About Me

https://www.vizify.com/linda-anderson

Hi, my name is Lala...( really, there are people who actually call me that. Its a name the son of my best friend who, by the way is also the best friend of my son made up for me, lo these 30 odd years ago.) I’m the writer behind Lala Land. You can read a little more about my blogging on the About Lala Land page, but let me give you a glimpse into who I am.

I am a Mid-lifer/second-halfer/ just don’t call me a Baby Boomer Generation Joneser-age, ex-pat California Girl, living in a medium sized metropolis in the upper Midwestern Plains (aka The Frozen TundraNot The End Of The World But You Can See It From HereThe FM)  I am married to Downtown Dad, and together we have two hairy dogs, a cat, three noisy cockatiels, a house which is in a constant state of renovation, and three grown, nearly grown, and overgrown kids, (aka Beez, Tessie, and Bear) who are in various and fluctuating stages of leaving the nest. The youngest, Bear, is currently attending American University in Washington DC, the middle, Tessie Wee, is attending Minnesota State University here in town, and the oldest, Beezer, is a server in an upscale restaurant in town, living in a swanky bachelor pad.  He is inches, inches I tell you, from completing a degree he started, then gave up on 10 years ago. The kids are all grown now, and all but one are out of the house, but you will undoubtedly read unabashedly prideful things about all of them now and then.

Between us, we also have 30+ members of our immediate family who constantly provide us with sitcom-worthy adventures in everything from feuding over political and religious differences, to dealing with Alzheimers and elder care, to the more mundane issues like paying for college, where to spend Christmas, and whose turn is it to do the dishes, most of which makes it into my blog in some form or another. 

Growing up in California, my alma mater was what we lovingly referred to as Hippie High.  In my sophomore year, for reasons that will forever remain a mystery, my dad moved us  45 miles away, where I reluctantly attended the high school there for 1.5 years, at which point my incessant wheedling and near misses with the law, convinced my parents we should move back from whence we came.  I spent my senior year happily and highly back at Hippie High, where I met my first ex husband.  A testament to how much I wanted out of my parents’ house, we were married 1 month to the day after graduation, and divorced nine months to the day from the ceremony.  I found another ex-husband a few years later, who gave me a son, and little else. 

Sometime between the first divorce and the first baby I moved to the beautiful and slightly moldy Pacific Northwest.  I took a job at AAA, not the drinkers association, the auto club, and that’s where I met Downtown Dad. I am nearly certain that it was love at first sight, although we were each married to a different person at the time. A lot happened in between the time we met and the time I actually decided I had to snag him for myself, but that is a long complicated story that will undoubtedly wind up in my blog.  I tease and poke fun at DD a lot but that’s only because he is truly a Boy Scout of the first water (can recite the Scout's 12 Words To Live By on command, in order) and I just love telling the world how much I adore him. Not that the world cares, necessarily—it’s just that’s how I show my love.

We both have corporate jobs working in the corporate office of a local giant healthcare corporation.  He in public affairs, and me, in digital marketing.  OK, I’ll just say it.  I’m a geek. It actually surprises me because I wasn’t always a geek, I sort of stumbled into this, but it seems like a pretty good fit.  In former lives I’ve been an administrative assistant, a Realtor, and many other things, working for places from power cooperatives, to symphonies.    

I’ve been blogging since 2008. I started out with a site called Straight Up and Slightly Dirty, a play on words combining my favorite martini, and my hope to write funny, but true posts on a myriad of what ever topics took my fancy.  The lessons I learned with that site, which still exists in the blogosphere’s deep dusty archives, helped to spawn Lala Land.  This is my real life story.  Please read along as I try to find the moral of the stories, the funny within the tragic, and the ironic within the weird.  I hope you find something here to make you smile, and moreso, I hope you will comment freely.

For anyone who wants to further categorize me, I’m a Sagittarius; my strengths are Input, Positivity, Communication, Arranger;  and I’m a High I, ENFJ. I’m also an avid reader, enjoy good food and wine, and I love a good story. I not only love to read Shakespeare, I understand it, and waste a lot of energy trying to get DD to accompany me to to live plays.