It’s time for another round of Great Expectations! Today, I’m so lucky to have Erica, the incredibly supportive, thoughtful, talented host of Yeah Write (formerly Lovelinks) and author of Free Fringes. If you haven’t checked in on the Yeah Write community, you should. It’s awesome to be a part of (and there are prizes involved!).
Did I mention that she’s talented, and whipped up this FABULOUS Great Expectations button for me?! I’m totally buying her coffee AND a cocktail if we ever meet in real life.
So, here she is, Ms. Free Fringes herself, on her own expectations.
It was hard for me to write a post on a Great Expectations theme this week now that I’ve lowered my entire life’s expectations to being able to sleep through the night without getting kicked in the neck by a toddler, so I recruited my husband Q for a Q & E session (get it?) for questions to which we thought you, Greta’s readers, would like to know the answers.
Q: The travel time between my house and yours was about 6 hours when we first started dating. On my first trip, I had loads of time to speculate, dream and wonder about what our relationship would turn in to. In the hours leading up to our first date, did you have any idea about where we were headed?
E: I remember furiously vacuuming and mopping trying to get my apartment ready for you in six hours. So my first expectation was that you wouldn’t immediately know how messy I am. I’d sent the soon-to-be our two kids to my dad’s so you wouldn’t have to parent anybody on a first date. And in all my panic, I forgot to put on a bra, so who knows what you were expecting once you got here and saw loose boobies under my shirt. To this day, I think you’re probably simply expecting me to get dressed in the morning while I’m expecting you to be my knight in shining armor. You’ve made a wonderful knight, father and husband, and I still have no idea where my bra is.
Q: Who is your hero?
E: Okay, so I happen to be answering these questions while your two-year-old is shoving an iPhone game in my face insisting I play it for him. I’m behind on laundry and he’s behind on his nap. So in this very moment, my hero is your mother who will be taking the baby to her hotel for the weekend during her visit. My usual hero is my dad whose sole mission seems to be taking care of me even when he knows you’re pretty good at it.
Q: What drives you in your writing?
E: Insanity. I’d be all over some LSD if it were legal and if I thought it would help me tell cool stories. It’s disheartening sometimes to compare my writing to people who are obviously better at writing than I am, but the insanity keeps me working toward my own torn-off corner of the page. It’s something inside that says to live, I’ve gotta be putting down words at all times. So I make notes. I write about you, I write about the kids, I write about writing. Then I grab a banana and open my world famous blog.
Q: Besides me, who are your major literary influences?
E: Ha. Well, when I was younger, it was anyone my mother liked, so I guess I would count her as one. We each read a lot of Steinbeck and Hemingway and whatever may have been a school assignment. She’d been out of college long before I started to read, but she had all her course assignments on the bookshelves in the den, and I’d just pick one and start reading. I’m thinking the pulp fiction may have been my dad’s.
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From left to right, back row: Ehren, Nana, Q, Erica
From left to right, front row: Jordan, Jon Alex |
I love little glimpses into other couple’s married lives and feel like I know her so much better already, don’t you? She’s a woman after my own heart, with her lowered expectations. Follow Erica on Twitter, her blog, and Yeah Write.
Thanks for stopping by, Erica!
