Edgy Mama

1. I stick pens behind my ears, then I forget they are there. I walked into a room the other day, and my boy said, “Mom, you look like an alien!” I glanced in the mirror. I had a pen stuck behind each ear and one through my ponytail holder.

2. All of the make-up I own resides in a small portable bag that I can carry with me because 90 percent of the time, I apply make-up in the car. I can drive and curl my eyelashes at the same time.

3. I have always been fascinated with medical and biological terminology and details. I LOVED college biology! I’m always surprised when people don’t really know how their bodies work.

4. I lived in London for almost three years when I was in my twenties. For a year, I resided in a tiny, dank, windowless basement flat near Victoria station. The toilet was down a long hallway. It was unheated AND had a concrete floor. There was no shower, only a bathtub, which was at the top of some crickety stairs. My bed was a beat-up mattress that took up the entire living area. I propped it against the wall during the day. My Dad says he still has nightmares about me living in the “dungeon.”

5. The second part of my first name, Fitten, is the #51,858 most common last name in the U.S. In other words, it’s pretty rare. Only around 1,200 people still have this surname. It was my great-grandmother’s last name. Every time I visit a town, I look in the phone book for “Fittens.” I’ve never found any. If you Google “fitten,” you get me, my cousin, John Fitten Goldsmith, aka Fitten the Talking Mule, Fitten dorm at Georgia Tech (named for an ancestress of mine) and a Coldwell Banker realtor based in Maryland.