gratitude, selfcare, purpose

i just saw this on linkedin - one of those posts by some or other coach, asking you to say what the first three words you spotted are. mine were gratitude, selfcare and  purpose.  and it struck me that maybe there was more to it than just a random trick of the eye. i think those words have been the words of my summer - perhaps selfcare most of all, as i've gently tried to give myself time to think. but i've also been very grateful for the chance to try something completely new, stretching my body and yes, even my brain, in new directions, while i give myself time to once again find my purpose. i'm also grateful that i've had the time to devote to this selfcare. when i glanced at the graphic again after uploading it here, strength and breakthrough were the words that popped out. i don't know that i'm feeling particularly strong, and nor have i had any great breakthrough, but i'll be looking for those on the horizon.

which words do you see?

stone age fare - or adventures in homeschooling during a lockout

is this what they mean by a stone age diet?

there's a little meme circulating on facebook (tho' i think it originated on reddit) - it asks: what was the coolest thing your parents did for you as a kid?

~ the first thing that leapt to mind was that they didn't baptise me as a baby, thinking that when (if?) i was baptized, it should be something that i chose for myself, because i wanted it and understood what it meant. i did eventually choose to be baptized and join st. andrew's presbyterian church in iowa city. it was at a time when i needed to believe there was something else after we die - i'd lost my favorite uncle and my favorite cat, bob, around the same time and since my uncle was a veterinarian and bobby had suffered horribly with kidney cancer, i needed to believe that they were together in heaven. so i got baptized. now i'm no longer sure about all that, but at the time i made the choice, it was the right one for me.

i've been pondering that question today, as the government and the teachers' union in this country cannot agree and today a lockout of the teachers around the country began. with some reluctance, i told my child that we were going to do a homeschool assignment (do you know how hard it is to find some ideas/curriculum that aren't religious if you google it? shocking, but the stuff of a different post.). she has two friends here and i told them they could pick the topic they wanted to work on and we'd find ways to do a whole range of things - reading, writing, science, cooking, art, history, maybe even math (not my strong suit). i was thinking vikings, but they chose food.

i've decided to have them look at different time periods and the food that was common then. with the prevalence of the paleo diet at the moment, i asked them to research (google) it a bit - what did they really eat in the stone age? what sweeteners did they use? was there loads of meat? were there any grains? what root veggies were available? was there really as much cabbage as in my new paleo cookbook by danish hottie chef thomas rode? i told them they could use google and the cookbook and that they should create a pinterest board with what they learned. i want them to create a presentation about it and then, tomorrow, i want them to cook a paleo meal. they're sixth graders and tho' only 12, are starting to be a bit teenager-agtig (that's that danish suffix that's just better than -ish), so they were a bit reluctant to start with. one of them developed a fever of 39 and i'm not sure how far they got. but they do realize that i'm serious and that this has to end in the kitchen.

next food time period i want them to investigate is the viking era (see, i will get vikings in there). after that, i'm going to have them read the chapter about maple syrup in the little house books and then make a meal ala little house. they say this lockout will last for at least two weeks, maybe longer. but there's no reason not to learn something in the meantime. and hopefully, sabin will eventually look back on it as one of the cool things her parents did for her as a kid.

* * *

i love REI's april fool's joke - adventure kitten gear.

a whole lotta gratefulness going on

there's a lot of gratefulness going on in the blogosphere and on planet facebook, so i thought i'd jump on the bandwagon, just for today. grateful for:

kittens.

fresh eggs.

people (who aren't me) who really care about details and getting them right.

lunch with old friends.

opportunities on the horizon.

possibilities.

music.

and people who are good at playing it.

storytelling.

books.

different points of view.

that the end of this awful election is in sight.

sunshine.

the dishwasher.

fish soup.

bacon.

fresh bread.

and did i mention the kittens?

* * *

happy sunday, one and all.

books bring comfort

as i write this, i feel a little like i'm coming down with a flu. there's something going around. and coupled with grey, rainy weather, it has me thinking about comforts. like curling up with a good book. bee wrote a couple of weeks ago about her comfort reads (and a lot of other favorite book categories) and so i've been thinking about this for awhile. when polly wrote about it too, that sealed it. i've got to make lists of favorite books--my categories are, for the most part, loosely adapted from bee's and polly's...

childhood favorites:

1. really rosie - maurice sendak (i had both book and record - we still play the music in the car when we travel as a family)
   
2. chronicles of narnia - c.s. lewis (i still reread these every once in awhile. and i truly didn't get the christian references as a kid. i just wanted to be lucy.)
3. little women - louisa may alcott (i read this dozens of times and fancied myself as jo)
4. little men - louisa may alcott (ditto this and i think i even liked it better--i wanted to live in that big old house with all those boys)
5. the little house books - laura ingalls wilder (i had dresses to dress up and played little house for hours on end. i even went to the LIW pageant in DeSmet, SD, tho' all i really remember were the mosquitos because it was outdoors.)
6. fox in socks - dr. seuss. (still love this one and read it with sabin regularly)

comfort reading (to which i return again and again)

1. no. 1 ladies detective series - alexander mccall smith (i love mma ramotswe. period.)
2. harry potter series - j.k. rowling (yup, i return to this one again and again - they're just such great characters and they do fit together wonderfully--she had to have really planned them out in advance)
3. master & margarita - mikael bulgakov (talking cats and people who materialize on street corners - ya gotta love it)
4. what i loved - siri hustvedt (although i siri-ed myself out last year, i'd be ready to go back to this one again now)
5. a widow for one year - john irving (i love the sweep of this one and although i fancy myself as ruth (there's a recurring thing here wherein i place myself in all of the novels), there is something sorrowful over eddie that i love as well)
6. the bean trees - barbara kingsolver (the quotes that stick best in my head are from this book)
7. one hundred years of solitude - gabriel garcia marquez
8. the unbearable lightness of being - milan kundera

favorite theorists

1. the indivisible remainder - slavoj žižek
2. problems of dostoevsky's poetics - mikael bakhtin
3. mythologies - roland barthes
4. after theory - terry eagleton
5. distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste - pierre bourdieu 

the russians 

1. the brothers karamazov - fyodor dostoevsky
2. pushkin house - andrei bitov
3. master & margarita - mikael bulgakov (yup, on this list too)
4. notes from underground - fyodor dostoevsky
5. pale fire - vladimir nabokov

best i've read in the past year

1. dance, dance, dance - haruki murakami
2. hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world - haruki murakami
3. the short wondrous life of oscar wao - junot diaz

non-fiction faves

1. black lamb and grey falcon - rebecca west
2. lucy: the beginnings of humankind - donald c. johanson and maitland edey
3. origins - richard leakey
4. devil in the white city - erik larson

ones which i've only pretended to read in their entirety (had to slip in a confession)

1. ulysses - james joyce (had a whole course devoted to this and STILL didn't make it through, tho' i wrote a great paper)
2. satanic verses - salman rushdie
3. the odyssey - homer (i've come closest to reading it all on this one)
4. faust - johann wolfgang von goethe

strangely have never picked up

1. lord of the rings - j.r.r. tolkien
2. proust
3. tess of the d'urbervilles - thomas hardy

play along if you'd like to make lists of your favorite books. and i'd love to see some confessions on what you've only pretended to have read. because you know there's something.

gin & tonic sorbet

what i love about the blogosphere is how it's constantly expanding, like the universe. it gives us new ideas and brings us new inspiration and new friends all the time. and new friends mean new opportunities to play old games. :-) so, thanks to my new blog friend polly, who writes beautiful things like this (go read it now and come back, i'll wait, believe me, it's worth it), i have five new interview questions. we know i adore this format, so here goes...

Polly: I know you've lived in Denmark for some time now. As An American in Copenhagen, (Gershwin's new tune) what do you like the most & the least about being an expat in Europe?

me: it's so strange to realize that i've lived in denmark for more than ten years now. where did all that time go? it's been so full of experiences and laughter and fun, that i really can't believe how it's flown by.

i have to say that i feel less like an expat than i once did and that now i really only have that expat feeling  when i choose to, which does still happen occasionally and usually after an encounter with an especially cold, unfeeling aspect of danish culture.

what i like most about being an expat in denmark is that i more or less have permission (at least psychologically) to treat situations which bewilder me in some sense from an anthropological standpoint--as an analytical observer of the strange behavior of the natives.

what i like least: during the bush administration, answering for all of its sins just because of the passport i carry. i didn't vote for the man, and could definitely not explain him. but thankfully that's over. actually, the same happened during the waning years of the clinton administration, where i was asked to explain what we were doing to our president over the whole monica lewinsky thing. my response was always the disarming comment that i would have been doing what monica had done if i'd been given the chance--clinton was totally magnetic if you ever saw him in person.

the other thing i like least is that i fear that i will become a permanent speaker of the language we affectionately call "danglish." this is a mixture of english and danish, which pretty much takes the worst of both and throws them into a grammatical/verbal mishmash. i feel at times a distance from the vibrancy of living within a culture of which the native tongue is your native tongue and therefore you are hip to all of the neologisms as they happen (staycation, carmageddon and the like). i fear i will preserve some mid-90s version of english for all eternity (or at least the rest of my life).

Polly: And if not in Copenhagen, where do you think you would be right now?

me: this is a very interesting question, not least because i've pondered it on occasion. but even more so because if you'd told me fifteen years ago that in fifteen years, i'd be living in a house with my husband and daughter in a small town of 18,000 in denmark, married to a guy i met in macedonia, and commuting to work in the shipping industry in norway, i'd have laughed and said it was completely impossible. i could never in my wildest imagination have imagined the series of events that would have to happen for me to be in that situation. and yet, here i am, doing all of those things. so i think it's not a question we can ever really even imagine the answer to.

what i imagined would happen with my life was that i'd finish my Ph.D. and be teaching slavic literature at some american university somewhere (preferably somewhere like berkeley, but more likely somewhere like KU (no offense to kansas, they at least used to have a perfectly good slavic program with an emphasis on the south slavic even, i almost went there but instead chose chicago)) because you have to take what's available the year you graduate.

instead, i am ABD on the Ph.D. and don't intend to ever finish. i unexpectedly met a nice danish boy in the balkans and followed him home. in a fit of boredom i ended up working in the software industry and accidentally worked for microsoft for a few years. then i found myself in the maritime industry, which feels strangely like home for someone who grew up in the middle of the US about as far from big-ass ships as you can get.

i guess if it wasn't copenhagen, it could be oslo or singapore or hong kong or manila. i could see myself ending up working for lloyd's list or trade winds or fairplay, reporting on shipping industry news.

but, you really never know where life will take you, so i try to stay open to the possibilities that present themselves.

Polly: Your latest obsession is eyeballs and you seem to be a very creative and crafty person. What inspires your creativity?

i think a lot about this and am trying to tune in to what inspires me, in the hopes that i can make it happen a bit more. but what i'm learning is that you can't make it happen. but, what i think you can make happen is being in a state of openness to inspiration. but i find that i'm not very good at predicting what will inspire. a flea market or a museum visit often can do it, but of late, the light falling a certain way on a branch might be what grabs me. sometimes i'm surprised by what makes me feel inspired.

flickr almost always inspires, but i sometimes feel it mires me down too much and actually serves more to overwhelm me or lead me astray than truly inspire me.

i get a lot of inspiration from my reading and i read a lot...articles, books, fiction, non-fiction.  i think it goes without saying that i find a lot of inspiration in the blogosphere (and yet i felt compelled to say it, hmm...).

i have a couple of highly creative friends who i try to spend time with when i have a lot of ideas swirling in my head, but can't see a way of making them come together. because that's the thing about me, sometimes i have given myself so much input that i get stuck on the output part. i think i need to develop a more disciplined way of dealing with that (but that's the stuff of more pondering and another post).

i'm also a person who is inspired by a deadline. together with a friend, i signed up for an art exhibition at the end of october, because i need a goal like that to go for. i know that the pressure of needing to have enough things to exhibit will inspire me and spark my creativity. it's just how i work.

but probably what inspires me most are the daily conversations i have with husband. he's a super smart, funny, thoughtful person. he thinks about things and articulates his thoughts very well. he has lots of wacky ideas, but usually they only appear wacky at first and then you realize they're really deep (and probably somehow related to evolution/cultural capital/the industrial revolution). he's also got a marvelous ability to see things in fresh, new ways. if i'm stuck on an idea, i tell him about it and he always, always helps me see it from a fresh, new angle. i love that about him.

and i do think i'm getting over the eyeball thing, because i've started to notice and think about nests...oh, and stones. and i'm developing a bit of a thing about windmills, especially old decrepit ones. i hope this new obsession doesn't go all cervantes on me...

Polly:  A fashion question:  If you could only live with one accessory for the rest of your life, which would it be and why? Only one item! (I've been asked this question, it's a good one... )

me:  i have a lovely pale green (we have a cloudy day and it doesn't look very green in this photo) embroidered pashmina that i bought in goa a couple of years ago. at the time, i didn't really need it, but i also didn't want to go home empty-handed after a very eventful trip. i almost didn't buy it because the guy selling it rubbed me the wrong way, but then one of my colleagues was going to buy one too and the price suddenly got better if we both bought one, so i went for it (totally to help her out, you know, altruistic me).

i'm so glad i bought it, because i have used it so much. i've bought two seasons of winter coats to match it, i've used it as my only "coat" on a cool summer evening. it dresses up any outfit and gives it a touch of exoticism and luxury. just yesterday, i wore it to the funeral and some of the other guests were trying to appropriate it from the coat rack at the house, thinking it had belonged to the deceased and was now fair game. (luckily, i retrieved it in time.)

it wears beautifully, i've had it dry-cleaned a couple of times, but it continues to look like new. it's a color i never tire of and now that i'm doing a bit of embroidery myself, i find myself carefully inspecting the marvelous stitchwork. so my one accessory would most definitely be this scarf.

but i'd be pretty sad to give up my "obama won" ring.

Polly:  Everyone in this chain of interviews have asked and answered this next question so now it's your turn :-)  If you had to choose a flavor of ice cream that most fits your personality, what kind do you think you would you be? Feel free to make one up if necessary.

me:  i asked husband this one, actually. and since his favorite flavor of ice cream is licorice (silly dane), he said licorice.  it's unusual, a bit peppery, not at all normal, rather strong and can be a bit overpowering. not everyone likes it, but if people like it, they love it. 

i actually think that fits pretty well. but i can tell you that licorice is not my favorite ice cream.

i'd personally probably try to concoct something like a gin & tonic sorbet if it were up to me. grown-up, sophisticated, relaxing, refreshing and with a bit of sass. something you'd like to spend time with every day.

thanks, polly, for these fun questions (i may have to actually invent a G&T sorbet now). if anyone wants to play along, knowing you have to identify yourself as an ice cream, please let me know. :-)

this girl...

gillian at indigo blue wrote a wonderful "this girl" post about herself and asked readers to play along should they so desire. i'm a rather new reader of indigo blue, but as my sister always says to me, "it always comes back to you," so it feels like this game is a natural one for me to play along...

this girl is out of her element yet entirely at home. she is unsure but comfortable. at ease in her skin, but doesn't really know her own contours. she's navigating her topography, filling in the pieces as she goes along. she doesn't know the way, but is sure there is one.

she is searching, striving. wanting, always wanting. more knowledge, more input, more inspiration. more crocheted stones. more gadgets. more laughter. she's curious and open yet strangely closed and definitely opinionated. she's judgmental. she's live and let live. she loves to be with people, but just wants to be left alone. she's a mass of contradictions wrapped into one skin.

when she gets hold of an idea, she embraces it fully. she's obsessed with eyeballs. but it's because she's working on seeing. seeing the world around her in new ways (the camera lens helps this). she loves to wrap herself in mythology, which is why it's odin's eyeballs in particular that appeal... mythological sacrifice at the alter of knowledge. a prayer to sofia, the divine wisdom. (and now she's mixing mythologies too.)

she wants to be good, but she doesn't always achieve that. she's snarky and crabby and short with those she most loves. she's mean but generous. she procrastinates with blinding efficiency. she's not always a great mom. but she is constantly in awe of the little person she helped create. she worries about the world that little person will inherit and how to equip her for that task.

she jumps in with both feet and asks questions and figures out the logistics later. there rests within her a feeling that things will work out how they're supposed to. she strives to see. and learn. and seek. and love.

at times, she has a sense of being totally in the zone. she has no control of that feeling and has no idea how to make it happen (but knows that a great outfit helps). in those moments, she breezes in and brings with her a force of energy that's fairly beaming off of her and she can actually see its effect on people. during one of those times, someone once said to her, "you are like cocaine." she liked that very much.

she's always been one of the guys in her own mind. this has mostly been a good thing, but has sometimes gotten her in trouble.

once she's decided someone is stupid or not worth her time, it's totally over for her and that person. she can't really even be nice anymore. it isn't very fair. but she knows it about herself.

she is pedicures and fake eyelashes. she's natural, locally-grown organic produce. she's posh hotels and backpacking it on a balkan train. she's hugo boss suits and flannel pjs all day. she's a midwestern girl. she's european. she's sushi. she's tropical fruits on a philippine beach. she's pork rinds on friday evening. she's gold lounge and the first one off the plane. she's at home everywhere and nowhere. she's a coach bag and H&M dress.

she's moscow, not st. petersburg. she's nikon, not canon. she's white chocolate, not dark.

she's an avid reader. a writer. a photographer. an artist. she's finding her place.

she is mostly chaos. a force of nature. evolving. becoming. a bee charmer.

* * *

wow, that was fun and really liberating to write in 3rd person. you should try it too.

why yes, it is another interview...

lynne of wheatlands news, who i interviewed during the great interview meme, actually interviews people for a living, so i asked her to send me five questions. what can i say, i'm a girl who needs an assignment.  i've found this interview thing to be so much fun! it has provoked my thinking and helped me explain things even to myself while i was writing the answers. that's how a good interview should be.  so i give you lynne's questions and my answers:

lynne:  Your daughter Sabin has an unusual name. Where does it come from and how do you pronounce it?

me:  sabin is a twin, born 10 weeks early because i had the first case of listeriosis seen in denmark in 25 years. her twin sister, sophia, was stillborn. sabin, although only 1570 grams, was perfect and fine and healthy, but just very small. we felt she needed a very strong name after such a difficult beginning. so she was named after my paternal grandmother, whose maiden name was sabin. we decided it would work as a beautiful first name and would carry with it the weight of the strength of my amazing grandmother, who lived to be 96 years old and had ten children (not necessarily in that order) and was truly the matriarch of our family. although she didn't live to meet sabin, i know she'd have loved knowing her and would have loved that she had her name.

sabin's middle name is amalie, in case she grew up and didn't feel sabin suited her. amalie is a more common name in denmark. however, she strongly identifies with sabin and wouldn't dream of using something else. i call her all sorts of pet names and she often insists that her name is sabin and i should stop calling her pooka.

and it's pronounced "say-bin" with the stress on the first syllable and a soft i (not e-sound, but also not really a schwa (one of those upsidedown e's you might remember from linguistics and which i can't seem to make blogger produce)).

lynne: What do you feel about long, dark winter days?

the dark winters are something i struggle with living in denmark and something which makes the prospect of norway, which is even darker in the winter, a bit daunting. it might be ok if you had proper snow along with it, but instead, the winter is grey and dreary in addition to dark. it rains more often than it snows and there isn't much snow or even frost. most mornings when i run sabin to school, although it's still pretty dark out around 8 a.m., i don't have to scrape frost off the car.

i remember the first november i spent here, the sun never shined a single time. it rained an annoying cold drizzle the entire, grey, bleak month. that definitely gave me pause as to what i had gotten myself into.

where i grew up in south dakota, you had a proper cold, snowy winter and the winters were dark, but nothing like here. just as an example, chicago is more or less on the same latitude as rome and here in denmark we are more or less on the same latitude as the hudson bay. it's not as cold here due to the gulf stream and the fact of being surrounded by water (i guess that was what we called the lake effect in chicago), but the darkness is similar.

i think it's why the danes have this thing about "hygge," which is translated as "coziness," but which carries far more weight than that word carries in english, at least for me. inherent in it is a combatting of darkness with candlelight and red wine and good food and good design and laughter together with friends in your home. and that feeling wouldn't be the same without the darkness of the winter, so i've come to think that's something i can live with. i just have to be sure that when the sun shines i get out for a walk in it, regardless of how cold it is. we also try to go to the swimming pool on a weekly basis and there they have a "health cabin" with light and warmth treatment where you can spend 20 minutes or so and i've found that really helps.

lynne: What makes you feel most content?


as i'm waiting to start my new job (with the same company i worked for last year), i've actually been thinking a lot about this. because despite the doom and gloom of the newspapers and the television news going on and on about GEC, i actually feel quite content in my life at this moment. if i think about the reasons why, it has a lot to do with the fact of being in a home i love with people i love, surrounded by things i love, getting to do the things i love--cooking, sewing, painting, drawing--all domestic things.

despite spending a number of years chasing a career, i have to admit that many of my moments of contentment come from being in my home.  and the moments when i'm most often aware of feeling content are when i'm cooking with ingredients that inspire me or painting the walls a rich color that makes me feel good or sewing up a lap quilt or a pillow.

for me contentment also has to do with being able to spend a number of hours alone nearly every day. despite being seen as an outgoing person and largely being that, i have a great need for time alone to think. i love the quiet of the house around me or of listening to the same album or even the same song over and over. i love letting my thoughts wander as i sew seams. i crave the time to do that and feel most content when i have plenty of alone time.

i guess contentment comes as well from generally feeling that i'm where i should be at this stage in my life. although i didn't finish my Ph.D., because life took me in another direction, i don't regret it. in fact, i don't have a lot of regrets in general. all of the choices i've made and the experiences i've had have brought me to this place and this time where i feel satisfied. and it really does seem to be true that we have to go through bad experiences in order to be stronger and to appreciate the good ones.  i know that i am far more content now than i was at this time last year.

on the other hand, contentment is highly subjective and personal, isn't it? and who knows, i might wake up feeling far less content tomorrow because i also know that one of the things that makes me content is change and if things stay the same for too long, i get impatient and restless. i'm likely going to need to have some plane tickets pretty soon if i'm going to maintain this sense of contentment that i have at the moment.

lynne: How important is music in your life? What is your favourite type of music? I notice you write a lot about books your read and about your crafts but seldom mention music.

interesting you ask. music is very important and it's actually rare that i am without music. we have more iPods in this house than i care to admit and seven different speaker sets to plug them into so there can be music anywhere in the house(s). we have henry kloss radios in both of the bathrooms so we can listen to the radio while we're getting ready in the morning.

i've written a few of times about music, and pretty much all of the times i mentioned alanis morissette, who is one of my big favorites and the one i return to again and again to keep my equilibrium and sanity. but largely, i think i don't write about it much because it's something that's always there for me, like air, which i also don't write much about. :-) and i definitely don't have one of those widgets that triggers a playlist when you come to my blog--i have to admit that really bugs me when i come across those on blogs. i'm cool with people TALKING about their music, i just don't really want them to play it for me automatically, mostly because i have my own music playing. plus, i don't know where people are when they're reading my blog, perhaps they're somewhere where it would be really quite inconvenient to have regina spector blasting out of their computer speakers. because my list, if i had it, would have some regina on it.

my musical tastes run from what my sister calls vag rock (by which she means everyone from alanis, regina and sheryl crow to katy perry and lily allen) to chill and house, which i got into on a trip to turkey a few years ago to scissor sisters (might be vag rock too, now that i think about it) to jamiriquoi to nirvana to andrew lloyd weber's evita if i'm in the mood. i got totally into that, even before madonna played evita in the mid-90s and read every biography of eva peron that was published at the time. oh, and i love madonna and have since the beginning.

music was important in our household growing up. i had 9 years of piano lessons and almost as many of the flute. i continued playing the flute into college and although we don't have a piano these days, i do have my flute and should play it more often than i do. we sing a lot around here--with the music that's playing and especially in the car. and especially when my sister is here. sabin loves that.

the only thing i'm not a big fan of is most jazz, tho' some i do like. for me, there is a certain kind of jazz that just agitates me and makes me feel really restless and on edge. that's not what i want music to do for me--i generally use it to clear out emotions and find my balance again or to uplift my spirits and much jazz actually makes me feel the opposite of that.

but alanis, she's there for me every time.

lynne: What really makes you laugh?


husband. he's so funny and always says things that are so unexpected and hilarious. he can burst into a little song or make up a story and he makes me laugh every time. he's ironic and smart and just so funny. we laugh together every day and that's an essential component of my contentment as well.

jon stewart really makes me laugh too. intelligent, biting, satirical humor is the kind that's best for me. mr. bean-style humor doesn't really do it for me--that often just makes me cringe. but give me black adder any day. historically astute, bitingly accurate and just so funny, that's my kind of humor.

being with people i can laugh with, especially in a work setting, is really important to me. one of the things that made me realize i had to leave my job from hell was that i found that i wasn't laughing anymore. for me, laughter is a sign that things are good and if it's absent, i need to pay attention to that. and do something about it.

* * *

well, that was it, i think that was the last one. at least for now. thank you, lynne, for asking me these questions and thank you all for reading. now go, listen to some music you love, laugh and be content!

oops, one more interview!

after a whirlwind week of playing tour guide in denmark (which i'm rubbish at, because i give vague background on all of the sights and sometimes just make stuff up), i'm catching up and i realized that the lovely relyn has posted her interview with me (a few days ago, yikes!!)!  please go and read it while i catch up on the rest of what you all have been doing! :-)

wherein she goes on and on about cape town

it's the interview meme that keeps on giving! i asked molly from ohfortheloveofblog to interview me after i interviewed her last week and here are her questions for me. i totally loved the mix of serious and frivolous. :-)

molly:  I’m dying to know about your trip to Cape Town in, was it 2007? What did you do? Where did you go? What was the best and the least pleasant thing about your stay?

i was last in cape town in november of 2007. i had visited once before, in july of 2006. both trips were related to my job, so on both trips i got to hang out with sailors. i think there are many reasons that i fell in love with cape town that first time...partly, since it was july, i was in a summer holiday mood, so although it was work, it felt a bit like a holiday. i was lucky with the weather as well, despite it being winter in that part of the world. i was attending an officer's seminar and got to meet a load of great guys from the fleet down there, plus, i stayed in a funky protea hotel (victoria junction) . i think when your hotel is different from the usual anonymous business hotel, it puts you in a better frame of mind. the protea hotels are hip, funky places with fun decor and playful meeting notebooks with jokes and time-killers in the watermarks. you can't help but feel in a good mood when you stay in one. (and yes, protea people, if you stumble across this, you are welcome to quote me on this.)

another reason it was so great was that i got to hang out with one of my favorite people. i stayed over the weekend and she took me to the winelands. here we are, trying out the wares at delheim (i highly recommend the chardonnay sur lie if you can get your hands on some):

and how can you not completely fall madly in love with a place that looks like this, even in the winter? or where your friend has a friend who works here and you can visit the factory and walk away with rather a lot of beautiful purses for yourself and your friends and family (zebra shopper on the right is MY actual bag).

because it was work, i visited a training centre, the idyllically-placed SAMTRA in simonstown. the managing director was so kind that after he took me on a tour of the simulator and the facilities, he drove me down to cape point, since i hadn't been there before:

after which we had the most fantastic seafood lunch overlooking the sea and even caught a glimpse of some whales languishing off the shore. then, a little walk on boulder beach to meet some of these guys:

on my second visit, i had a number of meetings and once again had the chance to visit SAMTRA and i stayed in the fab fire & ice protea hotel with its shark cage elevators and the dramatic high-backed chairs in the dining room. i think it was over a lovely dinner conversation with the MD of SAMTRA and his wonderful down-to-earth wife on that trip that i first admitted out loud how tired and burned out i was by the prospect of starting all over again with a new boss. it was such a relief to discuss it with such kind people.

so, for me, cape town and the people i know there, make it a place where i feel comfortable and relaxed and where i feel i have time to think and clear my head. i'm not sure how it happened, but it seemed to be a magical combination of great people with whom i felt totally at ease, a gorgeous setting and quite possibly the general vibe that i felt in the air when i was there. perhaps the fact that i was literally far from my everyday reality at work gave me the space i needed literally and metaphorically and psychically for that matter, to think and see my situation for what it was.

one of the places where the chill-out, relaxing vibe is spot-on is at spiers' moyo. i actually visited there both times i went, but on the second trip, i think that lying there, giggling with my good friend and her daughter while sipping a crisp chardonnay was what did the trick for me and helped me on the road to my decision to leave the job that was so bad for me, even tho' it meant i no longer had a ready excuse to visit cape town anymore.

but, seriously, how can you not think clearly in a place like this:

where a perfectly lovely woman comes by and paints your face like this:

and you can lean back and chat with your husband back in the northern hemisphere like this:

it has actually occurred to me that the pattern she painted on my face did something to clear my ability to think and see things more clearly, directing and unblocking the flow of my thoughts. do you believe such things can be so?

i honestly can't think of a single unpleasant thing about either of my stays, but will admit that i was in an ideal situation. i was picked up at the airport by our company driver and he took me everywhere i wanted to go when i wasn't with colleagues and business associates. this may have left me rather protected from some of the realities that are no doubt there. for example, we merely drove past shanty towns and although i talked to the driver about them, i didn't really experience them or the people who live there.

i was told some stories of a spate of incidents where some people were causing serious accidents by throwing large rocks down onto cars on the freeway below from an overpass, but again, didn't face this reality. i didn't have time on either visit to go to robbin island (or rather, i probably would have had time, but chose the winelands instead, which shows you my priorities), and i am sure that would have been a sobering experience.

there are many reasons to return--for example, i didn't get to climb table mountain. not to mention that now i've met some really cool people here in the blogosphere that i would love to meet in person (see SA blog link list in sidebar). i would love to go with my family. i might even like to try a bit of camping. and although i don't really have a burning desire to check the big five off my list, it would be fun to see some of those beautiful animals, especially if sabin was along, because she would find it amazing. so basically, i keep an eye out for opportunities for us job-wise in that part of the world and feel that someday, the right thing will come along. and in the meantime, it's definitely on the family holiday destination list.

molly:  Absolutely no hint of judgement in this next question, I’m genuinely just curious: do you think about, and if yes, how do you offset / rationalise / ignore the size of your carbon footprint from all the flying you do? (Or, if they’re work-related flights do you notch up the environmental debt to your employers as I would.)

i will admit to a shocking lack of thinking about such things until rather recently. back in 2007, when i traveled more than 150 days, i didn't think about it at all. all i thought about was how ridiculous it was to try to get from singapore to constanta, romania in two days (no direct route and involving not one but TWO horrible london airports) and how much i hated those business class seats on BA where you are FACING your seat mate and if you have a seat mate (read: random stranger) that doesn't want to put the little wall up, you're a bit stuck. in other words, i was pretty shallow. or maybe i was just really, really busy and had no time to think.

these days, i think about it because i'm still working in oslo and that involves a commute by air. i have wondered how much longer that will be defensible on my part (and my employer's, for that matter). the airlines (especially the ones i fly most often--SAS and KLM) have made it easy to pay a few euros extra (i think it's 8) to offset the CO2 and i choose that option, passing along the cost to the company, after all, they are asking me to do the traveling. however, i'm also usually traveling in a fare class where i feel that i'm paying enough for the ticket that it's defensible. as i see it, the super cheap, discount-rate tickets probably aren't covering a lot of ability on the airline's part to do anything extra for the environment (not that i don't go for those when there are five of us flying somewhere), like upgrading to newer, more fuel efficient planes.

frankly, i think that the global economic crisis will make companies think harder about how much they require their employees to travel. they'll use the technologies that are available (not that i think that face-to-face meetings aren't necessary some of the time, they are) to hold virtual meetings. people won't be placed in the ridiculous situation i was placed in of giving a 30-minute presentation in singapore on a monday and the same presentation in constanta, romania on the wednesday of the same week, then being expected to be in newcastle for an opening of a new office on that friday. and i wasn't even top management. i think that level of madness will come to a well-deserved end. as will last-minute trips halfway across the world. on more than one occasion i was asked late on a friday afternoon to be in singapore on the following monday. however, that hasn't been the case for the past year, my current employer is MUCH better at planning than the old one was.

molly: How many pairs of shoes do you own? How about some pics of your favourites?

i'm a little fearful to actually go and count, tho' it's not as bad as it once was. i have probably 4 pairs of heels that i wear for work with suits. 4 pairs of havianas that are my summer wear and which i wear around the house when it's not too cold (i actually have them on now because we really warmed up the house with the fireplace today). i have two pairs of furry boots--one red, and new purple ones that i just bought (on sale, of course), plus a pair of tommy hilfiger wintery boots that can get muddy (the furry ones really shouldn't) and a couple different pairs of wellingtons for those many rainy days in denmark (different styles for different moods). i've got nike running shoes (the iPod ones, despite the fact that i don't really run except when chased--but as we know, i love gadgets) and nike tennis shoes for casual wear. two pairs of K swiss to wear with jeans. a couple of pairs of flats (i'm a sucker for camper shoes). one pair of crocs. two pairs of el naturalistas, which are my latest everyday shoes. i've got a couple of pairs of sparkly shoes for with fancy dresses, but i don't use them that often, so they're at the back of the closet. i've got riding boots, which i haven't used in far too long. but, as requested, here are a few of my faves:

jessica simpson stilettos

(i know, i lose a few IQ points every time i wear them, but they're beautiful)

the beloved SA havianas (i will cry when these wear out)

please ignore the pedicure, but do note my one and only tattoo:

my summer flats from last summer:

my first pair of purple el naturalistas:

and the newer pair of red ones that i wear nearly every day these days

(and since it was taken with my iPhone, perhaps a small lesson in why people shouldn't use mobile phones while driving):

and last, but not least, my new purple furry bumper boots:

molly:  I’m sure there’s a part of you that thinks about moving back to the States now that it’s a Whole New World over there. If your husband’s work would allow it (‘cos I believe that’s the main reason you’re all in Denmark?), would you consider it? Are you considering it?

actually, we're not considering it at all. the economy over there is still in the toilet, despite the new president (granted, he's had less than a week). and, despite my occasional frustrations with the danes, our life is here. originally, i came here because my husband was an officer in the danish army and i was but a drifting graduate student. also, when we got together, his girls from his previous marriage were small. too small to be put on a plane to the US to visit us. but now, ten+ years have gone by and our life is here. our house, our friends, sabin's school, her friends--not that i wouldn't take an expatriation in a heartbeat. i just wouldn't imagine it being to the US.

during the bush years, it was out of the question. i skulked through passport control, head hanging low and while i no longer feel i have to do that, i think the US would drive me crazy. the bush legacy is is at least partly an enhancement of the lack of common sense and trusting in employees that was always there. i see it when i encounter those lovely people from "homeland security." they have no visible ability to think for themselves, no sense of humor and frankly, many of them don't even have all their own teeth. it would drive me crazy now after being gone for so long.

i don't like how i feel when i'm in the US. i'm more stressed and i feel it changes me into a more hurried, rushed person who could go postal (as we say in the US) at any moment. i'm more aggressive--verbalizing threats against other drivers and the like. i'm a kinder, gentler person here in DK (tho' i realize i might not always seem that way on this blog). in short, i like me better here.

i always say that i have a mid-atlantic feeling--adrift somewhere in the middle of the atlantic, not belonging on either side. i no longer feel fully like an american nor do i feel like a dane (tho' i fear i act like one more often than i'd like to admit). and both are surely by choice. you don't get over eight years of distancing yourself from bush in less than a week of the new president (as much hope as he gives me). i guess i'm quite content to continue voting and holding an american passport and living here, observing it all from afar. i can't actually imagine a situation in which that will change.

molly: What plans, if any, for your etsy shop?

good question. i created it last summer sometime, but have never listed a single item. i have some kind of huge block/fear about it. i think the block has to do with the creative block in general that i had after leaving my stressful job. perhaps now that i feel that clearing out, i will take the plunge and list something. i'm just not sure what. probably my pillow creations come to mind as the first thing i'd be willing to list. or perhaps some gocco cards. or my little fimo clay robots or maybe some of the 25 pairs of earrings that i've made. or maybe even some photos printed up nicely...(perhaps what's stopping me is the array of choice).

but i can always find a zillion excuses. like that i don't have a zipper foot for my old sewing machine, so i couldn't make pillows with a zipper so you could easily wash them. so i'd need a new sewing machine before i could list anything. or that i don't really know how to bend those little wires with the earrings, so they don't look entirely professional.  these are the stories that i tell myself in my head, but i know they're just excuses. hmm...i don't really have any excuse about the gocco cards, so perhaps that's where i should start.

i think if i'm honest, i'm also a little bit afraid of making what's fun and light-hearted into work and drudgery and something that i have to do. today, i can stay up late sewing or painting if the spirit moves me. if i were selling things and people actually ordered them, then i would HAVE to do it. there would be constant pressure to come up with something new or to keep doing something that i'd become tired of.

so, frankly, i don't really know what i will do with it. i probably should just give it a whirl. what am i gonna remember?

molly: Bonus frivolous question (‘cos there was nothing frivolous about Question 3...) -  which is, so far, your favourite Murakami novel and why?


i love this question, but will answer it in another posting because i think we've all had enough for now (and it's now nearly 2 a.m. as i write this). i realized this evening, after my sister left and i had time to sit down that i've really missed this whole blog thing. i'll be by this week to read what all of you have had to say while i've been running around. and i will tell you which is my favorite murakami sometime this week. thank you molly, for getting me back on the blog bandwagon again.

last but not least

i finally got the last of my interview questions off and my interviewees have now all posted their answers. so please go read artistic mari's arty answers to all of my obsessive questions about inspiration and the muses.

if you're in the mood for the entire spectrum from fabulous chair design to burgeoning southern african democracy, go and check out molly's wonderful answers to my questions at ohfortheloveofblog.

these interviews were great fun! a big thank you to all of you who wanted to be interviewed and to all who read the interviews. don't you love the blogosphere?

* * *

and just a few more days of mad dashing around before my sister heads home on sunday. but in the meantime, it's all scenes like this:

there will be many stories to tell next week...but first, we have to survive a treasure hunt birthday party with 20 second graders. but husband has a plan involving fish...

for your reading pleasure

while i've been off playing on lots of staircases and cold beaches, some more of the 5-question interviews have gone up:

• my new blog friend and fellow julie at just jules has answered her questions (and tangobaby's, so you get a double dose of fun!)
• from sunny yuma, arizona, delena at serenity now, famed for her grateful friday posts, has answered five questions from me.

you should definitely go check them out and get to know them a little bit better. i've got one set of questions yet to get out and there are a couple more to go up. i'll give you the links as soon as they're up!

interviews anyone?

i forgot to mention in my haste to run off to the airport, that i'd be happy to do more interviews of anyone who is game and didn't say so in the last round. :-) just let me know in the comments and be sure to leave your email address.

500th post - an interview of me by tangobaby

that 499 was staring me in the face in my blogger dashboard this morning. i knew this would be my 500th post and i had nothing but a really weird dream that i had last night (strangely not in a mall) which although i took a page and a half of notes when i woke up from it, wouldn't have much sense to all of you...so, i was very fortunate that the lovely and talented tangobaby was staying up late during her staycation and just sent her 5 interview questions for me. we can all breathe a sigh of relief about that one! especially me, because i didn't want to waste my 500th post on drivel. so, here goes...

tangobaby:  I see now in your profile that you're currently working as a bee charmer. Since previously you were in the shipping industry, can you please elaborate on the change of career and tell us how you do charm bees. Is charming a bee easier than charming a sailor?

me:  back in '97 when i was on my fulbright in macedonia (at the point where i was just hanging out because the subject of my research turned out not to exist), a couple of NGO/peace corps types who i had met in the ex-pat community in skopje were going to travel to russia during the summer. they had been to the russian embassy to acquire their visas and had faced a lot of bureaucratic red tape and had come away discouraged. one of the women, bless her heart, was a prematurely grey 40-year-old with one of those eyes that looked off the other direction during the conversation and the other was a frumpy, slightly lumpy, no makeup, very granola-type. they were very nice, don't get me wrong, but they just weren't getting anywhere on the visa front. they knew i spoke russian (and had a few very short skirts and some nice new high-heeled sandals), so they asked me to help them out.

it just so happened that i needed a russian visa myself as i was headed on my friend gabi's honeymoon. so, i took my paperwork and theirs, put on my short orange dress and walked over to the russian embassy, which was about two blocks from my apartment. the dress is here on another occasion (when i was too afraid of heights to stand all the way up on a column at a ruin in central macedonia):

in those days (and maybe still today), you needed an invitation to get a visa to russia. my friends had a formal invitation from the place they were going to stay--very official-looking. i had an invitation from some friends. now there were some issues with my invitation. for one, it only had my first and middle names on it, not my last name. oh, and although the passport number was correct, it said i had a german passport. so, when i fronted up with a last name and a US passport, i expected i'd have some explaining to do.

it was a bright sunny day in early june. very summery and i was in a buoyant mood (it was probably the dress). i was let into the courtyard to the consular window by the guards. you actually stood outside and there was a picnic table there where you could wait. i went up to the window and explained in my rusty russian about the three visas and avoided mentioning the problematic bits with my invitation, hoping they might not notice.  then, i sat down at the picnic table to wait.

before long, the visa officer, a stocky, 50-ish russian gentleman, came out to the picnic table. he asked if i'd like a coffee and i said, yes and he asked someone to bring us coffee. then, he asked me about my invitation. he pointed out that my last name was missing and that it stated that i had a german passport. i was, of course, aware of these facts. but he was quite nice about it, laughing a bit and not at all intimidating. i explained that i was going together with german friends and they had arranged for our invitation and the russian friends must have not realized i wasn't german too. and then he laughed and said he'd issue the visa and that i should have a nice trip. and that i was welcome to come back anytime for coffee. then he went in and issued all 3 visas while i waited (which was quite unheard of, people normally waited at least a week).

when i went back to my friends to give them their visas, ellen pronounced me a bee charmer, so that's the long version of where that came from. actually, i think it's a line from the lovely 1991 movie fried green tomatoes at the whistle stop cafe.  that same summer, i had several other bee charming experiences, which i'll save for another day, so it was somehow the place i was in and the aura i was giving off.

i decided that i wanted 2009 to be such a bee charming year--to call some of that positive energy back into my life, so that's why i recently changed my blogger profile. and sailors are just as subject to bee charming as anyone else (if the queen bee can swear), so i expect to keep right on charming them as well.

tangobaby: You're remarkably candid about your feelings on your blog, especially in the area of the media and politics. If you could distill the greatest differences between the media and politics in Denmark and the US, what would they be. If you could infuse part of Denmark into the US, what change would be most beneficial? (Feel free to expound voluminously.)

me:  first, i guess i'm remarkably candid about my politics and opinions in general pretty much all the time, so it's natural for me to be so here on my blog as well. my blog is an extension of me, so to speak, so i behave here like i do in "real" life. and i guess i'm honest to a fault. husband has said that he understands the phrase "brutally honest" now that he knows me. this has been both good and bad for me, but is so closely tied to my identity and how i want to live my life...in a very real, raw, true manner, that i can't imagine being otherwise. i have tried to learn to temper it a bit when necessary, but i don't always succeed.

now back to media & politics...the largest difference surely comes from the fact that running denmark, with a population of 5 million, is like running a moderately-sized US city. of course, cities don't have embassies or a navy, so that's a bit of an over-simplification, but, it's still a scale. it's a bit easier to put a national health care system in place for 5 million people than for 300 million, just as one example.

there are a lot more parties in danish politics than in the US and people are starting new parties all the time. and because denmark is so egalitarian, it's really quite difficult (for me at least) to see any real difference between parties. the social democrats, the radicals and the socialists are the opposition to the coalition government that's in power at the moment, which consists of the left (venstre) party (which confusingly, is actually right), the conservatives and, as a "supporting partner," the danish people's party (dansk folkeparti). dansk folkeparti is the most colorful party, with a very colorful leader named pia. she's a real piece of work with her madonna-esque gap between her front teeth (the comparison most decidedly stops there) and speaks for the lower classes (whatever they may be in denmark, since everyone is SOOooo middle class)--those people who want to keep denmark for the danes, who are afraid of any foreigners and who go on charter holidays to mallorca, where they take their rye bread and liver pate along from home and stay in a hotel full of other danes. i'm sure that the woman who ran into the disabled guy in the wheelchair the other day was a member of dansk folkeparti's core audience.

as far as media, there is DR--danish radio, which would, in being publicly funded, be something akin to PBS in the US. however, it's a major media force in denmark--with two t.v. channels, 4 radio channels and lots of local radio. they do a limited amount of own production quality t.v. dramas and then crap like a danish version of x-factor (5 million people is not a large enough pool to draw talent from, let me tell you), which appeals to the masses.

i learned just the other night that if a t.v. station broadcasts from denmark, they cannot have commercials during their programming, only between the programs. a friend of ours works for a commercial station that broadcasts from the UK to get around this. weird how these things work.

as for other media...we have disney (the hannah montana channel, as nearly as i can tell), which strangely has ads only for their own programming, discovery, BBC world, CNN, BBC entertainment, 3-4 swedish channels, a couple of german ones, one swiss, a couple of french. but the main thing i watch is british detective shows and comedies. nothing is dubbed in danish (except children's programs and hannah montana for the morning broadcast), the market is too small, but it's good for people's english.

the DR popular radio station, P3, is great. they are some of the funniest DJs i've ever heard on radio (and i  lived in the southern california, chicago and phoenix radio markets) and they do a lot of really edgy stuff. the DR satire department is not at all afraid of lampooning any aspect of danish society and current events. nor do they have issues swearing on air. much freer in that sense than US media and not so restricted by political correctness.  i think it's this that i would infuse into US politics/media. a figure like jon stewart is doing so in the US, but he's on comedy central and that's not exactly wide distribution/mainstream media.  here, the daily show is broadcast on CNN and DR2, which says something interesting.

another interesting aspect of denmark that i'd like to inject into the US is a bit hard to describe. one of our best friends is black--her danish mother was studying in london and met a nice nigerian boy and produced our friend. she grew up in denmark, as danish as can be, but her skin is really black. and i always joke (even to her), that she doesn't know she's black. not in the way that people who are black in the US know they are black. she's completely complex-free and that's so refreshing. the US could use more of that and perhaps it will come for the generation growing up today now that obama is our coming president. i would wish that for the US.

tangobaby: You're a girl of many blogs. What does your hubby think of all of us in Bloglandia? (I ask this because my Boy is still befuddled about it all.) Does he encourage and/or enjoy your pursuits, or does he try to unplug your computer and hide it?

let me explain all those blogs, because they're for different purposes and not all active.

• moments of perfect clarity - this is the main blog. this is the one i write on (nearly) every day and where it all happens. this is my REAL blog.
  
• balderdash - this blog seemed to be needed as a place to put the funny made-up definitions i was coming up with for the WV words. and making a new blog afforded me the opportunity to invite a others to contribute. i've found that i really need to be inspired to write them and so my entries there are more sporadic than i would like them to be. i faithfully write down the words tho', they're scribbled on surfaces all over the house.
• just know where you are - this is the blog my sister and i put up about a year ago, when she was getting ready to go home to the US after being here for five months. we thought we'd continue our conversation there. that hasn't really happened (mostly because i think she lost the link and doesn't remember it exists). it has ended up being a place where i post pictures and small vignettes of what's been happening on our side of the atlantic. i do this because i have set it to send an email to our parents when there's a posting there and it's a good way to keep them informed when i don't call them often enough. i also post recipes there and i do think my sister goes there to look those up. we named it just know where you are because my sister wanted a GPS last year for christmas and husband's response was to buy her a map and a compass and tell her, "just know where you are," which i thought was pretty clever.
• too late nathan - my cousin does a family newsletter twice a year. i put up this blog as a supplement to that...to be a place where we could share a few more pictures and where my cousins would tell their stories. they haven't really done so. i think my family is actually rather luddite, if i'm honest. and it disappoints me a bit, because i have 29 cousins and i know that some of them must have something witty and/or humorous to say.
• getting it outta my system - only has 3 posts in it, but i write there when i want to vent about something that no one else should read, but which i need to get out of my system to move on. it's completely private and no one can go there but me. :-)
• sea skill - this is an invite-only blog where i put my work-related writing over the past year. i was having a writer's block in october and thought it might help cure it, since i seemed to have no trouble writing within this little blogger compose space during that time. it did help. it was also a way to solve the problem of my working on a mac in a PC environment and the issues i had with working on three different computers and never having the file i needed on the computer i needed it on at the moment i needed it.  basically, it's a sharepoint.

and as for husband's opinion...he thinks it's madness. i'm occasionally petulant to him about him not reading my blog, but he says, "i get to have the conversation with YOU, in person, i don't need to read it." and he's really right. many of the things i write about are the result of conversations i've had with him over a cup of tea in the evening or breakfast on a sunday morning.

tangobaby: As a former almost beauty queen from SD, what in your childhood prepared you for your life abroad and your years of travel? 

me:  i didn't have a passport or travel outside the US (except to canada and mexico, which didn't count since all you needed was a blockbuster card) 'til i was 26 if you can believe it. but, despite growing up in a very small town (1334 people), i learned to be outward looking from my mother, who hauled us in a 7-state area showing horses every summer. she drove us miles and miles and i learned from that to be fearless and that you didn't have to sit around waiting for a man to do stuff for you, since dad stayed home and golfed and no doubt enjoyed the peace and quiet.  and i've written before about how the made-for-t.v. movie the day after with jason robards and a deep and abiding loathing for ronald reagan (which i must have learned from my dad) made me want to study russian and visit russia.

i don't think i ever imagined that i'd live outside the US, especially not in denmark, which wasn't even on my list of places to visit--kind of in the same way that north dakota wasn't really on my list either--it just seemed boring. it just goes to show that you have to be open to what life throws at you and just go with it. and that, i learned growing up.

as for the beauty queen thing, i don't think that had anything to do with it, that was about revenge on a boyfriend who dumped me.

tangobaby:  To me, your photography is very graphic, vibrant and playful. Does your vision of the world inspire this aspect of your photography? What do you wish to learn most through your photographic exploits, what lessons are you looking for?

me:  this is an excellent question, mostly because it's provoking me to think about something that i never really thought about before.  i think that i'm very attracted to strong colors (which may contribute to my winter depression in this dark, grey danish landscape) and find myself taking pictures of things with strong colors. i only just started to play with the black & white presets in lightroom, to try to force myself off the direct positive and to expand my horizons (hence the new avatar pic).

as for the lessons i'd like to learn through my photography...i'm not sure i have consciously had any. but, i've been positively surprised on numerous occasions to notice some detail in a photo that i didn't realize was there when i was taking it...a shadow, a detail, some depth. i enjoy noticing those things. and i would say that noticing my surroundings has been one side-effect of photography. i think in photographs now in a way that i didn't used to. i tend to have a camera on me all the time, tho' i discovered the battery was dead on the pink sony when i was in ikea the other day and had to use my iPhone, which takes crap pictures, but i NEEDED a picture of this lamp to show to husband:

i'd like to learn a lot more about my camera. i have a nikon D60 DSLR and i've invested in some great lenses--an 18-200mm zoom lens and a macro, plus a fun lensbaby. i'm using the manual setting and choosing my own ISO more and more often, but still use it on auto settings most of the time. so from a learning standpoint, i'd like to work more on manual. my rolleicord TLR and other analog cameras help me on that front as well. i guess developing a photographic eye involves new, fresh ways of looking at the world. i look at things more closely than i used to, noticing chipping paint and details that i wouldn't once have noticed. photography grounds me and places me more firmly in the world, here and now. and although i hadn't articulated it until you asked me, that's what i want from it.

* * *

well, that's it, that's my 500th post and my interview with the fabulous and wonderful tangobaby. thank you, dahling, for asking me these great questions! and now i've got to go pick my sister at the airport, which means my postings for the next ten days may be sporadic at best. but i'm sure i'll find time to share some pictures!

new interviews are up!

two more interviews are up:

our dear amanda of WTF? wednesday fame is serializing her answers (i guess my questions were a bit wordy). and barb has shared her answers, including pictures of all of her creative endeavors at mammy's love.

they're really good, so hurry on over and read them. :-)

she's overthinking again

not to harp on and on....but i have few more things to say about this whole process of writing the five interview questions and doing these bloggy interviews.  first of all, i've spent the past year writing for a living and part of that has been interviewing people, so this shouldn't be unfamiliar territory. however, it seems somehow to be different.

there are a number of reasons that come to mind:

1. in this case i'm interviewing friends.
2. in this case i'm interviewing friends who i've never actually met in person.
3. interviewing someone via email is different than sitting down and talking with them, tho' i've tried to imagine that i'm doing that.
4. this is more personal.
5. it's a different audience than it is when i write articles for a living. a more elusive, harder-to-imagine audience. in the end, i pretty much decided that the audience for MY five questions is me, so i asked the things i want to know. 

one of the things i've done in order to compose my questions for each person is go back and read their blog. lots of postings, all in one go, rather than reading them from my reader on a post-by-post basis. actually getting into the groove and rhythm. and it's very interesting, because a picture begins to emerge in a way that it doesn't if you just read on a post-by-post basis. you begin to get a more coherent sense of the blogger as a person who actually spends their time out there in the world, living and breathing. interestingly, it seems to remove you all from cyberspace, where i imagined you resided and into the real world. 

i had an intuition about this being the case from my own blog. every month, on the last day, i print the month's postings and put them in a binder. i always enjoy tracing the development of my own thoughts over the entire month. and one of these days, i'm going to sit down and read the whole year's worth. because i'll bet i've come a long way without even realizing it.

the WAY we read something would seem to be really important. with all of the information and all of the beautiful things out there to read and look at all the time, we read in a really fragmented way these days. i read lots of blogs and surf many sites every day, clicking from one to the next. very often, i find myself telling husband about something and then trying to find it again...trying to remember where i saw some snippet of inspiration or information. and because of the fragmented way in which i read, i can't always recall where i've seen something. luckily, i'm pretty good about using bookmarks or dragging a picture into my "inspiration" folder in iPhoto, so i very often can find the best stuff again. 

i guess what i'm trying to say is that i've enjoyed this bloggy interview exercise, because it's helped me see a clearer, more whole, coherent picture of you, my friends in the blogosphere. and i very much like what i've seen.

and now, you must go read tangobaby's interview. she's so fabulous.

interviews starting to go up

a couple of my interviewees have already posted their answers (and there are still two who i have yet to send questions to...but i will do it, never fear!), so i thought i'd provide links so you can see what they had to say...

mary at the eleventh
lynne at wheatlands news
hele at truth cycles

i have to say that i have a little performance anxiety writing these questions. it's like one of those genie in a bottle/3 wishes kind of things...you have only the one chance to get the questions right! i've tried to ask some serious, but one frivolous question of each person. except lynne, i think all of hers were serious. this is why two people haven't yet got their questions. one is the fabulous tangobaby, about whom i have an extreme case of performance anxiety! yikes! i promise i'll get them off to you later this evening or first thing tomorrow morning.  at the same time as i have performance anxiety, i've also had a lot of fun coming up the questions..rereading blogs and thinking of things i've wondered about. the blogosphere is so wonderful, don't you think?

but now, i'm off to play cards and make dinner with friends.