This week I get the wonderful opportunity to ask an actual friend of mine 20 Questions. What?!? Yes, I have actual friends who will actually share enough time with me (at least digitally) to answer my inane 20 Questions. So let’s explore 20 Questions with one of my more hilarious co-workers who is an absolute delight, Susan McGowan. I met Susan earlier this year when she started working at the same place of employment as myself. It turns out that her daughter and my daughter have horse riding lessons at the same barn and sometimes at the same time and in the same class. Oh, and she and I know a surprising amount of the same people from at least 4 different pockets of connections. It really is surprising that we only met this year.
Editor’s note: Susan, over the course of this interview (which only took a few weeks), has had two of her beloved pets “cross the rainbow bridge” (that’s one of the pet euphemisms about pets dying, right?). Anyway, she lost two furry companions in the span of a week and a half. I think it ended up being about 10 days total between pet deaths. That is not much time between pets dying, and incredibly emotionally hard to deal with while full-time jobbing and parenting. I know their passing was hard on her. Needless to say this post is dedicated to those two four-legged members of her family. So everyone, pour some out for Murphy Seidel Herriott-McGowan (cat of the month for an untold number of months running) and Bartleby Herriott-McGowan (her mix Shar-Pei in the hizzay).
Bartleby and Murphy sharing a couch
So without further ado… 20 Questions with Susan McGowan.
Many people know this little preamble, because I have been doing this for years…. And question one is always the same, but I get new readers and I get people who only read one of these and then drift off to be non-readers, so bear with me faithful readers and welcome aboard new people.
Anyhoo… my professional life started with selling Nordictracks at a mall, but that doesn’t really mean anything. I just did not want to write that my professional life began with making maps and then to get a nasty email from David Metzger the manager of Nordictrack in the Riverchase Galleria Mall. I know he is watching… he is always watching… and waiting....
Umm… where was I? Oh, yes. My real career began with making maps in 1997. I have always loved stories told through the concept of place. For me, my personal geographic story is that I was born outside of Oklahoma City, moved to Montgomery, Alabama when I was super young, moved up to Birmingham, Alabama for the rest of my childhood, and then moved off to college in Kent, Ohio. I followed my fiance to Columbus, Ohio for grad school and marriage and have been in the Columbus area for more than 20 years now. We have settled in Worthington, Ohio (which is an edge city around Columbus, that straddles the I-270 outerbelt). Question 1: What is your geographic story?
The short version of my geographic story is uninspiring--I’ve lived in Ohio my entire life, moving from Cleveland to Wooster for undergrad, then Columbus for grad school. I intended to move to Scotland after that, but I took a job to save up some money, and, like a comfy couch, Columbus sucked me in. Even though I’ve lived here for 22 years, it still feels temporary. Home might always be Cleveland Heights. If I’m very still, I can feel the way it breathes green in the summer and picture some carved corner. I think of Columbus from an aerial view primarily, but Cleveland is a collection of architectural details, old and filthy and beautiful--an American thatched roof, an angel draped over a gravestone, an iron bridge, a cracking tower. I also have roots in Chautauqua, NY, although I’ve never lived there. I grew up spending summers there, got married there, scattered my mother’s ashes there. My dad currently has a little place there, but he will be selling it next fall, around the same time he moves out of Cleveland Heights. I’m not sure where home will be then.
It is an interesting thing when what was home is now, no longer home. That happened for me when I moved away from Alabama. The place only holds memories for me, especially after my parents moved out of my childhood home. The 2 things that killed any and all love for Alabama was the death of my childhood cat in my super-senior year of college, and my parents moving out of my childhood home. The place just is not “home” anymore. You will find a place to call home. It takes time and can be emotionally difficult, but you will find that, and my bet is that it matches up with where you will have the bulk of your memories with your kids.
You seem to not be sheltered like many people who have only lived in (pretty much) one place. Question 2: Do you travel much and what is the furthest from Ohio you have traveled?
I grew up traveling and it’s something I want to pass along to my children. My dad traveled a lot for his job and my mother loved to travel, so if a trip fell during a school break or in the summer, we would go with him. If it was within the US, he’d add a few days on either side, and we’d drive. As a kid, I had winter friends (from school) and summer friends (kids I befriended for a few days in hotel pools, kids whose parents attended the same lighting conferences year after year). As a June birthday, I had as many birthdays on the road (7th picnicking by a stream in the Blue Ridge, 9th in an apartment in DC, 15th in Venice) as I did at home. I complained about that a lot and finally my parents agreed we’d try to be home for a party every other year. That seems so dumb now, but as a kid it felt like the Worst Thing Ever.
By the time I left home, I’d visited 48 states and three continents. I’ve been fortunate to have a best friend who traveled with me for a bit, and then my husband. Having kids has made it harder and more expensive. We persevered with Kid 1, taking her to Iceland and Germany when she was three and I was 6 months pregnant with Kid 2--and she was such a trooper. But Kid 2 is a different beast; we’ve traveled cross country with him, but haven’t ventured overseas. It’s something that kind of kills me.
The furthest from Ohio I’ve been is Israel (twice) and Ghana. I went to Israel once with my youth group in high school, during my religious phase, and as a then-Christian among Christians, it felt like it could be home. The second time, I was there through Journey of Conscience, an organized visit to several of the death camps in Eastern Europe. I was invited as sort of the Poet-in-Residence and one of only two non-Jews on the trip. After the rage and unrelenting sadness at the Holocaust sites, my travelmates got off the little prop plane that had taken us from Warsaw to Tel Aviv and kissed the ground. I felt like I was at a friend’s house for the holidays, where their mom might give me a hug in welcome, but I was still just a guest.
I went to Ghana because my stepsister was a math teacher in a little village there for Peace Corps. Instead of bringing her back to the US for Christmas, my family rented a palazzo in Sicily for a week and she met us there. Since I was already halfway around the world, my best friend* and I decided to return with her to Ghana, figuring it would never be easier than having my stepsister to act as a guide and deal with logistics for us. We flew in and out of Accra, then traveled to her village for a few days. We covered a lot of ground on that trip—not just mileage-wise, but going from celebrating New Years’ with fireworks in a medieval square and drinking limoncello to riding a tro-tro for 10 hours with 15 strangers in a sweaty crush.
*I was dating my now-husband at that point, but I didn’t invite him to join us on this amazing trip, because we were never going to last, something he likes to bring up to this day.
Well, I think you may have mis-stated earlier. You have been to 4 continents, not merely 3. You have graced North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. You’ll need to update that in your travel log. You are only 3 away from collecting the set. I, sadly, have only been to a measly 2 continents, but once we kick the kids out of the house… Nothing. But. Travel!
That’s funny; I always put Israel in Africa, but the Internet says you’re right.
Question 3: Cake or pie? Which specific kind and why?
Totally pie. If you match random pie vs random cake, 90% of the time, pie will be the victor. Pie comes with pi puns and a day dedicated to celebrating it; cake makes you choose between cake or death and we all know the cake is a lie. As for specifics, the #1 pie is sour cream peach. Somewhere below that, in vaguely ranked order: pecan, butterscotch, blueberry, bumbleberry, chess, and sweet potato.
Of course, the question itself is flawed, because sticky toffee pudding is neither cake nor pie and is the best dessert on earth.
Sticky toffee pudding was not in the question, because the question was not “What’s your favorite dessert-like food?” ugh… Do you like cats or dogs? I like cats more, but sugar gliders are the best. And sweet potato pie is an affront to humanity because it tries to disguise itself as pumpkin pie. Sweet potatoes are the devil’s food, but not like “devil’s food cake” devil’s food, but like the “made of lies and tormented dreams” devil’s food.
Question 4: What do you consider to be the “made from lies and tormented dreams” devil’s food?
You have the “devil’s weed”, which is cilantro, but anti-cilantro rants are boring--it’s like the Mac/PC debate that geeks-in-training like to drag you into. I despise avocados--why would anyone willing eat swamp-flavored butter? But--and maybe it’s the phrasing that confuses me, but what’s really made of lies is yogurt. Is it a dessert? A cheese? “Hey, I’m like healthy ice cream! Good people eat me! I’m breakfast-ready pudding!” Those are the devil’s lies. Yogurt is a grave disappointment 99% of the time. Actually, 100% of the time. The other 1% is when you mistakenly eat pudding and think “this is the best damn yogurt ever”.
Cilantro is a loved or hated item, it is not a surprising selection at all. People who love it, want it on everything, while people who hate it, hate people who love it. Also, I think I will start referring to avocados as “swamp butters” from now on. This yogurt thing surprises me, because yogurt is so unusually innocuous. Who hates beige? I am sure people do, but it beige is so blah, which is what yogurt is, beigy blah.
Again, I may have just been misconstruing your language about “made of lies and tormented dreams”, but that’s why yogurt makes the list. It’s made of lies.
I know for a fact that you have held some odd jobs (while not being Odd Job from the Bond films). So, I started into the professional world by selling NordicTrack exercise equipment in mall retail stores for most of my undergrad years, then I worked at Barnes & Noble for a bit, then I was a graduate assistant in the Department of Geography teaching GIS and cartography labs, from there I went to a local engineering architecture firm as a transportation planning cartographer, then I became the GIS technician for the Department of Geotechnical Engineering for the Ohio Department of Transportation. From there I switched careers entirely and went into user experience design as an interaction designer. Question 5: What is your professional journey?
My first non-babysitting job was working retail at an antiques shop where I did table displays of Staffordshire figurines and dusted a lot. Then, I apprenticed to a rare book dealer. I spent one summer temping at Office Max world headquarters, blacking numbers out of reports with Sharpies, like the guy in Catch-22. In grad school, I taught English 101 and beginning poetry workshops and worked as a research assistant for David Citino.
After I graduated, I was hired as a researcher to develop content for an educational computer game company. After a few months, my boss asked if I wanted to learn to code. Three months later, I made my first game--Magnificent Marlena’s Mind-Bending Magic Show, a sequence game. I loved this job--storyboarding, coding, troubleshooting, plus I did most of the female voices in our games. I truly believe learning to code changed my life.
When the company started going under, I left to go to library school and worked as a writer for the International Dark-Sky Association, a non-profit dedicated to reducing light pollution. During that time, I took on additional freelance writing, editing, and research gigs. I published a few magazine articles and had a nice stretch with the Armchair Reader series, contributing to Weird, Scary, and Unusual and a few others. I realized that I was making more as a writer than I would as a librarian, so I dropped out of school. A friend who worked for a healthcare marketing agency reached out, asking if I had ever done digital QC. I said I’d give it a try, and the 6 hours a week turned into full time. I created the processes, the team grew to ten people--it was thriving, but I hated it.
During this time, I started hearing about UX. I found a few people at the agency who were interested in it as well, and through good fortune and kindness, I got a mentor and a workstream and started the UX team at the agency with a handful of people. The agency decided it didn’t want to support UX work, so it was time to leave. I moved to an edtech startup at Ohio State’s College of Education as the Director of Product and User Experience. I was there for three glorious years, then the funding was pulled and the company went under. From there, I came to the UX team at my current employer, where I met you.
That is a pretty interesting list of jobbies. I had not realized how much the English language was your playground. I just thought you might be kind of verbose, but you are officially verbose. Well done.
Since you are an English aficionado, and since I like me some language arts. Question 6: What is one word in the English language that you feel is getting short shrift? What word is not being used enough and is ready for a resurgence?
I don’t know how to answer this--that’s like asking me to pick a favorite child. How could anyone choose between mirepoix and fungible? Acanthopterygian and flibbertigibbet? Frangipane and salacious? Picking a word is like wandering through a fabric store--a rush of textures and colors. Words should feel good in the mouth, be a bit of a surprise for the listener and the user, and delight the ear.
For my job at the game company, my first assignment was to write a 10,000-word dictionary and it was so much fun. I combed through other dictionaries to find words, then wrote my own definitions to avoid copyright infringement. The president of the company was a word person too, so we met for three hours every day to go over the previous day’s words--good gravy, how we argued over the minutiae of definitions. There are some perfectly good words, such as hirsute and parka that didn’t make it into our database because neither of us would budge*.
There is a wonderful children’s book called Ounce, Dice, Trice that is the closest thing I’ve found to being in my brain, the way it savors and plays with words. The kindest thing you could do for a budding poet in your life is to keep them far away from this book and tell them to develop some useful skills, otherwise, they will be forever lost.
*He was incredibly wrong on both counts, however, and I’m still quite bitter. Almost as bitter as the time my 3rd-grade class played Scattergories and didn’t believe that indigo was a real color, the little heathens. Words matter, people. Words matter.
...okay. I was just thinking that “whilst” should be used more. This is clearly a topic that you feel strongly about. I know what mirepoix, fungible, frangipane, salacious, hirsute and parka mean, but I am at a loss for acanthopterygian, and think I know what flibbertigibbet means but did not know that it was a recognized word in the English language.
Acanthopterygian means descriptive of a spiny-finned fish, such as a bass or perch. TMYK.
TMYK
Question 7: Do you think that the English language can rightfully claim words such as salsa and mirepoix as its own even though those words belong to a different language?
Absolutely. I love English for its gelatinous cube-like quality of picking up and holding anything in its path--in this case, great words from other languages. I don’t think we’d be able to make or eat salsa if we called it something else. The Anglo-Saxons ate onions, but they didn’t know about tomatoes or the “demon weed”, so we’d be looking to another language anyway. It might be called relish or chutney, but both of those stem from India, so why is borrowing from Hindi, but not Spanish or French? Pretty much, unless we’re talking about livestock, root vegetables, or war, we’re going to borrow words. It seems nicer to keep them with some semblance of their original pronunciation. Though give it a few centuries and I’m sure we’ll manage to turn mirepoix into something like “murrypoy”.
Dungeons and Dragons' Gelatinous Cube
+2 to Int for use of gelatinous cube, but sadly -1 to Cha. Even though geeky things are “in” right now, overly deep cuts into geeky things are still surprisingly negatively geeky. I don’t write the rules, I just enforce them (which gives me a -2 Cha modifier to old skool geeks). Also, “murrypoy” sounds like a name and is not any easier to say than “mirepoix.” If Americans have anything to say about it, the linguistic shift will be from “mirepoix” to “merpo” or something else that sounds less sophisticated. Americans can be soooo un-sophisticated.
I didn’t know what Cha meant, but my husband stepped into the room, wearing +1 flannel armor and immediately got a -3 to his Cha by knowing the answer, but he’s used to it.
Question 8: How many animals do you have in your household?
Currently, not counting children, we have four. Bartleby the shar pei butler dog and then three cats: Murph the Cat (not to be confused with our late Murph the Dog, and winner of Cat of the Month for 200+ months!), Rory the Round, and Wunk (née Duncan) the Dim. The cats are all orange by royal fiat.
That is a bunch of wee beasties in the house. When my wife and I were married (over 20 years ago now… how the hell did that happen??!? {that’s not the question, do not answer that question!!!}), we immediately got 2 cats. They were our marriage cats. Lenny was a Russian Blue, and Señor Don Gato (was a cat, meow meow meow) was a solid black lump of milk cap fetching love. Señor Don Gato’s name eventually truncated to just Señor. Señor then became Señor Von Beanor, and eventually just to Bean. Question 9: How did Duncan’s”regal Scottish king’s name devolve into the less regal “Wunk?”
First, let me disabuse you of how regal poor Duncan’s name is. At the time my daughter named him, she was very much into the dreadful show “Total Drama Island” on which the character Duncan is a villainous, scheming emo-punk. I requested that whatever we named the cat have Scottish flavor, so that’s what she chose. Duncan branched into Dunk, Punk, and Punkin, but he is not smart, and we quickly started looking for less-intelligent variations. He spent some time as Wunkin. Wunkish. Wunky Woo-woo. Wunky Wunk and the Funky Pants. You know, the usual. At my last job, my daughter wrote Wunk all over a process diagram I was working on. WUNK. WUNKIN. YOU MUST KNOW HE IS A POUFE [sic]. This evolution is the way of things. Sadly, since having all of his teeth removed, Murph (the cat) has become Moop. This is the way of the world.
Right… so no “Duncan Wunkan.” Occam’s Razor be damned. I would not have thought the path from Duncan to Wunk would be a Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon-esque path. Don’t get me wrong, the actual path is way more interesting, just more surprising as well.
Question 9: What is something that you think people would be surprised about you?
This question has been hard to answer, mostly because I’m bad at predicting what surprises people. I think the answer depends on which person, and how do they know me.
o If you know me now, you might be surprised that I was a fundamentalist in my early teens.
o If you knew me in my early tweens, you might be surprised that I was a paranormal investigator.
o If we went to college together, you are often very surprised to learn I married Mark.
o If you knew me in high school, you might be surprised to learn that I’m smart; if you knew me after high school, you might be surprised that I used to practice batting my eyelashes and giggling because I thought I was hopelessly stupid and tried to cover it up.
Again, it’s all context. But I’m a Gemini and we’re just a delightful mess of contradictions.
The thing is, I love it when people surprise me, which they always do. My favorite poems are made of details that are like delicious little salt crystals, and so are people. Uncovering a surprise is a burst of flavor. In high school, a friend was detailing some minutiae of her life and I responded with the clever ‘I’m like, wow” and she snapped, “Susan, you’re always like ‘wow’.” She meant it as a bad thing, but I think it’s part of my charm. This thing I just learned about you? Wow.
The fundamentalist thing is super surprising to me. I was pretty thick in the religion when I was a youngun as well. The somewhat racist reaction from my childhood church burned that bridge below its caissons. I was already tottering on the edge of leaving the churchiness behind, and then there was the reaction to whom I was going to marry.
For me, it was a few things. A) I had made somewhat of a career of dating Jewish men, and they found that unacceptable. B) I was given a talking to about listening to the “wrong sort” of Christian rock. But the final straw was when they told me that my mother’s death was “all in God’s plan.” There’s no excuse for that—none.
Question 10: Fill in the blanks: I find that I am mostly _____________. Others think that I am mostly _________.
I think/feel/imagine myself to be mostly Fluttershy. Others think/feel/imagine me to be mostly Twilight Sparkle, although Mark, and possibly he alone, finds me to be Rarity.
Fluttershy, Twilight Sparkle, and Rarity
I so do not want to know about any potential cutie mark //shudder.
Question 11: So, why do you think others feel you are a magical problem solving princess, your partner sees you as a magical and giving seamstress, and you think you are mainly known for being a caretaker? And why don’t you think anyone thinks you are Applejack?
Applejack
Interesting. I think others see me as bookish and well-read. Mark sees me as refined and polite. I see myself as a burbling mess of insecurity. I don’t think anyone thinks I’m an extroverted hick. I mean, maybe they do, but that’s not one that’s filtered back to me.
That cartoon was a bizarre one. It seemed relatively innocuous and fun for young girls and then the weird movie thing came out where the ponies became overly sexualized horse/girl/furries. It really made me sad to see this cartoon where young girls/women who happened to be ponies of some kind were able to overcome obstacles though friendship and understanding turned into anthropomorphized teenage horse girls. Seemed to be catering to the furry bronie more than the kids.
So… a few years ago I did a 20 Questions with a French podcaster, Patrick Beja, and this delightful gentleman brought me to the most deceptively simple questions I have ever been asked or have asked. So, without further ado… Question 12: Are you happy?
I’ve really been pondering this one. I am happy. I’m a happy person--I’ve always been kind of emo, even as a kid, but generally, I trend to happy. I’m also happy in this moment--I can’t promise about the moment before or what will come next, but this moment is perfect and I am content in that.
That said, I’m depression’s bitch, if you’ll pardon the language. I recognize this, and am trying to learn to separate what is real, and what is that smothering, gray blanket in my head, but it’s hard. I had post-partum after my my daughter was born, sought treatment, then went off it when I was trying to get pregnant again. My son’s birth was so traumatic that I didn’t recognize it--I thought I was just grieving that, but it’s eight years later and the sun hasn’t come out yet. I thought I could fight it on my own, and I am slowly realizing I just can’t.
Depression is a lying liar that constantly lies. Honest to goodness depression is not something that can be navigated by oneself. Depression is misassociated with the idea of people being “sad.” It is not merely big sustained sadness, but a fundamental brain chemistry issue that cannot just be pushed to the side by a smile and some M & M’s (not saying that M & M’s couldn’t help… well, the peanut butter M & M’s or the white chocolate ones… the caramel ones are terrible, and they should not be). I suffer from it, and no many people who suffer from it on a a daily basis. Seriously people, depression sucks, and the people who have to deal with it, do better when they do not have to deal with it by themselves. So, hug someone you care about, but don’t hug them in a weird way that takes just a beat or two too long.
Here we are at an unlucky question for triskaidecaphobics… Question 13: Do you subscribe to any superstitions or rituals?
If I let my brain do what it wants, I would be too busy touching oak, building altars, and sourcing silver to keep in my pocket to get anything done. At heart, I want to embrace superstition and bury my face in it. When I was little, I used to say a series of prayers at night, and I was fairly certain that if I got them out of order, I would die. I think this is why I was such an easy mark for religion. I have spent most of my adult life, walking the fine line between rational and batshit crazy. I joined my paranormal investigation group as a skeptic, because I really did yearn to find something magical, something beyond the rational. I was a skeptic, though, and joined a group that tried to find scientific evidence, so at the same time I was searching, I was also walling myself off from that possibility. I want proof that is based on more than just a feeling, because I don’t trust my brain to do what’s right.
I remember crying after seeing my grandma, several years before she died. I told my husband (who had once been a phone psychic), that I had a premonition that it was the last time I would see her. He said that it was possible, but that our brains don’t remember all the times we have premonitions that DON’T come true—and that’s stuck with me. I did see her after that, many times, and if he hadn’t said that, I would have forgotten how sure I felt. That’s why I can’t trust my brain—it lies.
All that said, I still believe in saying “good night”, “I love you”, or “See you soon”, rather than “good bye”. I believe you should start as you intend to end, so birthdays, New Year’s, and other beginning/end holidays should involve physical and emotional contact with the people you love best in the world. I believe in kissing on footbridges and saying “gesundheit”. I light the wicks of every new candle that comes into the house, although I’m not sure why—I learned that at the antique store. I try to light a candle on Yom Hashoa. I am incapable of not touching wood, but I try to do it secretly. I say thank you to animals we eat and apologize to the bugs I kill. And if there’s a special place, I find myself talking to it—like Lake Chautauqua. I don’t particularly respect these things about myself, but it is what it is.
I don’t think this was the direction you meant the conversation to go, and really revealed more about the soft squishy bits than I meant to. I wish I had a meditation practice or could say breezily, oh, yeah, I do yoga every morning. That’s what normal people do.
Even though you did not directly answer the question, you did thoroughly answer it. I have a couple of reactions to some of what you wrote.
One: I have often found that skeptics want the paranormal to be real much more than believers. Skeptics truly want these phenomena to be real, and try their darndest to prove it. Believers tend to just believe without questioning wholesale the thing that they believe in. I have found this is true for many highly religious people and flat-earthers as well.
Two: “Good night,” “I love you,” and “see you soon” is one of the best rituals I can think of.
Three: Let’s be clear, normal people don’t do yoga every morning. Yoga people do yoga every morning. If they have an issue, they “take it to the mat.” I hate myself a little more for just typing that out.
So, this paranormal investigation group thing has come up, so I feel like I need to dig. Question 14: So what types of things did you investigate and what supernatural thing do you most want to be real?
The group was The Ghosts of Ohio so we specialized in...wait for it...ghosts, but I don’t believe we ever turned down a call. We did private investigations for property owners who contacted us. We’re not allowed to talk about our those, but we did everything from private homes in quiet neighborhoods to historic structures and places of business. We also did investigations of places that were open to the public, researched local legends (Helltown, crybaby bridges, etc.), collected folklore about any number of things.
The founder, Jim Wills, is a local paranormal historian and one of the authors of Weird Ohio. I didn’t have kids then, and Jim was one of my closest friends, so we spent a lot of time wandering through cemeteries together. (In fact, check out the title page and p. 248 of Weird Ohio!).
As for what I most want to be real? Ghosts for sure. The thought of nothingness when you die terrifies me. Also, fairies--the grotesquely beautiful fairies of Brian Froud’s world--because I so very much want there to be magic in this world. That is, when I allow myself to believe in it.
Brian Froud's Faeries
I think I had some kind of ghostly encounter when I was a kid, but I have chalked that up to the overactive imagination of a 5 or 6 year old (I don’t remember how old I was at the time). That is a story for a different time. My favoritest thing for paranormal stuff is cryptids. I want so many of the legendary creatures to be real. It would be amazing if even one of them was conclusively proven real.
Question 15: In all of these paranormal investigations did you (specifically you) ever experience something ghostly, or did you suffer the equivalent of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and effect the outcome by trying to observe it? Honestly if you did, that would be kind of burying the lead a bit.
I never did, although for a while, I tried to feel like things other people experienced were just as good as experiencing them myself. At one investigation, my first, Jim recorded a cold spot that moved down the hall towards him and I would tell people about that, as if it meant something. But after a while, you start asking yourself why you’re never the one to get an aberrant reading, see something strange, catch the EVP. Jim always said that he imagined crowds of ghosts scurrying into hiding when they saw us pulling up in the driveway, and laughing and waving at us as we left, so it’s a known thing that when people are looking, they don’t find anything. But when the group shifted from entirely recordable data to giving weight to things like seeing orbs and feeling feelings, it seemed time for me to leave. It felt like a club that I wasn’t part of, if that makes sense.
When I was in 8th or 9th grade, in the heat of my Fundamentalist phase, I went to sort of a Christian Woodstock (a Christian Lollapalooza?) with my youth group. On the final night, there was a big revival before we boarded the bus to drive home in the dark. Once on the bus, one of the girls in my group--one of the “good” ones, the ones who prayed publicly and was known to be particularly godly--began sobbing, saying she saw an angel and he was shaking his head and expressing his disappointment. Soon the whole bus was filled with weeping teenagers claiming to have seen or felt that angel. I didn’t see an angel. I hugged my friends while they cried and prayed with them, but as with the ghosts, I was an outsider, not one of the blessed.
That’s what I don’t get--what’s the point of having this irrational part of my brain, the part that wants ghosts, that wants God, that wants fairies and magic, if I’m meant to only ever witness the supernatural touching others?
You don’t get to ask me questions until Question 18. I know you have read some of these, I cannot believe that you thought you could just randomly ask me a question in the middle of this. I am shocked at this behavior. Shocked!
As I stated earlier, the skeptical want desperately to believe, it is just that their threshold of believability is much stricter. I can easily see you on the fringe of the paranormal and on the fringe of the fundamental. I think they are different colors of the same mask. There is a level of faith required for both fundies and believers that logic just won’t work with.
Question 16: Are there any questions you expected me to ask that I have not?
“What is your favorite song/album/band/Spotify playlist/type of music?” I absolutely hate that question, but it’s de rigueur, isn’t it? I know so many people who claim to judge your worth based on the answer, and I feel like it gets too close to the soft underbelly. We were listening to Spotify the other day and Mark said “What is this playlist? I have no idea what’s going on here.” I said it was just things I’d favorited. He said that made sense, how it was at once bizarre, yet familiar. That’s me. Bizarre. Yet familiar.
There are many questions that tend to be de rigueur that are really horrible questions. The most often one I have seen is the “what’s your favorite X?” That is a tired and boring question.
Comedy dictates that my next question be something about identifying your favorite of some category, but today I am eschewing comedy dictates. You hear that, Comedy? Eschewing!
Question 17: What would the God of All Comedy be named, if you could name the God of All Comedy? For the purposes of this post, you do, indeed, have that power.
I’m an agnostic, so I’m not sure if there is a God of ALL Comedy, but a few Halloweens ago, Mark and I dressed as two of the lesser gods you might not have heard of--Dorfeus, god of Dad jokes, and Purrsephone, goddess of cat memes.
My go to names for gods of humor are Mirthcoatl the Omnijocular or Brosadi the Norn or Humor. That being said, I do not have “go to’s” for a god of humor name. I just came up with them for this post, but I like them verily.
Now it is time for me to turn the tables. Question 18: Do you have any questions you want to ask me?
I love asking questions and hearing people spin their yarns, so I have ALL the questions for you.
What keeps you going?
What keeps you up at night?
What makes your skin crawl?
What taste, smell, or sound turns you into a kid again?
What do you try not to remember?
What do you hope to learn through these questions?
How much is enough?
It’s hard, because what I really want is a bottle of wine, and the ability to respond to some of your responses with more questions, but this is a start.
Susan with a foliage moustache
Alright… here we go.
In general, curiosity keeps me going.
Worrying about the kids and having to deal with emotions I try not to deal with keep me up at night.
Spiders make my skin crawl.
Not much will turn me into a kid again… maybe dealing with my parents for more than a day at a time will throw me into some not so great childhood patterns. Does that count?
I will not tell you what I try not to remember. Nope, not going to happen.
I hope to learn more about people, because I like people in the abstract… I tend to not actually like people though.
Enough is enough.
So… Question 19: What are you taking from these 20 Questions that you did not bring with you?
I discovered that I actually love talking about myself, even though it’s ingrained in me to deny that vehemently. I don’t think I looked my depression in the eyes and gave it a nod until we discussed happiness here. And I don’t think I truly understood how starting your career trajectory at NordicTrak can put you on the path to success before this; I regret some earlier life choices.
Not just anyone could start their worklife at NordicTrack, and no one can start in their retail arm anymore. The 90’s were the absolute best for niche retail stores in malls. Anyhoo… the happiness question is always an introspective one.
Here we are at the last. Question 20: What's next? Be as vague or as specific, as concrete or philosophical, and as near term or long term as you would like
In the short term, we are opening up the house and trying to dig out. Things have been rough, with two beloved pets dying in the last month. Spring is a good time to open all the french doors in our house that were closed to keep ailing pets out, to remove puppy pads, to let in some light. I need to get back to work--I owe a dear friend a poem, and frankly, I owe myself a poem. And it’s time to travel, to see new things, to taste new things, and to make a few new lists, because life doesn’t doesn’t seem to have direction without one. Beyond that, things are fuzzy, and not just because of all the cats.
Susan's partner, Mark with Bartleby and Murphy
The problem with flinging open the doors in Central Ohio is that the weather is so volatile, you will want to fling them closed again almost instantly. In the time since Susan flung open her doors (answered this last question) it has snowed twice... maybe three times.
I have adored this 20 Questions Tuesday greatly, and am very happy to know more about Susan. Everyone should give her a follow on the Twitters (@selimacat) even though she does not tweet much and on the ‘Grams (@selimacat).
She is an absolute delight and everyone should get to know her primarily because she is an introvert and that would freak her out.
To recap:
Plumber and painter in the house this week
Oh, and had to get a new over the range microwave as well
It does really come in threes
My kid really likes the Overwatch League
I find myself being sucked into it somewhat
My heel/plantar fasciitis is still a little ouchy
I realize this is a Wednesday
But I was not able to get the post formatted yesterday
It takes time
This blogging platform does not keep the formatting I already do on the documents
So I have to reformat everything
It is an arduous process
I just want to make sure all of you know that I suffer for my art
I don’t really
I was tired last night and didn’t feel like doing it
So this becomes a Wednesday post
Deal with it
Have a great week everyone
