Five things about me that most people don’t know…

1. It is my dream (and has been since I was a little girl) to own a farm. My dad grew up on a corn-wheat-tomato-soybean farm in NW Ohio, and my uncle Eddie had a farm in the rocky hills of the Berkshires. I cherished the visits we made as a family to those two places. I feel real outside. Connected. Now, I won’t have animals on my farm, but I will have a giant vegetable garden and a baseball field with real dugouts and a backstop. And, when I have my farm, I will host an annual Summer Olympics barbeque for everyone – adults, kids, even pets that day. You’re all invited.

2. I like reading Martha Stewart Living magazine. I want to make yummy butterscotch cookies, throw a Thanksgiving feast in a real horse barn, and paint silhouettes on pumpkins just like her.

3. I like maple walnut ice cream. It’s my grandpa’s favorite, so when I was a little kid, I decided it would be my favorite too.

4. Every summer I have a “personal growth and achievement” project. One summer it was reading as many of the “Top 100 books of all time” lists I found. Another one was learning to play the guitar. Another was learning the swimming strokes that preceded the major four (butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, and front crawl) used today: the trudgen, double trudgen, Austrailian crawl, etc. And so on…what will this summer be??

5. My two favorite novels are A Separate Peace and How Green Was My Valley. My favorite poem is “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer” by Walt Whitman. My husband and I read all the time. It’s one thing I like so much about him. He’s interested…