Sunset Rose

I believe in the honest intentions of the teachings of my religion, the morality it tries to instill. But I don't necessarily believe there's an almighty gatekeeper behind them anymore. My family is Eastern Orthodox but I'm probably the least active member of it. If it weren't for my mother-in-law, my husband and I would probably never go to church again. It's a family thing, but beyond that I don't really think about it very much. I find some teachings inspiring and useful and I'm not the kind of person to associate the worst things about a religion with the entirety of it. I take the good teachings to heart, but I don't drink the Kool-Aid.

I personally don't see these things as mutually exclusive, so I'll say conceptually I find order to be a more useful concept overall than freedom.

I preferred Windows XP the most, then 7. I still navigate Windows 10 like I did before instead of getting into the newer settings menus.

I'd say personality-wise I'm a cross between Ramona Quimby and Darlene Conner.

I don't really read profiles on forums or social media sites at all unless I'm really interested in something about that person, which is pretty infrequent. That sounded a lot meaner than I meant it to, but I guess it's honest...

I wouldn't have been using the internet specifically until around maybe 1998 or thereabouts.

I hate periods, and I can't wait to never have to deal with them again. I also don't like having breasts. At all. I hate them. I also honestly feel like I'd have an easier time blending in with most crowds if I were male. Also- and this may just be a problem here- women are very competitive. Since we outnumber males in my country by quite a bit, a ton of women will actually dress very nicely, keep their nails on/painted and wear a full face of makeup just to do the shopping or anything else in public. And it's honestly exhausting cause I am not a particularly pretty woman and don't really care about trying to be one, I'm already married. But the pressure is intense sometimes when you're in a group of other women and you're not just the odd one out but the ugly duckling haha. I'm also just envious of how guys seem to have an easier time finding same-sex friend groups here and them being so tight-knit. My husband and his group of friends seem to just click on every level 24 hours a day. Even when they're fighting over sports or cars or drama they seem to just understand each other and it's not long before they're over for the night again drinking and laughing. I don't have any friends at all that I'm like that with. It's actually very hard for me to make female friends and actually keep them since many of the ones I've made tend to still act like teenagers with all the gossip and body shaming. It's not explicitly a problem with my sex but the social architecture around it means it may as well be.

Hardly ever. I want to swear all the time but I think I do a pretty good job of keeping it under control.

I like both, I'm just not super fond of very hot coffee or tea.

I try really hard to not let things register on an emotional level but it can be quite hard with some people. Since I try not to react to things that upset me I end up holding really bad grudges, however. Which I'm not sure is any better. But some of them can be hard to let go of.

I speak English and Latvian fluently but have some limited proficiency in Lithuanian just because it's so close to my own language, Russian because you kinda just have to know a bit of it here and a little bit of Estoniain from having lived there for a short while. I tried to get into learning Italian in the past but it never stuck.

Eastern Orthadox as with the rest of my extended family but I choose which tenets to actually put faith in. I believe there are some lessons that help temper my worst qualities, but practicing faith as a whole is mostly a familiar/social activity for me. My husband and his family are extremely serious about it but I'm just cherry-picking my beliefs and keeping that fact to myself. Singing in mass is nice though!

It depends on how much I've already had!

Frikadeles zupa I made for dinner.

I grew up with a Latvian mother teaching me both Latvian and English but her English was never perfect. I pronounced my Vs as Ws for a very long time because it was hard for her to pronounce a V in English correctly. Some Ss were pronounced as Zs due to the way we pronounce some words in Latvian. While I like to think I speak perfect English now, these days I hardly speak English out loud compared to how often I type it, so those old habits come back to me from time to time over phone calls and things like that. I live in Riga, and many of the Northern parts of the country can come off as somewhat Italian-sounding to people who not know the difference. My English can have this kind of 'flavor' to it sometimes.

I wrote my yearly performance review. I really hate that we have to do our own reviews, and my boss isn't a fan of it either but he can't get it changed. He even said nobody even reads them, so this whole process is really... stupid.

I've been on forums for a long time. Social media things like Twitter sort of suit me a little more since I'm not much for friendships over the net and people are more impersonal there, but forums will always be more comfortable for me. I can't really explain why.

'The bloody cats don't need beer today. I'm keeping it for myself.'

My husband and I have been through lengthy separations, devastating deaths in the family, relocations for our careers- the list of relationship-destroying events is kind of long. I've even lived all the way on the other side of the world from him on multiple occasions (during out separation and for work) and yet we're still married, I still very much love him and will never be able to see myself without him or his family at any point in the future. He came down with a nasty case of me almost 20 years ago now and I'm afraid he's never getting over it. :)

All the time. Mostly over money or time.

I've got a lot of artwork of my pony character but this just suites as an avatar most. It was drawn in 2011 by Bamboodog.

I do because it's a token of courtesy. Something that seems to be in short supply these days.

Trying FiM-themed cocktails and checking out EQD for interesting fanfiction every night during the hayday of the first two seasons.

In English I average around 85ish wpm. In Latvian, about 70 or so. Diacritics can sometimes still trip me up.

I don't even remember my birthday sometimes. The only one who always does is my husband so I don't really care if someone who knows it forgets. I don't think I've done anything for my birthday in like 20 years anyway.