ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

Over the course of this past weekend I have become obsessed with a stranger on the internet.  Mildly.  Mildly obsessed.  More like just being very, very interested, really.  Obsessed only in the sense that I have read over half of this person’s entire blog archive and spent that whole time constantly thrilling over how unbelievably alike we are in terms of personality, attitude and outlook.  She’s in love with music.  I’m in love with music!  She loves the words “fuck”, “cocksucker” and “motherfucker”.  I love the words “fuck”, “cocksucker” and “motherfucker”!  She’s a nonreligious person living in a red state.  I’m a nonreligious person living in a red state!  She sews and plays with legos and loves math things and is raising her kids to be smart nerds.  I am obsessed with spreadsheets and I have a book called the Excel Bible on my Amazon wish list.  She referred to her family’s pet turtle as acting like a shithead. She’s a habitual over-sharer.  Oh, oh, me too!

Best of all.  She probably lives within 25 minutes of me, which I determined based on careful consideration of the stores she mentions frequenting.  I don’t know why this is so exciting to me.  Obviously I’m not expecting to become best buds or to necessarily ever even meet her, for that matter.  But it just feels cool to know that someone whose wavelength is so similar to mine is RIGHT HERE IN MY OWN TOWN.  I felt the same way when my crafty friend and I became buddies.  But back to the object of my new obsession, we go to the SAME BORDERS!  The same WHOLE FOODS!  But not the same Target.  I go to the Mission one and she goes to the Oak Park one.  I feel like such a stalker knowing this and just lurking around on her site.  But my need for completeness requires that I finish reading her archives before I can e-mail her and gush about shit.

Anyway.  So this is how the whole thing went down.  A couple months ago I started subscribing to this blog called A Year of Crockpotting.  I love it and I like to let the posts stack up for a few days and then I read a few all at once.  And on Saturday my crafty friend and I went on one last yard-saling hurrah in her neighborhood and I found a one quart “Fiesta Crockette” mini crock pot for only three dollars and as soon as I got home I went straight to the Crockpotting blog so I could figure out what to do with it.

And I decided to take some inspiration from her peach compote recipe, only mine was going to be a crisp.  But more importantly, while I was looking at that page I saw a link to some other lady’s blog and I opened it up in another tab and then I went off and forgot all about it.  I do that all the time.  And then later I came back and was like, “What the fuck is this?”  And I read:

Tuckie continues to be a shithead. I got so desperate today, I dunked him in water and tried to force feed him. He can keep his mouth shut for a super-long time.

Tuckie, it turns out, is a pet turtle.  Anyway, her description of the shithead turtle was so appealing to me that I also read:

So the Other Mom was all “oh, I get to listen to music I like now.” And I was, of course, all “What the fuck you talkin’ about?” But only without the fuck because we live in Kansas.

That was, like, all it took.  I mean, can’t you just picture that coming out of my mouth?  If I had a kid, I mean?  And so I was practically in love and also hysterically excited to find out that this person who said shithead and fuck lives in MY STATE.  And I thought, as progressive as she obviously is, she MUST live in Wyandotte, Johnson or Douglas County.  And I practically had the vapors when I read that she lives in Overland Park, which is almost where I live except that I’m in the Dotte.

Not to mention she has a son named Darwin.  As in, Charles.

And because I felt terribly guilty for procrastinating on this all last week and their wedding is in like two fucking weeks now - how did that happen? - I immediately got up and baked the second layer for the bottom tier of the wedding cake.  But yes, later, I went back and began reading from the very beginning.  I don’t do this often, but when I feel that I am truly going to like a blog, I have to go back to the start and take it all in.  Just like I need to read books in order and watch TV shows in order.

What makes me feel like the biggest freaking internet stalker about this whole thing is that I have to keep reminding myself that this person is a complete and total stranger who has never heard of me and therefore can’t be expected to give two shits about me.  But I want to e-mail her and tell her about “Allergic to Beans” by Leticia Viloria.  I want to e-mail her and ask eager questions about the zippered pouch she made last year.  I want to e-mail her and be like, “Isn’t it exciting!  Another non-Christian right here!”  I make it sound like I’ve never met another nonreligious person.  Not so.  But it still excites me when I run into another person who thinks religion sucks.  To me they’re the brilliant, sparkling gems of the prairie.

Anyway, so I’m pretty sure that even if I don’t e-mail her she will eventually get a hit from my site when one of you people clicks over, because I’m just assuming she is every bit as in love with her site stats as I am with mine.  So I’ve decided that I’ll play coy, finish reading and plan to e-mail her in a friendly way that won’t make me sound like a crazy person, and if she gets a hit and comes here and sees all this explanation and says hi to me, well, then that’s OK too.

By the way.  The peach crisp was fantastic.