Eliza Reid

And he, too, has been watching Goodney that day on TV.

And he, too, and some colleagues have been so impressed by what they saw that he had looked at my number in the phone book and thought he would just call and suggest that Goodney consider running for president of Iceland.

The phone kept ringing.

And I remember thinking, wow, when Goodney gets home from work, he is never going to believe this story of what has happened.

But actually, when he came back that night, he was very sanguine.

He took out his phone and he showed me just DMs, text messages, instant messages, all saying exactly the same thing to him.

Now, Goodney had never before considered or tried running for elected office.

despite the fact that he was an academic expert on the presidents of Iceland and was writing a book about it at the time.

But all of a sudden, the stars had aligned in such a constellation that he really needed to make a considered thought about it and make a response.

And really, the decision distilled down to just a few core questions.

Would we ruin our children?

Could we afford to do it?

Would I still be able to continue my work as a writer and editor?

And most importantly, did he want to do it, and did he think he could do a good job?

But really, it just felt like fate had thrown us some kind of a curveball.

All we could do was catch it and run.

So, Goodney declared that he was running for president of Iceland, and the election was held seven weeks later.

It happened that quickly.

And on August 1st, 2016, I became Iceland's forsetafru.

For those of you who don't speak Icelandic, that literally means president's wife.