I’ve Been Tagged

There’s a game going on in the blogosphere the equivalent of “Tag, You’re It!” Mortgage blogger, Dan Green, tagged me the other day and now I must tell you 5 things you may not know about me and tag others.

If they made a movie about my parents, Bridget Bardot would play my mother and Andy Griffith would play my father. They met when dad was stationed in France in World War II. Mom grew up in a town an hour from Paris. Dad grew up in Madison County (as in “The Bridges of Madison County”), Iowa.
My mother, Antoinette, named me Francoise. When I started school, 20 kindergartners in Bondurant, IA were faced with the challenge of pronouncing my name. In frustration, they nicknamed me, Fran.
I live with my partner, Mary Kaye. We have 2 cats that allow us to live with them.
Before meeting Mary Kaye, I lived in Des Moines. Unlike Chicago, it’s not a great place to be gay and an even worse place to be gay and single. I made the most of my challenging social life through standup comedy. Jokes like, “I’ve faced a lot of discrimination in my life. It’s tough when you’re a lesbian and you don’t have a talent for softball.” and “My gay lifestyle in Des Moines is so incredible, they made a movie about it – Home Alone.” got me into the finals of the Funniest Person in Iowa Contest in 1998.
A health scare is what got me into Chicago real estate. Years ago, my doctor said a test came back abnormal and that I needed to see a specialist. My mother died at age 54, so it prompted a lot of thinking about my life. I decided that I didn’t want to spend the rest of it managing projects for a large global corporation. It turned-out that my doctor mis-read my report and I was fine. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I love being a Realtor!