I have many names. When I stop to think about it, it seems odd, but I suppose I collect names just like I collect lots of other things. It’s the packrat nature, I guess.

My name is Jennifer. This is my “real” name. Legal, anyway, (and combined with “Smith”, the world’s most boring last name — the combination of the two is startlingly common) and the name I go by most of the time. I live in Stillwater, Oklahoma, a nice little college town which is not a fort, nor a farm, nor is lacking in any modern conveniences like television and cell phones. We do have tornadoes. I am married (more on that below). I also have two dogs, Molly and Desi, and of course a husband of the fairly tolerable sort. Or is that tolerant? Never can keep that straight…

My name is Moira. This is the name I have long gone by on various online text-based games (MUDs). I did actually use it on BBSs during college too, I recall. It’s more or less a play on the name my husband used for the same purpose, Random. (Think Greek, not Irish!) This name is falling into disuse somewhat, as my time is spent less and less on MUDs, and more and more on other things. Still, I have a great many good friends scattered around the US and the world that I met that way, and I was stuck with the moniker “Mama Moira” long before I ever had kids. Thus, my livejournal account name.

My name is Emma. This is my SCA name. The SCA is a sort of medieval reenactment group. Think renfaire, only medieval, and not done for an audience, but for ourselves. My local branch is known as the Province of Mooneschadowe, in the Kingdom of Ansteorra. Woo! The lady Emma de Fetherstan has a “persona” about as thick as a sheet of paper; she’s English and from somewhere between 1300 and 1400. I credit the SCA with getting me back into the sewing groove, and introducing me to cool new hobbies like tablet weaving and heraldry.

My name is Mom. I (rather, I should say, we) have two wonderful daughters, Nikhita and Asha. Both were adopted from Kolkata, India as infants. Adoption was a first choice for us, and we’ve definitely been blessed.

But why Blue Balloon? My oldest daughter, Niki, has this fascination with balloons. Once, when she was four years old, a certain Restaurant Which Shall Go Unnamed (it starts with a C and has a red chili pepper as a logo) ran out of balloons right before she asked for one, and she burst into tears. It was the biggest meltdown I’ve ever seen her have — cries of anguish, sorrow, dooooom. You’d think someone had died. I asked her why she was still crying minutes later, and all she could say was “balloon!” My husband and I (I blame him, he blames me) resolved that if she should die in her grief, her tombstone epitaph would say “Nikhita Smith / 1999-2004 / No Balloon.”

Everyone loves balloons. And I like blue.