Answers, Issue I

Whoa, Mama! Look at all the questions! I would feign belief that they are because I am *such* a popular girl, but I really know you all want the goods. :) So, here are a few answers to all of your questions. I will have to break it up a bit as to not overwhelm all of my lovely readers with the blah blah blah...

Mimi said...
What do you think is the hardest part of raising boys?

Not sure I can answer this as I have never raised girls and am an only child. I think the hardest part about raising KIDS is the fact that I am so impatient and feel like a constant failure. (*Scoff* Don't hold back now Misty, make sure alllll these poor people come back to hear you whine about your inadequacies.) But maybe, if I had to pick something, I would say that the hardest part is the fear that they will turn out like so many other men I know in not being close to their families. It seems like, in my experience, the woman's extended family gets most of the attention. So it is like girls stay, but boys go away. Anyway, that is what I would pick.

That and not being able to buy the adorable pink frilly outfits at the store. Talk about heart wrenching.

parkingathome said...
Would you rather solve a quadratic equation graphically or algebraically?

Would I rather do a who with a what? Are there calculators and *shudder* numbers involved? Forgive me, fair parkingathome. Math is against my religion and therefore we must never speak of this again.

moo said...
Who's on first?

Hmmm, I would have to say some baseball guy. Go Team?

Stacy said...
Where were you on 9/11?

Playing with Brother, who was about 9 months old at the time. Later that day, I had a dentist appointment that I was terrified to go to because, you know, the world was falling apart. But my mother talked me into going anyway and I told the hygienist about the attacks because she hadn't heard yet. I remember days later listening to the radio and hearing the stories of folks who had escaped the twin towers. I was sitting in my car in a parking lot at the university, bawling like a baby. God. What a horrible time.

MzEll said...
Would you rather read one really great books, or 25 hilarious blog posts?

I would rather read the book, actually. I like to read, yah. And I like to read things I can hold in my hands. I like the aesthetics of reading books. The smell. The feel of the paper. The hours of work to tell one story that I can hold in my hands. It is like god.

Saly said...
HI! How do you think your parenting method would differ (if at all) if you had a baby girl. Why?How did Hurricane Katrina affect your personally?Do you think we would be friends outside of blogland??

Parenting of a girl: I am already a paranoid freak, but I think a girl would make me more so. Just because, statistically and because of our lovely patriarchal society, bad things are more likely to happen to girls. This sheer knowledge completely freaks me out. But I do hope to have a daughter someday, so I figure I will just have to learn to live with the fears, like I do with the boys. Plus! Frilly dresses! Yay!

Katrina: Man. I think I could probably do a whole post on this one alone. I will try to be brief, though. Katrina rocked the world. The devastation still continues. We are still not healed. I mean, sure. We, personally, left and then came back to our house, which was thankfully intact. We came back quickly because my father's position deals with supplying hospitals and my husband's position deals with IT. So they were needed. We lived for about a week with no electricity, smelling the meat rotting in the freezer. Thankfully, we were there to empty it out. I am sure most folks don't know this, but nearly everyone I knew had to buy new refrigerators because the rotting food smell could not be gotten out, even with straight bleach. You would drive up and down the streets and on every lawn, there was a cast out fridge.

Another 'blessing' is that we had no electricity for television or radio. To this day, I do not know what the media footage in New Orleans was like. I think a lot of heartache was saved that way, because we all know that the media is just the media and not everything that comes out is 100% true. But I have talked to people who slept on the roofs. I have talked to women who were raped in the middle of the night. I have delivered beds to into empty houses for folks who have lost everything. I have talked to police officers who had no food and no place to shit and national guard troops who gave up one MRE a day, to give it to a cop who was hungry. My family was unbelievably lucky. My parents needed a new roof, but their belongings were saved. We also had clean running water, which many of our relatives didn't have. And we had money. We could make the drive over 50 miles and wait in lines over an hour for gasoline. But we could do it. We were not hungry or thirsty. We did not suffer any violence. We were lucky.

But I still mourn the loss of the great lady of New Orleans. I know that much like a sexual assault, life will always be cleaved into the 'before' and the 'after'. The before was before. It can never be gotten back. It will never be the same. Now is the after. There is life that does go on. We may not be the same, but we are here. We have changed and change hurts. There is loss to carry with us as well. But who's to say that we shall not overcome? Who's to say?

Friends: The very best. I am sure of it.