25 Things
I lived in the DC suburbs when Martin Luther King was assassinated and remember seeing the black smoke on the horizon.
Like my late, great dad, the painter Ted Betts, I am fascinated by murder ballads, abandoned houses, and weird country sayings. I also love marshmallow circus peanuts, but only when they're really hard and stale.
When I was five I wanted to be Johnny Quest.
I cry real tears when I see a cat or dog dead on the road.
I studied ballet, French, piano, and horseback riding as a kid.
I have two gold crowns. One of my little nephews once asked me if I was a rap singer.
If I had a lot of money I'd learn to surf, make a horror movie, open a no-kill animal shelter, and become a viral epidemiologist.
I got accepted to U.Va. when I was sixteen.
I'm really weird about collecting gift boxes and shopping bags. Once a year I make myself recycle them, but I still worry that I won't have one when I need it.
My favorite foods are cherries, walnuts, shortbread, good tea, sweet potatoes, peaches, crabmeat, and a good steak.
I am very nerdy about grammar and love to mentally correct people's writing and speech. I had to stop doing this aloud at a young age, because no one would sit with me at lunch.
Hell to me would be a combination of nausea and remorse, while being surrounded by poor imitations of the things that I love.
My appendix burst in 2001, not even two months after 9/11. I was lying in the hospital thinking, If I something happens and I need to run, I won't be able to
I have wanted to be a rock guitarist since age six. I started to learn to play forty years later, and it's been worth the wait.
Hippie culture does not speak to me.
I had debilitating migraines twice a week for six years. CGRP drugs fixed them.
I write poetry that rhymes.
I wrote my senior thesis for my Cinema degree on animator Chuck Jones and the existential aspects of Wile E. Coyote.
I was a punk rocker and saw The Clash in 1978.
I hate Valentine's Day.
I am very nerdy about Twin Peaks and all things David Lynch.
I am a Christian, but some of what Christianity has done to this world breaks my heart.
I met my husband Chris in 1983, and didn't marry him until 1996. But I kept seeing him around town the whole time—everywhere. He was dating my boss's daughter at one point, and later was married to one of my friends (but I didn't steal him!)
I've written two scary novels.
My greatest lost love was my 1966 Mustang, which my first husband made me get rid of when we married. My first husband died in 1990; I feel the Mustang is still alive somewhere.