They ask me point blank for a self-summary. Well enough, I suppose. But if one goes on forever about oneself, one is considered conceited.

Since I am technically single at the moment, I thought this might not be a bad way to meet people. I am here because after seven years in Oregon I have yet to make any real friends (and I tend to get on better with men... go figure, I must like the sexual tension). I suppose that's because my definition of friendship is pretty taxing, and also because I almost never leave the farm. You heard that right, farm. I keep a tiny ranch, milk the cow, collect the eggs, tend the goats. But since we have everything here that we could possibly need, and I don't see the need to go out and indulge in the comsumer frenzy of our current Western culture, I tend to spend a lot of time at home, playing with my daughter or writing or reading or playing my harp or marveling at the wonders of nature. (I know, I sound like a prize hippie, don't I? I get along with hippies, but I'm too pragmatic to be considered one myself.)

Here's something. Consider me an innocent. I Will Not Do Telephone Or On-Line Sex so QUIT ASKING!

While I'm at it, due to supposed match-ups from other sites, I issue the following warning: If you ever considered voting for George Bush, or would use the words Republican or Conservitive in your discription of yourself, Do Not Contact Me! We won't like each other. On a more personal note, if you don't understand why anyone would read for pleasure, don't bother either.

As well as being a farmer, I write YA novels. I play the harp moderately well. I'm improving my sign-language, mostly because I find it so useful! How else can you ask someone across a crowded room to pick up some more chicken? I used to be in the SCA, but the politics out here are something dreadful, so now I mostly do the research and live the life without bothering with the event scene much. Before Oregon I lived in Madison, WI, but we had family out here.

My daughter is the greatest love of my life, of course. She is currently three years old, and hopefully not my last child. Her father is still in the picture as a good friend. I love all children, the potential is amazing. I love animals also. (Hence the hundred or so we have here... counting all the chickens indivudually.)

I love Star Trek, Diana Wynne Jones, Shakespeare, Jim Henson and Irish music. I hate right-wing politics, druggies and non-constructive violence. While I also get on famously with emotionally healthy people, and probably need more of them in my life, I have gotten on well with cronic depressives, autistics, PTSD sufferers, and other self-described geeks, freaks and wierdos. I prefer organic food, I cook and am Not a vegetarian. I follow global news, plan to adopt once my own children are older, and believe in honesty.

I am easy to get to know, painfully honest, and eternally devoted to anyone I come to love in any sense of the word. I'm keen on debate, long conversation and personal nobility.

I'm looking for you: the person I can talk to for eight hours straight, the person who knows what I mean when I say Pre-Rafaelite, the person who is willing to understand that I am painfully shy, but you'd never know it unless you knew me.

Anybody interested in starting a dialogue? I ask for no more than that.

There will be repetition in these, won't there.

My current daily schedual has become a whirlwind of hanging out in the car. As the school system in my tiny town is not exactly trustworthy, I've enroled my darling daughter in a school in Eugene, which involved driving for 45 minutes just to get her in the door. So after waking up absurdly early, I feed the cow, stuff breakfast into her and myself, and head for the commute, while I listen to NPR. After I drop her off I try to take a NIA class to get myself reved up for the day, and then I settle into my favorite bookstore and write (or more usually rewrite, thanks to all the myriad notes from my agent) bits of my current novel. Then I pick up my daughter and commute another 45 minutes home, where I settle in to remember why I exist, usually watching something fun, like a Doctor Who episode, or something a little more globally oriented like Democracy Now! While that's going on, I'm often sewing clothes, embriodering something, spinning wool (turns out I'm a natural spinner -- who knew?) or baking. Ideally I go out and chop wood or hang laundry. After my daughter gets up from her nap I make dinner, and when the rest of my family comes home we usually watch The Daily Show and Colbert, because really, we need to laugh at this insane world we've been thrust into. I get my daughter into bed, try to write a little more, and then I go out to milk the cow, which somehow happens at midnight.

It's a very quiet little life, but I'm enjoying it.

I am good at making something out of nothing. Should we have nothing, in the course of a day I can produce from it a homemade shirt, dinner, a poem and a novel. Or part thereof. I can make jewelry out of scrap metal, quilts out of scrap fabric, a fine floor out of scrap wood, dinner out of nothing but flour and water, and a best friend out of a cronic depressive caffine addict or an adult abuse victim.

Most of these things come about because no one ever told me I couldn't, so I try. And if I fail, well, I failed. Try again. If you want it, you'll keep trying until you get it.

I stick out like a sore thumb in every group photograph I've ever seen. It might be the clothes (I dress like a cross between a lady pirate, a charity case and a midevil princess, with a little pioneer thrown in.) It might be the hair. (It seems bright for some reason. Maybe it's just big.) It might be my voice. (I will not, cannot, shall not, perhaps, lower my voice. There are reasons, involving Shakespeare and ancient ballads.) Or, as a friend of mine once put it, "You're just so big and loud and fast and THERE."

I guess that's it. The first thing people notice about me is that I am THERE.

These are a few of my favorite things.... Everybody, now!

My favorite books include anything by Dianna Wynne Jones, and various other YA fantasy. I don't fall in much for the genre sword and sorcery fantasy as much, (I find it repetitious.) I have Hitchhiker's Guide memorized, so I don't read it much anymore, really, but I'll put it on the list. I like ElfQuest and Rumiko Takahashi. I like classic poetry, such as Blake and Yeats, but usually in small doses. If you want my undying attention, quote Shakespeare at me.

My favorite movies are usually fantasy or literature related, such as Labyrinth, Stranger Than Fiction, Finding Forester, Whale Rider, Princess Bride, Chocolat, Henson's "The Storyteller" (best of both worlds, on that one!) I am a Trekker. I have every episode of Beauty and the Beast (for emotional masochism,) and Red Dwarf, (for much needed sarcasm.) In fact, I have a strong passion for humorous British sci-fi, and have loved Doctor Who before it came back from the dead and became popular to do so. (I was K-9 for Halloween for my eleventh birthday, and explaining where I got the idea for a robot dog to a bunch of residential door openers was really exhausting.) I also like Pride and Prejudice, Pitch Black and Underworld, and most anything by Tim Burton. My tastes are varied, with a hint toward the Gothic. (Actual classic definition of Gothic, not just bloody.)

My favorite music is usally anything Celtic, but I like lots of folk, have an absurd affiliation for Arlo Guthrie, and a fondness for movie soundtracks. Evanecence and Danny Elfman fall into that catagory. I like Classical quintets. Select Queen, David Bowie and Peter Gabriel sometimes find themselves on my album player, as well.

So long as we're on my favorite things, I also have a strong affiliation for men with long hair. Yes, I will want to play with it.

I could be flippant here and say oxygen, food, water, gravity, warmth and protection, but I'll take it as read that, all things being equal (which they aren't) we all have those.

My daughter. I could say her six times, but I'll add on from there.

My writing. Nothing else makes any sense of the world for me. If every single agent and publisher in the world came up to me and said you'd never get a single story published, I'd still be writing. I get a little weird when I don't. Fortunately, I seem to be making headway, there.

Other people's books. Again, making sense of the world. I have to be able to escape somehow.

Tranquility. I would go mad very quickly if I had to live all of my life in an urban setting. I don't know how other human beings can do it, biologically speaking we're meant to live in extended family groups and rural village structure.

History. Perhaps that's just making sense of the world again, but an understanding and reverence for what has come before is important to me.

I'll throw my harp in here at the end, though I'm sure I could make up for my loss of her through singing or something. I would cry, though, and miss her.

Global politics, Genetically Modified foods, where I can get another book, what I'm going to do with the extra milk and eggs, where my daughter has gotten to and what on earth is she up to, why my latest novel is stuck or, conversely, why it's going so well, where we need to put up the next set of fences, have I fed the lamb, the kids, the chickens, are we taking care of the elderly, the disabled, and do your children have health insurance, and are you teaching them, if nothing else, how to take care of themselves.

On Fridays my schedual is the same as every other day. The cow doesn't care what day it is.

I am both attracted and repulsed by humanity in general.

You should message me if you are willing to talk, to tell the truth, to discuss philosophy and politics and tell the story of your life. You should message me if you honestly intend to continue any corrospondance you initiate, and if you won't, to tell me so, not just vanish off the face of the planet. You should message me if you are actually, genuinely interested in getting to know another person. You should message me if you aren't afraid of me.

A latant desire for the occational good hard shag wouldn't bother me either.