#theimbroglio

Question-thingy!  I was tagged by tacosaysroar – thanks!

1.  Post the rules  2. Answer the questions the tagged set for you. Write 11 new ones. 3. Tag 11 people. 
 4. Let them know you tagged them.

1. If you had all the money you’d ever need but still had to work, what sort of job would you choose?  Writing, no question.  I used to think it would be more novel writing, but now I think it would be more essay/blog type writing.  So basically I’m rich but I still have my tumblr J

2. Name something that always puts a smile on your face.  My funny kids, my funny friends, texts, Jon Stewart

3. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever gotten?  I’m not sure it was meant as overt advice, but when I was a senior in high school, my mom was driving my friends and I down to Georgia for Spring Break.  In the car, we were playing question-type games. Someone asked everyone to answer the question, “If you could be absolutely anything, guaranteed you’d be able to do/get the applicable schooling/degree and no other obstacles stood in your way, what would you be?”  When it was my mom’s turn to answer, she said something like ‘To be honest, I’ve loved being a teacher, it’s very rewarding, and there were times growing up when I wanted to be different things, but the only thing that I’ve always wanted to be throughout my life is a really good mom. That’s the one thing that always mattered the most to me when thinking about my life, both before and after I became a parent.  And I’ve done that. I’m doing that.  So I’m happy.’  The car was silent for nearly a minute.  Becoming a teenager in the 80s we were bombarded with ideas of breaking the glass ceiling and achieving the previously unachievable in our careers as women in a world where equality was becoming more real.  But my mom’s answer completely changed my thinking about careers and jobs overnight.  Not because I wasn’t qualified to do whatever men could do, or because I didn’t think I could be both a mom and a success in the workplace.  It wasn’t anything like that.  It was the realization that defining yourself by a job someone else has likely created in a trade that probably isn’t saving the world is a fool’s errand.  My kids will always be my greatest achievement.

4. Tell us about your first love.  I love how the answer to this changes as time goes by and I get more and more acquainted with what love is and what it isn’t.  I always had a boyfriend, from sixth grade on. I dated the same guy for a few years in high school.  But I think my best friend from high school, Paul, was my first love.  He was brilliant, and exaggerated, and barely in control, and I don’t think he was romantically attracted to me, but he thought I was the sun and the moon.  He needed me, I needed him, and I really felt not just more complete but better, richer when I was with him. And I’ve always wanted his happiness. The summer between our junior and senior year he went on a student exchange to Portugal, and I felt like I was dying.  I wrote him every week, and got three letters from him in return.  They’ve been among my most prized possessions over the years, along with the page he wrote in my yearbook.  We’ve never even kissed, we married other people, we both have our own kids, and we live on opposite sides of the country.  But I still consider him to be my other half in many ways, and I think he feels the same. 

5. What are you most grateful for? Love, my kids, my friends, my family, and a break whenever I can get it.

6. What do you need in order to fall asleep? Usually just permission from myself.  I fall asleep really fast.  Sometimes if my mind is racing I have to pretend someone is beside me with an arm around me, a leg over me, or a hand on my back as a virtual “You’re okay, I’ve got you.” That’s a little humiliating to write but it’s true.

7. How do you imagine your life 10 years from now?  My goodness, I hope ten years from now I don’t have to imagine what I confessed above and it’s a reality.  I really struggle with how long I’ve had to wait for the happy ending.  And my kids will all be grown and off to college and beyond, so even more so, I really hope there’s someone beside me.

8. What’s the weirdest thing you do when no one’s around? (Keep it clean, friends. Keep it clean.)  In the morning before I leave the house, I take pictures with my phone of the outlet where I had a hair dryer or flat iron plugged in, and the stove top dials if I cooked something for breakfast.  This is to prevent a panic attack later that my house is burning down. 

9. What are you most proud of? My kids and the person I am.  I lead a very simple life but I’m always honest, I always help, and I’m generally a really good human.

10. What’s your current musical preoccupation? (ie, who or what can’t you stop listening to lately?) I really can’t stop listening to the Aloe Blacc song, The Man.

11. If you could travel back in your own timeline—I know, just go with it—who would you visit and what would you tell them?  Do I have to choose just one?  My dad, early on, to show him how things played out over the following decades so he could make changes in behaviors that would have led to better health.  The other one I’m not super comfortable writing about, but in vague terms it would be making sure someone knew they were strong and deserving, not to change the course of things but to give them better defenses to deal with what was coming. 

My questions:

1) Do you like your first name?  Did you ever want it to be something else, and if so, what?

2) What’s one element to your day that you always enjoy?

3) What’s the best thing you make in the kitchen?

4) What were you like in high school?

5) How do you read your dash – most current back to where you left off or do you scroll down to where you left off and read up to most current?

6) Where is your favorite place to vacation?

7) You’re traveling to some place 8 hours away.  Drive or fly?

8) Your absolute favorite meal?

9) Mac or Other?

10) Favorite museum?

11) Hypothetical: Your kid’s fish dies.  Replace it without the child knowing, or acknowledge the passing?