Picture of the Day: My niece Sophia, all grown up and going places

Sophia and her years of study at Slippery Rock University

It's been awhile since I blogged about my niece Sophia--3 years to be exact, when I wrote about attending her high school graduation in May 2023 (click here to see) and how impressed I was with her speech.  She was in the top 2 of her class.

Since then, Soph's went on to Slippery Rock University and somehow while working afterschool jobs and meeting stringent scholarship requirements, managed to stay on the Dean's List -and- the fast track, completing her undergrad studies a year early.  She'll receive her bachelors degree when she dons her cap & gown next spring.

But this August, she begins graduate school where she'll get her Doctorate in Occupational Therapy in 3 years.  (You can't touch that, AI!)  I'm so proud of this young lady I could bust.

As of this writing, she (along with 20 of her classmates) are en route to Italy to tour the Coliseum and the Vatican in Rome-- they're flying there as I type this.  Talk about going places!

Ti voglio bene, Sophia! 

Happy Mother's Day to my favorite working mom

This is a Mother's Day card my dad made for Mom sometime in the mid-1970s.  (Her name was Linda, but he always called her "Line".)   On the card, she's wearing her red Fisher's Big Wheel smock.  It had a large white button pinned on the front that displayed her name and the caption "We're Big on People".

When Fisher's Big Wheel came to our hometown in 1972, we were all excited.  It was our first big department store.  We had a GC Murphy's and McCrory's, but those five and dime stores were small-fry compared to this.

It was right around my 11th birthday that Fisher's opened for business, and on Opening Day my mom took a couple of us kids to check it out.  We walked out of there with Mom holding a job application. 

That night at dinner, Mom told Dad about the store and how she was hoping to get a job there.  Dad (in a half-kidding manner) said "Now Liney, no wife of mine is going to get a job..."  and Mom said "Then go find one paying double so I don't have to!"   

   The inside of Mom's card

I swear to God I remember this--after the dishes were cleared, Mom was sitting at our kitchen table filling out her application, and where it said 'Age' (yep, back then they could ask for it) she drew an arrow pointing to the side and wrote "I believe women are like fine wines, we improve with age."  

She showed it to Dad and asked what he thought and he said "Oh sure Line, they'll like that" and winked at me!  I didn't say anything but thought "You blew it, Mom."

Apparently, Fishers liked it just fine--they offered her a job and she worked there for 23 years.  Happy Mothers Day Mom, and to all the other awesome moms out there.   

A puffy face, pioneer rigatoni and you've come a long way, Baby: Jennifer Grey in her own (sometimes dirty) words

I just got a haircut (which was long overdue) and I'm feeling downright civilized again.  I can't say I'm too happy with my puffy cheeks here, they are pretty sore and swollen right now.  But I suppose things could be worse.

This past Saturday was a mostly good day long covid wise, until sunset when the inflammation in my temples and cheeks sprang into action.  I awoke Sunday morning feeling better, only to have those same symptoms returning at noon and hanging around until 7pm before mysteriously vanishing.

Long covid is a strange and persistent animal, but I'm convinced I'm heading in the right direction.

Speaking of long covid, shortly after I was diagnosed in March 2024, I was filled with regret:  "If only I hadn't asked Typhoid Susie for that ride to Giant Eagle, I wouldn't have gotten infected..." 

I began watching videos on YouTube of people expressing regret for various things like getting bad tattoos (or worse, getting Lasik) to see how they cope, and that's when I saw an interview with actress Jennifer Grey, talking about her infamous nose job.  She said it changed her looks so much, Hollywood dropped her like a hot potato.  She said it was probably one of the worst decisions she'd made in her life.

The interview was for her book Out Of The Corner.  You know where that title came from, Patrick Swayze telling her father "Nobody puts Baby in a corner" in Dirty Dancing.

I put my name on the waitlist for the e-book at Carnegie Library, but after waiting two years, went on Barnes and Noble last week and bought my own copy for $7.99.

She doesn't waste any time getting down to the business at hand.  There's a 20 page prologue before Chapter One, where she discusses the surprise success of Dirty Dancing in 1987.  Why wasn't she being offered more acting roles?

She was convinced to get a minor nose job which made it fuller but less long (that's it on her book's cover).  She absolutely loved it and was soon offered a movie role right away.  But one year after that, cartilage began to grow on the tip of her nose.

When she returned to the same surgeon in 1990 to have it corrected, he went too far and she came out with a different face.

Filled with panic and despair, she was shocked to discover no one recognized her.  Invited to the Golden Globes, she approached other celebrities and was treated like a stranger.  Her plastic surgeon even admitted he'd never seen such a radical change in someone's features.

End of prologue.  The book is 310 pages long and I'm currently at the halfway point.  But for the first 140 pages it's only about her privileged upbringing, growing up with a celebrity father (Joel Grey) and living in big apartments in New York City or on the West Coast, in Malibu.  I'm not a prude by any means, but boy did she have a wild youth, especially her teenage years!  Everything is sex, cigarettes, booze, sex, "blow" (cocaine and she stresses she only snorted the primo stuff), more sex, Studio 54 while living with her fortysomething hairdresser at age 17 and getting every STD in the book.  

I never thought I'd say this, but frankly I'm sexed out.  Where's the acting career, the girl I fell in love with in Dirty Dancing?  Okay, I just started Chapter 21 where it's now 1984 and she lands her first acting gigs in The Cotton Club and Red Dawn.  Finally!  

I didn't know Jennifer was 18 months older than me, she just turned 66 in March.  Wow.  I can still remember my sister Shawn coming to visit me in 1987 and telling me we were going to see this movie Dirty Dancing.  Last night I watched it (probably for the first time in 30+ years) on Peacock and was surprised how charming it still was. 

EDIT:  I'm in the second half of Jennifer's book, discussing her acting career and backstories to Dirty Dancing, and it is much, much better.  She really is a good writer.

Finally, I thought I'd show you what I had for dinner Monday.  A couple weeks ago I decided to stop watching The Pioneer Woman's cooking show, but not before making her homemade pasta sauce and loving it.  She only uses crushed tomatoes (which I had a hard time finding, but got 2 generic cans), adding tomato paste, brown sugar, olive oil, garlic, peppers, basil & ground beef.  I cooked it for 2 hours and filled 4 freezer bags of the stuff, and added one of them to a pot of cooked rigatoni.

Throw in a garlic breadstick, some lettuce with some Bleu cheese dressing... yep. 😋