My dear friend Candie nominated me for the Leibster Award which, if I am reading right, is a like a blog chain letter plus questions but sans the threat of horrible things happening if you don’t pass it on. So why not right?
Candie’s questions with my answers:
- Who has been a constant in your life, making you the person you are today? It’s so obvious that it is almost boring of me to respond this way but I will anyway, My Husband. He married me twenty years ago and he keeps being married to me every day. We orbit each other like Earth and Halley’s Comet except I crash into his atmosphere way more often than Halley visits earth. He gets to be the Earth part of the analogy because he holds still better and he’s bigger than me, while I race around driven, on a clear trajectory. My whole personality sometimes seems to be a reaction to his. Where he is quiet, I am loudly obnoxious. He is math. I am English. We are not opposites in the truest, opposites-attract kind of way. We are alike. We share the important stuff; the values, the kids, and the dreams. The similarities draw us to each other and the differences fascinate us enough to stick around to see what will happen next. He made me me. He said, “fight for what you want” and I did. He said, “I’ve got your back” so I jumped. He held the door because he honored me and I walked through it. He’s everything.
- What song would play at the quintessential part of your own movie? Uh. Most of the time, it would be the Kronos Quartet playing string music. I know! The Kronos Quartet? You don’t even know who they are do you? I found one of their CDs – back when that was a thing – at the library and it was the soundtrack to my editing job at the time and it always feels right to be my background. But then sometimes, it will be a Daniel Tiger ditty. The whole song goes like this: “It’s okay to feel sad sometimes. Little by little, you’ll feel better again!”
- List three literary characters who best represent you or wished you had created? First, Jane Eyre is my favorite literary character of all time, a woman whose integrity ran so deep, it was mutually exclusive to her happiness and she still chose it. Second, Alexander of the Horrible, Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day and other fabulous stories by Judith Viorst. I love that kid. Straight-up. Third, any character written by Anne Tyler because she is simply masterful at writing the realness of people.
- How do you inspire those around you? There is just no graceful way to answer this. I’d never, ever have the chutzpah to say I had done such a thing. But sometimes, I can convince people to do things, to try harder or be better. And I guess the way I’ve done that is by believing in them, knowing them, encouraging them, showing them. My 12-year-old said in his mother’s day poem to me that “[my] heart is as pure as a gold bar that was purified 734,623,891 times.” So, maybe that.
- What is the tagline for the book of your life? I once wrote my autobiography in college and titled it “Life is Good” but since then, there has been more of the Daniel Tiger song and less of the string quartet. But you already know my tagline! It’s open book, open heart. That captures me best.
Now, here’s the part where I don’t follow the rules. I’m going to tell you my favorite of all the blogs in the land. And link to them. But, I’m just too shy to nominate them or ask them any questions because they are blog beasts. I want to be them when I grow up. If I ever met their authors IRL, I’d drool on myself and stutter like a fool, the lamest of lame fangirls. Because really, I’d only have two questions:
1. How did you become you?
and
2. Will you please be my best friend?
In order of my fangirl crushing:
I’ve mentioned these two before and I am actually friends with them (go me!):
open book open heart 