List 4: Fun Facts

1.  I have an irrational fear of slugs, stemming from the time I was a nanny in the South of France and stuck in an old villa alone with a toddler during a thunderstorm.  Gargantuan slugs started creeping into the house, from everywhere, in the dark, to escape the storm.  I was scarred for life.  I also realize that this sounds like some sort of bad Gothic parody.

2.  Unnaturally blue foods (think Kool-Aid, bakery frosting) really, really bother me. 

3.  When we first moved to New Mexico we were unemployed and decided to make a few bucks as extras in a movie with Sam Shepard.  We shot a cocktail party scene until four in the morning, in the middle of nowhere, and drove home on empty highways watching a full moon hang over the mountains while dawn broke.

4.  When I was little I wanted a pony so badly I tried to fashion one out of a wooden sawhorse, with a flower pot for the head, an old bath mat for a saddle, and a belt for a tail.  My father and a neighbor decided to play things up by putting manure under it.  I was not amused.

5.  I love to read, but most books (no matter how good) seem to leave my head as soon as I'm done with them.

6.  Two years ago I started keeping a five-year diary.  There's just enough space to jot down a few images from the day, and I love looking at the page and seeing where I was the year or two before.  Life is so good lately it makes me smile.

7.  Related to that, there is nothing I love more than a new Moleksine notebook.  Which means I have half-filled Moleskine notebooks all over the house.

8.  I go through cycles of collecting and purging, and always seem to find a use for an item a year or two after I've parted with it.

9.  My Jack Russell terrier Chesney is named after a man in a pub in Bath, England, who walked up to my friend and licked the side of her face.  The canine Chesney and I met much the same way, hence the name.

10.  I have always, always longed to take this sort of trip.

(4 down, 96 to go.  This one inspired by Brooke.)