Liebster Award

So think of this as an extended About page. I love linking to other writers who share their lives with me, no matter how trying, happy, stressful, and exhilarating they can be. According to my blog reader, I wait with bated breath for 347 sources everyday and, given the ones who stopped writing and the news/general interest sites, I still see at a least 50 or so posts a day. Of those, I really read 20 personal accounts. Thank goodness you all don’t write everyday and thank goodness you don’t write pages and thank goodness I’m a fast reader with a kid that goes to bed early. And that’s all I have to say about that.

There are rules to the Liebster Award – ugh, life, so many damn rules – and the whole shebang follows below. You’re going to find out a bunch of things you maybe didn’t know about me and then I’m going to list a bunch of people who write regularly (at least once a week – as of now anyway!) and that you should visit.

And to save you the googling: “The real purpose behind these nominations are not only as an accolade from a fellow blogger and let’s face it, nothing gently strokes our little writer hearts more than someone telling you they appreciate your work.  In addition to the back patting we need to receive from time to time, it also allows us to get a little more personal as we get to know our increasing blogging community. It also helps drive traffic to your site as we reference one another.”

The rules:

1. Thank the person who nominated you and link back to their blog.

In this case, both The Gayby Project: Making the Next Generation Fabulous and Love Invents Us. You guys, they are the bees knees.

2. Post 11 facts about yourself, answering the 11 questions you were asked and create 11 questions for your 11 nominees. Leave a comment on their blog letting them know they have been chosen.

3. Display the Liebster Award logo.

Look, I can’t do this. I am not savvy enough and I’m pretty damn lazy. It was all I could do to get those eggs in the header, I had to have my wife over at Butch and Pregnant help AND I haven’t changed it in four years. So, there you have it.

5. Don’t re-nominate the person who nominated you.

Andie’s questions:

What’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever created?
Now look Andie, this is a lovely question but I plow through life without remembering one day from the next. I’m like Drew Barrymore in the 50 First Dates movie (not really, though sometimes it seems like it). I can tell you, I garden the hell out of some dirt, I raise the hell out of my kid, and I can tear up a blank page (with words) if given half a chance.

If a movie was made of your life, who would play you?
Would it be weird to say Ryan Gosling? I mean, it wouldn’t work at all but he gives such great film noir.

Most memorable dream ever?
You know why I can’t remember anything? It’s because all of my mental hard drive is packed solid with dream memories. Like, all of them. Those 10 times I swam in the air, the 20 times I dreamed I was getting my head stuck in a toilet full of green slime in my front hall, the time my grandmother gave me the best hug in the world, the times I dreamed of floating away in a house, the multitude of times there were spiders in the beds, ants on the wall, and strangers seated around the bed. You don’t want in, believe me.

Creamy peanut butter or smooth. And WHY?
You know how when you find that god knows how old it it piece of dark chocolate on the third shelf of the cupboard and you think, this would be really good with some peanut butter right now and then you stick it in the jar directly because no one is looking? It wouldn’t be the same if it weren’t smooth.

The literary character you’d most like to hang out with?
There’s a woman, Dorinda Hafner, and she’s not a character except in her own memoir, I Was Never Here and This Never Happened. She’s fucking amazing and I totally take back what I said about Ryan Gosling. Give me Dorinda. THAT would be an honor.

Words of wisdom for the next generation?
Be deliberate, be peaceful, and be happy. Take medication if you have to. It’s worth it to be your best.

What song is currently soundtracking your life?
You guys, yesterday I woke up to ‘All That Jazz’ in my head. And every beat of the keyboard, my shoes, my gum hit those notes. I haven’t seen Chicago in years. But the song I can’t wake up to is ‘City Hall’ by Vienna Tang. I cry because for me it’s about the right to marry and until I get it (frankly, probably well after, too) I’m going to unabashedly cry.

What quality about your parents do you have but wish you didn’t?
I’ve got one streak of crazy and another of steadiness. And it’s probably one that makes me mourn the other. Without both, I’d have gone over the edge long ago.

What do you want to be when you grow up?
I’ve done nearly everything I ever dreamed. I know, I never ever forget how wonderful that is. But you know how you can look at your life and say, “if I had just turned there, if I had just” and it isn’t regret so much as wonder? Well, I didn’t turn at the corner of ranger and game warden when I lived in southern Africa. I could easily have spent my life in the bush looking at lion’s tracks around water holes and counting rhinos underneath the fever trees. Easily fallen off of the map.

How do you take your coffee? 
Black. Though this morning I drank it blended with two eggs and a teaspoon of sugar. See steady v. crazy above. Cage match of all time, I’m telling you.

If you could live in any time period (excepting the present), where and when would you live?
I pretty much pick any year surrounding a World Fair in the U.S. I’m torn between the 1893 exposition in Chicago or the 1914 show in San Francisco. And, I’m a 1930’s girl at heart. I know. Who picks the Depression? I don’t know. Ask my past lives.

And from Yogi’s Mama:

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I told my mom I was going to be an Ambassador. I got close enough for my taste. And, while I won’t go back to the State Department, what I took away more than counts as fulfilling a childhood dream.

What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?
Do you have a Baskin-Robbins? Go there and order World Class Chocolate. I mean go there now. Now. Silky, creamy, a combination of white chocolate mousse and milk chocolate, softer than usual ice cream, melts instantly when it hits your tongue and absolutely satisfying.

Share your three favorite (non lesbian baby-making) blogs.

I love Vi Hart’s YouTube channel. She makes math amazing.
xoJane makes me laugh and cringe.
Lifehacker: because I am unable to exist without improving.

What public figures (people we all might know) make your top five? (As in, people you think are hot)
I’m that person. I don’t actually think celebrities/public figures are hot. Like, ever. Something is wrong with me. But I wouldn’t lie to you, so there it is. But! I’ll make a dinner party for you and the people I will invite to the dinner party are people I’d (probably) stand my wife up for and she’d (probably) understand. So I’m going to have to have Ryan Gosling and Dorinda Hafner (see above) but I’m definitely also inviting Colin Powell and Hillary Clinton (god, I know) and then probably Louis CK. Don’t tell him he’s #5.

What is your most favorite meal? Looking for more than breakfast, lunch or dinner here. What’s on the plate?
I wish I had more to tell you than pizza but that’s what I’ve got. I mean, I have a pie thing in general, there’s nothing that a slice of blueberry or lemon meringue for breakfast can’t cure, but I just really like pizza. Pizza that is so hot you have to bite it just so not to burn the roof of your mouth and that lights your throat on fire a bit at it slides down. Pizza with a thick crust on the sides and a thin crispy crust on the bottom. Pizza crust brushed with butter. Homemade tomato sauce. Spinach. Pizza that pulls apart without breaking apart. Pizza without any other distractions. Pizza. Put it in my mouth.

What book could you read over and over?
Well, see above for Dorinda. I’m not much of a re-reader, generally, but there’s a children’s book called Tales of Terror, which I adore and I have 5 copies of The Count of Monte Cristo. So, there’s that.

What are five words that best describe you?
Rules, you all, they kill me. That’s not the five, that’s just my bemoaning the penalty of picking six and what about ands and where’s the punctuation in this and rebellion and limitation and tongue-tied. Well, I bet you can just see my crazy peeking through riiiiight there. Fair, realistic, motivated, inspired, watchful. Today, anyway.

If you could trade places with someone (anyone!) for a day who would it be?
No, I promise not to haul Dorinda out again, poor lady, and, if you read her book you’ll see why not. I’d love to be Stephen King for the day but frankly, that’s because Hunter S. Thompson isn’t around for me to poach. I used to have this daydream of being a famous writer with a house on a small lake in a deeply wooded area. And in the house would be a large floor to almost-ceiling picture window overlooking the lake and a huge, round, deep, white carpet in front of it. Outside of a wall of books, a comfortable couch and chair and a lamp, it would just be me, the high ceilings, the vast window and the lake. Of course, then in the daydream I’d be worried about getting my next book written and whether the isolation was healthy and if I was safe from criminals out in the woods with that big window. So, that’s why Stephen King.

An envelope stuffed with cash appears in your mailbox, what do you do?
I’d pay some bills. I just don’t like debt, you know?

If someone threw you a surprise party would you feel loved or misunderstood?
I’ve had two surprise parties in my life. The first, when I was 16, was attended by 15 or so classmates had picked by my mother and best friend but, given my wide-ranging circle, they weren’t necessarily all the folks I’d have picked. Ungrateful child, as my mother would say. The second, at 27, was thrown by my then-girlfriend for 75 people at the house down the street from Nelson Mandela. He was not home to complain about the raucous noise. There was a whole roast pig. With teeth. My girlfriend and I fought terribly on the street in front of the house (and Nelson’s guards) about my not wanting to go to a party, any party which, as my wife will tell you, plagues us to this day. Would you throw me a surprise party?

Now, as promised, here are some folks who write regularly and who I think you should read. Seriously. Also, some other folks who don’t write as regularly but who, when they do, are beyond funny. 

Cats and Cradles
Not Sisters
Creampuff Revolution
Silly Wrong but Vivid Right
stop hounding me!
A Natural Scientist
Bionic Mamas
The Falco Project
Chicken Wire & Paper Flowers
Refuel. Refocus.
Bread and Roses

Here are my 11 questions:
1)  Do you alter recipes when you cook?
2) Let’s have it: first kiss. How’d that happen?
3) What do you do with bad photos?
4) Hitchhiking. For or against?
5) Why do you live where you live?
6) Best compliment you’ve ever received?
7) Go on and pick a new name. Now tell us what it is.
8) What do you say when someone is grieving?
9) Where do you write?
10) Do you tell people you blog? What about family?
11) The last thing you do before sleep is…