Interview ME!

I was reading I found a fatal flaw in the logic of love… yesterday, as I do when it pops up as new on my Bloglines. Now, I don’t know Alissa, but I love her blog, and feel that if we lived anywhere close, we might hang out. Yay for cool bloggers!

She had five questions that her friend made up in a meme, and said that if someone said “interview me!” in her comments, she’d make up five questions, too. Well, being a sucker for that sort of thing, I jumped on. Here are Alissa’s questions for me, and my answers….

1. What smell instantly takes you back to childhood and why?

I am so the wrong person to answer that. I have almost NO sense of smell, and what I can smell is generally unpleasant. Like, I have a hard time smelling flowers when I have my nose right in them, but I can smell manure in the fields on a road trip just fine, thank you.

That being said, I remember when I was really, really little, my mom bought some doll house furniture for my father’s mother (she must have had one of those really fancy doll houses, but I don’t remember that part). I remember that there was a green velvet Victorian style couch in the bunch of stuff in the box she was giving my grandmother, and I remember exactly how it smelled.

A year or so later, we moved out to Maryland, and as my mom’s a bit of a history buff, we went to all the cool places in the DC area. One of our favorites (and still mine) was Mount Vernon, and I remember when I walked into the cellar it smelled just like that couch. Now, anytime I smell something musty, like it’s been in a basement for a long time, I think of that couch, and Mount Vernon. (I’ve also been back to Mount Vernon several times over the last 25+ years, and it smells exactly the same.)

2. If you could have been born into any other culture, which would you choose and why?

Oh, that’s a hard one. It would have to be an advanced culture, because I loves me some indoor plumbing. (I have a feeling that if I’d been a pioneer and had to use an outhouse, I’d spend every trip thinking, ‘there’s GOT to be a better way.’)

My first inclination is to say English or Irish culture, because even though they are modern and English-speaking, it really is a different way of life, and much more my style. Europeans have a much more pragmatic view of life, and what goes on, and how to balance the necessities thereof. Having grown up in the Midwest, in a very protestant-work-ethicky-we-don’t-need-nothing-from-no-one way, it would be interesting to live in a more socialist society, and one with a government that can’t be bought with special interest dollars.

Also of interest would be any culture which is not based on the Judeo-Christian values. India of course leaps to mind, as my grandfather-in-law was an immigrant from Northern India and a practicing Sikh. The middle east with it’s basis in Islam would also be fascinating, although I think my basic I am woman, hear me roar attitude would not be particularly welcomed (something that my college boyfriend from the UAE and I discussed a lot…he wanted me to come back to the UAE with him to visit, and I told him that while he thought my loud-mouthed American ways were ”cute” and “charming” to him here, they’d be an embarrassment to him there).

Gosh, so much to experience, and so few lives to take it all in. I think it would be fascinating to be independently wealthy (or more willing to live hand-to-mouth in uncertainty than I am) and just travel and experience the different cultures…find one that seems cool, and settle in for a few years, repeat. Mmmm….

(I now look at my cubicle in distain. Why aren’t you somewhere cool?)

3. What would be your super power of choice?

Teleportation. No more time wasted going to and fro, no more squished legs on airplanes, much shorter commute time. No brainer.

4. If you could live one year over again, which year would it be?

This could be a double question: which BAD year would you like to live over again, so it would be good, or which GOOD year would you go through again, cause it was so fantastic you just want more? I’m gonna answer both, cause I’m just like that. Oh, and I’m avoiding work. And if I’m typing in Word, it looks like work.

My BAD year – 2004. (Really, 2002-2004, but I don’t want to be greedy.) It started out in the shitter: my grandfather died the day after New Year’s, then I got canned, and then the husband and I split up. I was sick as hell the whole year with the HAE, on steroids and hospitalized. Frankly, it didn’t get much better from there. On New Year’s Eve I went to Kieran’s with a bunch of friends and The Troll, gave him his first ever midnight kiss (ew for me), and was so relieved that the year was over that, even with two eyes swollen shut and a killer case of bronchitis, I began to dance (and by dance, I mean lurch drunkenly).

My GOOD year – 2000. That was the year that I turned 25. I was finally over my big love interest, and started doing the rounds of the city. I left a job that wore me down at the beginning of the year, and had that year to basically build a division of the company I worked for from the ground up (it folded soon after, but not due to anything I did. I blame the gambling alchy that came in after me). I lived in a place I loved, and it was the social hub of my fabulous group of friends. I traveled, I took road trips, I drank every bottle and screwed every guy that came around. It wasn’t a lifestyle that I could keep up for long, but I think that I “found” myself that year, felt like a real person for the first time in my life, and had a blast doing it.

5. What is the one thing in the future you are looking forward to the most?

Immediate future, getting a house. We’re currently in the middle of changing our real estate agent, and hopefully will get some more action with the next one we go with. I’d really like to be settled in a new house by the time we have our party in the fall, and not have to arrange for an alternate location. That, and I miss my stuff, and having things the way I like them versus the way they need to be to show a place. It’s just not my style, and it doesn’t feel like home.

A bit longer term, Jeff and I having a baby. I can’t wait to see what we produce together.

Wanna participate? The "rules"...

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by e-mailing you five questions. I get to pick them, and you have to answer them all.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions