What's the Hardest Thing You've ever Done?

The other day John mentioned that the hardest thing he had done to date was vet school. He then added rather dramatically that it was even harder than climbing Mount Kiliminjaro. Judging from the amount of stress he has been under the last few weeks...I have no doubt.

Anyway, our conversation got me thinking what's the hardest thing you've ever done? John asked me and I said automatically, "child birth" (I guess the memory has not yet faded) but, then I thought that can't be the hardest thing I have ever done. Women do it everyday often without modern medicine and, I hear teenagers are now doing it on reality tv while telling off their 'baby daddy'. So, no, I must have done something more monumental than child birth.

At one time in my life just getting up and going to work at a job I hated seemed like it was the hardest thing I would ever have to do. As marketing director for a mall I thought I might just lose it if I had to face one more bunny breakfast or deal with one more season of drunk, narcoleptic santas. This prompted what might have been the best but, at the time seemingly most bizarre decision I ever made. I quite my job moved to Zambia and lived in a game park trading drunk santas for inebriated ganme rangers and fake bunnys for a pride of lions. I have to say the lions ended up being a lot less scary. That was an exciting and terrifying decision but not the hardest thing I've ever one. Though as I met my husband, one of the better decisions I've ever made.

Some days I think taking Charlie for an outing might be the hardest thing I've ever done. To go out and about in Grenada she needs more changes of clothing than a runway model. If you happen to be out as the sun sets and the temp drops from 90 to 85 and you don't have full length pajamas a hat and heavy blanket you will bring down the wrath of every Grenadian woman upon your head. If child child services existed here they might just have Charlie hauled off as her negligent mother is causing "the chile to catch cold." The first few weeks we were back I thought raising a baby in Grenada might be the hardest thing I would ever do because of the amount of advice I recieved, but the day they told me I would break my child's back is the day I stopped listening so island life is back to being a snap as long as the car is working, you don't mind no running hot water, etc...etc..

Now that I think of it the hardest thing I've ever done might have been finding someone on this island who hadn't heard about our troubled car and selling it to them.

I'm not sure what the hardest thing I have ever done is. As I'm not that ancient maybe I haven't done it yet. I do have a sneaky suspicion that when it comes to children, child birth might be the easy part, raising them well or as my 8th grade science teacher used to say having "good home training" may be the hard part.

What's the hardest thing you've ever done?