Sunday Stealing

The Unknown Author Questions

1.   if someone wanted to really understand you, what would they read, watch, and listen to? Broadcast News. Holly Hunter's Jane reminds me of me in ways both good and not so good.

2.      have you ever found a blogger who thinks just like you? if so, who? It's not that she thinks just like me, but I feel a great kinship with Kwizgiver.

3.      list your fandoms and one character from each that you identify with. While I am a tremendous fangirl, my fandom doesn't work that way. I don't watch LOTR or GOT, I watch the Cubs, who won yesterday.

 And then there's him. Always him.

4.      do you like your name?  is there another name you think would fit you better? At this late date, I don't care. When people mispronounce my last name, I don't even correct them anymore.

5.      do you think of yourself as a human being or a human doing? do you identify yourself by the things you do? I guess I'm a "human doing," because I am very defined by my job. (See #1.)

6.      are you religious/spiritual? Yes.

7.      do you care about your ethnicity? Not really. 

8.      what musical artists have you most felt connected to over your lifetime? The B's: The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, Barbra Streisand.

9.      are you an artist? I write. Does that count?

10.   do you have a creed? The Golden Rule has always worked for me.

11.   describe your ideal day. With me, the perfect day is set by how it starts. I love waking up with nothing I must do. No train to catch. No doctor's appointment or vet's appointment or hair appointment. 

12.   dog person or cat person? I have cats and always will, but I really don't believe in the premise of the question. If I lived in a home with a yard, and could afford a dogsitter or doggy daycare, I'd have a dog, too. Animals are just naturally my buds.

13.   inside or outdoors? Inside. Unless we're talking about The Friendly Confines of Wrigley Field.

14.   are you a musician? Hell, no. I'm tone deaf.

15.   five most influential books over your lifetime. I'm only mentioning one: Saving Graces by Elizabeth Edwards. She writes with breathtaking candor about loss and grief and she taught me by word and example that sharing your pain and fears doesn't make us weak, it strengthens us.

16.   if you’d grown up in a different environment, do you think you’d have turned out the same? Probably not. Within my family and my hometown, I was not really encouraged to be myself. I wonder how I would have fared in an environment where I received more support from an early age.

17.   would you say your tumblr is a fair representation of the “real you”? I don't have a Tumblr account.

18.   what’s your patron-us? I think this is from Harry Potter. I know nothing about Harry Potter.

19.   which Harry Potter house would you be in? or are you a muggle? See #18.

20.   would you rather be in Middle Earth, Narnia, Hogwarts, or somewhere else? See #18.

21.   do you love easily? I love carefully.

22.   list the top five things you spend the most time doing, in order.

•  Farting around on the internet

•  Working

•  Reading

•  Playing with the cats

•  Laundry. OK, that's not accurate. But I feel like I'm forever doing laundry. 

23.   how often would you want to see your family every year? It's not how often, it's how long. I prefer spending no more than three hours at a family gathering. At 3:01, someone reliably says something that annoys me, or I annoy everyone else.

24.   have you ever felt like you had a “mind-meld” with someone? Sure. The friends I'm like minded with my most comfortable, closest friends.

25.   could you live as a hermit? Yes.

26.   how would you describe your gender/sexuality? Straight. 

27.   do you feel like your outside appearance is a fair representation of the “real you”? Sure.

28.   on a scale from 1 to 10, how hard is it for someone to get under your skin? Some days: zero. At times I'm easily annoyable.

29.   three songs that you connect with right now. Again, I'm sharing just one. It's a little known Dusty Springfield gem about love and dreams.

30.   pick one of your favorite quotes. In the immortal words of Groucho Marx: East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.