Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Featured Blogger - Kirsten from Nilsen Life

Today's featured blogger's lovely prose can be found at Nilsen Life.

1. Tell us about yourself: Hey Red Dress Club!  I'm Kirsten, a thirty-something-old person married to an extremely funny Norwegian, with three off-the-wall children. I have traveled all over the world, lived in 4 different countries, and have an accent that's an odd blend of all of this, with topnotes of Baltimore.  I love to read, love to scrawl long letters to be mailed overseas, and love my kids (8, 5 and 2) to distraction.  I do all sorts of sports, but am no natural athlete. I am funny, but sometimes get a little intense by accident. (Sort of like those small dogs that pee when they get excited.)  I'm a writer, and yet I'm still waiting for the day when I resist the urge to hit backspace 13 times whenever I type out the phrase "I'm a writer."  I am a blogger by accident: the ol' Blogger site was created to show friends & family overseas photos of the offspring.  Then, as I started to emerge from the comatose fog of Baby 3, I found I had a lot going on in my head, and my ever-patient husband was becoming increasingly unwilling to stop organizing his sock drawer to listen to my complicated trains of thought.   I found myself hogging the keyboard more and more often, and he finally found himself relegated to occasional guest-poster.  

2. Give us the 30-second elevator pitch about your blog:  NilsenLife is about writing - I write because I have to, and I am way more comfortable with wordy-nonfiction than terse poetry. I'm an observer of both absurdity and complexity: my favorite posts are those that combine both. I write about life, love, and trying to find a path leading to Simple.  Often I find the smallest things that happen in my day-to-day life lead me to thoughts about the Big Picture, and I try to blog about these happy accidents.  It is a blog about Faith - not only mine, but the kind of Faith that is possible for all of us to claim, regardless of creed or calling.  But sometimes I just blog about dirty jokes and getting hit on by the guys at Trader Joes.

3. Who is your favorite literary character and why?: Lizzie Bennett from Pride and Predjudice, because, well, how can she not be every thinking woman's favorite?  But on dark days, I tend a little more towards Mrs Dalloway, and equally, on the happiest days I lean towards Jo March of Little Women.  

4) If you carved your initials on a tree, what ree would it be and why?: Now, what do you mean IF I could carve my initials into a tree? Ahem. IF I were to do it today, it would be in a white birch tree, as it's speckled, mottled bark evokes such strong childhood memories of tiny birch canoes crafted by my brother for his plastic army guys,  as well as instant associations with Scandinavian forests and midsummer nights. I'd want to be part of that continuum of memories and evocations.

5) What animal does your husband look like?: Let me just say, I'm not an animal lover.  I mean, I don't hate animals.  I would most definitely open up a can of whoop-ass on any child being cruel to animals. But animals and I.... well, we respect each other from a distance.  So I don't tend to think of my guy in animal terms, typically.  But, to answer your question, I would love to say my husband looks like a bear, because his name - Torbjorn - means, literally, God of Thunder and Bear. (Of course on hearing this my brothers instantly nicknamed him Thunderbear.  Neither Torbjorn or I thought that was particularly cute. Anyway.)  After almost sixteen years together, I'd have to settle on him looking most like.... an American buffalo. Yep.  A bald one (which is really some mental image.)

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