Home of the Surreal Squirrel

I am an intensely creative individual. I wind up being a bit of an idea factory – I spit out fully-formed conceptualizations that probably could make someone some nice money, but don’t have the energy to follow through. I’m physically disabled, and have stamina issues because of it.  I also have three small children (born May 2004, June  2007, and May 2010) and a spouse with serious procrastination and attention-to-detail issues. Oh, and spouse’s parents live with us.

Yes, that’s as fun and uplifting as you’re imagining.

Yes, that last sentance was a tsunami of sarcasm.

I have been writing poetry since at least age 13, I think before but that’s the oldest one I can actually remember and locate the full text of.  I have been writing prose, fiction and non-fiction, for much longer than that (I wrote a little self-published extremely-small-run book on sleep when I was about 10, co-authored an actually published, decent-sized run book about railroads around the same age, and have been writing little short stories with anthropomorphic characters since at least age 7).  I have been taking photographs longer still, longer than I can even estimate, as I come from a line of photographers and was handed an old 110 camera with film to play with sometime around the time I learned to walk steadily if family stories are to be believed. I my photography has been entirely digital since April 1999, since it is much more accessible to me with my disabilities (and chemical sensitivity to the stuff needed to process my own film). I sometimes do photography professionally for others (have done weddings, still do portraits and some product photography occasionally) but I’m not devoting much energy to it now while my kids are little.

I am also a social researcher.  My Bachelors is in Psychology and Sociology. I am currently (2011) in graduate school and plan to go on to earn a PhD in Sociology. My primary research interests are the interplay of medicine and culture on outcomes in the first half of the life span, and cumulative (dis)advantage.  I also like to study what makes some groups work well and thrive while others quickly lose focus and whither, in the hopes of helping all groups I interact with be more of the former and less of the later.

I scamper around in many different groups, some highly unrelated to others, and my social network is very ecclectic.  Some of the people in it might actually be surprised (and possibly unpleasantly so) by some of my other associations but they are part of what makes up the whole of the process of becoming me and I value all of it (or else I let it languish, whithering away 😉 ). The nickname “Squirrel” is highly appropriate (and I’ve bore it since I was about 16) as I tend to leave projects/people/groups in random places in my brain, forget about them for long stretches of time, and then come back to them as if no time has passed at all. I have very little concept of linear time, in fact, my metaphor for how time exists is based upon a Slinky.

I have no problem spending time on things that may seem frivolous, but I abhor and lose patience quickly with things that do not engage my thought processes.  Hence, many pop culture references are lost on me and I’m not a great person to invite to a social gathering that revolves primarily around getting intoxicated. I am very particular about when and to what level I become intoxicated with foreign substances, and I don’t generally enjoy being surrounded by large numbers intoxicated people. Hence, you can usually find me home, working on some favored project, on Independence Day and New Year’s Eve (I also strongly dislike fireworks – I have a pronounced startle reflex to the initial sound they cause and the smoke from them gives me migraines). I’m also generally not someone others find fun to debate, as I totally kick ass at debating. Consider yourself forewarned, and please don’t mix debating with me with you being in an intoxicated state. It won’t end pretty.

I’m otherwise extremely extroverted. My life is an open book, waiting for whomever is interested in perusing it, and there are few topics that are off-limits (and even those limits are generally situational – for instance I don’t appreciate an engrossing conversation about favorite sex acts when my minor children in ear shot. That is subject to change once they’ve all reached puberty, who knows what my comfort level with discussing sex and other topics around them will be like in a decade or so, but I’m not likely to want to have such conversations when ANY pre-pubescent individual may overhear, and will absolutely not participate when it’s someone else’s minor child overhearing).

I’m a big fan of parenthesis.  So much of life seems to be lived parenthetically.

I’m great at editing other people’s work, probably halfway decent at editing my own (when I bother), and horrible at self-censoring. That’s why I put some topics off-limits when too-young-for-topic ears may be about.

I was born in Cleveland, Ohio shortly after President Carter was elected but before he took office.  I have lived elsewhere, but this region of the world is my first choice for permanent home despite my occasional claims to desire to run away to Canada (that’s mostly for political reasons). I have been with my spouse since Spring 1996, married in Autumn 1999, and plan to stay with him at least until one of us dies. I do not fantasize about killing him. Well… not very often, maybe once.

I have a weird, wicked sense of humor that not everyone gets. My spouse usually does. My kids hopefully will eventually. Your mileage may vary. Thank you for reading this, go find a gold star to stick on yourself.