Interview With a Blogger

Your name: Liz Hum

Name of your blog or blogs: My Other Car is a TARDIS

1. In a few sentences, describe your blog(s)

My blog is a collection of diverse stories, articles, essays, witticisms, criticisms and general musings from the perspective of a sharp-tongued, fairly hip but slightly geeky mother and artist. In other words, I am a mommy and a blogger – but I’m not just another mommy blogger.

2. How long have you been blogging?

About a year and a half.

3. Why do you blog?

I blog because I love to talk to people, but being a stay-at-home mom, I don’t get the outlet I need. I also blog to keep a record of the milestones my kids reach and the issues of the day. At the end of each year, I collect all my posts and print them in a family yearbook.

4. What’s the most positive aspect of blogging? Most negative?

The most positive aspect of blogging is, by far, the release you feel through communication. The most negative, I suppose, depends on what you’re blogging about! I don’t get much negative traffic, myself – probably because I’m always right.

5. What inspires your blog entries?

Everything! My kids brilliant and hilarious escapades, things about people that annoy me, articles I read in the paper, my writing community, anything I notice on any given day can inspire a post.

6. What’s your take on the current financial crisis? Who, or what, is to blame?

We ALL are! Come on, admit it – every greedy one of us. From every giganto bank flipping loans to every "Wall Street" jerk flipping investments and right on down to every "Main Street" jerk flipping houses. Investors and banks should not have been encouraging sub-prime loans and the buyers should have thought (as my husband and I did) "We can make this mortgage, but won’t be able to afford furniture or food and if the slightest thing happens, say a car breaks down or a job is lost – we’re toast." We all live in serious debt and consider luxury items to be necessities. It’s a giant clunking machine of every person and every institution keeping up with or surpassing the Joneses. Now we all need to learn a collective lesson about greed at a global expense.

7. Where do you get your news?

I get my news from all over: CNN, NPR, Blogs, Gossip Rags, my husband, Mother Jones magazine and quite often through good old fashioned chat, hearsay and scuttlebutt. (The main news outlets aren’t much more than paid PSAs these days, anyhow.)

8. Aside from your blog, do you do any other writing?

I love writing, and as I get older I am realizing this is my artistic forte. I can do it all: poetry, short fiction, essay, memoir and script. I am currently involved in writing my first novel, which is a ghost story of sorts, and will probably self-publish so I can move on to the next one.

9. If you could orbit the earth in Richard Branson’s spaceship (or any other that takes civilians), would you?

Let me start out by saying that space is awesome. That said, it scares the sh*t out of me! Space is this great indifferent void and to be too close might whip me into an existential crisis of some sort. Trust me; you would not want to be on that trip with me. I’ll keep my feet planted on this secure, earthen… spinning rock… hurtling through the void… around a giant gaseous ball of fusion reaction… Well I guess it doesn’t matter either way, now, does it?

10. Do you consider yourself adventurous, in general?

I am intellectually adventurous. I am adventurous in a culinary way. I am a rebel of convention. That said, I don’t jump from planes, take candy from strangers, partake in threesomes, do drugs (when I can help it), adventure vacation or test my survival skills against anything, anywhere.

11. Do you enjoy cooking? Any specialties?

I love cooking! I inherited the gene from my mother, in that I just "know" when something is done or what spices to add to something. I make really good pasta concoctions and a killer lamb but I am best known for my "fatty salads" which I bring to most parties and events. I am considering a cookbook specifically devoted to them, which I plan on titling "Tossing Salads." I am waffling on the cover art, though.

12. What do you do to relax?

I read, sit in the sun, space out, drink a glass (or two) of wine, listen to music, dance about or take a bath with my husband.

13. If money were no object, where would you live?

Darin and I have a dream, and in this dream, we own some acreage, and on this acreage we have a great log lodge that runs on solar, wind and hydro-electricity, powered by our own windmill, panes and turbines. We would have wings with rooms for our families to stay any time they’d like and trees everywhere. We both love the forest. I don’t care where this place is. I just want to live there.

14. If you were forced to evacuate your home, what possessions would you grab on your way out the door?

My husband and children. The rest would be a tragedy, but they’re just possessions. Besides, everyone knows you don’t d*ck around looking for things if you’re house is on fire.

15. What value, moral, or principle do you think is most important in life?

I believe that none of us knows the great answer and frankly, we need to get over the great answer. It could be very anti-climactic, you know. Planning for the future is one thing, but don’t plan for the afterlife – you’ll miss all the perks of being human, here and now, around you. That and when you are up against evil and aren’t sure how to rid yourself of it, decapitation will generally do the trick, unless the evil in question is incorporeal. In that case you better call Ghostbusters