Twas Brillig

I’m in an old abandoned warehouse with leaky pipes and the occasional rat. I’m in a hard metal chair and my arms and feet are tied. A wicked voice cackles and says, “Welcome to Jurgen Nation. We have some questions for you.”

“No!!!” I scream. “No! You can’t make me talk! YOU CAN’T MAKE ME TALK!!!!!” But suddenly Stacy shines a bright white light in my face, cackles again, and bribes me with chocolate.

“Fine,” I whimper, defeated. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

(Okay, maybe it didn’t QUITE happen like that. But I’m pretty sure there was chocolate involved, right Stacy?)

“Here are your questions. AHEM.”

1. So, your blog is a month old! If you were a baby, you’d be walking now! Or…wait. Whatever. Bad metaphor. What, in this past month, is your favorite post that you really worked hard on and of which you’re most proud? Cut and paste, please. (Only don’t use real glue.)

Hmmmm. This is tricky. But I think the one that I’m most “proud of” is the one called “This Hate Cycle.” The blog was pretty new (okay, it’s still new) and while I’m generally a happy and silly kind of gal, there were stories that I was dying to tell that didn’t fit into the happy and silly-ness. It took some courage to write it, because I wasn’t sure what kind of audience it might appeal to and I wasn’t sure I wanted to open up some of the darker memories. It’s not that I wanted my whole blog to become dark and dreary, though, and I wasn’t sure if I could have multiple personalities here. But somehow it’s worked out all right. I know that some of my silliness will put some readers off, while some of the more serious stuff will not be interesting to others. And that’s okay! Anyway, Stacy’s instructions were to copy/paste, and on this I’m going to disobey… But if you wanna read it, just click here.

2. I love your stories and memories about you and your BFF, the lovely Kate of Kateastrophe. Maintaining a BFFship is so incredibly hard. What is the secret to your and Kate’s success? I know, of course, that one never really knows why something works - it just does - but what traits do you think you two share that just make you two fit?

It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it? I’m not sure what one thing has caused it to work for so long. Kate and I are actually extremely different people. And maybe that’s what makes it work–we get that we’re different, and we’re okay with that. We’ve also survived a lot of catfighting, a lot of stupidness, and even that one time she made out with my boyfriend and then got me thrown out of BYU (Sorry, Katie, I had to bring it up, didn’t I?) But there’s been a lot of forgiveness on BOTH sides (cuz she’s definitely got a list of the ways I screwed her over too…) and that’s another key. One other thing that has really worked is that when one of us needs space, it’s granted. I’m not always a terribly social person and once I got married and had kids, my social life pretty much came to a screeching halt because it just wasn’t where my priorities were. She got that, and wasn’t offended by it, and would still drop me a note or a call, but wouldn’t make me feel like I had to call her back or anything. We also each have a TON of friends, some mutual, some not. That has helped us so that our friendship isn’t “needy”–we don’t depend entirely upon each other. That may sound dumb, but it’s actually a really important part. If she thought that she was the only person I ever talked to and the only person I liked and the person I needed to dump all my issues on, I think she’d get burned out real fast (and vice versa, of course.)

Mostly, though, I think I just kinda lucked out with her. She’s just cool, yo.

3. Think of all the boyfriends (using the term loosely) you have had in your life. Identify the third and tell us about it. Your answer should contain the following five wordish things: “philharmonic,” “frozen chicken breasts,” “vomit,” “Electric Youth perfume,” and “fishnet stockings.”

Haha. I’m trying to decide how “loosely” to use the term. Instead, though, I think I’ll use the term very literally–the third boy that I was officially boyfriend and girlfriend with. There were many, many boys before him, but he was the third OFFICIAL boyfriend. Anyway, his name was Todd. He was incredibly hot. We were both going to school in Southern Utah, but we both came from up north. I wanted to go home for a weekend, and he had a car and was already heading north, so our roommates set it up. That’s really how we got to know each other in the first place. Anyway, we started hanging out, and he was fun, though he had about the brain capacity of frozen chicken breasts. One day we just sorta made it “official” that I was his girlfriend–but he hadn’t even kissed me yet. Weird. I’m still trying to figure out exactly how that happened–I mean, while I’m not the kind of girl who went traipsing around in leather mini-skirts and fishnet stockings, I still generally at least made out with a guy a few times before signing up to be his girlfriend. But that same night, after I’d somewhat committed myself to him, he finally kissed me. And for me, in that moment, it was over. Somehow I’d imagined that kissing him would be amazing, blissful, philharmonic. But no. It was the worst kiss ever. EVER!!! I realized that I would rather drink a gallon of Electric Youth perfume than have him or his lips ever come near me again. Even so, I stuck it out for a whole two weeks and finally dumped him. He was actually really cool about it–it was the best dump-session I’d ever had! My roommates and TWO guys I’d lined up for after the “break up” (oh my gosh, that’s so embarrassing) were standing outside my door trying to listen in as I was dumping him. Hahaha. All they heard was laughter and friendship, cuz that’s really how the whole thing ended. I never did tell him, though, that the main reason we needed to break up was that his kisses made me want to vomit into the empty cavity of his skull where his brain should have been.

(Okay, so I had to reach a little bit to get the words in. Sigh. I’m not quite as good at this stuff as you are, Stacy.)

4. Your a mother, three times over! Which one is your favorite? JUST KIDDING. What was your favorite part about being pregnant, as well as your least favorite?

Actually, I’m a mother FOUR times over–but I get that you were kinda drunk when you were writing these questions, so it’s all good (and, for the record, my favorite kid is whichever one you forgot when you wrote “three” :D). My favorite part about being pregnant is the part where I’m GETTING pregnant. (Once again, Brillig is blushing…) It’s really the only good part. Pregnancy and I don’t really get along very well, but the very worst part for me was in subsequent pregnancies where I was puking my brains out and exhausted with that pregnancy exhaustion that nothing else seems to compare to, but as a mom you don’t get to take time off. My kids are super young and close together (four in four and a half years and none are even old enough for school yet) so the older ones were still incredibly young and super needy while I was pregnant with the younger ones. I still had toddlers to chase, food to cook, poop to scrub out of the carpet, and so on. It was all worth it though–honestly! I’m not just saying that! I love being a mom and have a blast with my kids. They’re so freaking awesome. But yeah. In my cases, pregnancy sucks.

5. You just received the death sentence (for being so gorgeous, natch). What would you choose as your last meal? The taxpayers are paying for it, so go buck nuts and describe in delicious detail, for I am hungry.

I KNEW things were screwy in Jurgen Nation! First of all, they’re calling me gorgeous, and secondly they’re killing me for it? Dude, I gotta get out of this place. Anyway, I’m SO BORING when it comes to food! Seriously! You’re going to cry when I tell you that all I want is some really great penne pasta with a fabulous marinara sauce (all directly from Italy, please, and not too heavy on the seasoning–and NO MEAT BECAUSE THE MEAT JUST RUINS IT) with endless Dr. Pepper to drink and a huge variety of chocolate desserts. And, okay, a salad too. That’s it. I know. Lame.

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And now, gentle readers, as is the fashion with these things, I bestow upon you the opportunity to be interrogated by the lovely and fabulous ME. However, I don’t quite have as much time as Stacy does (haha, Stacy, I’m just kidding. But really, I do have those four kids and all…) so how ’bout I interview the first three people who want one? And I’ll try to be as thoughtful as Stacy was, but I do not promise to be as clever!