Maggie interviewed me weeks ago, and I have been extremely slow in getting my answers together.  The couple of people I have interviewed so far have mentioned how slow they were, but I assure everyone reading this that I am much worse.  I’m going to blame it on massive amounts of stress, by which of course I mean that Maggie’s questions were so insightful I needed time to meditate upon my answers.  You will probably read her questions and laugh about what I just said, but the Gilmore Girls question and the very last question took me forever to answer.  I can’t be flippant about Gilmore Girls, people.  I think it says that somewhere in some authoritative religious text out there.  Anyway, onto Maggie’s interview.

1. You are going to become an aunt soon.  Please detail the ways in which you plan to position yourself as The Cool Aunt. (And if you are the ONLY aunt, you still have to acquire The Coolness, so no skipping out on a technicality.)

The “Cool Aunt,” huh?  I am relatively certain that I will never hold that status since I do not consider myself cool, and being such, the possibility that anyone else would is somewhat ridiculous in my mind.  However, I will humor Maggie and detail the plans which I have for my niece.  (Oops.  Did I just reveal that information in an interview on my blog?  I was going to share that in its own separate blog post, but, uh, guess not.  Yeah, my sister found out on St. Patrick’s Day that she’s having a girl.   Whoo!)

I have already typed up a draft of a letter to my niece which I tentatively plan on posting here sometime in the not so distant future, and I hope to continue to write her letters fairly regularly so that she can read them when she’s older.  Along the same vein, I was contemplating what my first gift to her would be.  I tend to spend a lot of time (you don’t even want to know) thinking about gifts to give to people so that they are personal and heartfelt.  Right now, I am planning on writing & illustrating a book for her.  That probably sounds kind of lame, but it’s exactly the kind of gift that I would absolutely love, and many, many people have told me that I would be an excellent children’s author due to my writing and artistic abilities.  I won’t be able to get around to this until this summer, so it will not likely be ready in time for her birth, but it’s not like she’ll be able to read it anyway, so I figure it’s ok.  I’m hoping to have it done in time for Christmas, but I don’t want to rush it.  I haven’t had time to really plan out a storyline or anything yet, and it’s been awhile since I’ve had time to really delve back into art, so my loving gesture may turn out to be a nightmare.  We’ll see how that goes.

I don’t know where I’ll be once she makes her grand arrival in the world, but when I am around her, I look forward to reading to her for hours on end and introducing her to the greatness that is Gilmore Girls.  If I can get Rory to be her first word, I will cry tears of joy.  My sister’s thought process is similar to mine, so I have her blessing.

I love toy stores, playgrounds, zoos and museums.  I will gladly take her to each as many times as she wishes to go.  If anything, having her with me gives me an excuse to be able to go to all of those places and have fun without getting weird looks from people.  I also get the added benefit of getting her for all the fun and then returning her to my sister for the discipline part of it all (well, not really, but this is what I’m telling myself now), so I fully intend on giving her cookies and ice cream when she’s with me–in moderation, of course, otherwise my sister will kill me.  I haven’t seen many Disney movies, so maybe I can finally see all the many movies I never have for the first time with her.  The same applies to fairy tales, so I can read those to her and really take them in and experience them for the first time along with her.

If this child does not like books and movies, I am screwed.  I suppose it doesn’t really matter, though.  I can guarantee you that she will have me wrapped around her little finger and I’ll probably give in to whatever she wants.  Playing house, playing with Barbies (which reminds me of the days my sister played with me ), playing with dolls, playing dress-up (this, too, reminds me of the days my sister made me do this, BLECH), playing make-believe and whatever else she could possibly want to play.  I’d be completely ok with basketball, football and swimming or even playing with trucks or blocks.

“The Coolness,” though is really sort of a moot point until she is a bit older anyway.  Right now,everyone’s just trying to get me to work on getting me to HOLD a baby.  That’s a story for another post, though.

2. You also recentlyish joined Twitter.  How are you liking this new foray into social media?

I guess this is where I come out and say that I joined Twitter.  I refused to join for the longest time, but I finally gave in.  I’m actually enjoying it quite a bit.  I love blogging, but I’m often so busy and stressed that I don’t have the time to do so as frequently as I would like.  Sometimes I just want to say a couple of sentences, and I usually don’t think it’s blog worthy, so it’s nice to have an outlet to do that in.  It’s also convenient for quick messages for those who are email lazy.

If you’re interested, my username is Electraaa.  It is an alias that I often use around the internet, but not many people are knowledgeable of that fact.  It is taken from my favorite play (the one by Sophocles, not those inferior ones–I have standards, people!) which is based on my favorite mythological character, Electra, and one whom I feel I can relate to in many ways.  It has nothing to do with the comic book character Elektra, though her character is loosely based off of my Electra. (For the record, Electra avenged her father’s death.  That is all.  That and the fact that Sophocles wrote the play are the only reasons the Electra Complex is named after her.  She was not romantically involved with her father in any way. )

3. Do you think Rory has a position in the Obama Administration?  Do you think Lane woke up one day and was all, “I’m married to HIM?  And we have TWINS? WTH!”  Do you wish Paris had her own spinoff?  Sigh.  Are there any new shows to rival Gilmore Girls?

I really wanted to go into a rant about the ending of the series with this question, but I shall attempt to avoid doing so.

I’m not sure where Rory ended up (Don’t you love how we talk about the character as if she’s a real person?  The correct answer to that question is, “What do you mean?  Of course she’s a real person!”)–I still call bologna on her not getting the internship at The New York Times, but that is neither here nor there, and I promised I’d try not to rant.  I think that given her liberal leanings (Love her, love her, love her, she’s a liberal), her keen intellect and her amiable personality, Obama would love her and want to adopt her.  With her writing talent she probably would catch his eye and eventually gain a personal interview with him.  As for where that would take her, I can only imagine, but I think the probability that she ends up highly involved in the administration is pretty good.  I think that she’d use her connections to launch her into doing foreign correspondence, though.  …For The New York Times.  They’d hire her.  They would have hired her given her credentials, but I said I’m not talking about this.

Lane… oh, Lane.  Honestly, no, I don’t think she ever woke up and wondered what she was doing married to Zach–well, no more than any woman does at times when extremely frustrated with her spouse.  While Zach is not who I imagined she’d end up with, it works.  They are somewhat of a quirky pair, but I think they’re well matched.  (You know else who was well matched?  Rory & Logan.  I know, go on and flame me.)  The twins thing, though.  Whoa.  That whole storyline was just surreal.  I think that they both spent her entire pregnancy thinking that, and I wager that they probably did for quite some time afterwards.  But, like all unplanned surprises life throws at us, I think that they are both ultimately happy with the way things turned out.  You could really see that at the end.  Well, I think they’ll eventually wake up and wonder what they were thinking when they named their sons Steve & Quan, only to realize that they weren’t thinking.  Steve & Quan?  Really?  I understand wanting to maintain your Asian heritage, but couldn’t they given both of them Asian names or both Caucasian names with Asian middle names?  You know what’s going to happen, don’t you?  Steve is going to grow up and wonder why he was given a white yuppie name, and Quan is going to grow up and resent people assuming that he was born in Asia instead of the United States.

I love Paris, but I think that if she had her own spinoff it would be horrible, as nearly all spinoffs are.  Paris and Rory served as foils for one another, and while Rory could last without Paris (because she has other foil characters on the show), Paris could not last without Rory.  I think it would be amusing, but it would probably make me die a little bit inside.  Then again, I am emotional about Gilmore Girls.  Raise your hand if you cried during the series finale!  (I pretty much “grew up” alongside Rory, so it was also a reminder of my own upcoming life transitions.)

There are currently only two television shows on that I am watching.  (Well, four, but two of them are on at times I cannot see, and I don’t have time to watch them online.  I’ll catch them once the season comes out on DVD.)  This is a big deal, because I don’t really watch television for another other than movies.  However, neither of them are particularly GGish in nature.  I remember seeing a commercial in the fall about some new television show where it displayed all of its naturally glowing reviews, and one of the characters was hailed as the new Rory Gilmore.  I remember this, because I remember scoffing and throwing a pillow at the television.  The whole ten seconds they showed of the character seemed nothing at all like Rory, and obviously ten seconds is enough to pass judgment, and so I decided it was not worth the time I already did not have.  I can’t remember which show it was, though.

4. So, uh, what are you planning to do with that degree?

Good question, bad answer.

5. What are the top three Must-Haves in the next boyfriend?

Uhm.

What?

Ok, ok.  I didn’t know the answer to this, so, like I always do when I am uncertain of something, I made a list.  Lists are fabulous things.  So, I made this big huge list, including everything from the superficial to the soulful.  And then?  Then I realized that I was the pickiest person on the planet (hello, alliteration, my old friend!) and that at the rate I’m going there won’t be a next boyfriend, so I scribbled over it and wrote “DO. NOT. KNOW.” in bright red ink.  It’s not really something I’ve ever thought about.  Well, ok, I’ve actually thought about it quite a bit, but I think about it when I read.  You see, I have this problem with actual “I’m a real boy now!” guys.  My problem is that I simply am not attracted to them.  I have been interested in only two (potentially working on a third, and currently trying to squash that) males in my entire life, not counting Jensen Ackles & Robert Pattinson.  I am picky, and it takes a lot to pique my interest into anything beyond curiosity.  This problem seems to vanish once fictional characters in books come into play, and I think this is because their words and actions are carefully chosen.  (Confession: I am a huge sucker for the Byronic hero.  If there’s a Byronic hero in a book, I’ll probably read it.)  While I love reading, being a bookworm has done nothing but squelch any emotional response to most members of the opposite sex.  However, I figure I’m still young, so I’ve got nothing but time.  (I know, famous last words.  Good thing I like cats.)

Also, I’m one of those people that typically gets along with virtually anyone.  My personality can more or less mesh with most others, which is good, but it’s been bad in that I’ve never really considered what works well with mine.  I honestly haven’t attempted to figure that out, and it’s actually more difficult to figure out when your own personality sort of fits in with most others, even ones it doesn’t seem to fit in with.  Then there’s the obvious point that romantic relationships are very different from friendships and so require different things, and I only have one experience to base my “wish list” off of.  At this point, given that little piece of history, I’m operating under the assumption that I have absolutely no idea and that I’m probably wrong.  I’m much better at knowing what I don’t want than what I do want, so God better take pity on me.

Anyway.  I made a big list of what I think I want and what seem to be important.  Out of all of those, I chose the three that seem to be the more strategic picks.  I KNOW, I actually made my decision based upon strategy, sue me.

The first quality I would want the next boyfriend to possess is selflessness.  I will be the first to adamantly admit that I am a selfish human being, so the fact that I would desire selflessness in a partner is not so much of a surprise.  Others would disagree in my assessment of my being selfish, and I would agree to an extent.  I am not very selfish in love, so it is all too easy to take advantage of that.  Plus, the more someone does for me, the more I reciprocate and focus my attention on them.  This is true of most of my relationships, and it is especially true romantically.  I’m not very assertive either, and I hate conflict, so I’ll often suck it up and suffer rather than say something.  I will remain quiet even if it’s not my fault, because it embarrasses me to think that something I might bring up could possibly embarrass or hurt someone else.  That presents a problem.  A selfless individual could make it easier for me to be happier with the relationship while I still focus my efforts on trying to do the same for them.

The second trait I decided on is intelligence.  I’m an autodidact in many respects, and I think it’s safe to say I’ll be a lifelong learner.  I love to learn.  I love to discuss things.  I love to read.  I need someone who challenges and engages me.  At the very least, I need someone who is my equal; ideally, I would prefer someone who is more intelligent than I.  I like being impressed, and it does not often happen.  Preferably, he’d be fairly well-versed in the areas I’m passionate about but also in areas that I know absolutely nothing about.  I want someone I can look up to and learn from (admittedly, you can learn from anyone, but I’m sure you understand my meaning) but who isn’t going to make me feel inferior or idiotic.  Intelligence and confidence is good; arrogance, not so much.

There were several others that I really wanted to put down as the third one, but ultimately, I decided to go with the ability to read and influence my emotional state.  I’m pretty even tempered, but when I hit an emotional peak, I really hit an emotional peak.  I’m also very self-aware and logical, so I will often recognize this fact and realize how irrational I’m being when I’m angry or sad or freaking out, but usually that only serves to amplify things, because then I find myself disappointed that I reacted that way and suddenly I’m dealing with that on top of whatever I’m already feeling.  Nobody ever knows what to say or what to do when this happens, so no one can ever really bring me down from that.  (I suffer from two anxiety disorders, and while I’ve gotten a lot better at controlling myself, when they do hit, it usually tends to be pretty bad.)   Similarly, most people don’t really know what to say or do that could make me happy.  I guess a lot of that is due to the fact that most people just don’t really understand me.  A lot of my personality is somewhat contradictory, and I don’t typically respond the way most people do to things.  So, it’d be nice to finally have someone who does.

Longest. Interview. Ever.  My apologies.  I told you I had to really think about some of those questions.  I really pared down the Gilmore Girls question, too!