Let it Roll, Baby, Roll…

It occurred to me this afternoon, as I drove alone in the momvan, that it’s been years and years since I participated in a youthful rite of passage. You know the one where you’re tearin’ down the highway or the lonely open road, windows down, blaring the stereo to some great driving music. I mean can you even really “open ‘er up” when you’re driving a minivan? I’m thinking not. Not without feeling really dorky…

But I digress. What I really want to discuss is good driving music. I think everyone has a few old standards. Though they’re not my favorite songs in the world, mine absolutely represent the aforementioned rite of passage.

My top two are Roadhouse Blues by The Doors (as evidenced by the title of this post) and She Sells Sanctuary by The Cult. To me, something about these songs just goes perfectly with driving in the wind at unsafe speeds and leaving the world behind in your proverbial dust.

What are your top ass-hauling, wind-in-your-hair driving songs?

I want to hear from all of you and definitely from Chag and Chris as your recent posts have been music-oriented.

And when you’re done thinking about this question, scroll down for a treat from two of my favoritest bloggers…two of blogging’s most interesting people…two chiquitas that just plain rock!

These interviews are part of the Blogher BlogMe online mixer to help us all get to know each other a bit better. But please, even if you’re not going, feel free to participate. You can get the details here.

This first interview is with Sue of the blog Red Stapler. Not only is Sue good people, but she’s sharp and witty and has a way of reaching all sorts of people with her writing (which she really should be getting paid for, IMO)

The second interview is with Catherine of the blog Her Bad Mother. Catherine’s blog just blows my mind sometimes. She’s so SMART! and FUNNY! She has her own unique way of seeing the world. And her baby looks like a living doll.

So without further ado…

Sue of Red Stapler Speaks!

1. When did you start blogging and why?

I started my first blog, Snackish, as a way to talk about food, because I love to cook and I am always thinking about food and generally have very few non-food related thoughts in my head. Then I discovered that I also wanted to say some personal things, mostly because I was super frustrated with the way my life was going at that point. So I wrote a couple blogs that were all whining and complaining, all the time. I eventually deleted those and moved on to Red Stapler, where I try to take a more balanced approach - only about 70 percent whining and complaining, which, for me, is a huge improvement and which makes me feel like Little Mary Sunshine.

2. What is your blog motto?

It says “Dang it feels good to be a gangster,” which is a line from a song in the movie “Office Space.” It is purely ironic because I am the furthest thing from a gangster that there is. I am the woman who waves at the nice police officers as they drive by and who cleans up other people’s dog poop in the park because I don’t want people to step in it. I can guarantee that you will neither find me wearing a baseball cap nor popping a cap in someone’s ass.

3. Are you and your blogging persona the same person?

Yeah. I can’t hide. No matter how I pretend to be, the suebobness leaks out.

4. How would you describe your writing style?

I write in my blog like I talk, stupid colloquialisms, fillers, repetitions and all. It is such a relief because my two writing jobs (technical writing and newspaper writing) have such a formal structure. It feels like taking off uncomfortable underwear at the end of the day.

5. What don’t you write about?

Anything considered a no-no in your book? I hope to someday be as brave as the tell-all bloggers like Heather Armstrong of Dooce or Melissa Summers of Suburban Bliss, but I am not there yet. I am too big of a chicken. I am so afraid of hurting people. Also, I do not write about work because I need my job and do not want to get dooced. I don’t write much about the other people in my life because they didn’t ask to have their lives dragged out into a public forum. At least, I try to change names to protect the innocent (or guilty). That doesn’t sound like it leaves much, but somehow I find enough to write about every day.

6. How do you feel about meeting bloggers in real life? Are you nervous? Will you have great expectations? What do you home to take away from the BlogHer experience?

I am more excited than nervous. I get all emotional. I have grown to be so fond of y’all and I just hope I can express in person how much I admire you - and do it without sobbing and snotting on myself. To take away - at BlogHer, I hope to learn how to become a fabulously wealthy blogging mogul who sits home in her pajamas while taking calls from The New Yorker and Gourmet magazines. Is that too much to expect?

7. So soon we’re going to meet each other at BlogHer. Important question. How do you party?

I’m nervous about this one. Is this a test? Is there a right and wrong answer? Uh…I’m a bit of a geek (surprise!). I love to meet people but I need a lot of quiet time to process stuff. I get overwhelmed easily. So I will be the one alternately laughing loudest and then sneaking out to the parking lot to take deep breaths and look at the clouds.

8. What is your favorite thing that you wrote? What got a strong reaction from readers? Links please?

Blogger is a bit permalink-challenged, but on May 31 I wrote a post about getting older “Cloak of Invisibility” that I liked because I think it is a subject that isn’t written about enough. Strong reaction? That would have to be: “Crotch Waxing? Que barbaridad!” It started a multi-day, multi-blog waxing argument. Who knew that people felt so strongly about ripping out your pubic hair by the roots?

9. you had a super power, what would it be?

Like a genie in a bottle, I would love to be able to grant wishes.

10. What historical or real life person do you most wish had a blog?

Is it too trite to say Jesus? I feel like a Miss America contestant when I say that. I wish Jesus and Mohammed had a team-blog. Maybe they could straighten some people out. Man, I would read that thing EVERY day.

11. What natural gift would you most like to possess?

I would love to know what is like to be graceful. I have spent a lifetime being clumsy and have the bruises and scars to prove it. It gets a bit tedious, always being the one falling over or slamming into things. Good blog fodder, though.

12.Who or what would you have liked to be?

I would like to do a day as someone else - dance in Baryshnikov’s body, surf as Kelly Slater, host the Daily Show as Jon Stewart or sit in Oprah’s chair - but at the end of the day, I’ll take being me, mostly because I am less afraid of my own demons than other people’s.

14. What is your favorite virtue?

Compassion.

15. What is your idea of earthly happiness?

Part of my spiritual practice is a mantra: “happiness is a decision I must make.” Generally I can decide to be happy or not (I know there are some circumstances where that is for all practical purposes impossible, but I said generally). But when I think of a truly happy day, I think of hanging out in the back yard with my whole family, eating homemade potato salad and watching the kids play in the sprinkler. It would have to be a BIG back yard, since I have 4 siblings (and their spouses) 8 nieces and nephews (and their spouses) and 12 great-nieces and nephews. THAT would be happiness.

Thanks Sue!

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And now, I give you Catherine of Her Bad Mother
1. When did you start blogging and why? Or Talk about your blog. What can I learn about you in under 5 minutes?

I wrote about why I started blogging here. So, about the blog and what you can learn about me there…? Well, let me see… that I am given to running off at the mouth, given to cursing, and given to potty humour. That I use big words when I am not using four-letter words. That I can go on and on and on and on about ideas and issues that interest me or worry me or anger me. That I love my daughter. (What you probably don’t get too much of a sense of from my blog – that I adore my husband, and that I used to wear really fabulous shoes, always.

2. How do you use blogging to build friendships?

I’ve really noticed lately that I sometimes write with particular people in mind (like, oh that line will make Kristen laugh, and will make Izzy snort - cuz in my head you snort when you laugh - or Liz will get that reference, and Joy THAT reference, and Mo-Wo will appreciate the subtext here, that kind of thing) My friends in the blogosphere – and I now understand ‘friends’ to include many, many friends that I haven’t met yet – are really a circle that I am often speaking to through the blog. That builds the friendship, for me – you all have really become my ears. On the other end of things, I feel that I’m part of that circle for other bloggers – that I’m out here listening and commiserating and laughing. Which is why, when I’m in a blogging slump (as I was recently, with regard to both posting and visiting), I feel both starved (for the friendship) and neglectful (of the friendship).

3. Who do you read every day, rain or shine?

This is so not a fair question. The kind of question that cuts to the core of all of my blogging anxieties about not visiting all of the blogs that I adore frequently enough (because, you know, the kid needs to be fed). But, OK, if I had to point to just one (and again, it’s never just one, as I also said here) – Kristen, who posts every freakin’ day and if I’m going to read every word that she ever writes (which I must) I have to visit every day.

4. Why did you choose to share that piece of yourself in a photograph?

Because, as I said over at Devra’s space the other day, SHE is the most important piece of me, the piece that most defines me right now. The piece that I never knew was missing. (And! Titty shot!) (And did you notice that my boob is bigger than her head? Nice.)

5. How would you describe your writing style?

Wordy. (Hey, did y’all catch that irony? Summed up my writing style IN ONE WORD!) (Then ruined the moment, by demonstrating that style.) (Am meta-blogger.)

6. If you could spend time with one person, who would it be? (other than your spouse, because really, let’s not rack up the suck up points here)

Dude. After popping the WonderBaby out my wazoo, I have a lifetime supply of suck-up points. Anything nice that I do for my husband now is just gravy. I wish that I could spend more time with my mom and dad, who live across the country. I miss them both terribly.

7. What don’t you write about? Anything considered a no-no in your book?

I don’t write about my in-laws and about certain friends, who read the blog (that is, until a certain friend decided that I was a Bad Friend for keeping a blog and broke up with me. Then all bets were off.) Self-censorship can really suck. I started the Basement for this reason, to give other bloggers a space in which they could escape those constraints. But… I’ve been working on a post for a while now, on a topic that I’ve been afraid of writing about… we’ll see if I can work this one out.

8. How do you feel about meeting bloggers in real life? Are you nervous? Will you have great expectations? What do you home to take away from the BlogHer experience?

Very anxious, and very, very excited. More excited than anxious. Might pee. Might pee right now. And, yeah, have very high expectations that just fuel the excitement and anxiety. And the pee risk. Gotta go do some Kegels.

9. So soon we’re going to meet each other at BlogHer. Important question. How do you party?

Like everybody. Like it’s 1999. Duh.

10. What is your favorite thing that you wrote? What got a strong reaction from readers? Links please?

The post about losing a friend because of blogging, the post about my nephew being marginalized in his kindergarden class because of his (terminal) illness, and the post about losing my teaching contract because of circumstances related to PPD – those received the strongest reactions from readers, I think. That last one was the one that brought out my blogtard, who was inspired by that post and its comments to start her own anti-mommy-blogger blog, which was in turn the inspiration for the Great Mommy-Blogger Love-In Project (which probably had the greatest reponse – I received nearly 100 links from loved-up mama-bloggers.) My favorite post? Usually the last thing that I wrote. Which is, as it happens, also my least favorite post.

11. Have you written anything controversial? Is blogging controversial?

It can be. I worried about venturing into controversial territory with my most recent posts, on religion. But I think that, for the most part, we’re all such reasonable and sympathetic people that topics which might otherwise erupt into controversy *usually* get treated with care and respect. When I started the Basement, I was a little worried that some of the posts would garner mean or reactive comments – they do, after all, address topics such as abortion and infidelity and frustration with motherhood. But almost without exception, comments to posts in the Basement have been measured and supportive. The post in which the author outlined the death of love in her marriage and deliberated over having an affair… I worried about that one, about there being a lot of judgment. But there wasn’t – everyone was gentle and measured and serious. And it wasn’t just a sucky hug-fest: most commenters urged her to re-examine her desires. But they did so warmly and supportively and my heart SWELLED with pride for the maturity and compassion and generosity of spirit that abounds in this community. This is, for the most part, a safe space to explore ideas and feelings that might, in other venues, be deemed ‘controversial.’ That’s extraordinary.

12. Are you and your blogging persona the same person?

Pretty much. I may be a bit goofier in real life. And, in real life, I have an almost pathological need to be liked, that sometimes gets me into trouble (TP the potted plants at the Hyatt? Will that make you think that I’m edgy and fun? OKAY! Rum-and-Red-Bull shooters? SURE!) But then again, maybe you already got that from the blog.

13. Have you ever anonymously posted on a site to flame them?

Never.

14. If you had a super power, what would it be?

The power to guarantee the happiest possible life for my daughter.

Thank you, Catherine!

And stay tuned for my next interview with Christina from A Mommy Story. If you’d like to read MY interview, so kindly done by Christina, go here to check it out!

And if you’ve made it this far, you get a big {{HUG}} for perserverance. This was a lot of reading!