10 Things About Me You Probably Didn’t Know
Because I was tagged by Harper Thorpe in September 2018, I’ve finally gotten around to posting this for him and the rest of my followers.
- I was the manager and official scorekeeper of the high school track and X-country teams for three years. I got to travel to all the meets on the school bus. Being the only girl, I loved it. I made brownies for the boys. And handed out towels in the locker room. (Only kidding, but this was a running joke when the coach asked if I was going to hand out towels again this year. He’d ask me that in front of the freshmen team members just to see their reaction. It was ridiculously hilarious!)
2. My favorite food is sushi and there is nothing I won’t try at the sushi bar. My favorite items are natto (fermented soybean, which nobody I know likes), uni (sea urchin, eaten alive) with quail egg, and ikura(salmon roe).
3. I learned how to swim when I was not even three years old. When my father insisted on moving to the Valley because house prices were extremely low (yep, I’m a Valley Girl), my mother demanded to have a swimming pool built. One of my favorite childhood memories was swimming in our backyard pool with my twin brother. We played this game pretending we were married and all the decorative tiles were places we had to go: work, the grocery store, and home. I will always cherish those memories; it brings a smile to my face.
4. I’ve broken only one bone in my life: it was my baby toe in ballet when I was 24 years old. A technician at Kaiser hospital (I hate Kaiser, a story for another time) put me in a cast up to my knee! I was given four different diagnoses from four different doctors and technicians. An x-ray technician told me, “To give you the unvarnished truth, no one knows what the hell they’re talking about around here.”
Six weeks later, I went to a friend of mine who worked for the orthopedic surgeon for the Oakland Raiders. He removed my cast, put me in an orthopedic shoe, and I was dancing on my toes in two weeks.
Kaiser never even contacted me for a follow-up to remove my cast!
5. I am an excellent cook. In thirteen years, I’ve only messed up two meals. Below is not one of them.
6. I was the Joe Cocker International Fan Club president for seven years. I ended up working for A&M Records answering all the artists’ fan mail when I was 15. I stopped working there because I went on to get my BA in English at Sonoma State College. (Sonoma State is now a State University.)
I also was very good friends with Al Jarreau and got him a meeting with Artist Relations at A&M Records. They mistakenly didn’t sign him and he ended up signing with Warner Brothers Records and went on to earn seven Grammys and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I miss them both.
7. I love doing volunteer work. I’ve delivered holiday bags for seniors at home for Jewish Family and Children Services since the late 1990s.
I was the Vice President of Fundraising for a chapter of The City of Hope in southern California. Here I am below at the City of Hope 5K Run for Hope with our sponsor, Lakers Michael Cooper.
I wrote for my synagogue newsletter.
I was also the Mother’s Club President in my hometown. I wrote a column in their newsletter, too. It was pretty difficult after I wrote a beautiful poem for the treasurer who decided to step down. It didn’t take us long to discover why: she was embezzling from the club!
8. My twin brother phoned and said that he wanted to celebrate our 50th birthday with no one else, that we should go somewhere we’ve both have never visited. Below is a photo of us celebrating our birthday at an exclusive restaurant in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We had an absolutely fantastic time together.
After my twin brother was assisted in his suicide (no he wasn’t terminally ill, but depressed) by my narcissistic mother and sociopathic brother, I wrote and published my memoir, Beside Myself-Recovery From My family Betrayal and Estrangement.
http://amzn.to/1HsHsyw
9. I owned and operated Peppermints Children’s Hairstyling salon in Sherman Oaks, California. (My last name was Pepper.) Many of my clients were the children of celebrities, including a sportscaster, actors, and writers in “the business,” professional athletes, and one of O.J.’s defense lawyers who claimed he was definitely guilty, but he had a job to do…[to defend the killer]. (This was not an exact quote, but close enough.)
10. I’ve traveled to Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Europe, Israel (where I lived for four months on a kibbutz), Egypt, and Mexico by myself.
Below are some photos of my travels. Enjoy!
I hope you enjoyed these photos and “10 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Me.”
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