When Katie Asked Away

Have you met Katie? Okay, I have a bit of a confession to make here: I’ve been reading Katie’s blog, Sluiter Nation, for a lot longer than she has even known about me. I’ve been a longtime fan, new-time friend. Katie has two boys, just like I do and so I have always felt a bit of a kinship with her for that reason. And I totally know the right way to pronounce her last name.

I told Katie that she could ask me any 10 questions and I would answer them on my blog, and these are the questions she came up with. In return, I asked her 10 questions as well. We’re doing this because The Bold Fab Mom and The Real Housewife of Caroline County host a weekly link up called #AskAwayFriday that encourages bloggers to pair up and swap 10 questions, which is such a cool way for everyone to get to know each other better.

1. Tell me about your part of Canada. I always think of maple leaves and cold, but you get nice warm weather, yes?

I live in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the biggest Canadian city east of Montreal. We’re a harbour city right on the Atlantic ocean, and to me, there is so much that is perfect about it. While we have maple leaves (you should drive through our city in the middle of autumn!), I mostly associate my city (and province) with the ocean. We’re a quick jaunt away from a handful of beaches. My husband even swears you can see the ocean from our living room window. And, until we moved this summer, I used to commute to work by ferry. The air is salty, but just lightly enough that you don’t notice it until you leave.

Because of how close we are to the ocean, our climate is actually quite temperate. We don’t get the super frozen temperatures that someone in the prairies would experience all winter long. And our summer temperatures aren’t out of control either (though we often are quite humid). According to Wikipedia, the average temperature ranges from between -5ºC (23ºF) and 25ºC (77ºF) (although it has been quite a bit colder this winter).

Now I feel like we’re just getting too technical. Halifax is a place that people come to and feel at home. It is part big-city, part small-town. The people are polite and kind and friendly. It is one of my favourite places in the world.

You’re welcome to visit. I’ll show you around.

2. Your About Page claims you were a teenager when you started blogging in 2003. I was 25 in 2003 and had no idea about blogging. Why did you start blogging so young?

You actually asked me this as question #6, but I decided to switch questions #2 and #6 because they are kind of related.

I’ve always been a “writer”, assuming you define a writer as “someone who writes”. From a very young age, I filled notebook after notebook with responses and reflections. Writing down my thoughts has always been a necessary outlet for me. In September of my senior year of high school, I had just moved to a new city and a new school. It was rough. It was more than rough. I was angry and I missed my friends desperately. One of my best friends from “back home” had started a blog and he encouraged me to start one too. It seemed like it would be a good way to keep in touch with a few friends while expressing myself in that angsty way that seventeen year olds like to do when they’re angry at life.

I had no idea where that first blog post would lead me. But I’ve been a “blogger” for over 10 years now, assuming you define a blogger as “someone who blogs.”

3. As a mom of boys, what would you tell a mom expecting her first son?

I would say: “Please don’t wish for a girl. Your boy will grab onto your heart and never let go. He is going to need you and want you and snuggle you. Someday, he will tell you that you are beautiful and you’ll believe him. He will tell you that you’re a princess and you’ll wear your imaginary crown with pride. He’ll kiss you on the lips over and over and over again until you have to pull away, because he’ll never stop.  You will be his best girl. This boy? He is going to love you fiercely. And you’re going to love being a boy-mom.”

4. What is your favorite quality about each of your boys that they got from Dan?

There are a few things that, while I participate in them as part of the family, I know they are Dan and Cameron’s thing (and maybe Gavin’s soon too). One of those things is their love of sport. While I can enjoy watching sports on the television, Dan really created a love of athletics in Cameron. Hockey is their favourite to watch together but Cameron has also been very invested in a few golf games. Needless to say, Cameron is all about the Olympics at the moment. (Go Canada!). And, of course, watching a sport always turns into playing that sport. That’s when things get extra crazy around here.

Gavin is my secretly-goofy kid, and I think that’s a trait passed on by Dan. There’s a sense of humour bubbling up inside my little nearly-two-year-old that makes me smile just like his Dad’s sense of humour makes me smile. It is one of my favourite things about both of those guys.

5. What is your favorite quality about each of your boys that they got from YOU?

I used to be musical. At one time in my life I was in multiple choirs, took piano lessons, was involved with band at school and a hand-bell choir at church. My boys both seem genetically drawn to music. Cameron used to pulse on beat in my womb when we’d go to a friend’s concert at a local bar. From the moment he was born, his mood would change music was playing. And he loves to dance.

Meanwhile, Gavin has become quite the little singer. For someone who has such a hard time learning to talk, he has no trouble picking up a tune. He has many songs in his repertoire right now, even if he doesn’t really sing the words.

6. How did you and your husband meet?

So, remember that blog that I started in 2003? Back then, there were things called “blog rings” which were a way to group blogs by certain characteristics. My blog was included in a few of these rings, one of which was a blog ring for bloggers who lived in the East Coast provinces of Canada. At that time in his life, Dan also happened to have a blog that just happened to be part of this same blog ring.

After clicking over through the blog ring, Dan commented on a blog post of mine and it was just witty enough that I jumped over to his blog to leave a comment on his. (Okay, I probably would have done it without the wit too. I liked whatever new reader I could get. Some things never change). We started reading the other’s blog and commenting back and forth until one day he added me on MSN (remember that?).

At the time, Dan and I lived in different provinces and were arguably in different phases of life as well. I was in my first year of university and Dan was in his first year out of university. He was six years older than me and at the end of a relationship with an on-again-off-again girlfriend. I was heartbroken from a recent breakup. We were friendly and seemed to get along online, but we had no romantic expectations at all. We even had plans to meet during a trip I had planned to Halifax, just because we were becoming such good friends.

As fate would have it (or whatever you call things happening out of the blue), an instant message chat turned long and personal one night. We started talking about faith and God and love and all kinds of heart-things. I think that was the moment we both knew that our friendship had the possibility of being something more.

This story continues. It is long and exciting and sweet. But that’s the story of how we met. Isn’t is perfect that I met him through blogging?

7. If you had the chance to re-do your wedding, what would you change and what would you keep the same?

I always say that if I had to get married again, I would elope. We would not worry so much about the details and just get a few loved ones together down south. But I can’t really say that because I know that would mean my Nana wouldn’t have been able to come to my wedding. And my Nana died later that year. If I had to re-do my wedding, I wouldn’t make it any further away from her than it already was.

So, if I had to re-do, in the time and place that it was, I would have hired a wedding planner and tried to do less of everything myself. Sometimes doing it all ends up being way too overwhelming and even disappointing in the long run. I was so tired the week of my wedding. I wish I could have saved myself some of that grief.

8. What books did you read your senior year of high school?

This one is a hard one because I have read so many books in my lifetime, narrowing it down to one year is really difficult. I started Grade 12 in a brand new school and did an AP English class there. We read Wuthering Heights, The Great Gatsby, and The Catcher in the Rye (those are the three I can remember). I cannot remember what else I read for school or personally that year but I have some distinct memories of sitting in my Grade 12 English classroom in that brand new school, reading and writing about Wuthering Heights, The Great Gatsby, and The Catcher in the Rye.

9. What books have you read lately that you would recommend to me?

I’m currently working my way through book 4 of The Game of Thrones and while I really do enjoy reading through that series, it is not one I would recommend to a mother with a full-time job who also blogs on the side. It is a large book to start with and I am finding very little time to get through it.

That said, I have read some really great books in the past few months that I completely recommend, including The Light Between Oceans, Me Before You, The Rosie Project, and The Husband’s Secret. Seriously, you can’t go wrong with any of these.

10. What sort of legacy do you want to leave behind?

I want my legacy to be two-fold. I want to create a lasting living legacy through my children. I want to create children who transform the world for good wherever they go. I want to teach my children to put others first, to be polite, and to smile. I want them to be good people who encourage others to be good. And I want the world to be more beautiful because of them.

Selfishly, I would also really love to leave some sort of written legacy that doesn’t simply disappear into oblivion after I pass. I would love to write something that wants to linger. We’ll see.

Don’t forget to head over to Katie’s blog to see what questions I asked her!