I'm back today with more answers to the questions you asked in October. Part I here.
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If money was no object, what car would you buy?
Look, I have a confession to make. I don't really care. Is it reliable? Does it have heat, AC, and cruise control? Can I fit it in the tiniest parking spot in the parking garage? Is it an automatic? Then I'll probably take it.
How did you end up in the city where you live?
We moved to Wisconsin for my husband's job. We had intended on living in the town where the university is. There were a few problems with this. The first is that the grocery store in the town closed a couple of years after we moved there. Not having a grocery store is challenging for us. It looks like an ALDI will be opening in the town next year, but it hasn't had a grocery store for years. Meanwhile, I had a really hard time meeting people in town. The town/gown relationship is testy at best and it was even hard for me to find volunteer opportunities. We gave up and when we were going to buy a house, we moved to the next town over because it has multiple grocery stores and a much livelier civic life.
Name one thing that you love about yourself.
Wow! I need to interrogate the reasons why this question was so hard for me to answer. I love that when I say I'm going to do something, I do it. I am not particularly internally motivated, but if I tell someone that I'm going to get it done, it will get done.
What are you afraid of?
The usual stuff - dark, enclosed spaces; snakes; heights; death; being buried alive; an underage wizard accidentally turning giant oversized stuffed rabbits into real oversized rabbits; the building falling down when I am on the top floor with no way out; lions and elephants and hippopotamuses just wandering around the world, not enclosed in cages or pens; my husband waking up one day and not knowing who I am; paperwork filled out incorrectly.
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| Not relevant to anything in this post, but look at my beautiful, crazy cat. For you non-cat people, those giant pupils mean she's about to attack. |
Taco or burrito? What kind?
Interesting. I mostly eat bean enchiladas for Mexican food, but if forced to pick a taco or burrito, I'd probably go taco. Vegetarian. Soft corn tortilla. Lots of tomatoes, lettuce, and sour cream. Guac on the side.
Would you rather swim in a pool, lake, river, or ocean?
I can't swim, so chances are that I'm not getting in further than waist level, but in an ideal world I'd like a beachside pool. That way I can swim in the pool, but walk on the beach. The beach would preferably be near a warm body of water, but I'm not particular if that body of water is a lake or an ocean.
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What's something you love about yourself?
That is a hard question! I think I love that I'm standing up for myself more lately and learning - oh so slowly - to let go of the things I can't control.
ReplyDeleteZelda is gorgeous. LOOK AT THOSE EYES.
And I would like to swim in any body of water that is warm. I get cold so easily, so as much as I loved swimming as a kid, I now kinda hate it because I am both wet AND cold. I prefer lakes to anything else for sure, though.
Paperwork being filled out incorrectly is pretty scary :)
I don't mind if the body of water is cold as long as the environment is warm when I get out of the cold water. So, it's fine if the pool is cool, but I want it HOT when I get out!
DeleteWow, that is a hard question. Shouldn't we be able to answer this more easily? I'll have to think about it.
ReplyDeleteI love your answers to the question what are you afraid of, ha ha.
I think we all need to do a bit of self-interrogation over why we don't know what we love about ourselves. It seems like an easy enough thing to say in theory, but I stared at the screen for an absurdly long time thinking about it.
DeleteDon't be afraid of elephants, NGS! They're gentle giants! (And if they aren't don't tell me... my teen ruined dolphins for me by telling me they're sexual predators--which turned out to be true, sadly.)
ReplyDeleteI love my design eye--it makes me good at putting decor, wardrobe, food, etc. together!
Yes, the water is filled with TERRIBLE creatures like dolphins and otters. Egads! I mean, some people do terrible things to other people, so why are surprised other animals sometimes do terrible things?
DeleteHow timely! I just did a whole post answering this question x3 at my place.
ReplyDeleteZelda is gorgeous. I, too, fear incorrect paperwork. Especially regarding healthcare and anything filed at a government office. My #1 fear is ending up with Alzheimer's like my mother.
And I love the idea of all those wild animals wandering around. THINK OF THE KOALAS!
Yes, Nance!! I was dumbfounded by your question because the things you loved about yourself couldn't be acts of service and I love that I care for my husband, my pets, and my community, but those don't count!! Who am I without those things? EGADS! It was so hard I just never commented on that post, but I've been thinking about it a lot!
DeleteI'm with you wrt cars. They are conveyances. Mind you, I would like a backup camera and maybe a heated steering wheel etc. Ours is a 2010, but it does have heated seats.
ReplyDeleteHeated seats and heated steering wheels are fancy! I've never had either. I mean, one of our cars only sort of has heat, so...
DeleteWow, I feel special; two mentions in a row! I am with you on the car front; I just want good gas mileage (or electric if that is an option), four wheel drive since I like to go to the mountains and drive on dirt and up hills (PS right now I do not have it as in the city tiny > 4WD), and if possible it would never break down. So maybe that would be my choice, instead of maintaining it, I will just swap it out every two years so it would always be fresh!
ReplyDeleteWe are follow through twins! I also love that if I say I will do it, I WILL do it. Not to flip this around, but one of my biggest peeves is people who casually agree to things and then don't do them! Follow through/accountability is important to me.
I guess I don't really get too peeved when people don't follow through. Life gets busy, you know? I just pride myself on NOT doing that because it can really inconvenience other people.
DeleteBravo to Kyria for asking the hard questions and to you for answering! Look, I like being me and I wouldn't be anyone else but beyond that I have no answer. That's a sweet present that you have under the tree.
ReplyDeleteShe loves to hang out under the tree and attack us. I love that she's a middle-aged kitty who still plays sometimes! She is my best present!
DeleteOkay, but your list of things that you are afraid of had me actually laughing and spilling my coffee. I love how "paperwork filled out incorrectly" is in the same paragraph as "the building falling down when I am on the top floor with no way out." I do not think that "building falling down" has ever crossed my mind in my life. Maybe I have too much trust in structural engineers. My grandma was very scared of heights and when I lived on the 30th floor in an apartment building, she did not want to visit me.
ReplyDeleteI have a question, what is town/ gown?
As to what Maya said, dolphins are sexual predators AND SO ARE OTTERS. Sorry to be the one to say.
As to your question, well, now I think there is something wrong with me because everyone else is having a hard time answering, and I'm like "I LOVE MYSELF" so clearly I could work on modesty.
So, in college towns, there are people who are not affiliated with the college/university (the town) and the people who are (the gown). If the college or university does a good job of contributing to the local community and integrating services into the city in which it resides, the town/gown relations should be mutually beneficial for everyone. When the college or university does not do a good job, townies can get peeved at the university. Our university has slowly tried to make sure everything students need is on campus, so many of our students literally never go off campus. And that's a big problem because when they DO go off campus they generally behave badly (getting intoxicated, vandalizing, etc.). It's tense over there in that town.
DeleteHa ha ha! We should all be like you, Nicole, and have a list of things we love about ourselves. We do for the other people in our lives - WHY NOT OURSELVES? This is a wakeup call for me, I think.
Otters too?!? I'm crushed.
DeleteWell, I commented on Nance's blog with three non-acts-of-service things I like about myself, so I feel free to say here that I love how much I want to do for others! If I can help out a friend, or bring a laugh, it makes me so happy. Ideally we would have things in both categories, I guess.
ReplyDeleteAlmost all of my things I truly love about myself are acts of service: caring for my husband, my pets, sending birthday cards, being a good gift giver. It was truly challenging coming up with non-acts of service!
DeleteI'm more scared of being in the bottom of the building when it collapses. Maybe being in the top I could ride it all the way down? Although I hate heights. Yoou do have an interesting selection of fears, LOL. The thing I most appreciate about myself is my natural ability to analyse and think through etc which translates to making school and study a breeze, maths easy and I can pull it in to to the work as a substitute for having natural social skills.
ReplyDeleteOh, wow! Having good social skills is truly something to appreciate about yourself!
DeleteSomething that I love about myself.... that IS a hard question. But something that actually ironically popped into my head recently during an interaction in public: I really love that I am friendly. As in, if a person walks past me and we make eye contact, I will always smile. I wave at someone who lets me merge in traffic. I will always hold a door for someone. If I see an older person struggling with the self-checkout, I will ask if they need a hand. If someone's hat falls off the back of the chair in a restaurant and I'm far away but notice it, I will get up and go scoop it up, tap their shoulder and say, Your purse fell! (This happened the other day.) Etc. I feel like there are some people I encounter who are just generally not very friendly. And I am glad that I AM a friendly person. Now, I don't love chit chat and I don't go out of my way to actually befriend everyone or talk to strangers in depth or anything, either. But the small gestures I think can go a long way in making the world a better place, and I'm on it! :)
ReplyDeleteI love my sense of humor and my empathy. I love my eyes (and those thicc corneas, ha). And I have good hair. I don't know what it says about me that I can usually find things I love about myself pretty easily - maybe all the time I spend in therapy, lol.
ReplyDeleteI love about myself that I am a good listener (or so I've been told). I love hearing what others have to say and let them speak their minds. I often get people to tell me things that I find kinda personal, but I hope that means that I seem trustworthy.
ReplyDeleteIt's so interesting to me that people seem to have go-to Mexican food. I know people who will always get the tacos, I am personally a burrito girl and I don't think I've ever ordered enchiladas LOL
I love that you're a good listener! You're also so organized and the keystone to holding our blogging community together. You have got to feel so proud of that!
DeleteOh, gosh, I'm with you. Finding something I love about myself is like trying to take a selfie. Impossible. Truly. I may need to enroll in a class with Nicole and Stephany as teachers...:)
ReplyDeleteI do not have a go-to Mexican meal, either. I preferred the bowls when I ate Chipotle, and a good homemade taco salad is something I like (particularly with chips - usually homemade - mixed in...hmm...haven't had that for a long time! Ponder, ponder...). Out, though, I usually go for veggie fajitas.
Why do we find it so hard to say what we love about ourselves? Especially if it's not service-oriented. I love how I care for my husband and pets, how I send cards and remember birthday, make cookies and deliver dinner when people are sick, etc., but those are all things I do FOR OTHERS. Just what do I love about me outside of service? Ugh. So hard!
DeleteI'm rolling reading your list of fears. Especially: 'paperwork filled out incorrectly.' You are a special kind of nut! 😜
ReplyDeleteYou can't swim? That blows my mind!
I grew up in a cornfield and there were no pools or bodies of water nearby to learn to swim. I actually think that's pretty normal for many midwestern folks!
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