So I have to list 8 interesting things about myself and then tag some other blogs and they do the same. Seems fun…(thanks for the procrastination-from-working exercise Kristine!)
1. Hm. Well I told you one of them not too long ago…that I have a journal that I have written in every day since the 3rd grade. There is a separate volume for each year so needless to say, now there are heaps of them (32 to be exact). The early ones were just my Joan Walsh Anglund and Mary Englebreit wall calendars with teensy- tinsy mouse writing…and then the college ones….filled with boys names who I LOVED, and now the same boy could come up to me and slap me across the face and I would be clueless as to who they are.
2. I have been flashed three times. Yes, you heard correctly. (Meaning exposure of ones parts to unwitting passersby, that are intended to remain behind closed…er…zippers). They say lightening doesn’t strike twice but I see this as the equivilent and it happened TO ME. As if I have a sign on my forehead that says FREAK ME OUT. The first one happened in Atlanta after a photo shoot. I must have been 23 or so. We are in bumper-to-bumper traffic in the photography van (when I worked for Cooking Light magazine), so I have a birds-eye view into the low-lying cars around us. And there he was. Busy as a bee and looking right at me. I almost had heart failure. Truly traumatized at my tender young age.
Then, and you REALLY won’t believe this one, The DAY we returned from Atlanta I went for a walk in my neighborhood. This car starts to crawl right beside me…I try to ignore it (as I am still trembling over the other “episode”) but finally had to look. It’s a seemingly nice young man and he needs directions. I studder, and ponder…and then lamely attempt to answer…and THERE IT IS, with a big ole beam of sunlight shining right on it. I yell at the top of my lungs…PER-VERRRRRRRTTTTTTTTT and then take off running, certain that he is going to shoot me in the back, towards a poor old man who is gardening in his back yard, and almost give HIM heart failure.
A couple of years later, I am driving down highway 31 in Birmingham, AL and the same scenario occurs, only now we are BOTH on wheels…this car keeps edging up beside me, and then falling behind…edging up…falling behind. Which, after a while, you can’t help but notice in your periphery. So I look. Oh Lord. This guy is on crack for sure. Or severely MENTAL. And he too, busy, busy.
Me? Scarred for life.
3. Two things I said above, reminded me of two more things to list. One, I worked for Cooking Light for 14 years. I feel like I spent my life there, and now it seems like another life altogether. I walked into those offices more than 10, 220 times (if my calculations are correct, which they probably aren’t). I started out as a graphic designer (that was my major at Auburn), then became promotion manager, and after that creative director for Cooking Light and Weight Watchers magazines. I miss that place, that job. To be creative and get paid for it is a very sweet thing indeed.
4. I am SEVERELY directionally/geographically challenged (as flasher number two would attest). Em and I share this affliction, and when I moved here, I (wrongly) assumed she could help me get un-lost when I was near tears on some random interstate headed to hell in a handbasket. Instead, she would laugh. HA. You are asking ME? She would say. I have gotten lost trying to get home from work. It’s sad, I know. My friends are ruthless in their teasing…my next car WILL have one of those direction thingy’s–
Take THAT and chew on it, my so-called FRIENDS!
5. My hair is completely white. Has been since 30, and started greying in college. At the time I thought it would be cool to let it go…but my friends did an intervention, and Loreal became my closest friend. Since then, hubby, who fancies himself as some sort of naturalist (not), decided he preferred natural beauties and encouraged me to grow out the grey. Trouble is, “beauty” is the operative word, and it wasn’t quite like that for me…so an inch or so into the process he decided that maybe he wasn’t “ready” for a white-headed wife.
6. I used to be obsessed with true crime. I have probably read every book ever written on the subject (yes, hundreds). All the while, I lived alone, and for whatever reason, I never got scared. Interesting aside: growing up in Columbus, Georgia we had our VERY OWN serial killer. Carlton Gary. Google him and get the whole sordid scoop. It was a truly frightening time…worst of all, my grandmother had to come and stay with us because this guy targeted old ladies, and she stayed in MY ROOM and snored like a freight train.
But all of a sudden, a switch flipped, and I realized that I was filling my mind with nothing short of pure evil incarnate. I went to rehab, and gave it up. Just like that. Cold turkey. Impressive, huh?
7. I am shy. Shut it, friends. I am! When I was little, painfully so. My mom loves to recount how she drove me to swim lessons every day for an entire summer (and of course paid for them) and not only would I not tell the instructor my name, but I wouldn’t even get in the pool. This scenario played out time and time again. But I have this other side. The very dramatic one. The millions-of-accents one that I hide behind. Recently my good friend Kathy asked me if it might be possible for me to leave a message on her machine, for once, in MY accent, not some random made-up one.
8. I was born in England. My brother took great pleasure in calling me “foreigner” growing up. And “Bathroom” because that sounds JUST like Kathryn, doesn’t it? (Eye roll into bowels of skull).
