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Wow. The interview questions just keep rolling in. This time, Monkiegrrrl is the curious one. Let 'er rip!
1. You've been married for an awfully long time. How has your relationship with your hubby evolved over the years? Ever wonder what your life would be like if you you hadn't gotten married?
Over the years, I don't think our relationship has really changed all that much. We have changed, but the relationship seems to be pretty much the same as it was when we first started "going steady" (Ack. I hate that phrase. It's so Archie and Veronica). I'm steadily becoming a more physical person, and f00 is steadily becoming more cerebral, but we act as counterpoints to one another. Sometimes, it feels like we've been together for centuries. Other times, it feels like we've only just started going out with one another. In either case, we know one another far better than anyone else can know us.
If we hadn't gotten married, we'd probably be living together in sin, like we did before. Nothing would be particularly different, except that we wouldn't have wedding rings. I don't wear mine, anyhow, because I do too much stuff where it gets in the way (martial arts, working out, etc.).
If, for some fluke, we weren't together at all, I'm not sure what I'd be doing. It's very hard to say. f00 probably had something to do with me getting out of the Jehovah's Witness cult. He helped me when I was going through an extremely difficult time in my life: a crisis of faith, depression, and the works. If he hadn't have been there, I suppose there is a slight possibility I'd have stayed with the JWs. And if that's the case, I probably would currently be a very unhappy housewife with a misogynistic husband and a few kids in tow, spending every weekend going from door to door peddling religious magazines.
Ugh.
Then again, maybe I'm not giving myself enough credit. Maybe I would have hauled my own ass out of the cult, and I might have continued with my academic studies. Who knows? I might have become a full-fledged radical feminist, and I might have a tenure-track position as an English professor somewhere. It's pretty much impossible to conjecture the what-ifs.
I'm pretty happy with the way it is, now.
2. It sounds like you've had (and currently have) some really significant physical obstacles to overcome given how active you are. How do you manage that?
By being too stupid to quit while I'm ahead, I guess.
There's always been something or another wrong with me, ever since I was a kid. I guess these are pretty good reasons in themselves not to procreate. I was born with severely pronated feet. I couldn't walk without falling over my own feet. I wore orthopedic shoes for years, and managed to correct the problem without having to ever go for surgery.
I developed pretty serious knee problems (patello-femoral syndrome) when I was about ten years old, due to an extremely fast growth spurt. I went from being the shortest kid in my class to being the talles within two months. I grew six inches in that time period, which pretty much destroyed my knees and my parents' pocketbook (I ate a lot!). My doctors told me that I could probably overcome these problems if I did certain exercises to develope my quadriceps.
So every day, in a most religious fashion, I did the leg exercises. They didn't seem to work, though.
Just bending my knees a little bit would make them grind audibly. If you put a hand on my knee while I bent it, you could feel an appalling jittering mortar and pestle sensation. Bicycling pretty much did me in. I couldn't go up and down more than one flight of stairs without experiencing severe pain in my knees. Receiving even a light tap to either knee was enough to make me go into foetal position and bawl my eyes out (and I am definitely not the crying sort of person). The way I figure, my knees were like testicles, only without the semen, of course. Heh....
I started doing weights, though, and gradually, my knees got better. My doctor had told me I'd probably never be able to do much in the way of cycling, yet in 1995, I became an interprovincial bicyclist, cycling more than one hundred miles in one day without experiencing any appreciable knee pain. By this point, my legs had become very powerful. I have some pretty massive upper legs now, and do about 400 pounds on the leg press. Now, something can hit me pretty hard on the knees, and I don't think it hurts me any more than it would hurt anyone else.
They're not entirely cured, though. I still can't really do any sort of deep knee bend, but as long as I pay attention to what my knees are telling me, we get along just fine together.
Developing asthma was one of the worst things that happened to me. That happened around 1996 or 1997. It snuck up on me all of a sudden. For a while, I didn't think I'd be able to do anything ever again. I wanted to die, the pain was so bad. I couldn't say a complete sentence without breaking into an agonizing coughing fit. I couldn't even slowly walk a block without having the same thing happen. Going to the beach was scary, because water pressure around my chest would trigger an attack, and once, f00 had to rescue me. I suddenly couldn't breathe, and the waves were dragging me under. I didn't have the strength to swim, and f00 saw me and carried me to shallow water. It was very scary.
I thought I was ruined.
But I kept working at it, and now, my asthma is almost completely gone. My lung capacity is probably even better now than it was before I was diagnosed with asthma. I spent a lot of time in the pool over the last couple of years, and now I can swim in deep water with no ill effects. Over the past year, I've had maybe two or three attacks (triggered by temperature/atmospheric changes), and they were very mild. So I'm pleased about this.
The mysterious bad foot has been a constant thorn in my side. For years, I loved my boot collection. I still own plenty of really funky-ass boots, but I can't wear them for any length of time. High heels seem to exacerbate my foot problems. No two doctors can agree what the problem is, but wearing flats, avoiding going up on the ball of my foot, high impact exercises (like jumping jacks and running), and levées (goodbye, modern dance) seems to have helped quite a bit. It's frustrating, not being able to do these things, but at least I can still do flat-footed stuff. And yes, I have extremely flat feet. Over the last week or so, my good foot has been giving me grief. My good ankle is currently swollen up like an overstuffed sausage, and I'm having little shooting pains along the top of my foot and shin. I guess I'll have to schedule yet another doctor's appointment. Maybe this time I'll try a circulation specialist. My feet really hate me.
The one other thing that has been almost insurmountable has been my migraine aura status. Without warning, I become blind and stupid for sometimes months on end. It's awful. My attention span is shot because I'm distracted by the constant strobe light show going on in my peripheral vision, and the blind spots take over most of my vision, until reading is impossible, and I can't even see where I'm walking. To top it off, this seems to be accompanied by an absolute intolerance to heat and humidity. As soon as it gets even slightly muggy, my mind and body shut down. I feel retarded and thoroughly ennervated. People get frustrated because I can't understand even the simplest concepts, and I get frustrated because I know I'm being really dense.
Luckily, I'm on a medication which seems to be staving off these problems. As the summer approaches, though, I get nervous. Summers here are very hot and humid. I think I'm going to have to invest in an air conditioner, just so I don't become a weakling with an IQ of 65 or so.
I've been doing my best to increase my stamina in the hopes that the heat will bother me a bit less. To do so, I do cardio workouts in a swimming pool. I've discovered that I can do a complete 45-minute intense workout without tiring, if I'm in the water. A workout with the same intensity on dry land leaves me pretty tired and wobbly. But the more I train in the water, the better I'm getting on land. At least, I think I am getting better. Tonight's kung fu class didn't kill me, and it was absolutely brutal!
3. You lead such a full life! What do you like to do in your down time?
I vegetate in front of my computer. I do a lot of mindless surfing. It's kind of the equivalent of staring slack-jawed at the television. I think I need to structure my surfing, though. I'm afraid the poor grammar and spelling I'm regularly exposed to may be rubbing itself off on me. That's a scary thought. I used 2 speek teh english real good, eh?
If I'm not in front of the computer, I'm reading, sewing, baking, hiking, dancing, sleeping, eating, singing, playing with my chinchillas, watching MST3Ks, tormenting f00, drawing, taking pictures, playing various games, thinking random thoughts, or practicing my tumbling in deep, fluffy snow drifts or piles of leaves. I loathe having nothing to do, so I fill all my time with something. I am rarely bored on my own time.
4. Tell me about a part of Shanmonster that most people don't know about.
Most people don't know that I would gladly play paintball for a living. I've only played a handful of times, but I'm a paintball god (if only in my own mind). Ever try something, and know right away that you'd be really, really good at it? It doesn't happen very often to me, but it happened the first time I played paintball.
I also think I'd make a damned good soldier, but I'm not at all interested in joining the military. The idea of being expected to kill someone, or maybe get killed myself, does not appeal to me in the slightest. Nevertheless, I think I'd make a helluva space marine!
Most people don't know that I'd love to be a storm chaser. Tornados thrill me in a big way, and I could see myself running them down all over the midwest. I also adore thunderstorms, and the way they get me all hopped up on adrenaline. I used to go for galloping horseback rides in the middle of storms. My horses loved storms, too. It made them really frisky, and they'd buck and rear and snort and prance all over the place. My mother was driven to distraction by my extremely foolhardy ways. I also dance in overflowing gutters during flash floods, getting absolutely drenched. Once, the water was deep enough in the street that I actually got to swim in the gutter!
Luckily, I have never been hit by lightning.
Also, most people don't know that I actually like goats and horses just as much, if not more, than I like chickens.
5. One of my best friends is Canadian. Part of our getting-to-know-you process was getting over some of our misconceptions about the other's country. What do you see as the biggest misconception that Americans have about Canadians?
Oh, the usual, I guess. We're not all Eskimos (even if I am, myself). We don't all have dog sleds (even if my family did). We don't live in teepees. We're not all into hockey, we don't all speak French (although most of us know how to ask where the bathroom is or say we're hungry en francais), and we're not necessarily as polite as Americans seem to think we are (Montréal is a particularly rude city!). And last, but not least, the Mounties don't always get their man.
1. You've been married for an awfully long time. How has your relationship with your hubby evolved over the years? Ever wonder what your life would be like if you you hadn't gotten married?
Over the years, I don't think our relationship has really changed all that much. We have changed, but the relationship seems to be pretty much the same as it was when we first started "going steady" (Ack. I hate that phrase. It's so Archie and Veronica). I'm steadily becoming a more physical person, and f00 is steadily becoming more cerebral, but we act as counterpoints to one another. Sometimes, it feels like we've been together for centuries. Other times, it feels like we've only just started going out with one another. In either case, we know one another far better than anyone else can know us.
If we hadn't gotten married, we'd probably be living together in sin, like we did before. Nothing would be particularly different, except that we wouldn't have wedding rings. I don't wear mine, anyhow, because I do too much stuff where it gets in the way (martial arts, working out, etc.).
If, for some fluke, we weren't together at all, I'm not sure what I'd be doing. It's very hard to say. f00 probably had something to do with me getting out of the Jehovah's Witness cult. He helped me when I was going through an extremely difficult time in my life: a crisis of faith, depression, and the works. If he hadn't have been there, I suppose there is a slight possibility I'd have stayed with the JWs. And if that's the case, I probably would currently be a very unhappy housewife with a misogynistic husband and a few kids in tow, spending every weekend going from door to door peddling religious magazines.
Ugh.
Then again, maybe I'm not giving myself enough credit. Maybe I would have hauled my own ass out of the cult, and I might have continued with my academic studies. Who knows? I might have become a full-fledged radical feminist, and I might have a tenure-track position as an English professor somewhere. It's pretty much impossible to conjecture the what-ifs.
I'm pretty happy with the way it is, now.
2. It sounds like you've had (and currently have) some really significant physical obstacles to overcome given how active you are. How do you manage that?
By being too stupid to quit while I'm ahead, I guess.
There's always been something or another wrong with me, ever since I was a kid. I guess these are pretty good reasons in themselves not to procreate. I was born with severely pronated feet. I couldn't walk without falling over my own feet. I wore orthopedic shoes for years, and managed to correct the problem without having to ever go for surgery.
I developed pretty serious knee problems (patello-femoral syndrome) when I was about ten years old, due to an extremely fast growth spurt. I went from being the shortest kid in my class to being the talles within two months. I grew six inches in that time period, which pretty much destroyed my knees and my parents' pocketbook (I ate a lot!). My doctors told me that I could probably overcome these problems if I did certain exercises to develope my quadriceps.
So every day, in a most religious fashion, I did the leg exercises. They didn't seem to work, though.
Just bending my knees a little bit would make them grind audibly. If you put a hand on my knee while I bent it, you could feel an appalling jittering mortar and pestle sensation. Bicycling pretty much did me in. I couldn't go up and down more than one flight of stairs without experiencing severe pain in my knees. Receiving even a light tap to either knee was enough to make me go into foetal position and bawl my eyes out (and I am definitely not the crying sort of person). The way I figure, my knees were like testicles, only without the semen, of course. Heh....
I started doing weights, though, and gradually, my knees got better. My doctor had told me I'd probably never be able to do much in the way of cycling, yet in 1995, I became an interprovincial bicyclist, cycling more than one hundred miles in one day without experiencing any appreciable knee pain. By this point, my legs had become very powerful. I have some pretty massive upper legs now, and do about 400 pounds on the leg press. Now, something can hit me pretty hard on the knees, and I don't think it hurts me any more than it would hurt anyone else.
They're not entirely cured, though. I still can't really do any sort of deep knee bend, but as long as I pay attention to what my knees are telling me, we get along just fine together.
Developing asthma was one of the worst things that happened to me. That happened around 1996 or 1997. It snuck up on me all of a sudden. For a while, I didn't think I'd be able to do anything ever again. I wanted to die, the pain was so bad. I couldn't say a complete sentence without breaking into an agonizing coughing fit. I couldn't even slowly walk a block without having the same thing happen. Going to the beach was scary, because water pressure around my chest would trigger an attack, and once, f00 had to rescue me. I suddenly couldn't breathe, and the waves were dragging me under. I didn't have the strength to swim, and f00 saw me and carried me to shallow water. It was very scary.
I thought I was ruined.
But I kept working at it, and now, my asthma is almost completely gone. My lung capacity is probably even better now than it was before I was diagnosed with asthma. I spent a lot of time in the pool over the last couple of years, and now I can swim in deep water with no ill effects. Over the past year, I've had maybe two or three attacks (triggered by temperature/atmospheric changes), and they were very mild. So I'm pleased about this.
The mysterious bad foot has been a constant thorn in my side. For years, I loved my boot collection. I still own plenty of really funky-ass boots, but I can't wear them for any length of time. High heels seem to exacerbate my foot problems. No two doctors can agree what the problem is, but wearing flats, avoiding going up on the ball of my foot, high impact exercises (like jumping jacks and running), and levées (goodbye, modern dance) seems to have helped quite a bit. It's frustrating, not being able to do these things, but at least I can still do flat-footed stuff. And yes, I have extremely flat feet. Over the last week or so, my good foot has been giving me grief. My good ankle is currently swollen up like an overstuffed sausage, and I'm having little shooting pains along the top of my foot and shin. I guess I'll have to schedule yet another doctor's appointment. Maybe this time I'll try a circulation specialist. My feet really hate me.
The one other thing that has been almost insurmountable has been my migraine aura status. Without warning, I become blind and stupid for sometimes months on end. It's awful. My attention span is shot because I'm distracted by the constant strobe light show going on in my peripheral vision, and the blind spots take over most of my vision, until reading is impossible, and I can't even see where I'm walking. To top it off, this seems to be accompanied by an absolute intolerance to heat and humidity. As soon as it gets even slightly muggy, my mind and body shut down. I feel retarded and thoroughly ennervated. People get frustrated because I can't understand even the simplest concepts, and I get frustrated because I know I'm being really dense.
Luckily, I'm on a medication which seems to be staving off these problems. As the summer approaches, though, I get nervous. Summers here are very hot and humid. I think I'm going to have to invest in an air conditioner, just so I don't become a weakling with an IQ of 65 or so.
I've been doing my best to increase my stamina in the hopes that the heat will bother me a bit less. To do so, I do cardio workouts in a swimming pool. I've discovered that I can do a complete 45-minute intense workout without tiring, if I'm in the water. A workout with the same intensity on dry land leaves me pretty tired and wobbly. But the more I train in the water, the better I'm getting on land. At least, I think I am getting better. Tonight's kung fu class didn't kill me, and it was absolutely brutal!
3. You lead such a full life! What do you like to do in your down time?
I vegetate in front of my computer. I do a lot of mindless surfing. It's kind of the equivalent of staring slack-jawed at the television. I think I need to structure my surfing, though. I'm afraid the poor grammar and spelling I'm regularly exposed to may be rubbing itself off on me. That's a scary thought. I used 2 speek teh english real good, eh?
If I'm not in front of the computer, I'm reading, sewing, baking, hiking, dancing, sleeping, eating, singing, playing with my chinchillas, watching MST3Ks, tormenting f00, drawing, taking pictures, playing various games, thinking random thoughts, or practicing my tumbling in deep, fluffy snow drifts or piles of leaves. I loathe having nothing to do, so I fill all my time with something. I am rarely bored on my own time.
4. Tell me about a part of Shanmonster that most people don't know about.
Most people don't know that I would gladly play paintball for a living. I've only played a handful of times, but I'm a paintball god (if only in my own mind). Ever try something, and know right away that you'd be really, really good at it? It doesn't happen very often to me, but it happened the first time I played paintball.
I also think I'd make a damned good soldier, but I'm not at all interested in joining the military. The idea of being expected to kill someone, or maybe get killed myself, does not appeal to me in the slightest. Nevertheless, I think I'd make a helluva space marine!
Most people don't know that I'd love to be a storm chaser. Tornados thrill me in a big way, and I could see myself running them down all over the midwest. I also adore thunderstorms, and the way they get me all hopped up on adrenaline. I used to go for galloping horseback rides in the middle of storms. My horses loved storms, too. It made them really frisky, and they'd buck and rear and snort and prance all over the place. My mother was driven to distraction by my extremely foolhardy ways. I also dance in overflowing gutters during flash floods, getting absolutely drenched. Once, the water was deep enough in the street that I actually got to swim in the gutter!
Luckily, I have never been hit by lightning.
Also, most people don't know that I actually like goats and horses just as much, if not more, than I like chickens.
5. One of my best friends is Canadian. Part of our getting-to-know-you process was getting over some of our misconceptions about the other's country. What do you see as the biggest misconception that Americans have about Canadians?
Oh, the usual, I guess. We're not all Eskimos (even if I am, myself). We don't all have dog sleds (even if my family did). We don't live in teepees. We're not all into hockey, we don't all speak French (although most of us know how to ask where the bathroom is or say we're hungry en francais), and we're not necessarily as polite as Americans seem to think we are (Montréal is a particularly rude city!). And last, but not least, the Mounties don't always get their man.
