a hobby is: An activity done regularly in one’s leisure time for pleasure. By this definition, I have a number of hobbies and this blog is one of them. (The Frugal Girl earns money. This blog earns exactly $0, so I consider it to be just a fun side project.) Other…
