Getting to Know You

I'm officially stealing a post idea from Annie. Maybe we can count it as a quasi-guest post? Anyway, she blogged about the age old tradition of sharing one interesting thing about yourself on the first day of school. I have always hated such getting-to-know-you questions...I never know what to say. I always wondered if people just kept an answer to this question on standby; I certainly tried to do just that but was never successful. My life always seemed unbearably boring and chronically uninteresting. That's not really true, but when I was put on the spot like that I could only think of the most mundane details of my life. Not like Annie. Annie has a plethora of "one interesting thing"s to share about herself. Things like almost meeting Tom Cruise and references to a decade of orthodontia.

In an effort to provide you Lovely Readers with a truly interesting fact about myself, I sat and thought for far too long about this question. My one interesting thing is that I won second place in a diorama contest in elementary school by creating scenes from The Lorax in a shoebox. The lid was the grimy "after" scene and when you slid the lid up, it revealed the "before" scene with the Swammy Swans and Truffula Trees and brown Barbaloots in their Barbaloot suits. It was quite involved.

And now I am very curious how you might answer this question.

So. Tell me. What is one interesting thing about you?

Magical Miri

Remember those get-to-know-you games we played in elementary school, where everyone had to introduce themselves using an adjective that described them and started with the same letter as their first name? Well, guess what: "M" adjectives suck. My choices were pretty much "magical," "magnificent," and "marvelous," and don't get me wrong, I am all of those things--but as nicknames for a fourth grader go, they are crap.

So I got the short end of the stick in get-to-know-you games. I've also had my name mispronounced just about every way you can think of, for my entire life: Myree, Mira, Murry, Marie, Mary, and so on--I've even heard Mitzi, although that was just once and I suspect the substitute teacher responsible may have been partially blind. (For the record, my name is Miri, pronounced like Miriam without the -um. This method of explaining my name is the only one that has been consistently successful in getting people to hear the difference between Miri and Mary.) But I love my name, and I wouldn't change it for anything. I am named after my Italian grandmother (Miriam) and my Russian great-grandmother Kayla, and that has always been very special to me.

Besides my name, the first thing you should know about me is that I read all the time. It's very nearly the only thing I claim as a hobby, and pretty much all I did until I reached high school--I read at recess, at lunch, standing in line in the cafeteria, in the bathroom, on the bus, in class with my book hidden in my desk. When my parents wanted to punish me they took away my books, because being sent to my room wasn't a punishment at all as long as they were there.

Because I read so much I was really good at tuning out noise so I could read anywhere, which, let me tell you, was a feat to be proud of at my house. This is the second thing you should know about me: I have a big, LOUD family. There are eight people in my immediate family--I'm the oldest of six kids--and no matter where I went as a child there was always someone there. I have between 45 and 50 first cousins on my dad's side (no one seems to know the exact number anymore), sixteen aunts and uncles, and approximately 60 children-of-cousins... what are they, my second cousins? First cousins once removed? I will probably never know. Most of that family lives in Arizona, with branches in other places (like my family in Texas). My mom is from Israel, and I don't actually know how many cousins I have on her side; many of them still live in Israel, and I've never met them. I do have eight that I've met, and I'm going to guess five or six that I haven't. It's important for me to tell you this because family is hugely vital to my existence. I am so used to having tons of family around all the time that it's very difficult for me to be living near only five relatives right now. My siblings and I fought like crazy growing up--we are very close in age, six of us in seven and a half years, and that made for some complicated situations--but I still prefer noise and good-natured chaos to peace and quiet.

The last thing you need to know, for the purposes of this blog, is that what we are undertaking here is very personal to me. I have had intense social anxiety my whole life. There was a miraculous period in college where it mostly went away, for no reason I can fathom: for two years that I lived at Glenwood with Megan and Lindsey and other amazing girls, I was a crazy social butterfly, dated some, and was actually popular--now a fond but incomprehensible memory for me. For the rest of my life, ever since I can remember, I have struggled just to be in the most normal social situations (school, church, and jobs, for example). I have always been incredibly insecure, although my amazing junior year was a huge step forward in that department and I have made great progress since then. I am still working really hard to overcome this stuff, and that is why I jumped when Lindsey pitched the idea of this blog to us. I hope it will be as meaningful to you as it is to me.

Sophisticated Lady: Also Answers to Megalicious

I like to put things together in ways that make sense, which is probably why I'm currently getting a Master's degree in Library Science. Also because of this, I like to make playlists, and I do it most frequently when I'm trying to figure something out about the way I feel. I have this ongoing playlist of songs that I feel particularly apply to me in general. A few of the songs are pretty self-explanatory - "Green Eyes" by Coldplay, "Megan" by the Smoking Popes, "Wrapped Up in Books" by Belle and Sebastian, "Brainy" by The National (just go with it). However, since I want you to get a feel for me, I'm also going to share some less obvious lyrics that spoke to me. In some superficial way I feel like people understanding why I picked a specific song for my personal soundtrack will mean they'll know me, but I'm beginning to realize that there is more to people than pop song lyrics. (Yes. Beginning.) In any case, it might at least give you a feel for why I feel strongly about this blog.

• From "Pretty (Ugly Before)" by Elliott Smith: "Is it destruction that you require to feel like someone wants you - someone that's more for real?"
• From "Clark Gable" by the Postal Service: "I want to badly to believe that there is truth, that love is real."
• From "The World You Love" by Jimmy Eat World: "We're only just as happy as everyone else seems to think we are."
• From "Darlin' Do Not Fear" by Brett Dennen: "Sometimes your path is marked in the sky, sometimes you're forced to fit in between the lines. Sometimes all you can do is say no; darlin' do not fear what you don't really know."
• From "I Am Ready, I Am" by The Format: "I'm trying to find truth, in words, in rhymes, in notes, in all the things I wish I wrote."

So there's that. You may proceed to draw conclusions now.

Other things that are relevant for you to know about me:

I have four brothers, and I'm crazy about them, but most of what I learned about how to enjoy being a girl (which is at least partially what this whole thing is about, right?) came from my mom (who is amazing and the most loving person I know) and my friends, particularly my college roommates (a couple of whom contribute to this blog). I love and currently miss my parents while I'm several states away from them - which would make me feel like a little kid if they didn't cry about it more than I do. My nieces and nephews are turning into lovely, amusing people, and I like being friends with them.

I love strong female characters in books and movies. Beatrice. Viola. Jane Eyre. Elizabeth Bennett. Princess Leia. Buffy Summers. (Okay, Princess Leia is kind of a joke. Buffy Summers - not so much.) It's all good stuff, even when it's geeky. I'm definitely not afraid of being a nerd or a geek (and yes, I know the difference). I love books and movies in general (Remember? Librarian?) and will surely talk about both more as this blog goes along.

I don't particularly want a huge house when I finally get on top of my life, but I would like to have a walk in closet, and to finally have enough space to store all of my books in one room.

My favorite punctuation marks are parentheses and semicolons. My favorite board game is Trivial Pursuit.

My dad taught me that it was always okay to do what made me happy, even if it wasn't what was popular or cool. That's probably why I'm so cool now. I've always believed that going along with what everyone else is doing only gets you so far, and then suddenly you aren't interesting because you don't know what you like. I know what I like, and for the most part, I know who I am (although you'll probably read several posts here that contradict that). You can't be happy if you're only try to be what other people think you should be. I firmly believe that happiness comes from being the person you want to be.

A final song for the playlist:

• From "Time Has Told Me" by Nick Drake: "I leave the ways that are making me be what I really don't want to be, leave the ways that are making me love what I really don't want to love."

And that is who I am and why I'm here. Let's do this thing.

(P.S. if you're wondering where the title of this post comes from, the first part comes from a song Ella Fitzgerald sang. The second comes from Lindsey.)

Lindsey Fantastic

One thing you need to know about me is that I am a big fan of lists, I would marry a list if it were possible. Since it is not, I will just have to settle with creating a list about myself for you to enjoy. Here goes.

1. I am weird. I really am. I like even numbers, I do not like mushrooms and I am wary of balloons (down graded from "afraid of" because I have improved in that department). There are many more things that exemplify my weirdness, but that would make this list far too long.

2. I love art, books, movies, music and television. That sounds vague and non-specific, but there is really no way to specify my favorites from those things because I generally just enjoy being entertained and don't really mind too much what genre, channel or time period that entertainment comes from.

3. I am a single, LDS girl in her mid-twenties and I live with my sister and her family. People generally don't know what to do with me.


4. I am quite addicted to my family. My sister is my best friend. My nephews and niece are some of my most favorite people to be around. My mom is amazing.

5. I don't think I really understand how funny I am. I'm still just trying to figure things out - but I LOVE IT when people laugh at my jokes. I just keep saying stuff and people laugh and that is surprising to me every time. Seriously, EVERY. TIME.

6. I have recently begun a love affair with Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Macadamia ice cream. This is probably the most important piece of information on this list because, if you ever want to become my friend, just show up at my door with a pint of it in your gorgeous hand and I will welcome you into my life with open arms.

7. I have more nick names than any one person should have to handle - and I still get new ones. I don't really know what makes a person susceptible to nick names, but whatever it is I have it.

8. I get crazy silly crushes on random celebrities, but I do an okay job at keeping them kind of under control. It's not like I still plaster pictures of them all over my wall or anything. I just, you know, follow them on Twitter...or not.

9. I am addicted to technology. I cannot live without my computer, my phone or my iPod. And they all have names.

10. I am happy to be where I am right now. This was not always the case, but I am glad that circumstances have changed to make it so.

So there I am, in a nutshell ("Look at me! I'm in a nutshell!"). I've already shared my reasons for creating this blog so I won't repeat myself, but I will say that I am looking forward to finding out why I felt the need to get this up and running. I am anxious to learn new things and figure out ways to make my life more like I want it to be and I am excited to share it all with you.