High on Sunshine (Awards)

2014 is two weeks old, and already I'm pretty pumped about it. Joining BLUNTmoms has given my writing, editing, and thinking a massive creative jolt. They inspire me to be funnier, more concise, better in every way. Finding said bitches has been like finding my homeland, or maybe I mean like being adopted into an insane, profane, and utterly politically incorrect all-woman version of the Brady Bunch.

You can only begin to imagine my elation (defined above) when BLUNTmoms mastermind Julie bestowed upon me a Sunshine Award.  It came after a particularly rough and barfy day, and her love warmed my world like, well, sunshine. A Sunshine Award is FBBB (for bloggers, by bloggers), and a way to recognize people who have charmed, supported, enlightened, and inspired the awarder in recent months.

The way this normally goes is eleven questions, eleven recipients. Julie changed the game and chose eight, which is fine with (lazy old) me. I answer Julie's questions, and pose new ones to my eight, who, should they wish to keep the warm fuzzy party going, come up with a list of questions and people to recognize.

My reply to Julie's inquiries:

1. What is your Theme song for 2014? Who by David Byrne & St. Vincent. It's catchy as hell. Also, I'd be hard-pressed to choose between world peace and immortality for David Byrne so that the world would never be without his dance moves.

2. What would your perfect “normal” day look like? Oh, perfect is a fickle thing, isn't it? I'd say it would involve getting up early to gallop wildly on a horse, having a messy breakfast involving banana pancakes and two kids under three, warping my tongue around Dr. Seuss lines before nap time, meandering around Amsterdam in a quest to find the perfect croissant, and having something totally spectacular on the dinner table by the time my bearded baby daddy walks in the door.

You asked for perfect. The horse thing is a pipe dream these days, and since kid no. two arrived, takeout and hastily arranged meals are the sad norm. The world will right itself, right? Right?

3. One place in the world you would LOVE to travel and spend some time? Rural Mongolia, hands down. I'm obsessed with going there someday, nomads, and horses.

4. Name something that is on your bucket list, but probably won’t get done in your lifetime. Hmmm, I'm not sure I have an answer to this one. I've changed my outlook back to the (childish?) I-can-be-any-damn-thing-when-I-grow-up stance. But one dream I always had as a kid was to be a jockey. When I grew taller than four and a half feet, my heart simultaneously broke.

5. What is one thing you could wish you could stop arguing about? Dumb stuff. Half the time, I couldn't give you a synopsis of our argument a day later, which tells me it wasn't worth having. We're both pretty intense, stubborn, and expert mind game players, which is both infuriating and entertaining. Twelve years in, I just go with it; I'm pretty sure a plain Dane nice guy would bore the hell out of me, and vice versa.

6. What is one thing you wish you had the courage to do? Travel to sketchier locations. Since having kids, my already exaggerated internal risk assessment gauge is perpetually in the red.

7. Best. Moment. EVER? Waking up that first morning as a resident of a foreign country. And by best I mean totally terrifying. Growth happens exponentially outside our comfort zones.

8. What would you choose? Living in the city or the country? Until we moved to Amsterdam recently, I would have said, without hesitation, country. This city has changed me in so many ways, all of them good. At this point, I'm happy to be a city mouse, but it's my dream to someday have a plot of land big enough for a small menagerie and a gargantuan garden (to make it easy, I'm planning on just stealing Julie's identity as chicken vlogger.)

1. Anna E Zimmerman takes photos that are luminescent, that glow from the inside out.

2. Angyla over at Detached from Logic is uproarious. She's my wittier, dirtier twin; I am completely doe-eyed.

3. Oana Befort picks up a paintbrush, and the world brightens. Her photos are equally sigh-worthy.

4. Virginie's Cinema: Home to Virginie, filmmaker extraordinaire whose positivity shines through every word and gorgeous photo. She's talented in every way known to humankind, or at least those known to me.

5. Miss Teen USSR: Get out your Depends, because Brooke is ridiculous, explicit, and hits my laugh button smack-on every time. Hard. Warning (teaser?): Not for the faint of heart anything.

6. Dead Gigapet is the intellectual offspring (think Splice) of a dear friend. Ryan will almost certainly not participate in anything called a Sunshine Award, but I'm sacrificing a link of this chain for the greater good. His sometimes grotesque but always hysterical celebrity fiction is exactly what everyone needs after a day at the office. Or home with the kids. What I know is this: I WANT MORE.

7. I fell in love with Stacie Swift's quirky and endearing illustrations upon discovery, and her blog is just as charming as her frolicking creatures are. I go over to her world to get my happy on.

8. Christine Stocke, wordsmith extraordinaire. As I've already iterated elsewhere, this broad can write. My Sunshine Award to her is nothing compared to her recent Pushcart Prize nomination (!!!), but it's something. And hopefully when she's Poet Laureate, I'll get invited to some craaaaazy parties.

1. Whether you have offspring or not, what is your hope for the next generation of world citizens?
2. Without googling it, describe what a pangolin is. If you don't know, make something up.
3. Who has been the kindest to you in your life?
4. How do you pull yourself out of an emotional slump?
5. What's something you wish you would've said but didn't?
6. What was the best moment in your last 24 hours?
7. What's your worst memory from high school?
8. How has your work affected the way you see the world?

Keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and your muses on speed dial.

xxx+o,
Jess