(manic monday) Rocket City Bloggers’ Year Long Blogging Challenge: Weeks 3 – 6

Oh, dear. I really am behind. The point of a weekly challenge is to post weekly, so I suppose it defeats the point if I end up posting monthly instead… yet here I am, with four weeks rolled up into one post! This is kind of a manic Monday, isn’t it?

Week 3: Assuming the apocalypse is upon us, what do you stock up on?

Let us also assume this is a survivable apocalypse (zombie, holy) and not a nuclear one which would annihilate everything, including hope. In which case: I stock up on nothing because I would almost certainly not survive zombies. Is that a depressing thought? Totally. Do I curr? Naw.

In the spirit of participation, let us suspend all belief and say that the biblical apocalypse occurs, or that I do somehow manage to keep myself alive after a zombie-disease outbreak, and have reason to consider long-term supplies. This is what I would want:

• Weapons: a bow and many arrows, as they are recoverable.  An impressive collection of knives (for hunting and cleaning animals, as well as protection and other survival necessities)
• Books on the following subjects: generic wilderness survival and medicine, hunting & fishing (and how to clean animals for eating), plants, and first aid
• Rope
• Water containers and a large stock of purifiers (such as iodine tablets)
• First aid supplies, including antibiotics

Seeing as how I’ll be dead for all of this, my plans are moot. Next!

Week 4: What is your favorite joke/cartoon?

While I love many cartoons, choosing a favorite is easy: Adventure Time, because I am an adult, and seriously this show.  Fortunately my kids love it as well, so I have an excuse to watch it. Not that I would need an excuse if I didn’t have kids, because it is that awesome. Never growin’ up.

LSP forever

Because I have a rather dark sense of humor, all of my favorite jokes are the most inappropriate. I cannot possibly choose just one, but for the sake of the challenge, here is a (not so?) tame joke that never fails to make me laugh:

What is the hardest part of a vegetable to eat?

The wheelchair. 

I’m sorry.

Week 5: What are you passionate about? 

Reading. Writing. (Not arithmetic. So bad at math, tho.)  Photography. Art. Love. Learning. Those don’t require much explanation.

I am also passionate about mental heath awareness. Being bipolar and having many friends with different mental health issues, I know firsthand the difficulties of existing in a world unaccepting and ignorant. Even close family members can be hurtful without meaning to be: “Wow, you don’t seem bipolar.”  My disease is mild and under control, quite different than its frightening rap. Can I fault people for having no clue? Of course not. I can understand their side – give to them what they had not been able to give to me – and use my passion and knowledge to bring awareness to those around me. A flickering light.

 

Week 6: Are you a city mouse or a country mouse? 

I suppose you’d have to call me a suburban mouse. I love visiting both the city and the country, but my real home is right in the middle. That’s all I got to say about that. (What’s a good day without a Forrest Gump quote?)

Week seven coming your way – on time! On its own!

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The Rocket City Bloggers are a diverse group of bloggers with at least one thing in common: writing from the Huntsville, AL area, otherwise known as Rocket City. This April began a Year Long Blogging Challenge, and I am attempting to participate. Clearly, though, this is proving to be more of a challenge for me than I initially believed.  Click the image below for more awesome people from the Rocket City.

Rocket City Bloggers Year Long Blogging Challenge (YLBC): Week Two

For this week’s question, we look to the past. For those of you who are transplants, when did you come to Huntsville and why? For those of you that grew up here, why did you choose to stay?

This week’s challenge has me struggling for anything interesting to say, unfortunately. I was born in Huntsville Hospital and raised on the outskirts of town. I stayed in the same school district my entire life, and even my college attendance in another city lasted a single semester before I moved back home. My life, it is so very exciting.

That first semester back home was the final nail in the Huntsville coffin. On the morning of Good Friday in 2006, I found myself quite unexpectedly pregnant at the ripe old age of 18. My boyfriend (now my husband) and I decided to keep the baby, but it made moving anywhere less desirable after many years of wanderlust. Alabama is so lame, I would constantly whine, fully knowledgeable in all things as a teenager, and quite convinced there was no worse place to live, except maybe Mississippi. (In fact, my friends and I always joked that the Alabama motto was, “At least we’re not Mississippi!” Apologies to any Mississippians out there, but you probably understand the feeling of being adjacent to a state as poorly perceived as your own.)

With a baby to raise and her brother coming a couple of years later, thoughts of other homes far away went just there. Dreamland. Especially after purchasing a house and snagging a cushy job in the shitty economy, it seemed rather foolish to want to go anywhere else. My family is truly amazing, without whom I would have never made it as a mother. Or a person, honestly. Having the majority of them within ten minutes was a great comfort. Even with the suffocating feeling of over-protectiveness,  I never wanted to have to feel the stress of being alone in a city. My mood disorder makes a supportive net necessary for the health and well-being of not only me but my children.

As I have gotten a little older, the appeal of Rocket City has grown. Not just the web of supportive family, who would be there for me no matter where we lived, but the sense of community as a whole. Our fantastic public library (borrowing new books every couple of weeks never gets less exciting for me). Lowe Mill Arts & Entertainment, the coolest mix of talented local artisans and performers. Comic book shops like Haven Comics and The Deep. An amazing brewpub with the best food in town. A hands-on museum or two. And, of course, the budding blogging community within Rocket City Bloggers. That is just a little sampling of what Huntsville has to offer.

There truly are some amazing people in this town, regardless of our state’s stereotype. You can find ignorance anywhere, just like you can be bored anywhere, especially if you are always the hermit. Building solid relationships in your own community and supporting the local flavors are what make a city feel like your own. Cornily enough, I am proud to call my city home. Come on, guys. We’ve got rockets.