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*~*~* Spotlight on TeeThatsMe! *~*~*

1K views 35 replies 11 participants last post by  TeeThatsMe 
#1 ·
#4 ·
Bren, I am... animated. That's probably the nice way to put it. I've got a lot of emotional energy, and display it pretty transparently. I've been like this as long as I can remember, and sometimes wish to be a little calmer or more enigmatic, but the fact is that I'm an open book and express pretty much everything that's on my mind, sometimes in a bit of an extreme way.

Example: My son lost his first tooth on Saturday, at a polite luncheon at my fancy high school reunion (...I was very fortunate to go to a really wonderful boarding school, which wasn't actually very snooty by the time I got there, but a lot of its alumnae are pretty wealthy/preppy/snobby/etc). The tooth had been loose for several weeks, so we knew it was coming, but it was still surprising when he held it out to me and said, "Look! It's out! It fell out!" My reaction: I jumped up and screamed my head off with glee. High fiving, hugging, I may have cried a little bit. "I'M SO PROUD OF YOU!" and all that carrying on. Well-coiffed heads turned at every single table nearby. What on earth is that woman doing? Why is she screaming? What is happening? I'm just a one-woman commotion, you see. :D

So yeah, that's me. I'm an easy emotional get: Easily amused, easily offended, easily moved. I cry at the drop of a hat, and laugh loudly at just about everything else. But I sure am sincere!
 
#3 ·
I would love to know your love story. Can you tell me how you met your DH?
 
#8 ·
I would love to know your love story. Can youtell me how you met your DH?
Love story! The short version is "we met at work, and it's pretty neat to be in the same professional field as the love of my life." The long story is... long, because I love details :)

Both of my parents are deaf, a fact which loomed very large during my undergraduate education. My mother told me often that sign language interpreting would be a great way to support myself (especially since I majored in drama, aka "Would you like fries with that?"!), and I was always very stubbornly against going into something I perceived to be "the family business"--until several months after graduation when I was living in my parents' basement and waitressing during the lunch shift. Not much of a glittering career! So I didn't resist too much when she set up a screening at an interpreting company run by an old friend of hers, nor when they offered me a full-time job. It turned out that I was pretty good at interpreting, so... That worked out, in spite of my eye-rolls and protestations growing up. :)

Fast forward about a year and a half, and I was getting ready to jump ship from the company and start work at a public school system closer to my home. At the last quarterly staff meeting I attended with the company, the new hires stood up to do quick introductions. In addition to plenty of interpreters, the company had always had some employees who are deaf and primarily use sign language, as well as some employees who are hearing and can't sign very well.So, large staff meetings usually have folks providing the interpreting, but there's a weird dynamic wherein many people who *do* both speak and sign (interpreters, etc) go ahead and do both simultaneously,"so the interpreters don't have to work as hard to support the entire meeting." This is problematic because, while it does let the interpreters off the hook, speaking and signing simultaneously is kind of a lousy compromise that usually degrades the quality of your communication in one or both languages. It's hard to express yourself grammatically correctly in two completely separate languages at once!

So, despite the issue of the language not being that high-level, the standard during staff meetings at that time was that many people went ahead and communicated simultaneously, in an effort to be "nice." The first new hire got up and introduced herself in simultaneous speech/sign; the second person did the same thing. Then, a handsome guy got up and started signing with no voice at all, and he said: "I don't do the simultaneous thing, so somebody's going to have to interpret for me." Whoa! Who was THIS guy with the enormous ego?! Sure was cute, though...

And that's the man I married. :)

I decided very quickly that since I was about to leave the company, I had nothing to lose but my pride, so I put the flirt on pretty hard. The first words I spoke to him were the answer to a crossword puzzle hint, which I read over his shoulder as he was working on it. At a happy hour with coworkers, a friend asked me, "So are you two dating or what?" The following Friday, I caaaaaasually suggested another happy hour, and he was immediately enthusiastic... But nobody else wanted to go, except for one girl--who insisted that we go to the mall instead of out for a drink! Neither he nor I had any interest in going to the mall, but we DID want to hang out, so we ended up at the mall with our oblivious coworker who literally tried on clothes for several hours, while we tried to get rid of her so we could flirt some more.

We finally managed to exchange numbers and set up an actual date, where he told me that he was in the process of getting a divorce. A light bulb came on... I hadn't been able to figure out why a straight male interpreter hadn't been snapped up yet, because in our field they are shockingly rare. Still more unusual, he didn't have any deaf family--that almost never happens with straight men; they just don't go into interpreting unless there's a family reason. There are plenty of gay men, but very very few straight ones in the profession. (I used to think this was just my family being bigoted, but now that I've been a working professional for thirteen years, the numbers just don't lie! They're rare.)

I don't know what I thought I was doing, a twenty-two-year-old idiot who didn't really know anything about real relationships, trying to date a divorcé, but I really really liked him, so I jumped in with both feet. Six months in, he broke up with me because our intentions were so mismatched, but... Two months after that, he came back and said that his feelings had really changed after spending some time apart. Young as I was, I'd truly never had such an honest,straightforward, respectful breakup, and the manner in which he'd let me down convinced me that he was for real when he said he'd like to give itanother try. The relationship was instantly and permanently on a completely different level when we got back together, and we've been together ever since.

All of this beginning stuff went down about ten years ago. Since then:

We have:
moved away from DC (where we met) and to his hometown of Berkeley,
gotten married and had a child,
decided to come back to DC for his schooling,
had a second child,
and gotten started on our third.

He has:
worked full-time at the supervisory level in DC,
dropped back down to staffer in California,
come back to DC to pursue a PhD program,
completed his coursework, begun his dissertation,
and become a full-time Dad.

I have:
gotten a master's degree and tried on a teaching career (didn't fit),
done a bunch of freelance interpreting,
blundered my way into a government job and become sole breadwinner for our family,
and begun to pursue a sometimes-confusing array of career possibilities.

The biggest goal for us right now is to get back to California, but with a stay at home parent, and preferably with no break in my federal service... So that's kind of a tall order. We are working on it, though.

The thing I love best about my husband is his integrity. He is the most consistent, morally rigorous person I know, and it's challenging sometimes and I occasionally wish he could just be a liiiiiiittle bit flexible about ethics, but honestly, I'm just so much of a better person because of him, since being with him holds me to that standard as well. I admire him very much, in addition to, you know, being in love with him.

The other BIG deal I want to mention is how amazing it's been to have him integrate seamlessly into my family. I'd never dated anyone who could sign before, so the process of Meeting the Parents had always been a big scary thing to my dates--I'd teach them how to fingerspell their name and "Nice to meet you," reassure them a zillion times that I'd be right there to interpret, etc etc etc. With the man I went on to marry, we walked into the room, I said "Mom, Dad, this is my boyfriend, you three catch up, I'm going to go get a drink," and it was that easy. They actually didn't like him the first time they met him, because he didn't bother sucking up to the scary scary deaf people! He just acted like himself, and they weren't used to that. It's pretty great, now, to know that he has a real relationship with his in-laws and extended family. And, although my master's degree is not in a field that I use, I'm very proud that we're both alumni of the same deaf university, and that the two of us bring our family tally to eight graduates of the same school.
 
#5 ·
Tee your personality is a lot like mine. My emotions are easily moved as well!

Sooo this is the first spotlight I have commented on, I was sick during the others and all the great questions had already been asked when I got to them. So here it goes.

What was it like growing up? Do you have siblings? What was your favorite things to do? Stuff like that.
 
#9 ·
What was it like growing up? Do you have siblings? What was your favorite things to do? Stuff like that.
Growing up was interesting. I always told people, "Oh, it was normal," and in many, many ways it really was! But, on the other hand, being raised by two deaf parents definitely did have a big impact on me and my two younger brothers. Our social life was, for example, fairly constrained--we lived fairly far from any real Deaf community, so my stay-at-home mother was sometimes pretty starved for company. (Meanwhile, my dad worked third shift at a company far from home with tons of deaf employees, so his social life was completely different--but only at work!) Being the eldest and something of a know-it-all certainly cemented my status as the family's little interpreter, and I think that informed both my upbringing and my current personality; I have to work hard not to jump into every conversation with all the answers, and remember that people may not always be desperate to learn my opinion of something!

I was a high-achieving little kid from the get-go, too, so my mother was always seeking out new and better opportunities for me. I was very fortunate to be able to go to very good private schools from age nine on. I did develop a really high opinion of myself, though, and was not easy to get along with for many years as I grew up! I liked reading a lot, and anything performing-related... Plenty of singing and drama. I am still a big old ham, although opportunities for formal performance have waned as life has gotten busier. I also don't read as much as I'd like, now--although I am still super obnoxious about my big vocabulary. :eek:
 
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#10 ·
Ah, my children. They are so cool. You're going to have a hard time shutting me up about them. :)

The word I think I'd use to describe both of them, but in different ways, is STRONG.

My son's five this year, and a lot of what @luckiest said about her child really resonates with me about mine. He's honestly a lot like me--BIG personality, very quick to react, very outsized in those reactions. The things he remembers and connections he makes in his head are continually surprising me. Yesterday, out of nowhere, he told his father, "DAD! One time Mom told me about a guy who's deaf and he accidentally cut off four fingers on one hand and at the hospital they put three fingers back on and it was a really good thing because the guy is DEAF and it's really hard to talk to people when you're deaf and don't have any FINGERS! That was really lucky for him, huh?!" I was blown away. Yes, I did tell him that story once, but I am pretty sure it was fully six months ago, and we haven't discussed it one single time since then! He is also remarkably mature about random things I wouldn't expect, like the concept of death. "Mom, you won't die for a really long time, but when you do, it will be okay, because dying is a part of life." Whoa. Okay, kid.

He started kindergarten about a month ago, at a French immersion school that I have very high hopes for. It has been a struggle so far, because he, like me, is fairly quick to tune out when he is not feeling engaged--AND he is not interested in working very hard to engage, so when they are speaking nonstop French, for example, he simply isn't motivated to try to figure things out. Couple that with the fact that he, like his father, is a very physical little boy and has a lot of restless energy that needs out! out! out!, and you have... a kid who's getting in trouble a lot. He's not paying attention. He's hitting other kids. He's making random noises and interrupting the teacher. I worry about this and hope that we will be able to arrive at a place where he gets a few more outlets for all this energy, as well as learning how to harness it a bit more productively. All the while recognizing that he is still only five, for Pete's sake! He should still have plenty of time to wiggle and engage himself physically! I'm basically just hoping that the big bad expected learning curve starts to get a little less steep, for him and for every other brand-new kindergartner.

My daughter is three now. She's not always as "big," but she's intense. Very, very intense. It's hard to know how much of this is inborn in her, how much we've nurtured into her, and how much is as a result of her life experiences so far, but she is so freaking tough. I really love that. She's basically had to be tough, given that she went through two major craniofacial operations before she was even a year old, but I think you really can still see the effects of that now; she's the kid who will take a super-gnarly fall, hit the ground hard, and pick herself up and dust herself off and announce "I'm okay" before running off to keep playing. Her brother, meanwhile, goes into hysterics over a hangnail. So... they're different. :) She also forms very deep emotional bonds with particular individuals, sometimes quite quickly, whereas my son is more of a social butterfly. She's very comfortable doing her own thing for hours, which we're seeing more and more now that she is home all day with Dad one-on-one; that never happened when her brother was at home, because everything became a competition, including getting the parents' attention, but now that she's by herself, she literally spends time by herself. It's really wonderful to watch her grow into her own person.

She is also super, super excited about being a big sister, which was a really welcome surprise! She has been so into being the baby of the family that I was a bit concerned that she'd feel usurped by a new one coming along, but from the get-go, she's been just thrilled. We went camping for the weekend right after we told the children about their new sibling, and for three solid days, she kept running off to play and almost literally making U-turns back to me to squeal, "Mommy, I'm just so excited about the baby!!!" That's really warmed my heart. She's awfully sweet.

Truly, though, they both are. We're a very snuggly family, and one of my favorite things about interacting with them is that they're pretty much always up for "shnoogles" (just our stupid family word for snuggle time). So we spend a whole lot of time cuddling. This new baby is going to have to get quickly inured to being petted, like, all the time! Having seen how lovely the older two are with one another, though, I am very excited to welcome another into the fold. I feel she'll likely be their special treasured darling for many years to come.

My ideal family size is probably three or four children. I grew up in a family of three children, though my mother always wished for four. My husband had just one sibling, so he was satisfied with two but was amenable to three... I think that four might be really pushing it with him, but we'll see in another year or so. I do have a lot of dreams in my heart about fostering a deaf American child, or adopting from abroad and trying to find a child who was born deaf or with a cleft--or possibly both! We'd be so well-prepared for it!--but if that happens, it's likely far in the future, so we'll have to see what God has in store for us over the next five years or so before we can make any big/final decisions like that.
 
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#11 ·
Boarding school! Oh, wow, I just loved school so much. Now, keep in mind, you are currently getting me at my absolutely most nostalgic as I bask in the afterglow of Reunion, AND having just found out that I have two little girls to send there instead of just one, so I'm especially hyperbolic. I might not normally rhapsodize this much. :)

The story starts, once again, with my parents' being deaf. Lots of Americans would really never even consider boarding school an option for their children, but both of my parents attended boarding school from a very young age, as is typical of many deaf children. So it was already kind of a cultural norm in my house. On top of that, I was a little smarty pants and my mother always wanted more and better for me--I'm pretty sure she had actual designs on me becoming President, at one point (ha, too bad she missed the mark on that one!!)--so once she'd gotten me into a very nice private day school, she fairly quickly decided I still wasn't being challenged enough. A family friend mentioned prep schools in New England, and we were off and running. We literally went to the public library and sat down with several catalogs full of listings for boarding schools, called our favorites, and went off to tour them. It was really something, in retrospect. My mother's kind of a dynamo when she gets an idea into her head.

So, two years later, we had admission and a scholarship in hand to this amazing school for rich girls in Connecticut. I arrived and spent my days learning about this new community, and my nights staring at my roommate's top bunk thinking "Oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm here, I can't believe I'm here, I can't believe they sent me here and I'm really really here!" I loved it. The academics were challenging, the community was very small and tight-knit, and the many campus traditions really created lasting memories and lifelong friendships. I often tell people that while I had two brothers at home, I kind of had three hundred sisters at school, and I will always feel that way about any woman who went to my school--even if I didn't know her during our time there, I'd drop everything if a fellow alumna needed something and I could give it to her.

Realistically, I don't know that either of my girls will actually attend--if I get what I want, we'll live across the country in California!, and it is a very, very expensive school and I was extremely fortunate to receive scholarships. It would be great if my daughters wanted to go to school 3,000 miles away (and my husband could be talked into it) and the school offered scholarships at that level to them too, but... I'm trying not to hold my breath over it too, too much.

College was a whole different ballgame. I chose McGill University in Montreal, probably half for the academic prestige (there's that prep school snobbery rearing its ugly head, no state school for me!) and half for the glamour of living in Montreal. I totally bombed on the academic prestige part once I got there: switched my major from linguistics (so hard!) to drama (way more fun!), and then did not particularly distinguish myself. But the city itself did not disappoint; it's a fantastic place to be young. I love Montreal and miss it a great deal, probably always will. State school would've graduated me with a heap less debt, but I sure do have lots of fond memories, and that I will never regret.
 
#12 ·
I can so relate to the sisterhood of an all girls school. I didn't go to a boarding school but I loved my all girls private school and will forever feel bonded to the girls I shared those amazing experiences with.

What is the "story" behind your profile picture? You look so excited!
 
#15 ·
Couldn't agree more. My particular school did boarding, but I think it truly is the girls' school experience that sticks with you. I have multiple friends from several different schools, many of them day schools, who feel the same way.

The profile picture is a goofy "performance"/hamming-it-up photo. I was in an extremely silly original musical many years ago, and one night some friends asked for a rendition of the big show-stopping number. So I obliged them, because I cannot say no to an audience. :D And... Somebody snapped this picture!
 
#13 ·
We have lots in common, Tee. I am super over the top and emotional. Also, I was a theatre major for 3 of my 4 1/2 years in college. I was gonna be a star, you know. ;)

On that topic, What is/was your favorite playwright? What part of drama did you study?

Thank you for sharing your love story. It was a delightful read.

What are your most favorite family traditions that you have for your growing family? :D
 
#17 · (Edited)
We have lots in common, Tee. I am super over the top and emotional. Also, I was a theatre major for 3 of my 4 1/2 years in college. I was gonna be a star, you know. ;)

On that topic, What is/was your favorite playwright? What part of drama did you study?
I am soooo surprised that you and I have a lot in common, Jodie. ;)

My school was actually quite light on the arts, so my "drama degree" was actually a major in English with a concentration in the Drama/Theatre track. This is very convenient for resumes: when I want to look like a language professional, I majored in English, but when I want to seem like a serious actor, I majored in Theatre. In practice, I basically read a looooootttttt of Shakespeare and Aristotle. I literally read the Poetics three times, for three different classes. They just kept assigning it.

Favorite playwrights... Wow. It's pretty much impossible for me not to feel like Shakespeare is the center of my dramatic universe, so there's him. I actually do really love the Greek stuff, too. More recently, Noel Coward, Marsha Norman, Daniel MacIvor, David Ives, Stoppard, O'Neill, Sarah Kane, Tennessee Williams, Judith Thompson... There are a lot, I guess. :)

What are your most favorite family traditions that you have for your growing family? :D
Hmm! This is such a great question. Travel as a family has become increasingly important to me. Currently it's on a fairly small scale, sticking almost exclusively to car trips, but over the past month we've been to Missouri and Connecticut, as well as Pittsburgh, Toronto, and Berkeley over the past year. Seeing new things is a big thing I want to give to my children. We go "camping" every year in the same rental cabin I used to go to as a little girl, and that's an experience we always treasure. Our kids are getting really good at road trips and I'm really grateful for it!

Along those same lines, baseball is a big deal in our family. We saw games in Toronto and Pittsburgh (and were mightily disappointed when it didn't work out in STL!), and my dream is to fill the whole MLB map with stadiums we've visited. Our son's first ball game was Rickey Henderson Day at Oakland Coliseum (HUGE for my husband, for whom the A's were a major part of childhood), and our daughter's first game was at Camden Yards and my Orioles beat his A's, which meant I "won" and she wore orange on the ride home. :D
 
#18 ·
Good catch. Yes, my husband's grandmother is Japanese American. Her parents both emigrated to the US from Japan. Most of the Japanese culture that our kids receive is more in the way of attitudes and values rather than enacted customs--for example, ancestor veneration is big; our departed family are very present to us and we talk about them often. We also do little things that probably do trace back to that side of the family, like strictly taking our shoes off at the door. Back to the ancestor thing, we also maintain little altars for the deceased and honor their death days (...although, come to think of it, perhaps I'm conflating Japanese with Jewish there, from my dad's side? We're a real mishmash!). Most of all, though, we talk about it a lot. My husband goes through the family history and we discuss the meanings of the children's names and where they come from, who they are named for, what it means to be part of that clan, and so forth.
 
#16 ·
Tee, the thing with fascinating people is: the more you learn, the more questions you have. I have thoroughly enjoyed the way you have shared yourself. Of course, I have question galore, but I'll step aside (for the time being) to let others jump in. Your story is just so freaking cool! With your drama major, you could star in your own movie. Maybe those goofy little hipsters you met the other weekend could get something rolling? I'd watch it!

Montreal-- dreamy. I've always wanted to go there. My grandparents are French-Canadian. We grew up with lots of Canadiens games on!
 
#19 ·
Tee, the thing with fascinating people is: the more you learn, the more questions you have. I have thoroughly enjoyed the way you have shared yourself. Of course, I have question galore, but I'll step aside (for the time being) to let others jump in. Your story is just so freaking cool! With your drama major, you could star in your own movie. Maybe those goofy little hipsters you met the other weekend could get something rolling? I'd watch it!

Montreal-- dreamy. I've always wanted to go there. My grandparents are French-Canadian. We grew up with lots of Canadiens games on!
Aw, Duchess, so sweet as ever! Thanks for the kind words. I suspect a movie of my life would have a lot more of the boring, eye-rolling kind of drama than the entertaining kind, but I appreciate it all the same.

ALLEZ LES HABITANTS! You will love Montreal; you really must go, Duchess. You're only a grueling road trip away! It's just that easy! Seriously, though, I hope you do get a chance to visit someday. I suspect you particularly will enjoy it.
 
#22 ·
I studied bilingual deaf education, with an emphasis on teaching secondary (middle and high school level) English. Then I taught special needs kindergarten for a year, and it was such a disaster that I burned out and returned to interpreting. It was quite a growth experience. I have strengths, and then I have... emphatically-not-strengths. Which I discovered. It's good to know these things about oneself!
 
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#25 ·
My husbands son goes to a chinese immersion school. He's in 3rd grade now, and my husband was shocked when he went to the first day of school meet and greet, and the teachers were talking to Kai all in chinese. My husband chuckled inside, thinking he was just not aware- he was looking around, not looking really focused. When Kai responded to a (what sounded) long winded discussion in perfect Chinese, my husband quickly realized... immersing yourself in a given educational system does work!
My own son loves French culture (I think he was French in a past life), and I've wondered if there are other immersion schools of other cultures. How neat! What made you chose to send him to a French immersion school? And do you think this would be a good match for your daughter (in a few years), too?
 
#26 ·
Yeah, immersion's pretty amazing for small people! We chose this school as a bit of default, honestly, because we live in kind of a lousy district for schools. About a year ago, I started to get serious about looking around for kindergarten options, and over and over again, what I saw was that every local public school was pretty terrible... with the sole exception of the French immersion school, which is a bit of a hidden gem. It's been around for a long time and been consistently excellent. Plus, it doesn't hurt that I happen to speak French! (I mean, I would have wanted him to attend this excellent school even if it were a Punjabi immersion school, but I'm pretty psyched to be able to help out.) So, I quickly came to the conclusion that either he would get into the French school via the lottery system, or... we'd move within the next few years, back to a more expensive district with significantly better schools.

Students are admitted to our county's special programs on a lottery basis, and we were very fortunate to be entering the French immersion lottery during an expansion year when almost everybody got in! They're newly relocated in an enormous "new" (repurposed) school building, not too far from home. If we are still here when my daughter's school age, I do expect that she will attend as well. Siblings get an automatic in!

The problem with this great plan is that if/when we do get back to Berkeley... the French immersion school is private, and pricey. There is no immersion option anywhere in the Berkeley public school district. Rats. :)
 
#29 ·
When/how did you learn French? I majored in French in college, but would never dare actually claim to speak French, even though at the time I spoke and understood passably. These days, I can only hope for basic reading comprehension. How do you keep up with it?


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#32 ·
When/how did you learn French? I majored in French in college, but would never dare actually claim to speak French, even though at the time I spoke and understood passably. These days, I can only hope for basic reading comprehension. How do you keep up with it?
I started taking French in fourth grade. Added Latin in seventh grade, Spanish in twelfth, and German and Italian in college, but French is the one that really stuck, since I studied it continuously from age nine to age nineteen. Living in Montreal helped some, but to be honest with you, I was surprised by how little it actually did help! McGill offers quite a few classes in French--meaning that you are already fluent and just do the coursework in this whole other language--and I smugly signed up for a linguistics class taught in French for my first semester. Yeah, I was out of my depth in the first ten minutes. Quebecois French is REALLY, REALLY DIFFERENT than Parisian French. Whoops! :) I felt very bad about myself and my capabilities until I started meeting people who had grown up in France, spoke native French, and still didn't understand folks in Montreal. They're very, very different dialects.

Aaaaaanyway. After learning how to fake a passable Montreal accent to the point that cab drivers didn't switch to English on me, I really didn't develop much past there. And then after graduation, I let a lot of it fade away for many years... until I got my current job, which comes with a small pay bump for foreign language proficiency. So now, every year I study like mad for several months before my big re-test. First year, I barely squeaked by with a minimum score. Last year, I went ahead and signed up for an adult education enrichment class, and that helped a decent amount--I did increase my score! This year, I am hoping that interacting with my son's school will give me the practice I need to stay current.

I will tell you that my head swelled about five sizes when I chatted with my son's kindergarten teacher for a few minutes and she stopped dead after several sentences and said, "Where are you from? Where did you learn that?" If any of you are Arrested Development fans, Buster Bluth immediately popped into my head: "Mom's still got it!" :grin:
 
#30 ·
What have we not asked that you are dying to share with us!? :D I want to know more about you cuz you are so cool... but am at a loss with questions! ;)
 
#33 ·
You are so funny, oh my gosh. For the record, I am honestly not very cool. If anything, I'm just a big dork! :D

Let's see... I think the only other thing I really actively *want* you all to know is that if there is ever an issue with breastfeeding to the point that nursing is no longer an option... I'm your girl. I did plenty of pumping-from-work when my son was tiny, but it was just the regular run-of-the-mill pumping and then I'd go home and nurse as usual. With my daughter, though, knowing that nursing was a physical impossibility right off the bat, I EPed for 16 months. So, I just want it known that I'm a resource, and if you find yourself in that position, you'll have my boundless support. I know it's way early for this question to come up, but just in case, there you have it anyway. :)
 
#31 ·
PS. I LOVE Shakespeare. I read him for fun and most people think that is bizarre. I especially love dramatic readings of the sonnets. And, Lady Macbeth is my favorite crazy lady of all time! :D

PPS. @DuchessTergie, my grandpa was French Canadian! :D The only problem is that when I get nationality ornaments for my Christmas tree (Something weird I do... lol), I don't know whether to choose French or Canadian... No one makes French Canadian ornaments. ;)
 
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#34 ·
PS. I LOVE Shakespeare. I read him for fun and most people think that is bizarre. I especially love dramatic readings of the sonnets. And, Lady Macbeth is my favorite crazy lady of all time! :D

PPS. @DuchessTergie, my grandpa was French Canadian! :D The only problem is that when I get nationality ornaments for my Christmas tree (Something weird I do... lol), I don't know whether to choose French or Canadian... No one makes French Canadian ornaments. ;)
Love Lady M. Sometimes I get bummed about how if/when I ever return to acting on stage, I'm way past most young romantic leads at this point... And then I think of parts like Lady Macbeth and I'm like "Pssh, I am FINE! There are plenty of roles out there for me!!"

No one makes French Canadian ornaments?! No way!! I feel like it is absolutely impossible that there aren't zillions of "national pride" items in Quebec. Granted, it might be harder if your family background is in Acadie or Saskatchewan or something like that, but surely even then! If you have any Quebec in your family, though, I'd say there surely must be Quebec flag items for Christmas ornaments, no?
 
#36 ·
Dude, I hear you! I'm an actor... or an English teacher... or a kindergarten special needs teacher(!!!)... or an interpreter... or... shh, don't tell anyone, but my secret aspiration is absolutely midwifery. :) Our midwife recently told me that she has her PhD in linguistics (and actually even studied under one of my husband's academic idols, go figure!), so it's not a completely insurmountable career switch, but it's rather harder when you're the sole earner of the family. Soooo... Maybe in ten years!

Ah, yes, hand hammered aluminum does present a considerably greater challenge. No plastic fleur-de-lys baseball cap ornament for you! No sir!
 
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