Okay, you asked for it. I was born in Niagara Falls, New York, the sixth of eight children.
When I was five, my family moved to exotic Wilmington, Delaware where I lived in a happy suburban stupor until I flew off to college at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. I loved being a student and was pretty good at it, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude with a double major in English and History, which prepared me for an exciting career in waitressing. In desperation, I moved out to Colorado where I learned to ski and eventually found work as the editor of the Mountain Guide, a funny and colorful magazine distributed in Summit County, Vail and Aspen. I never really liked the mountains, though – too rocky! – and moved to Denver where I started work in advertising at Tracy Locke. I moved to San Francisco for a year and worked at Foote Cone and Belding, but while all the cool kids were working on Levi’s, I was stuck in the “whiter-whites!” group working on Clorox so I moved back to Denver, got married and started my own agency. My agency was bought out and I became Creative Director of the new agency, burned out, took a trip around the world, came back and got divorced. I then became Creative Director/Partner in what eventually grew to be the largest independent agency in Denver, during which time I met Mr. Wrong, had my precious Lulu, and tried to maintain a semblance of sanity. After finally ditching Mr. Wrong, I reluctantly attended my 25th high school reunion, where I re-met the adorable Larry Schall from junior high school Latin class, and three months later we were married and Lulu and I were living in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania with my three stepchildren: Jaime, Tyler and Lindsay. After two years at home, I went back to work as Creative Director of SFGT in Philadelphia and stayed there seven years, until my husband was invited to become President of Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia where we now live in a big White House (naturally). I wrote I’M TOO SEXY FOR MY VOLVO as a tribute to Lulu, and for all the fabulous women out there who are expecting moms, single moms, stepmoms, married moms, working moms, working-at-home moms, confused moms, panicked moms, enraged moms, lonely moms, and awesome, amazing, astounding moms – which is all of us. Party on!