If you're new here, I did a 20 Questions post last year that discusses some basics of who I am, so that's a good place to start if you don't know much about me. Last month I asked you for questions and now I'm here to answer them. I got a lot of questions, so I'm breaking this up into two parts. This is part I.
Elisabeth asked:
1) Have you always had pets?
I definitely grew up in a household with pets. We moved around a lot when I was little, but we settled down in Michigan when I was seven and pretty immediately got a cat to help control the rodent population. She was a mean cat, Penny was, and I still have a scar on my right wrist from her claws. We had a selection of dogs and cats as I grew up and by the time I left for college, we'd settled in that two cats and three dogs were a good number for our family. We had Loudmouth and Heinz for cats and Dusty, Midnight, and Gizmo for dogs when I left for college.
In college and grad school, I pet sat a fair amount and occasionally had roommates with pets, but didn't have furry pets of my own. I did have a succession of fish, frogs, and lizards, though. When I met Dr. BB, I made sure the he knew that having pets was a priority for me. For a few months after we were first married, we did a long-term catsitting gig when we had some friends who were overseas for a bit and Dr. BB fell in love with that cat (oh, Dae) and I knew that I had sold him that pets were important.
Right before we moved out of Minneapolis in 2011, I was visiting some friends in Michigan who had rescued a litter of teeny tiny barn kittens. Zelda was the last kitten available and my friends who had three rambunctious children were making noises about taking her; I scooped her up and said I'd take her home because I was worried for her life in that household (they are all three lovely young adults now, but eleven years ago was a different story). Note that I agreed to take the cat before consulting my husband, but let's not dwell on that. She was little and cute and became Zelda the Cat.
We had Zelda for years and years before we bought a house. Part of me agreeing to buy the house was that we could get a dog. What really happened was that we moved into our house, I went to visit my mom and sister, and my sister's dog bit me. That put off our dog search for a year. We adopted Hannah the Dog in the summer of 2019.
Since Dr. BB grew up in a home without pets, I think he still sort of thinks it's weird that he lives with a cat and a dog now. I, however feel like a house is not a home without a pet. I will make some allowances for people with allergies, but even then I think you should have a fish or a bird or something.
2) Do the people that you send snail mail to every month also respond via the postal service?
Ha. Rarely. I love it when people DO mail me back, but I mostly send mail so my loved ones know I'm thinking about them, even if they are far away. I have no expectation of reciprocation.
Anne asked:
3) Who are the people you write to every month?
The three people I write to are my mom, Aunt Debbie, and Uncle Kevin. I used to write my Grandmother and Aunt Jean, too, before they passed away.
Back to questions from Elizabeth:
4) How/where do you store scarves?
I store them in my downstairs clothes closet. I have two special scarf hanger/organizer things and one regular hanger that I use. They actually don't take up much room at all and they're quick at hand whenever I need them.
5) What's your ideal vacation?
For a variety of reasons having to do with food and control, I'm going to leave my husband at home. I'm renting an Air BnB with my best friend and hiring a caterer to handle all the cooking for our vacation. We mostly sit around around a pool or at a beach with books in our hands. Maybe, just maybe, once a day we'll leave for some sort of activity like a hike, museum visit, or shopping at an adorable downtown area, but let's not get carried away with things we need to plan. And we read books, nap, and eat delicious food we haven't prepared. That's basically the ideal version for me.
6) What's your favorite meal - start to finish?
Interesting and hard question. I am going to follow the format of the Off Menu podcast.
Water: Grapefruit Perrier
Bread: Seedy white bread with lots of room temp butter
Appetizer: Caesar salad with extra croutons
Main dish: Lasagna
Drink: Diet Coke (this is a dream - I don't have caffeine any more, but this would not be a problem in my dream world)
Dessert: Tiramisu. I wouldn't be mad if it came with a scoop of vanilla or coffee ice cream on the side
After-dinner: A lovely cheese plate and coffee with cream
Interestingly enough, as I read through this, it seems like you could buy me some Perrier and take me the Olive Garden and I will be your girl.
7) What's your dream job (like dream-dream; money is no object and you can snap your fingers and acquire all the necessary skills immediately)?
I always wanted to be a translator at someplace like the United Nations or the International Court of Justice. I like the idea of being involved in international politics and the fight for human rights. Unfortunately, I am just not as good at languages as I'd like to be. I am too literal and don't understand nuances of languages, which would make me a terrible translator in real life.
Nicole asked:
8) What is your degree in?
My undergraduate and graduate degrees are in political science. I have a heavy emphasis on math and stats, though, with an undergrad minor in math and an emphasis on research methods in grad school. I'm your all around basic liberal arts bitch.
Birchwood Pie asked:
9) Why did you choose the field you chose to study?
I choose political science because government is the heart of everything we do. There's not a choice you make that the government doesn't have a hand in and I like to think about structures and institutions of power and how they work. I also like that this it focuses on something really complex and challenging like figuring out human behavior (how will voters vote? judges decide? governments act? non-governmental entities interfere?), but also allows me to flex my math chops. It's a field that takes the best from math/stats, psychology, economics, and law and mixes it up into the most delicious stew.
(Also, anyone who thinks people in the STEM field have the hardest jobs? You are wrong. It's just plugging numbers into equations. Gravity is predictable. Drag is predictable. People are not. The social sciences are the most complex because people are unpredictable.)
10) How did you meet Dr. BB?
We met in grad school. He was a cohort ahead of me. He was a better grad student than me and had a crush on my roommate. Some of the early entries on this web log are from early dates with him. (Don't read those. The me of 2005 apparently didn't know what a paragraph break was.) We actually study completely different subfields and we don't really understand what the other does.
I remember Dr. BB getting a new cell phone and refusing to give me or my roommate his number because he only had limited minutes. Do you remember those days? He claims that this is clearly untrue because he would never deny a pretty woman his number. I guess I eventually did get his number.
Anne asked:
11) How did you end up where you live?
We moved to Wisconsin because my husband got a tenure track job at a small state school here. This was quite a coup since political theory jobs are few and far between, so we moved to the town where the school is. We lived there in an apartment until Dr. BB actually got tenure and then we bought a house in the next town over. The advantages to where we live now are that this town has an actual grocery store (two of them, as a matter of fact!) and the houses next door are a million times less likely to be turned into student housing. We also don't literally live next door to my husband's students.
12) What's your favorite childhood memory?
I used to spend summers with my Uncle Lenny and Aunt Debbie. I wrote about it a tiny bit before when Uncle Lenny died, but let me expand on an all-time legendary story. Lenny and Debbie didn't have children of their own, but every summer they'd take some of their tween/teen nieces and nephews for weeks on end. We'd go camping, traveling, and just generally goof off with them. At one point, there was a big group of us and we decided to go floating/canoeing down a river. It was me, my sister, my cousins Rachel, Jessica, Greg, and Melanie, and my Aunt Debbie's nephew on her side, Johnny. We had a blast. We got sunburned, overturned the canoe, and Melanie and Johnny may have done some hanky panky under the cover of the river water.
When we got back to the car, it turned out that Uncle Lenny had somehow LOST THE CAR KEYS in the river. Apparently, this happens with some regularity. Ha! We were able to break into the car, so we could change into somewhat dry clothes, but we didn't really have anyplace to stay and so all nine of us ended up spending the night in someone's random backyard shed (maybe? my memory is fuzzy). We basically relied on the kindness of strangers to get us food. Aunt Debbie's dad drove a spare set of car keys to us the next day. He got a speeding ticket. It was calamity after calamity. It's a great, classic family story.
Stay tuned for more questions tomorrow! In the meantime, please regale me with stories from your childhood.
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