Proust Questionnaire Take 2

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Sleeping late in my comfy bed cuddled in the softest blankets known to man, or at least the softest blankets available at the discount stores wherein we shop (shout out to the Christmas Tree Shoppe, yo!); my husband's huge, great, goofy grin as he dances like a fool for an audience of one, in the way-early-morning while coffee kicks in, when it's just me and him and the reflection of dawn off the snow outside the kitchen window while we prepare for another workday and savor the silence of the home we're building here; watching my son run in circles on our hardwood floors giggling loon-like in the early evening light between bath and bedtime, looking to his parents for approval, amusement, acknowledgment that he is here, that he is wonderful, that he is; sitting in a classroom where parents bare their hearts and look to me for guidance, google expert and over-educated amateur that I am, admitting my own folly and joining them in the ever-upward climb toward the mountain top of perfect parenting, never to be reached, ever to be aimed for; homemade meals; a family who loves me; the luxury to choose time over money, yet still eat and remain sheltered from the weather; right now; today; this moment; thank you.

What is your greatest extravagence?

I'm just going to be honest here: micro brew beer.  We have been poor as some mofos, but we don't get down with cheap beer.  It's handcrafted and tastes heavenly, or it's nothing at all.  And I would much rather not drink than drink crappy beer.  I never liked beer until I visited Seattle, and tried Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout.  And then it was all or nothing; the best or abstinence.  I don't drink Bud or Coors; I prefer water to cheap beer.  No offense to cheap beer drinkers.  I'll wear an entire wardrobe of hand-me-downs and drive used Hyundai's till the day I die.  I'm just a straight up beer snob, and since we can't afford it all the time, I'll choose to drink it less often and more delicious each and every time.

What is the quality you most like in a man?

I can't even begin to answer this question without waxing rhapsodic about my effing awesome husband.  Yes, I complain that he's a moody bastard; he admits as much himself.  But let me just take this moment to elaborate upon his endless list of attributes: the man is tireless; he works harder than anyone I've ever met; he can whip up an excellent meal out of kitchen scraps; he reads storybooks with the enthusiasm of Doctor Seuss himself; he's equally at home at a formal affair requiring black tie, dinner at my late grandma's house where she smacked him on the ass upon arrival, kitchen talk with generations of women whose work never left the confines of their own home, but who ruled that roost with an iron fist and a legacy to rival any legend, a gathering of professionals brainstorming the building of possibility upon the ruins of a city devastated by a dying economy, or an illegal bonfire in the backyard of some acquaintance from back in the day, introduced to an unfamiliar posse of men in coveralls, offering grunts as greeting and talk of carburetors and rebuilt engines reverberating in the flickering firelight; he's handy with power tools but can landscape a yard with nothing but dollar store devices when the need arises; he's more than willing to wear the secondhand clothes my sister gets for free from the thrift shop where she works, and he makes those clothes look like they belong in a GQ spread; he holds me tight in his strong arms, where I melt when I need to, and he stands at my back, grinning, while I lead the way on other days; we've been sitting, and standing, and lying side-by-side for over a decade, and I can't imagine a man better than the one who's here, with me, every day.  So the quality I most like in a man is apparently this: he is my husband.