The Great Interview Experiment: MJP

I recently took part (again) in the Great Interview Experiment, and if you aren't familiar with it, go here.  Anyway, I was interviewed a couple of weeks ago by my new BFF, Becky.  Now, I get to finally bring you my interview partner.

Please meet Mary.  She is the blogger behind A Room of Mama's Own. 

I suppose we should just get right down to it:

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions, Mary... I know that you are a busy lady, so spending your time going back and forth via email with a guy you don't know probably wasn't high on your list of priorities. 

Before we start, could you give the readers a little personal background about yourself?

Hi.  I'm MPJ (Mary P Jones).  Well, not really.  That's a pseudonym.  Those are even pseudonymous initials.  But that makes sense if you consider that I'm happily married (as odd as it sounds) to a recovering sex addict.  (Think Tiger Woods or Bill Clinton trying -- sincerely -- and succeeding -- mostly -- to clean up their acts.)  I'm a stay-at-home mom caring for our two elementary school-aged children, one of whom is autistic. 

I blog at A Room of Mama's Own about, well, whatever I feel like writing about, which tends to be mostly addiction recovery, autism, parenting and spirituality.  I've made some wonderful real life friends through blogging and have learned a lot.  And I absolutely love it.  Every minute of it.  Well, almost every minute.  I have to admit that spam and trolls piss me off, but every minute I'm not dealing with them, I really love.

Thanks, Mary!  I have to begin this interview by asking you a question that is near to my heart:  Do you watch television?  If so, what are your favorite shows, and why do you like them?

Yes, I love television.  I watch a whole plethora of what my husband Mark calls "crappy crime dramas" (Cold Case, Numb3rs, Criminal Minds, etc. plus Flash Forward), all of which he refuses to watch with me.  I don't watch every episode of every show, but will record them and save up big piles of laundry to fold so I can watch whichever one strikes my fancy that day guilt-free while I'm "doing something productive."  I watch The Colbert Report on my laptop as I do the dishes each day, which only occasionally leads to me distractedly breaking dishes.

Mark and I enjoy watching Glee and giggling together.  But my current favorite grownup shows are House and The Middle. I don't know what it says about me that I love House's mean, sarcastic humor, but I do.  Also, House is brilliant, broken, lonely and an addict, all of which I find extremely attractive in a man.  Mark loves watching it with me in spite of the fact that I whisper "Hot!" whenever Hugh Laurie appears on screen.  I find a lot of The Middle laugh-until-I-can't-breathe funny because there is always something that reminds me of our family.  (Most recently it was the fact that the Heck family discovered they had only four dining room chairs for five family members, but hadn't noticed because they always eat in front of the TV.  We, and this is the absolute truth, actually own just three dining room chairs for the four of us.)

I also have favorite kids' shows, of course, with Word Girl topping the list.  Sh!  Don't tell anyone (except the whole Internet), but Mark and I sometimes watch that even when the kids aren't around.

Glee (which has become my favorite new show) just had it's first-hals-of-the-season finale, tell me what you enjoyed about the season thus far, or about the episode itself.

I had mixed feelings about the finale.  I see Glee as very fluffy and two dimensional; it's about caricatures more than characters.  So, I think it's at its best when it deals with comedic issues like petty high school rivalries and crazy cover-ups.  I don't think it's particularly well-suited for having those kinds of situations explode in a dramatic way, because it's hard to get emotionally invested in caricatures.  So I haven't been as happy with the last few episodes (where many of the comedic elements have turned dramatic) as I was with the farce continuing.  But overall, I'm still willing to watch again when the show returns in the spring.

I don't mind telling you that, although I came to the show late (at the urging of Mrs Gunfighter), I enjoyed it and I am looking forward to the return.

Let's turn to one of my other favorite topics:  Books.  I love to read, and I always wonder what other people like to read, as it is often so different from the things that I like.  Who are your favorite Characters in literature? (I use the term "literature" loosely)

I read voraciously (and don't use the term literature loosely) so this is really difficult.  Peter Pan.  Hamlet.  Macbeth.  Viola (from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night).  Heathcliff (from Wuthering Heights).  Sydney Carton (from A Tale of Two Cities).  Frodo Baggins (from The Lord of the Rings).  Quentin Compson (from The Sound and the Fury).  Agatha Christie's detective Hercule Poirot.  Jane Eyre.  Nearly anyone from a Jane Austen novel.  Hm.  I'm seeing a disturbing lack of female characters.  I guess that's what I get for reading the classics.  I'm also noticing that they're not exactly a group anyone would exactly want to hang out with, and yet, I do hang out with them, quite a bit.  Analyze that as you will.

I won't analyze that at all.  Anyone who admires the wretched Hamlet can be a friend of mine.

Shifting gears, I'd like to ask you a more personal question:  Do you have any tattoos?  Where are they?  What are they? If you dislike tattoos, tell us why.

I do have a tattoo.  And it was actually another blogger, The Junky's Wife — who has become one of my closest real life friends — who took me to get it as a birthday present.  I'm not going to tell what or where it is, because I don't like to give out potentially identifying details.  But I will say that it's very meaningful to me and I'm so happy I got it.

No worries on the identifying details, I get that.  Back to the tattoo... would you get another?

I would totally get another one.  In fact, I keep coming up with ideas for what I might like (and where) but none of them have been quite the right fit yet.

I understand that, too.  All of my tattoos are very personal to me, and have to mean more than looking cool (which they do... for real!)

Like me, and so many of the people that are going to read this, you are a parent.   Tell me about your "Parenting style"

I believe my children learn more than anything else, from my example.  So the most important thing I can do as a mother is to model the kind of person I want them to grow up to be and to keep working on myself so that I can be that person.

That sounds sane.

 Have you ever committed an act of violence?  If so, do you, in retrospect, think that you acted appropriately?  Did you, you know, sort of like it? (you can tell me, I totally understand!)

Well, I do have my violent impulses, but I've got the opposite of poor impulse control; my restraint would kill lesser mortals.  In fact, if everyone in the world were like me, there would be no more wars; we'd all just make snarky passive-aggressive comments about each other and secretly seethe with suppressed rage until we exploded in tears or a single maniacal scream.  Then we'd apologize. 

The very few acts of violence or destruction I've committed tend to be fairly calculated.  I remember getting so mad at my boyfriend in college that I wanted to smash something, but rather than picking something up and just chucking it at a wall (or his head), like a normal human, I stood there looking around my room and thinking, "No, I don't want to break that, I like it.  And I don't know if I could replace this.  And that other thing doesn't belong to me."  After much thought, I decided I could safely break a light bulb.  It would make a satisfying smash yet be completely replaceable.  But of course, I couldn't do it in the room, because what if I got glass got on my roommate's bed or my books?  So, I actually took a spare light bulb, went outside and searched the campus until I found a very safe and abandoned wall, smashed the light bulb against it, and then cleaned up after myself.

I've blogged about my only act of violence in recent years: hitting my husband the night I learned he had a sexual addiction.  But I you should note that I waited very politely until he invited me to hit him and gave him time to take his glasses off, so I wouldn't break them.  I do think the impulse to smack the crap out of him was a very genuine response for the place of deep hurt I was in.  It's not how I would handle a situation like that now, but I think it was appropriate at the time.

And I can't say that I particularly enjoyed any of my (few) violent acts (such as they are).  They simply weren't very satisfying.

Well I can tell you, as someone who makes a living from the potential use of extreme violence that not being satisfied when you have acted violently is a very very healthy thing.  You shouldn't like it... even when it is the right thing.

OK, tell me your thoughts on the following random (well, one of them isn't random) people:  Martin Luther, Axl Rose, Tavis Smiley, Daisy Fuentes

Hm.  I know this is an extremely boring answer, but apparently I don't have any thoughts on any of those people.  I actually had to Google two of them because I wasn't sure who they were, which probably just proves how terribly out of it I am.

Do you mind telling me which ones you had to Google?

I thought it might be more fun for people to have to guess.  ;)  

I'm not touching that one.  Let me ask you this:  When greeting people,  Are you a hugger or a handshaker?

Total hugger.  There seem to be so many nuances to handshaking; I've seen whole lessons in how to do it correctly.  Grasp firmly, but not too firmly.  Be relaxed but not too relaxed.  Don't let go too soon or hold on too long.  I have to admit, I've never been able to grasp the whole process.  (Pun fully and brutally intended.)  And woe to anyone who doesn't do it the right way.  I've heard I won't get the job or the friend or the big break, because everyone will judge me in that split second and find me wanting.  I don't need that kind of pressure.  Hugging, on the other hand (or would that be both hands), comes very naturally to me.  I can even do it online.  {{{Gunfighter}}}  See!  But I have no idea how to shake hands with you.

Fair enough, but let me give you a quick tutorial:  firmly clasp hands (the whole hand, not just the fingers) give a firm squeeze, pump once and let go.  That's to greet a new acquaintance... you may choose a lengthier shake for someone you know, but not well enough to feel comfortable hugging.

Moving on, one of the things that I found out about you when I drew you as the subject of my interview, was that we have something in common:  We are both married interracially (at least, as some people construct race... but that's another story).  

Does the fact that you and your husband are not of the same ethnicity have any direct on your marriage?  Are interracial marriages common where you live?  Do you find, that people treat you, or your children differently?

Being different races has less of an effect on my life and marriage than I thought it would before I got involved with my husband.  Being from different backgrounds, and knowing that we would encounter difficulties from outside the relationship, really forced us to discuss a lot of issues before we made the decision to get married.  We haven't encountered a great deal of overt discrimination, although we are sensitive to it and tend to avoid places where we've felt uncomfortable.  I think the biggest problem we had came from our own parents, who weren't (at least initially) very excited about the prospect of either of us marrying someone from another race.  Both of our fathers told us they were disappointed when we announced our engagement, and it was very much because they were afraid that we (and our children) would suffer for it.

Oddly enough, it hasn't mattered much.  Most people just seem to notice us, but not necessarily in a negative way.  We just stand out.  We had one funny experience going to a crowded mall at this time of year in a very white neighborhood.  We bought a gift at a department store and left it to be wrapped.  When we came back to pick it up, we didn't even have to give our name.  The employees were holding it out for us with a smile when we walked up to the counter.  In spite of the fact that there were hundreds of other shoppers there that day, the store employees clearly remembered, not the Joneses, but the black guy and his white wife.

We were also traveling together once to an area where the thought of an interracial couple seemed so far from people's minds that they sometimes didn't recognize that we were actually a couple (in spite of the fact I was pregnant at the time).  We had people address us and ask to help us separately, as if we both just happened to walk in at the same time.  Oddly, I kind of liked that.  It made me feel safer.

I expected before I had kids that more people would ask me if my children were adopted, but to my surprise, that question has come up just once.  In contrast, I've had several people tell me the kids look like me, which I love, because my kids are absolutely gorgeous.  It's a great compliment.

 Oh, trust me, we got the "What about the children" crap, too.  Of course, in my experience, people who say that, aren't really concerned about the children as much as they say.  As it turns out, my kids are seriously well-adjusted people... and they look like their daddy! (which makes them gorgeous too!)

On my blog, I talk alot about my job... tell me, if you could  choose any occupation, without regard to how much money you would/could make, what would you choose that would make you happiest?

I would choose to do exactly what I'm doing now, spending time with my family and doing the kind of writing I want.

Awesome.   How do you feel about men in Kilts?

I kind of dig them.

Which makes you a very smart lady indeed.

 
I suppose I should stop asking you question now, as I feel that your eyes may be glazing over.  Thanks so much for agreeing to be my victim subject!  Anything else for the good of the order?

 I want to say thank you for taking the time to interview me and for inviting me into your corner of the blogosphere.  It has been a pleasure to get to know you. 

The pleasure was mine, indeed!