The blog where you go to play.

1) What is the single biggest sacrifice you can imagine asking a friend to make for you?

Babysitting my children for a week... Okay, just kidding. This is a difficult question because I really don't do well with asking for help. Thinking in terms of a huge sacrifice that I would ask of a friend takes that to an even greater level. Why am I so determined to be an island? I don't know.

I think the greatest sacrifice - and I know this is general - is one of time. Asking a friend for their time, lots of it, to help me do or accomplish or overcome something in my life seems like asking a big thing.

2) If you were in need of emotional refuge, what would you do to find it?

If my husband is at home, I go crying to him. If it's a conflict between us that's causing the need and I'm not quite ready to go crying to him, I would go for a very brisk walk and talk to myself and to God the whole time. This is part of why the neighbors look at me funny. If I am home with the kids and can't talk to Joe, I stop and pray and read from the Psalms.

3) In what way are you most unique?
In my way of thinking. I see no impossibilities. I don't get offended often because I like to try to think from another person's perspective. (I don't always like their perspective... ) I think positively, I love to analyze arguments, I love to find ways around the status quo, I love to ponder new ideas (my own or someone else's) and figure out how to make them part of reality. I love to learn and I love to work and I love to think about what I'm learning and what I'm working on.

4) What is your favorite sound?
Cliched, I know, but still, I can't find anything better than my children's voices, especially when they are being silly and laughing at each other. That's the best. I can't help but stop whatever I'm doing (usually writing) and just watch them.

A non-person sound I love is rain.

5) Show and Tell. What comes to mind first when you see this picture? Or, tell a story if it reminds you of one.

Reminds me of my grandfather's farm: almost 1000 acres of soybean and cotton growing fields in Mississippi. My mom grew up there with her two sisters and one brother. My grandfather started out with, well, not much, and worked hard and saved kind of obsessively and built up a successful farm. He is "retired" now: he runs an antique store from several of his buildings on the farm and rents his land to a young farmer.

I loved going there and just wandering around, playing on the hay bales, climbing on the tractors, and finding "new" fields... and then getting chased out of them by the angry cows who wanted grain...