Okay, Confession Time! (12 Things You Might Not Know About Me)

I'm in the midst of taking a blogging course from the ever-inspiring Susannah Conway and much of it involves being more open about our lives through our writing. So, taking one of the writing prompts, I'm going to plunge right into the deep end of the pool and share these 12 confessions with you:

We just traded in our aging minivan for...(are you ready for it?)...another minivan. I feel seriously uncool. (On the flip side, I'm at an age where I don't really care if I'm seriously uncool.) I also feel like a "green fraud." But our kids are still young, and we often shuttle around our friends, relatives, and dog, so it just makes the most sense for us right now. Isn't it greener to carpool anyway? (I know, I know...I'm just trying to make myself feel better about driving another minivan.)

I hate peanut butter. Even the faintest whiff of peanuts makes me feel barfy. (Ditto for cashews.) Conversely, I crave rye toast topped with Nutella and fresh strawberries, so it pains me that I can't buy Nutella anymore.

In school, I took three years of French, two years of Spanish, and two years of Italian. As a result, I can now speak a frightfully basic mish-mash of all of them. (Buenos dias, mademoiselle!)

Guilty pleasure: reading Architectural Digest. I know that the featured homes are often ridiculously wasteful and way over-the-top, and what really puts a bee in my bonnet is when a gigantic home featured is not even the primary residence of the owners--it's just a "weekend getaway." But something about flipping through the pages brings me back to my childhood days of constructing elaborate "dream houses" with my Lego blocks. Architects inspire me.

Deep water makes me nervous. I can swim, but I'm just a few notches above doggy-paddling.

Even though I've had a camera in my hands since I was nine years old, I think one of the big reasons that I'm a bit crazed about taking LOTS of pictures is because I watched my father descend into Alzheimer's for 16 very long years and I'm trying to hang on to my memories. (I've got a post brewing on that topic, but I'm taking my time with it. For obvious reasons.)

I can't stand talking on the phone. (This will not be a newsflash to anybody who knows me personally.) If you need to reach me, send me an email and I'll get right back to you. (Well...maybe not right back to you. But I'll get back to you sooner than I'll return a phonecall.)

If I'm at the movies and a preview comes up featuring a period drama set in the English countryside (you know: ladies in bonnets, men in tophats), I've already mentally bought the ticket.

Despite the previous confession, I probably know every word of the movie Valley Girl by heart. I had a big crush on young, indie-film era Nicolas Cage, before he jumped the shark with Face/Off.

I still have infrequent but really scary nightmares about the day I fought off a coyote that wanted to eat my dog for breakfast.

Although we strictly limit our kids' screen time, I had a black-and-white portable TV in my bedroom from fourth grade onward, and I watched A LOT of TV shows. (My favorites: Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, The Hardy Boys, Bewitched, The Brady Bunch, and Gilligan's Island.)

It took me until my mid-40's to figure out what I really wanted to do with my life. I feel like I've finally "arrived", teaching online photography courses, and it's thanks to this blog's readers. (Thank you so much for leading me to this path with your kind comments on my photos. Thanks also to Tammy Strobel for starting me on the journey.)

Funny how life has a way of leading us exactly to where we should be, if we listen very carefully to our heart's confessions.

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Bonus confession: You would totally make my day by doing any (or all!) of the following...

subscribing via email or RSS reader: just click here
"liking" my Facebook page
following me on Twitter
circling me on Google+. (That's my favorite place to share--check it out!)

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