43 posts tagged “qotd”

Are you worried about a swine flu pandemic?

Noooo.  And I've got sickies right here in my backyard.  It may, however, result in my not being able to go to Monterrey for a work trip, which is tentatively a month out.  That would be nice.

What question do you hate being asked?

"So when are you two going to have kids?"

This is the single-most inappropriate question I think you could ask a couple.  It falls into the "Think Before You Speak" category, filed under "What Did You Expect the Answer Would Be?"

There is little more private in a couple's relationship than the decision whether or not to have children and, if so, when.  When this question is actually posed, the answer to this question is either lamely vague or a lie, point blank.  If the question was answered honestly, the following awkward scenarios arise.  See if they don't make you squirm, just a little bit.

1. The couple wants kids, but not now. By far, the easiest of all the scenarios.  You get to tell the truth and still be the hero.  "Not now," or, "Someday," and if you're feeling a little Palin-esque, throw a little knowing wink in there too.  You will be heralded for your willingness to both procreate and wait until the proper time.  Unfortunately, this is the answer that 9 out of 10 women recommend, whether it is actually the truth or not, because it is the easiest way to avoid having these other squirmy conversations.
2. The couple doesn't want kids
.  The asker's inquisitive nature about when children will eventually come on the scene implies their supposition that kids are inevitable.  To indicate otherwise leads to the inevitable "Why not?" conversation where you have to defend YOUR God-given choice or the awkward, trailing "Oh..." where the asker really has no idea how to recover.  In this situation, the child-hater (*snort*) still feels the need to lamely defend their position.  In either case, both parties find themselves wishing they were 10 miles away from each other doing something that does not pertain to children at all.
3. The couple wants kids but can't have them.  Great job, now your question has just delivered a throat punch to the asked.  It's bad enough that this woman (or her mate) can't have what they so badly desire and what has been ingrained since birth as a simple, natural role that all women will fulfill someday, but now you've just drawn a big, flashing neon arrow at the problem.  Salt-in-the-wound, twisting the dagger, it's a veritable choose-your-own-adventure for clichés.  Way to remind this person that they already feel like a failure, especially if she's a woman.  If they're nice, they'll spare you and give you the answer to #1 on this list.  If they're anything like me, they'll turn it around on you and tell you the truth.  "Oh, we want kids, but we've been trying for 5 years with no luck."  There, now don't you feel like an asshole?
4. The couple is actively trying to have kids, but doesn't want anyone to know.  Again, you get #1's answer on this one.  The couple exercises their right to privacy about their reproductive organs.  Go figure.
5. The couple is actively trying and doesn't care who knows.  In this case, you haven't actually made the person in question uncomfortable.  Way to go.  However, you need to think about how comfortable you are with the inevitable visual that ensues after the person tells you that they're "trying".  Welcome to our bedroom.  Would you like to discuss my ovulation cycle and his sperm count?  How about how many times we've had sex this last week?

So, I don't really care how entitled you feel when it comes to a person's private life.  On this subject, it's best to just let people come to you with this information.  Take it off your list of elevator questions, and stop asking your kids.  Odds are, you'll find out the answer, it just may not be on your timeline.   

It's obvious that here at Vox we love blogging and with Valentine's Day fast approaching, we want to know: why do you love blogging? It can be a list of what you love, a story connected to your blog, a person you met through blogging, an opportunity that came your way... anything! Just share the love!

Just celebrating the fact that this isn't a schmoopy Valentine's Day qotd:

I love blogging, because I love writing.  I was just thinking about it this morning as I recalled a conversation that I had with my husband's family around the dinner table on a recent visit.  I have another blog that they love to follow.  "I don't know how you come up with what you write," my father-in-law said.  My sister-in-law, in response, said, "Just the idea of sitting down and writing makes my palms sweat... I don't know what I'd write about."  Last night, my husband was encouraging me, again, to think about writing a book, an idea I've toyed with but have usually put away because of feelings that I'd spend a lot of time writing something inane and uninteresting.  On that topic, he said, "You know what I'd do to get started?  I'd take my favorite album, like Ten, and I'd write a short story about each song.  Maybe tying them together, maybe not."  I looked at him, smiled, and said, "Getting an initial idea isn't the problem.  I have tons of ideas."

It hit me today that writing is an entirely different experience for me.  I have to write to organize the thoughts and ideas floating in my brain, just so that I can stop thinking about them and get back to life as usual.  Never have I thought, "I want to write something.  Now..... whaaaaaaat should I write about?  Hmmmmmmm."  It's always the opposite.  My train of thought gets so far off track, that I finally submit to it by opening Vox, my other blog, a new Word document, my moleskine that I carry around, whatever is at arm's reach, and I write it out.  Once I have it on paper, I feel relaxed again and can go back to thinking about what I should be thinking about.

So, Vox, I love blogging, because I would've been writing anyway.  Now I get to share my thoughts with someone else, without otherwise publishing myself, and that is pretty satisfying. 

It's the "blue" in me: in seeking to understand; I seek to be understood.

Snowball fights, hot cocoa by the fire, and sleigh rides... What's your favorite thing about winter?

Oh, I remember it with great nostalgia.  Now I live in Texas, but I spent my first 23 years in Illinois.  That's 23 winters' worth of memories there.  There are way too many things that I love about winter to choose just one.  I celebrate the entire collection.

• Around November the sun bids the sky adieu, as the cloud cover completely blots out any evidence of its existence, not to be seen again until - oh - March, if you're lucky.
• There's that strange sensation that occurs when, every other body part buried under several clothing layers composed of animal, vegetable and/or mineral, your face actually starts to freeze.  Muscles physically cannot contract and relax at the same speed they once could, thus you find children scrunching up their faces for fun yelling, "Look how slow MY nose is!!!"
• Boogers that you didn't even know you had freeze solid and pull at your nosehairs.
• Heaters running at full tilt, air becomes bone-dry yielding cracked lips and hands, hair that flies around your head as if you were in contact with a Van DeGraff generator, and a veritable electric storm under the blankets as you turn over in bed in your flannel pajamas.  Not to mention the massive electric shock incurred when touching the bedroom doorknob first thing every morning.
• Clearing snow off your car using shovels/buckets/brooms/arms/hands/ice scrapers/books/purses/shopping bags/floor mats/roadmaps.
• Chipping ice off your windows using ice scrapers/parking passes/credit cards/books/cassette tapes.
• Making sure your car had more than 1/4 tank of gas, so as the fuel line didn't freeze.
• Bringing the car battery inside the house and setting it by a space heater at night.
• Cars/carpets/shoes/pants cuffs constantly wet, dirty and salt-covered until the spring thaw.

I do miss hitching up our horses for those sleigh rides though...

What's the strangest thing you've ever found in the street?

My husband once saw a hammer and a very heavy wrench fall out of a toolbox on the back of a pickup truck while he was driving behind said pickup in his delivery van.  So he did what any 17-year-old computer technician/delivery guy would do.  He pulled over his van, ran into the street, picked up the hammer and the wrench, got back in the van, and commenced his deliveries.

'Cause you know, hey, free hand tools.

What do you see yourself doing on this day next year?
Submitted by Beautifully Broken.

Scary question.  A year seems like a lot of time to bite off in one sitting.

One year ago today, I was one career level back with not a lot of friends, struggling with obedience training the puppy and actively trying to enroll in culinary school.

Two years ago today, I was a newlywed unpacking boxes in our brand-spanking new (to us) home.

Three years ago today, I was a graduate student, writing my thesis with one job offer in my pocket and another one (the one I eventually took) right around the corner.

A lot can happen in a year.  If all goes according to plan, not too much should be different this time next year.  But of course, it won't. 

What first attracted you to the person you're currently dating?

I think it was his smile - not to be too cliche.  My first memory of him is him giggling about wedgies with my date at the Sweetheart Dance in 7th grade.  He disappeared into oblivion (in my world, which was entirely comprised of classes and family at that point) and re-emerged about a half-year later in english and social studies in 8th grade.  Longer hair, shabbier wardrobe - true early 90s, grunge-style - same smile. 

He was a moody teenager.  I learned later that, in those 6 months after I first saw him, his lifelong friends had shunned him.  For no really good reason, except that we were all 13 years old and, well, we thought we had good reasons for everything.  As with most pubescent kids trying to be accepted, he found the only crowd that precluded the influence his old group of friends had on everyone else.  And that group was into all the wrong things, which led him to be at odds with his parents and teachers.  Constantly at conflict between his instinctive nature to succeed and do well and the socialized need to be accepted, he was unhappy a lot of the time.  Rightfully so.

But I made him smile.  I've always been able to make him smile.  At the time, back in middle school, that smile emoted the same feelings that any person gets when they are treated to a rare sight.  Eventually he righted himself, as most wayward teenagers are able to do, and even though his smile comes much easier now, it still makes me feel the same way.

What word or phrase drives you absolutely nuts?
submitted by, revolt

"Right?" 

var. "I know, right?"

I had a reunion with a couple of my lifelong friends last month, one of whom used this phrase about 10 times in the first ten minutes.  For instance, if I said, "Parking at the airport was really tough."  She'd respond with a smile and, "Right?"  It frankly sounds vacant.

How do you know when a relationship has run its course and it's time to call it quits?

Ummm...  well... I have absolutely nothing to offer this post.  I've been married to my husband two years now.  We started our relationship when we were 16.  Dated two years.  Decided to give it a good go and went to college together.  After college, I continued my education, he moved 3 hours away.  We still stuck together.  Damn if he didn't miss me, so he popped the question.  I found a job below the Mason Dixon.  We wed and relocated.  And here we are.

No breaks.  Not that we were ever opposed to breaking up.  Nor were we ever scrabbling to repair whatever hint of a relationship we had left.  No, we just kind of keep going and going like that drumming bunny. 

Clearly in the scope of our lives, not that much time has passed, but right now its good.  I don't know.  Life is better when we're together.

How do you react when you're stressed?
Submitted by Deep Thinker

The many tiers of stress.  It takes many forms.

Tier 1:  Increased productivity.  I function extremely well under mild stress.  It makes me feel like I have to keep moving, thus more gets done.

Tier 2:  Uber-organization (a.k.a. the pretty Excel spreadsheet stage).  Okay, it's starting to get to a point where I can't keep it all in my head.  Be it personal or for work, this often results in the generation of an Excel spreadsheet of my to-do items.

Tier 3:  The breakdown of organization (a.k.a. the stage of many, many lists).  So much is going through my head at this point that I scrawl to-do's down everywhere I can find a spare piece of paper.  Thus, things get written on notebooks, post-its, bookmarks, old receipts and business cards.  You can probably conclude on your own that this is the exact opposite of where I need to be to stay sane. 

An insight into my head (and I know my mom works this way too): my mental to-do list is constantly scrolling through my head like credits at the end of a movie.  On constant repeat.  When there's not a lot on "the list", I can move the movie credits to the back of my mind and concentrate on other things.  When there is a lot on my list, those movie credits scroll and repeat and scroll and repeat at the very front of my thinking.  So it's all I can think about.  The many scrawled lists are a feeble attempt to remove items from my mental list so I can stop thinking about them and move on with my life.  To a point it works, until I find my written lists and get stressed because I feel I've forgotten about some very important things.  Then I move on to Tier 4.

Tier 4: The physical manifestation. Tier 3 and Tier 4 are connected.  Once I'm deeply in Tier 3, I almost inevitably can't dig myself out until Tier 4 requires me to make some drastic changes in my life.  I have the classic gastro-intestinal response to stress.  Acid reflux and IBS.  Good times.  And if I ignore this and attempt to treat my symptoms with medicine...

Tier 5: The emotional manifestation.  Spontaneous temper flares and crying spells.  Oh yeah, and sleeplessness.  Now, historically, the only time I've gotten to Tier 5 was by jumping straight to it after some sort of crisis.  Seem right, yes?  The only time I've ever actually "stair-stepped" to it was when I was in culinary class.  At the time, I was running 1st shift in our plants during the days and going to a pretty physical class at night.  I was 'on' all the time.  And I didn't see Andy ever.  That was tough.  I haven't taken a class since (work schedule wouldn't permit), but I'm a little afraid for the next time I do decide to take one.  And it also makes me wonder how I'll handle full-time working and parenting.  Should be interesting.