ask me anything

by

Ask Me Anything Answers, Part 2

Thank you so much to everyone who posted questions on my Ask Me Anything form! It is so fun to read what you want to know, and it is also super fun to have built-in blog content! And please feel free to ask additional questions if you like. 

While I plan to turn a few questions into stand-alone posts (because, as you know, I can never give short answers to anything), here is a roundup of some of your fun questions and my answers.

From San of The In Between Is Mine:

I know you’re not sharing pictures of yourself on your blog, but can you give a general description of what you look like so I can have an image in my head? I wonder if am imagining you totally different from what you actually look like. Haha.

Ah yes. I have only ever shared photos of myself once on this blog, and even then my head was missing. Let’s see if I can craft you a self-portrait.

I am Caucasian. I have dark brown hair ( no bangs) that hangs down past my shoulders. It’s wavy/curly, but I straighten it. I have quite a few freckles and pale-ish, burns-easily skin. My eyes are green, although they can be hazel depending on what I’m wearing. (Tangent: I got very affronted once when my mother claimed that my eyes are hazel. They are NOT hazel. They are green. Changeable, yes, but definitely green. Why does this matter so much to me? Maybe because green eyes aren’t particularly common and I am unremarkable in every other way, lol?) While I don’t wear much makeup, I almost never leave the house without mascara on. I am approximately 5’6” with a thick n’ sturdy bottom half. My mouth naturally turns down, so I have pretty severe RBF when I’m not focusing on Looking Pleasant and Approachable. I have a facial scar on my chin/neck that makes me very self-conscious when I meet new people. I like to wear leggings or jeans and loose-fitting but not shapeless tops that cover my rear, and prefer wedges to any other shoe style. I have very sensitive eyes, so I almost always have sunglasses on (and I personally think I look better in sunglasses than without). In one of her Ramona books, Beverly Cleary describes the mother of one of Ramona’s friends as “comfortable looking,” and the instant I read it I thought, yes. That is me: I am comfortable looking. Like a squashy couch.

From Amanda:

Could you make your blog so I can read it entirely in Feedly, not just the snippet?

This is a question I do not entirely know the answer to! My understanding of Feedly is minimal, and I did nothing on my end to enable Feedly to capture my posts. (Maybe a million years ago I clicked something in WordPress that says “enable RSS” or the like? I don’t know.) After a quick Google search, it seems like there IS a way to do this, but it looks like I would need to install a plug-in that is quite expensive. This blog is purely fun for me — I make a few dollars in amazon commissions a year, but beyond that, I don’t make any money from blogging; nor do I spend any money on blogging, aside from the time I put into writing posts and reading comments, so I don’t plan at this time to spend money on plug-ins. That’s a pretty selfish response, I recognize that, and I feel terrible that there are people who aren’t able to read this blog in the way they want to, but I just can’t justify the cost. (Nor do I want to do what it would take to monetize this blog. I feel like that would ruin it for me.) I would suggest signing up for email delivery of my posts, but a) that’s entirely different from going to Feedly and reading the posts you want to read, and b) the emails only include a snippet as well. I’m sorry! If anyone else is aware of a free way to accomplish Amanda’s request, I am all ears.

UPDATE! Kaelyn of Grateful Kae showed me how to fix this! So Feedly should now pick up the full text of my posts.

If you also want to do this, and you also have a WordPress blog, simply go into your dashboard, click on “settings,” and then choose “reading.” Then you scroll down to where it says “For each post in a feed, include” and then toggle the “full post” option.

Thank you so much, Kaelyn!

From Nicole of Girl in a Boy House:

What is your very favourite food? 

Oh Nicole. I have so many favorite foods! If I had to choose one, I would go with tacos. But I also adore pizza and red curry and chicken tikka masala and shrimp linguine with lemon-garlic-wine sauce and filet mignon with bordelaise and garlicky mashed potatoes and many, many other things. 

What is your favourite cocktail? My favorite is the classic margarita, rocks, with salt rim. But I also enjoy a good gin and tonic, or a dirty martini, or a gin gimlet. 

If there is a wedding that you’re attending, what song will get you on the dance floor no matter what? Probably anything from the 90s. Like… “Hit Me Baby One More Time” or “Bye Bye Bye.” 

If you were to karaoke, what song would you sing? “Say It Ain’t So” by Weezer, even though some of the register is too low for my voice. Or maybe “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey. That’s a belter. But I would never ever do karaoke. I get embarrassed singing along to songs in the car with my husband and daughter!

And do you have a favourite stage of Carla’s? The current stage is always my favorite! When I look back at prior stages, I tend to romanticize them. Like how cute she was when she was a toddler! But then I remember how she had absolutely no concept of personal safety and would just tear down a hallway/store aisle/parking lot if I happened to let go of her hand for a nanosecond, and I think, Nope, this stage is good. 

From NGS of The Time for Change:

How do you make your bed cozy? Fancy sheets, luxurious pajamas, special pillow? I am a hot sleeper, so I tend to avoid cozy for most of the year. In fact, my husband went on a quest this year to find me cooling sheets and a cooling duvet cover so that I would be more comfortable. We haven’t pulled the trigger on the sheets yet (sheets are so! expensive! and yes, I know you use them every day, so it’s worthwhile to spend a little more, but yeesh! so! expensive!), but we did get a cooling duvet cover that I adore. In the winter, we do put flannel sheets on our bed. I enjoy climbing into them, all fuzzy and warm, at night. But then I wake up all drenched in sweat and like them less. 

What is your favorite time of day? Early morning, when I am the only person awake and I have time to do nothing of consequence for awhile. Since Carla is an early riser, these early mornings alone are few and far between, so I tend to really cherish them.

Do you have a favorite pair of shoes? I love all my shoes equally. Well, except my wedges: I love them slightly more. I have fancy black patent leather wedges; I have faux-horsehair wedges in a leopard print; I have light grey canvas wedges; and brownish-grey faux-leather wedges. Plus a couple of pairs of wedge sandals. Wedges are leg-lengthening and sturdy, they go with anything from leggings to dresses to jeans, and I love them so much. Of course, I can’t really WEAR them anymore, what with the foot pain. But I can dream of a day when I will wear them again, pain free.

What’s your favorite hobby (besides this blog, obviously)? Reading! That counts as a hobby, right? If not, I have zero hobbies besides this blog. 

From Colleen Martin of Martin Family Moments:

What are your thoughts on the afterlife/ghosts/Heaven and the like? Wow, I don’t think anyone has ever asked me this before! Because I am not particularly religious, I don’t really feel like I have any sort of belief in the afterlife/heaven. This life is all we have, and it’s a gift, and we should make it count in whatever way is meaningful to us. However… I don’t know. And I am willing to admit that there are forces in the universe that I am unaware of, forces that I cannot fathom or explain, so if there were an afterlife/heaven, I guess I would not be surprised. (Same goes for ghosts. I have never experienced anything supernatural, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.) 

It seems as though I am doing NaBloPoMo this month, which is 30 blog posts in 30 days. (Will I make it??? Only time will tell.) Details at San’s blog here.

by

Ask Me Anything Part 1: Books + Reading Questions

If you are new here, first of all, welcome!

Second of all, you may not be aware that I love to read. At the moment, I am in the middle of five books: The Chestnut Man by Soren Sveistrup, The Wives by Taryn Fischer, The Art of Screen Time by Anya Kamenetz, Cultish by Amanda Montell, and Abel’s Island by William Steig. 

(I also have a book blog, which I post at far too infrequently.) 

While I am nowhere near as prolific a reader as many of the people reading this post, I tend to read around 75 books a year. Books are one of my favorite things, and one of my favorite topics. So I was delighted to get a few reading-specific questions when I first posted my Ask Me Anything form.

1) NGS asked, “What book do you recommend the most often?” and Stephany asked, “What books do you find yourself recommending over and over again?” 

Book recommendations completely depend on who’s asking and what they’re looking for. One of my all-time favorite books – and the one that popped immediately into my head – is The Friend by Sigrid Nunez. I thought it was written so well, the prose was so tight, the style so unique, the emotion so vivid… It is an example, for me, of a perfect book. But I can also acknowledge that it probably won’t appeal to everyone! The person who recommended it to me, for instance, read it and said, “I see why you loved this so much.” But it wasn’t his favorite book, it didn’t rock his reading world in the same ways it did mine. 

My favorite genre of books is mystery/thriller, and I think my top recommendations change with time. The Round House by Louise Erdrich was a beautiful, heartbreaking mystery that I absolutely adore. For a great mystery series, I don’t know that you can get any better than the Alphabet Mysteries by Sue Grafton, or the Jackson Brodie series by Kate Atkinson, or Sophie Hannah’s Zailer and Waterhouse mysteries, or the Dublin Murder Squad series by Tana French, or maybe Anthony Horowitz’s Hawthorne and Horowitz series. 

In thrillers, my favorites ebb and flow because there are so many fantastic novels being published every day. I adore A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne, because the writing quality is exquisite and the shape of the story is so unique and so well-fitted to the subject. The Push by Ashley Audrain had not only beautiful writing, but wonderful pacing.  Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris was a heart-pounder with one of the worst villains I’ve ever encountered. 

In historical fiction, of which I am admittedly not a connoisseur, I can’t imagine anything better than Hillary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy. Although I did find Kristin Hannah’s The Great Alone to be extremely engrossing, moving, and beautiful; it blends historical fiction with domestic suspense. 

When it comes to romance, which is another genre I generally eschew, I find myself recommending The Royal We and its sequel, The Heir Affair by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan. One of my all-time favorite books is The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, and that bridges speculative fiction and romance. Or, another all-time favorite, The History of Love by Nicole Krauss – which spans romance and literary fiction, and is one of the most beautiful, tender books I’ve ever read. 

For literary fiction, the books that come to mind are The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, A Little Life by Hanya Yanagahira, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, and All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. 

We haven’t even touched on speculative fiction, or short stories, or non-fiction! 

The horrible/wonderful truth of it is that there are SO MANY amazing books in the world, and none of us can ever read them all. But if you are looking for something specific, I probably have a recommendation for you.

2) NGS asked, “How do you fit in reading in your day?” If I read nothing else all day, I at least read before bed. One of the reasons I have multiple books going at a time is because I read via multiple methods. I usually have an audiobook, a print book (or several), and an ebook going all at once. When I dry my hair, which takes a good fifteen minutes, I read my Kindle. When I am in the car, or unloading groceries, or folding laundry, or going for a walk, I am listening to an audiobook. (Listening to audiobooks 100% counts as reading.) When I am waiting in the pickup line at school, or sitting outside one of Carla’s lessons or activities, I am reading. When I am eating lunch, I am reading. It adds up. 

3) NGS asked, “Is Carla a big reader? What does she read?” Carla is what I might call a burgeoning reader. She has enjoyed audiobooks for years, especially everything by Beverly Clearly and Judy Blume. (I think she has listened to Socks about a hundred times.) Before around third grade, she didn’t have a whole lot of interest in reading books for herself outside of the Gerald and Piggie books by Mo Willems. But last year, she got really into a series called Bad Kitty, which she tore through… and then she found another series called Notebook of Doom, and we had to go to the library weekly until she’d finished every book. 

Then, at the beginning of this year, I told her teacher that one of my goals for Carla is that she really love reading. Her teacher looked at me, very seriously, and said, “Oh, she will.” It seemed like mere days after fourth grade started that Carla had come home with a book – A Wolf Called Wander by Rosanne Parry – that she refused to put down. Suddenly, she was reading at meal times. She was rejecting my husband’s and my offers to read to her before bed in favor of reading to herself. She was gushing to me about the language style. She was dashing up to her room to get her book so she could take it to school. She was reading choice lines to me in the car. She was reading at recess.

It was like a switch had been flipped. Not only was she loving reading, but she was no longer intimidated by larger books with more words than pictures. She hasn’t found a book that has grabbed her quite like A Wolf Called Wander, but she is constantly in the middle of a book and she checks out huge piles of books from the library every time we go. It’s so gratifying to see her beginning to understand the magic of a really good book. (She is currently reading the newest Katharine Applegate book, Odder, which is a book in verse – a fact I did not know when I bought it for her. She is LOVING it.)

My husband and I still read to her every chance we get. He is currently reading her a book called The Name of This Book Is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch, although I don’t think either of them loves it a whole lot.  I am reading Abel’s Island to her, because it was one of my favorites as a kid. I have a whole stack of books from my childhood that I am “forcing” her to listen to; I usually read to her when she is eating dinner (which is almost always before my husband and I eat) and sometimes before bed. 

I could talk about books and reading all day. (Which is why I started the book blog… but apparently I don’t have enough time/wherewithal to make it a daily habit. Sigh. Maybe someday.) 

Are you a big reader? What are you reading now? What’s your favorite genre? What book do you find yourself recommending over and over?

(And if you have any questions for me, about reading or otherwise, feel free to fill out my Ask Me Anything form.)

It seems as though I am doing NaBloPoMo this month, which is 30 blog posts in 30 days. (Will I make it??? Only time will tell.) Details at San’s blog here.

by

How I Met My Husband 

Nicole posted this question on my Ask Me Anything form: How did you meet your husband?

My husband and I met at college in fall of 2001. Oh my goodness, that is eons ago! 

The short answer is that he knew my former roommate, so we met through her. But, if you have been reading this blog for more than five minutes, you know I am no good at short answers. So here’s the full story:

One of my college friends (who had been my roommate for two years) and I decided to go to a concert. We were juniors and I had never heard of the band before – and have never listened to a lick of their music since – but I was enthusiastic. I even bought a T-shirt with the band name on it, a little pink thing that barely covered my navel. Ah, those long ago days of baring my navel without a thought!

We went to the concert. My sole recollection of the concert was that it was Very Loud. (I am not much for loud music, or concerts in general.) We may have had some beers, I can’t recall. In any event, we were STARVING after the concert. So, together with a few other concertgoers, we went to a local convenience store that sold sandwiches and then all trooped back to somebody’s dorm room to eat them. I do not remember how many of us there were, all I remember is that one of them was a very cute boy with shaggy brown hair and gorgeous blue eyes. He’d ordered hot peppers on his sandwich, but for some reason didn’t want them, so I ate them. 

That was it. That was the spark that ignited what has become a decades-long fire. 

After the sandwiches, this very sweet boy walked me home. He was very sweet, and very gentlemanly, and simply walked me to my dorm room and left. Didn’t even try to kiss me. 

After that, we’d see each other at meals and wouldn’t talk. We’d catch each other’s eyes, and blush, and resume talking to whomever we’d been talking to. 

We went to a big fancy black-tie party in early November of that year, and that was the first time we’d kissed. I still remember what I was wearing: A black dress with a hot pink layer underneath, and a frilly bottom edge that revealed the pink when I walked. I still remember kissing him on the dance floor, all those weeks of flirtatious glances finally coming to fruition. 

After that, he’d come over to my dorm room almost daily, so we could watch Seinfeld together. Then he’d traipse back to his own dorm to do his homework. We were still shy around each other in public. We each went our separate ways over winter break – I went back to my hometown and he flew overseas to where his family was living at the time – but we emailed every day. When we got back to campus in January, we each sat whatever exams we had (I had learned by that point how to avoid ALL exams and only write papers; the major benefit of being an English major) and I had a full week left before classes were to resume. So I drove with him back to his hometown – which is where we live now – so he could do something with his car, and so I could meet his mother, his aunt, and his sister. I had to sleep on a trundle bed in his sister’s room and it was all a little awkward, but it was wonderful, too. 

One night, I sat on the edge of my trundle bed in the dark, talking to my mom on the phone. I wanted to tell her I thought I was going to marry this boy, but it sounded too outlandish so I swallowed it down. We’d known each other for two, maybe three months at that point, but I was already in love. I’ve loved him every day since.

How did you meet your partner, if you have one?

It seems as though I am doing NaBloPoMo this month, which is 30 blog posts in 30 days. (Will I make it??? Only time will tell.) Details at San’s blog here.