in which i blather on about myself
lorem ipsum, author of life is sweet, baby, memorably answered the challenge to respond to a blog interview designed specifically for her and is now passing on the challenge on to me, so here you may now find everything you ever (or never) wanted to know about johannes's mom (with apologies to johannes's dad, who will get dragged into this venture by virtue of being part of the story):
1) You and your husband met five years ago. How?
i used to unwind after long, life-draining days of work by hanging out in chat rooms. if you've never been a chatter, you should know that while there are many lovely people chatting, there are also a disproportionately large number of men who would be delighted to send you pictures of their penis, if only you would agree. so one must be judicious regarding with whom one chats - unless you're a person collecting phallic images, in which case you're on your own.
on a rainy, saturday afternoon, i stumbled into a room where the topic was whether a chatter should move to orlando or not (it was a slow day). one of the five or six people in the room used a spanish, feminine nickname, but in the course of the conversation, it became clear the nickname belonged to someone not at all feminine. i started a side conversation with that person in which i made fun of him for the girly name.
and that's technically how justinian and i met. he'll have to tell you why he used a girly name.
instant messaging led to him asking for my number, which led to me asking him for all of his personal information so i could run a background check on him first (romantic, isn't it?), which established that he had never filed for bankruptcy or been convicted of a felony, in case you're wondering.
phone conversations and enormous phone bills ensued. then i went out with an old flame, and mid-date i started to cry and made him take me home. i called justin and told him being out with someone else made me feel unfaithful, which was weirding me out. we agreed we had better meet in person.
we decided to meet in neutral territory, which turned out to be atlanta. when i got off the plane, i saw him, waiting for me directly across from the gate. my thoughts, in order, were:
1. there he is!
2. he could use a haircut...
3. there's my boss!
no, i did not lay eyes on justinian and immediately decide to make him my lord and master. my actual boss from work was sitting with two of my co-workers in the bar directly across from the gate, bizarrely situated immediately over justinian's left shoulder. i said, "hi!" and then "just a minute!" to a confused justinian while i greeted my associates and chatted about what had been going on back in the office that morning before i left on vacation, then grabbed justin's arm and propelled him down the terminal before they could ask me who that was.
and the rest is history.
2) What was your biggest adventure as a single woman?
i wish i had been more adventurous as a single woman. instead, i was career-oriented to a fault in a field for which i had no passion (commercial finance. woo-hoo. feel the excitement). i had no personal life because of it (which is why i was looking for a conversation in a chat room when i ran into justinian, so it worked out okay. but still.).
a few months after justinian and i met, i quit my job and spent a year living off my 401k and trekking all over europe and going to language school in nicaragua and picking coconuts in san blas (justin has reminded me you could read about that one here) and getting the therapy i needed. my mother in particular was horrified, and no one supported me - except justinian, so yea for him. at the end of that year, i started looking for work in cleveland and shortly thereafter moved to cleveland to be with justinian. and that was my big pre-marriage adventure.
making a life with justinian continues to be an adventure, though.
3) What concert do you wish you could have been at and/or which one you've seen is in your mind legendary?
i've never been to concert that i felt was legendary, and in my experience "legendary" concerts tend to be large events, and large events are too impersonal - if i squint very, very hard i can maybe make out the drummer waving his sticks around. not that fun.
i do love small, intimate shows. we saw the futureheads in march and again a couple of weeks ago, and both shows were the stuff of which legends should be made - high energy and personal meaning. the couple of times i've seen michael wolff and impure thoughts live were also phenomenal - he makes music like the sound of rain coming and going on a tin roof.
4) If you had to eat at only one restaurant the rest of your life (and it would be guaranteed to stay open, of course), which one would it be?
this one is easy. san francisco's millennium. hands down. no question. i've rambled on about it already.
5) You were an evangelical as a child. What happened?
this one is complicated. my father was (and still is) a minister. he did some really inappropriate things when i was growing up and was unfaithful to my mom. he's human, and if there's a place that should take in sinners, lord knows it's the church. but i don't think there's a place for me in a denomination that looks to him as a leader.
also, i know i've changed and grown and evolved and devolved, but i really think the church in which i grew up was pretty progressive when i was a child but some time in the late 80s started to take a turn to the right. that denomination's official positions on social issues are actually more conservative now than they were 30 years ago. i don't have the energy for that kind of nonsense.
justin and i have flirted with being quakers. there's room for both of us and our respective beliefs there, their social positions (and actions) are just fantastic), and their service style has worked really well for us, both at our wedding and at hans's memorial service. but i don't feel a sense of community at the nearest quaker meeting, and i need community in my church experience, so i'm still working on it. i hate to think of raising a child without a community of faith, whatever my belief or doubt, because there's no question that the community in which i grew up nurtured me in ways no secular community did. but i'm not going to subject my child to right-wing, politicized fundamentalism.
i'm worn out. and if you're still reading, you must be pooped, too. go to bed already.
1) You and your husband met five years ago. How?
i used to unwind after long, life-draining days of work by hanging out in chat rooms. if you've never been a chatter, you should know that while there are many lovely people chatting, there are also a disproportionately large number of men who would be delighted to send you pictures of their penis, if only you would agree. so one must be judicious regarding with whom one chats - unless you're a person collecting phallic images, in which case you're on your own.
on a rainy, saturday afternoon, i stumbled into a room where the topic was whether a chatter should move to orlando or not (it was a slow day). one of the five or six people in the room used a spanish, feminine nickname, but in the course of the conversation, it became clear the nickname belonged to someone not at all feminine. i started a side conversation with that person in which i made fun of him for the girly name.
and that's technically how justinian and i met. he'll have to tell you why he used a girly name.
instant messaging led to him asking for my number, which led to me asking him for all of his personal information so i could run a background check on him first (romantic, isn't it?), which established that he had never filed for bankruptcy or been convicted of a felony, in case you're wondering.
phone conversations and enormous phone bills ensued. then i went out with an old flame, and mid-date i started to cry and made him take me home. i called justin and told him being out with someone else made me feel unfaithful, which was weirding me out. we agreed we had better meet in person.
we decided to meet in neutral territory, which turned out to be atlanta. when i got off the plane, i saw him, waiting for me directly across from the gate. my thoughts, in order, were:
1. there he is!
2. he could use a haircut...
3. there's my boss!
no, i did not lay eyes on justinian and immediately decide to make him my lord and master. my actual boss from work was sitting with two of my co-workers in the bar directly across from the gate, bizarrely situated immediately over justinian's left shoulder. i said, "hi!" and then "just a minute!" to a confused justinian while i greeted my associates and chatted about what had been going on back in the office that morning before i left on vacation, then grabbed justin's arm and propelled him down the terminal before they could ask me who that was.
and the rest is history.
2) What was your biggest adventure as a single woman?
i wish i had been more adventurous as a single woman. instead, i was career-oriented to a fault in a field for which i had no passion (commercial finance. woo-hoo. feel the excitement). i had no personal life because of it (which is why i was looking for a conversation in a chat room when i ran into justinian, so it worked out okay. but still.).
a few months after justinian and i met, i quit my job and spent a year living off my 401k and trekking all over europe and going to language school in nicaragua and picking coconuts in san blas (justin has reminded me you could read about that one here) and getting the therapy i needed. my mother in particular was horrified, and no one supported me - except justinian, so yea for him. at the end of that year, i started looking for work in cleveland and shortly thereafter moved to cleveland to be with justinian. and that was my big pre-marriage adventure.
making a life with justinian continues to be an adventure, though.
3) What concert do you wish you could have been at and/or which one you've seen is in your mind legendary?
i've never been to concert that i felt was legendary, and in my experience "legendary" concerts tend to be large events, and large events are too impersonal - if i squint very, very hard i can maybe make out the drummer waving his sticks around. not that fun.
i do love small, intimate shows. we saw the futureheads in march and again a couple of weeks ago, and both shows were the stuff of which legends should be made - high energy and personal meaning. the couple of times i've seen michael wolff and impure thoughts live were also phenomenal - he makes music like the sound of rain coming and going on a tin roof.
4) If you had to eat at only one restaurant the rest of your life (and it would be guaranteed to stay open, of course), which one would it be?
this one is easy. san francisco's millennium. hands down. no question. i've rambled on about it already.
5) You were an evangelical as a child. What happened?
this one is complicated. my father was (and still is) a minister. he did some really inappropriate things when i was growing up and was unfaithful to my mom. he's human, and if there's a place that should take in sinners, lord knows it's the church. but i don't think there's a place for me in a denomination that looks to him as a leader.
also, i know i've changed and grown and evolved and devolved, but i really think the church in which i grew up was pretty progressive when i was a child but some time in the late 80s started to take a turn to the right. that denomination's official positions on social issues are actually more conservative now than they were 30 years ago. i don't have the energy for that kind of nonsense.
justin and i have flirted with being quakers. there's room for both of us and our respective beliefs there, their social positions (and actions) are just fantastic), and their service style has worked really well for us, both at our wedding and at hans's memorial service. but i don't feel a sense of community at the nearest quaker meeting, and i need community in my church experience, so i'm still working on it. i hate to think of raising a child without a community of faith, whatever my belief or doubt, because there's no question that the community in which i grew up nurtured me in ways no secular community did. but i'm not going to subject my child to right-wing, politicized fundamentalism.
i'm worn out. and if you're still reading, you must be pooped, too. go to bed already.
posted by laura at 11:26 PM
2 Comments:
Excellent, thoughtful and very funny too! Thank you for all your deep thought. I hope you enjoyed writing it as much as I did reading it. :-)
Look, it wasn't as if I was calling myself bikini_beach_babe, It was la bruja - which to most, is a witch, yes; but it's also a flower that grows in the most desolate of places.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti eloquently wrote about the flower, Rosalie Sorrels composed a beautiful song about it and, most importantly, during some incredibly tumultuous times in El Salvador, folks began to look at the flower as a sign of promise. The flower of revolution.
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