1. Do you complete your own taxes? Besides actual taxes, what’s something you’ve found taxing lately?

Well, my husband does but yes. And eff taxes this year; we owed. Ugh. My on-going job hunt has been taxing but I’m tempering my emotions about it and plugging away at what I can do.

2.  What are three values you treasure most in a friendship? 

Loyalty, Listening, Willingness to do things. That last one sounds funny but I feel like we are the only people who make plans and we ask people about stuff and they can’t organize their lives enough to stick to plans. Ugh.

3. Do you meal plan or do you mostly wing it? Share your dinner menus for this week. 

I go through phases of being organized and not. For the rest of this week we are looking at: sandwiches today, chicken alfredo tomorrow, then I have to make some meals for the kids for the weekend since we’ll be gone.

4. Thomas Sowell is credited as saying, ‘‘There are no solutions, only trade-offs.’ Agree or disagree? Discuss.

In some ways, I agree, since I am currently teaching a Rogerian argument essay which explores two sides of one issue and instead of a normal conclusion, you write the compromise, which essentially looks at a probable solution where both sides have to give up something in order to agree on where to move forward. So the trade-off is you kind of get what you want instead of not getting it at all and giving the other side all of it.

5. What’s the best perk you’ve enjoyed at a job?

Well, this one comes with a major caveat. At the Florida House, I earned enough comp time during Session to take a two week vacation and even then, I had hours leftover to be able to take half days and an hour here and there. BUT during Session, the hours were so long and arduous not only did I suffer while in the office, but it disrupted my home life and marriage. So there’s THAT.

6.  Insert your own random thought here. 

Like our host, I will post my A to Z challenge post here as well.

N is for Naps

(I was kind of with Joyce on this one; I really love nostalgia.)

Anyway, I thought naps was appropriate because my family makes fun of me for always wanting a nap. Do I always take one? No! If we have a slow weekend though, absolutely.

I love being able to sleep for even 20 minutes. I typically wake up feeling very rested and thankful that I can move on with my day. I also tend to dream a lot during these brief respites. In fact, I often have the same dreams! There are a few I slip into time and again. You can never truly describe a dream to someone but the one I always have is: I am walking through a house that feels more like a furniture showroom; how rooms blend into one another with tons of recliners and couches. But it’s supposedly my own house and there are all these new rooms I am discovering for the first time. I make my way upstairs where the landing opens up to a giant tree inside a wooden roofed room with skylights and in that room is a bar.

There are a few others but I have to be in that liminal space between sleeping and wakefulness to imagine them. I have had a few times like that where I suppose you’d call it lucid dreaming; I can recall these imaginary places and make my brain go there. It’s weird, I know, but naps allow me to do so and it’s a great escape.