The following post and subsequent interview between the lovely Mrs. Carolyn Bahm and myself is part of an ongoing project living on Neil’s site known as “The Great Interview Experiment.”

I was overwhelmed for six days and seven nights after reading the post and subsequent comments surrounding the aforementioned experiment, and finally, after much pacing and procrastinating (I rested, and then) decided I could muster up enough creativity to ask and answer some interesting interview questions. I’m nothing if not over-confident when there is nothing on the line.

In addition to prolific question-asking and answering, the experience promised new blog finds, and that side effect alone was enticing. My mind consistently reels with how many great writers exist in this, the great big pixel-laden world wide web, and it continues to reel with the hard-wrought truth that I will never be able to read all of them. Even if I clone myself four times and quit all four of my day-jobs. I’ve looked into it. Turns out, it’s rather expensive. No payment plans.

So! Being a non-bionic blog reader, it’s always enjoyable for me to stop and smell the sentences, if you will. And, let me be the first to tell you, there are some great sentences out there to smell.

Some of you probably already interviewed or were interviewed! Some of you have no idea what I’m talking about! (Rest assured I don’t understand what’s going on, with anything, anywhere, about 60% of the time. And that figure is grossly underrepresented, as, again, I don’t do The Math.) All are welcome here!

Per The Rules, it was Carolyn’s duty to interview me. She didn’t, however, have to dive into my archives to participate in the “experiment,” and I would have heartily and quickly forgiven her if she hadn’t any desire to, but because she is wonderful, and wonderfully thorough she did indeed archive-dive, and I found her questions quite awesome.

And not just because they are somewhat about me, I promise. They would be awesome if they were about anyone else, because she would have asked them, you see, and she is great at The Question-Asking. She brings The Personal, without offending in the slightest, which is not unlike bringing The Funk, but with better tact and grammar. Many of her questions were actually quite difficult to answer. Mostly because I never imagined anyone asking them, ever.

Begin interview:

1. What are your favorite memories about each of your two grandmothers? Alternate question: What’s the most amazing personal story one of them has ever told you?

Both of my grandmothers are amazing. My maternal grandmother takes care of my disabled grandfather and has done so diligently and lovingly for the past eight years. They have been married since she was nineteen. My paternal grandmother is equally fantastic: the most loving and gentle, quietly strong woman I have ever been privileged to know.

I would have to say that my favorite memory of my maternal grandmother centers on time I spent living with her and my grandfather post-college graduation. It wasn’t without its own unique struggles, but I got to know them so well, in a way I never would have otherwise. I am grateful for the time, and miss her on a daily basis.

My favorite memory of my paternal grandmother is the way she took time with me whenever we visited to read to me, or to let me read to her. I still vividly remember reading for hours with her, and falling in love with books and stories during those afternoons. I still remember a book about knitting socks in exchange for cheese, and how we both smiled the entire time we read it. My love of books and reading has stuck with me to this day, and I know it’s because of her and the time we spent together in front of printed pages.

2. What do you do with the bumper stickers you can’t resist? Do they end up on your car, notebook, computer, or other spots?

It’s very true that I very readily cannot resist quite a few bumper stickers. That being said, while I love to look at bumper stickers on your car, or your car, or hey, even your! car, I can’t stand the idea of putting one on mine (It’s the fact that it will inevitably crinkle, and tear, and leave white paper strewn messily across my car’s backside), so I always save them for a rainy day, mail them to friends, or decorate my laptop with them. There are currently nine on the top of my laptop.

3. What person or occasion is special enough for you to use your cool blank books and other parts of your paper collection for? What overcomes your reluctance to put pen onto those pristine pages?

A really good idea, I would say. Or a really good set of ideas. Or a really important list I suddenly need to write. Or some really bad poetry. I have used some of them as travel journals of sorts. I also use some of them for letters, some for sets of titles I want to use, and a lot of them I end up giving away as gifts because they are too pretty for me to use.

4. What novel would you like to have written, and why?

BEST QUESTION EVER, and the hardest for me to answer, honestly. I would say it’s a three-way tie between Melville’s Moby-Dick, Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, and Dreiser’s Sister Carrie. I also love Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and think everyone should read The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Euginedes at least once.

5. What’s too private, intimate, embarrassing, or painful to write about in depth on your site? What would move you to write about it anyway?

It’s difficult and intimate to write about my dad, and losing him to drowning when I was twelve, although I have done it a handful of times. I would say loss is the most difficult for me to write about in-depth, just because it’s constantly evolving and one moment I feel one way about it, and the next I might feel completely different. I miss him the same, though. That part doesn’t change.

I also rarely write about my faith and religion, my history and struggles with it, and where I currently stand. Again, it’s constantly evolving and changing, and it’s inherently personal and difficult for me to categorize. It’s something I want to talk about, eventually, but I’m not quite there yet.

As far as embarrassing goes, almost anything is fair game, and I’m not too shy about posting about The Ridiculous that is me sometimes. Like the time I showed up for Varsity track practice my sophomore year with my pants on inside-out.

6. What’s the tenderest or silliest dog-mommy thing you’ve ever done for Iggy?

When he was little he slept in the bed with us, but really, he slept with me because he was scared to sleep alone and he would wimper and I couldn’t stand it. He’s definitely no longer allowed in our bed, but I fall asleep with him on the couch quite a bit. I can’t help it. We’re both cuddlers. It’s also now impossible for me to walk into any store that sells dog paraphernalia and not buy him something.

7. Imagine you have a daughter in her early teens. If you were trying to tell her what love is, what would you say?

“There are different kinds of love, but, ultimately it comes down to communication, compromise, and trust. Love is honesty, and while it certainly isn’t perfect, no man will ask you to compromise yourself, in any way, for the sake of “love.” Also: you shouldn’t date the same person for four + years during high school and into college. Take my word for it: it’s a bad idea. Instead (don’t date, at all; be friends! Friends are great!) change your dates like you change your socks, and I will be more than happy to drive you and your various dates to and from dances, or to and from skate parks, or, even, to and from the mall, or wherever it is you want to go. Except, no, I won’t drive you to the liquor store; you can drive me.”

8. Is Chris’ head perfectly smooth, is it bristly like a closely shorn beard, or does he have a velvety-soft coat of super-short hair you can’t resist ruffling your hand across?

I love this question. He laughed when I read it to him. The top of his head is perfectly smooth. Perfectly. He can still grow some hair on the sides and back of his head, but he prefers to be completely bald and so shaves all of it. So depending on the day, in between shaves, I will rub his head and there will be a certain bristle to it. He once let me shave it and it was laughable how poor a job I did.

9. What three things about YOU make Chris smile?

1. My awesome jokes.
2. The way I love him; the way I get him and show him that I do.
3. The way I sing the wrong words to songs. All the time, and when I don’t even realize I am doing it.

10. One of your posts described you as once-upon-a-time being socially bipolar, teetering from confident to afraid. What events or people helped you find your center?

To put it mildly I was “unstable” when I was going to school in Oregon for the first three years of undergrad. There were various reasons for it, not the least of which was the aforementioned 4+ years-long relationship and the unhealthy “ending but not really” of said relationship that left me reeling and unsure of who I was as an individual. Leaving school to return home and finish my degree at a local university was simultaneously the most difficult and best decision I ever made. I attribute most of my center-finding to my family and close friends, although I will say, for me, it is a constant process of accepting myself and loving myself for who I am, wherever I am and with whomever. Chris does an amazing job of helping with that, and is the best partner for me I could have hoped to find, but I do think there are paths to emotional and physical healing we ultimately have to tread alone.

11. You’ve had changes large and small in recent months: eyeglasses, the uber-snuggly Iggy, a frequently shifting wedding date, marriage to a funny and romantic man, spending major holidays away from grandparents, and even a move. Even positive, healthy changes can be unsettling. What do you do to help you feel like the ground isn’t still shifting under your feet?

I stop and sit quietly a lot. I also walk to work almost daily, and while I’m walking I’ll catch myself breathing deeper than I do most of the day, thinking clearer and just reveling in the possibilities and happiness to which I am privy. Hot tea helps, too.

12. You’ve had a diverse series of jobs so far. What’s your five-year plan for your career? Do you just want to make money as painlessly as possible to support an artistic goal (literature, graphic design, or other) or a lifestyle goal (motherhood, family vacations, big purchases on your wish list, etc.), or is there another goal in your sights?

This was by far the most difficult question for me to answer, mostly because, right now, I don’t have the answer. I typically shy away from five-year plans, if only because I think they are wholly unrealistic, at least where I am concerned, and they make me feel mostly claustrophobic. But you’re talking to the girl who wasn’t nervous for her own wedding, at all, but who never joined the Peace Corps, even after almost applying at least four times, because she couldn’t wrap her mind around the idea of contractually staying put for two years. TWO. WHOLE. YEARS. Yeah, I never feigned to make any logical sense.

I actually recently gave notice at the job I have had since five days after we moved to Portland, because I realized, as much as I would like pretend I don’t, I do actually care about how I am spending the majority of my week days, and spending time ordering supplies, making and endless amount of Excel spreadsheets and washing other people’s dishes, all while dealing with a passive aggressive supervisor, who, as it turns out, was never supposed to be my supervisor, isn’t something I am aspiring to do in the long-term. I think I’ve always had the mentality of moving upward and onward with each new position, and while I do believe that can work, and has been working, I don’t feel any closer, professionally-speaking, to what it is I actually want to do, which is: write. There. I said it aloud. I want to write. For a living. So I’m taking time now to do that, every day, and I’m in the process of taking the necessary steps to secure a job that will more closely mirror my long-term career aspirations. As far as the rest of it goes, everything is up in the air. Somewhat surprisingly, I’m OK with that for the time being.

13. Why did you choose “.org” instead of “.com” for your top-level domain? What’s your vision for your site’s evolution?

Honestly, I wish the story was more interesting, but kerrianne dot com was already taken, and every other domain name I initially liked was either too long or I ended up hating ten minutes later. I am no “.org,” to be sure, but it could be also be successfully argued I am no “.com” either. I’m not selling anything. Unless you’re buying. In which case, I’ll have a Diet Coke and a cup of soup.

14. What about punctuation mattered enough to you to include it as a blog tagline? Were you making a statement about how precision matters to you — in communication, in understanding why you love someone, in mattering?

The current tagline was actually a testament to my affinity for alliteration, but I do indeed love proper punctuation and have been teased by various friends about my incessant need for grammatical correctness, especially on road signs and advertising placement. If a book could be a person’s soul mate, mine would probably be Eats, Shoots and Leaves. I didn’t choose English and English Literature as a major for the sheer sake of it. I adore books and writing, punctuation and sentence structure. I’m a huge geek like that, but I’m really OK with it. I sort of have to be.

I do think you raise an interesting point, and something about me that I never really noticed, at least not within this context: precision of communication and its importance to me. It is important! Hugely! And yet I would never have necessarily noticed it with regard to the way I communicate. I have never been to one to beat around the bush, with anyone, with regard to anything, so if I’m talking about it, I’m talking about it, and if I’m telling you how I feel, it’s real and it’s articulated the best of my ability, for better or for worse. I have always heralded communication as essential in any and all interpersonal relationships, and I firmly believe it’s one of the many reasons Chris and I are now married instead of just friends or long-distance acquaintances.

15. Which Girl Scout peanut butter cookie do you love the most — the Oreo-like “Do-Si-Do” or the Reese’s-like “Tagalongs”? Or are you a homemade peanut butter cookie gal all the way?

I was in Camp Fire as a girl and I don’t ever remember selling cookies. That was a bit of tangent just then, but what I really wanted to say is: I’m not huge into sweets. I mean, I like them, I do, but I don’t typically eat cake, and I rarely crave chocolate. Chris is always shocked when I do, and as stereotypical as it may be, it’s usually when I’m extremely (pre)menstrual, or feeling sorry for myself. That being said, I will choose pie over cake every time, and have always loved home-made peanut butter cookies, and will always love them. So the short answer would have been, but never is: “All the way.”

THE END.

(Do you like how I never apologized for being so long-winded in my answers? Me, too.)

(OK, OK, I’m SORRY; I CAN’T HELP MYSELF.)

Carolyn writes here, here, and here, too. You should drop in and read a bit. I assure you, you won’t be disappointed.

Thanks! Carolyn. It was terrific to meet you. Don’t be surprised if, in the future, I try to mail you various t-shirts you don’t want with various ridiculous slogans printed on them, because that’s how fantastic I think you are, and also? You should interview for a living. Seriously. I just hope, for your sake, that your future interviewees are less apt to answer with endless responses.