Someone I'd Like You to Meet: Sabine from "Life Isn't about Finding Yourself"

Oh boy these last two weeks have been crazy busy--I've been getting ready for our family vacation and what happens? My car blows up on the highway Monday morning while taking the kids to school (yes, thank you honking cars--that really made things so much better). We'd sworn that not another dime was to be dumped into that great beast of a minivan so we pretty much left it by the side of the road to go in search of a new vehicle (I'm exaggerating but only slightly). Preferably one not trailing antifreeze. So I added "buy new car, sell old" to the list of things to do.

But with all the running crazy I had the chance to enjoy lunch at my beloved Moose's Tooth with Julie from Thinking About who's in town during her mother's surgery and to interview Sabine, this month's Write-Away guest judge. Sweet bloggers like these make weeks like this quite bearable.

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This month's Write-Away Contest judge was Sabine from "Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself". I interviewed her and she had so many great answers to my questions . . . where to start?

Well I asked her first what her dream job would be and she said she'd love to be a photographer for National Geographic--it's probably one of the many reasons I enjoy her blog because as coincidence would have it, I was a journalism major in college for my first two years (before switching to English) and said for many years that my dream job would be writing for National Geographic. Maybe we should team up? Of course after a few children and a rather tame 15 years I don't know that I'd still have the stamina to sleep among the water buffalo of the Serengeti but my dream job would still have to be travel writing.

Sabine has a wonderfully exotic and exciting background: currently living in California she's originally from Switzerland, her husband's parents are from India, they have a biological daughter, Malina, who is 13 years old and they have an adopted daughter, Maya, from China who is two-and-a-half. Speaking of her family's blend of cultures she said,

"One friend calls us the United Colors of Benetton family . . . but I forget that we are such a blend because I do not see us as unique, I think we represent America. How is it the same with so many others? We are a mom, a dad, two kids, a dog (and a horse) and a white picket fence (actually a brick wall). We love each other, we fight, day to day we have the same worries and challenges and happy moments!"

Originally Sabine's blog started--like many others--to keep in touch with family and friends back in 2005 while she traveled to China for her daughter's adoption but once you're on the blogging trail it's hard not to find it addicting and Sabine's been with it ever since. Has it changed her as a parent? She says with a smile, "Only because my oldest who is 13 is always telling me that I am on the computer WAY TOO MUCH!" Sounds familiar, here I am regulating my children's screen time right and left and how many hours a day do I spend at the computer?

What are her goals or aspirations? "I would like to learn how to write well and I would like to go to photography school to better learn what I already love so much." This surprised me a bit because I've always thought her photographs--particularly the ones of Malina in horse competitions--were just terrific.

But she also says travel is on the agenda: "I have been very blessed and have seen much of the world. Yet, I want to discover more of it. Blogging has allowed me to discover places through people that live there and their wonderful blogs. I love that but my desire to see the world is intense. I would, right this second, like to see two places I have not seen--Machu Picchu and Egypt--and I would LOVE to return to Alaska." (Isn't that a shameless plug? See why I love her?)

Finally I'll leave you with her reply when I asked her what the difference was between parenting a teen and parenting a toddler. She summed it up pretty concisely by saying, "Little ones believe everything you say and the older ones KNOW EVERYTHING! But at the core, it is the same. They want to be loved, they want to be praised, they need to know their boundaries, etc."

If I haven't convinced you yet that Sabine's a lovely person to know go check out her blog and see for yourself and I'm sure you'll love reading about her life as much as I do.

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And while I'm rambling on with multiple posts and more topics of conversation than any human brain can comfortably handle here’s another fun thing I found: turn your handwriting into a font. Fontifier gives you step-by-step instructions on how to scan and download your handwriting all for only nine dollars.

But I pause. I first wrote out this little blurb in my cute little handwriting font that I made up, thinking "Wow, isn't this cute, I could make out a blog post and have it be in my handwriting!" I published it and though it appeared just perfectly on my screen it didn't work on anyone else's screen. The answer why would be obvious to anyone who is even semi-computer literate (unlike me apparently) and it's because though I have installed this cute little font on my computer it isn't installed on anyone else's computer so it won't show up for anyone but me.

Wow. That's pretty pointless. I mean, why buy the font at all if no one but you can see it? I could just as easily scan an image of a handwritten note if I was so desperate to have my handwriting published for the world to see. And why would I want the font on my computer if I can't share it with other computers? The only point I can see would be to save time sneaking in a type-written letter under the guise of hand-written intimacy. Kind of a "Dear Grandma, Look how I wrote you a hand-written note" (Ha! Ha! She'll never know I actually typed it out!)

So forget this whole thing. Save your nine dollars. It started out as a good idea but went horribly awry somewhere along the way.

Technorati tags: interviews, blogging, motherhood