Proust Questionnaire

Once again, I lifted this from someone else's blog. (She did, too.)

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Hmm, tough one. To live a life with meaningful work to do, and loving family and friends and dogs around me, with enough money to meet all my basic needs without difficulty.

What is your greatest fear?
That, at the end of my life, I will feel that it was meaningless.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
My tendency to procrastinate

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Stupidity

On what occasion do you lie?
I rarely lie. For one thing, morality notwithstanding, I'm horrible at it! I might lie to spare someone's feelings if I thought s/he couldn't handle hearing the truth at that moment.

What is your greatest extravagance?
Travel

What is your current state of mind?
Contented

What is the quality you most like in a man?
Sense of humor.

What is the quality you most like in a woman?
Intelligence

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
Whatever. The F word

When and where were you happiest?
The happiest time of my life was during my second year of law school. I was loving school and the daily intellectual stimulation; was surrounded by great friends with a busy social life; was eating healthier and exercising more than nearly any other time as an adult; and Sebastian was quite young. I was far enough along in school not to be stressed out and not far enough along to be worrying yet about taking the bar and finding a "real" job.

Who are your favorite writers?
John Grisham, Victoria Holt, Dean Koontz, just to name a few.

Which talent would you most like to have?
Creativity.

If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?
I would have liked to have had another sibling or two, probably a brother.

If you died and came back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
A well-loved golden retriever.

What do you dislike most about your appearance?
My weight.

Where would you like to live?
Cost no object? northern California coast

What is your most treasured possession?
My golden retrievers, though I don't really think of them as possessions. If not them, then the list is too long to choose one item. I have many beloved items from both my grandmothers that are irreplaceable.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Self pity.

What do you most value in your friends?
Honesty, loyalty, and sense of humor

What are your favorite names?
I prefer not to share them here. The last time we mentioned one of the names MM and I like to anyone, MM's coworker used it for her bulldog puppy!

What is it that you most dislike?
Worrying about money.

What is your greatest regret?
That I didn't choose a career that was a good fit for my personality and talents while I was in college.

How would you like to die?
In my sleep, sometime in my 90s.

What is your motto?
If I have one, I think it's something like "Make use of the gifts you've been given." (I had a therapist once in my 20s who said my motto was "Be all you can be," like the U.S. Army commercials.)