Day 10 - CDC recommends all J&J patients get a booster after 2 months

I finished this book today…

10/30/21. Saturday

 8:00 – I hear L. leave for work at the Art Studio, but I go back to sleep. 

10:00-10:30 – Up and I go downstairs to say good morning to the dog. She’s awake and looking expectantly up at the stairwell as I come downstairs. Surprisingly, she wants to go outside right now, so she grabs her toy and we head immediately to the backyard.  I scan the yard: 1) the snapdragons I tried to grow from seeds never bloomed; 2) and the zucchini I started as a seedling project in my kitchen and then transferred to a large pot that I spray-painted and moved to my back yard, never materialized.  The zucchini plants bloom, but there are no vegetables. Return inside: coffee for me; cheese for her. I go upstairs. 

10:30-12:00 – I finish Lady Parts!  This is, hands down, the best book of the year that I’ve read! The author, Deborah Copaken, is a New York Times bestseller who expertly chronicles the amount of bad luck that befalls her over the course of the past 10 years.  Only it’s not bad luck – it’s systemic and representative of how our society treats women. 

To start, Deborah is  a “contracted employee”, i.e. a free-lance writer, who has no consistent health care to sustain her during the medical calamities she is diagnosed with that befall most, if not all women, at some point in our lives, including an appendectomy [the doctor tells her it’s just gas 24 hours before she undergoes an emergency appendectomy]; a hysterectomy [the doctor, incorrectly, recommends that Deborah’s cervix  remain intact because it is thought that the cervix is a mechanism for providing sexual pleasure. The cervix? If you google a diagram of the female body, this makes no sense whatsoever to a layperson, such as myself]; a cervicectomy [because the first doctor was wrong and her cervix does, in fact, need to come out, which results in Deborah hemorrhaging from a known complication of a cervicetomy that is never listed in the consent form she signed, and results in Deborah famously calling a taxi for transport to the hospital, in lieu of an ambulance, because, at this particular time in her life, she has NO health insurance and cannot afford an ambulance; a mammogram, where Deborah is diagnosed with breast cancer after suspicious lumps are discovered, only to be informed that the lumps  mysteriously disappeared after she has already paid out-of-pocket for additional scans, biopsies, and blood work that she never needed, etc. I could go on but I might as well stop here regarding her medical issues… 

Simultaneously, Deborah is also the recipient of sexism and ageism and routinely told, while serving in some of the positions where she has, by the grace of God AND a network of long-time friends, as well as her sisters, secured sporadic, gainful employment in a constant quest for viable health insurance so she can actually schedule, and pay for, medical appointments, surgeries, medication, and treatments, that she is “not a good fit” for the company/magazine/editorial desk where she is working and abruptly fired with no severance package. 

If my above sentences appear to be one long, stream-of-consciousness narrative, lacking  correct punctuation…well, this is how Deborah writes and it is soooo good! Of course, I can’t even begin to compare my writing  to a New York Times best-selling author like Deborah [I read some of her other books], but at least I can give you a sample. 

Add to this, an allegedly autistic husband, who is probably just an “asshole” and NOT autistic, whom she divorces after 20+ years and whom, after the divorce, opened credit cards in her name so he could charge $30,000 for one failed start-up after another, leaving her responsible for the debt; and two kids in college for whom Deborah is paying their tuition with no help from their father; and the fact that she is now a single mother who has resumed 100% care and custody of their little boy [at the time of the divorce, he’s around 9-years-old] because her ex-husband refuses to pay child support and moves to California, leaving Deborah responsible for the debt he saddled her with; and the fact that she is priced out of the New York real estate market because she is a single mother and has to live in horrible cockroach-infested ‘digs’, run by a landlord who refuses to fix the hot water and/or heater because he is trying to force the rent-controlled occupants to move; and the fact that she is investigated for unemployment fraud when she files a claim after being inexplicably ‘laid off’ from a 40-hour a week editorial job because, as mentioned above, she is “not a good fit for the magazine”, but then takes a few photographs for a freelance gig that might materialize into paid work, thereby rendering her paltry unemployment benefits null and void [Deborah actually wins this case, btw]… after all this: 

It is an absolute miracle that she gets out of bed every day to fight the good fight. Her memoir doesn’t have a happy ending per se, because life seldom does as life is a series of ups and downs. Eventually, Deborah meets a man who genuinely seems to love her and who provides emotional, and sometimes, financial support, but… so what? Everything else is still a mess as she struggles to keep her kids in college, pay down the debt that her ex-husband fraudulently accrued in her name, and look for gainful employment so she can have viable health insurance…all in her 50s.   

I will say Deborah has wonderful, steadfast friends and sisters who, in her greatest time of need, have pulled her up and carried her through.  This is a woman who is really trying…and trying hard. Her friends seem to respect that and help. 

This book resonates with me on many levels even though Deborah and I are very different people, but the one thing I truly loved about the book is the amount of bureaucratic bullshit she must go through, on an almost daily basis, just to get through the day. Every day is a slog and I truly relate to that. Nothing ever seems to work out for Deborah and the amount of bad luck she experiences, which is not so much bad luck as it is part of the systemic sexism and ageism in our society concerning women, is unfathomable.  

In many ways, I feel like Deborah…if you read this blog, almost every day is its own nightmare of sorts, although I will say I’ve had remarkably good health [other than a strange, vacillating glaucoma diagnosis by an ophthalmologist who seems incompetent) my entire life, thank God, and L. and I have free health insurance on account of my pension…  

But just dealing with some of the things that Deborah is forced to deal with, like:

 - my job as an adjunct instructor and the fact that I’m in a field dominated by men who get the best teaching assignments [one of the male adjunct instructors is a high school MATH teacher. I have no idea what he’s doing in my Department], along with the constant merry-go-round of classes removed and added to my roster, every semester, without any consideration for my personal schedule or financial situation;  

-the fact that I never once received an interview for a tenure-track position, even though I’ve applied to multiple colleges; 

-the fact that, in 20 years, I was scheduled for just ONE adjunct position interview [I was hired a year after the interview (College No. 2)], even after submitting upwards of 20-30 applications to multiple colleges; 

-the fact that I lost my Long Term Care Disability Insurance - offered by the state of California, no less - after paying into it for 25 years;

-the fact that I’m a divorced, single mother who never received child support;  

-the fact that I’ve had to work upwards of 3 to 4 jobs at a clip, for the past 25 years, just to make it as a single mother in California [state job; adjunct instructor at College No. 1; adjunct instructor at College No. 2; substitute teacher; and part-time transcriptionist over the years]; 

-the fact that L. doesn’t have enough money for Otis, even though my parents generously contributed to her college education and I was able to grow their contributions to over $50,000 and her first two years of school were at a community college. This means that I am forced to pay the remaining $40,000 with her Dad contributing nothing so L. will not be mired in debt when she graduates while, at the same time, the Biden Administration is on the cusp of student loan forgiveness for hundreds of thousands of students, which means L.  probably should have taken out federal student loans anyway and used the $40,000 I have for her to start her life, instead of applying it to tuition; 

- the fact that every home repair is a f—king nightmare; 

-the fact that I never seem to have enough money; 

But these are “first world” “white-privilege” problems that we’re not allowed to talk about (especially women), until Deborah brought them to light, front-and-center, in her wonderful memoir.  Highly recommend and I give her book 5 stars. A Netflix series should come out of this book, similar to Maid. 

12:00-1:00 – I have some pecans and pepper-jack cheese coupons while I complete a bullet journal. 

1:00-1:45 – I do a 30-minute Insanity Max-Cardio workout; then 

1:45-3:30-I start a load of laundry and take a shower.  It’s spa day, today. I check the supplies in my overnight bag then eat a chocolate-covered marshmallow and a chocolate covered mini-graham. 

3:30-5:30 – I leave for UPS so I can return the ivy that I purchased, only to discover that they closed at 2:00! They’re also closed on Sundays, so I won’t be able to return the product until Monday, which means I’m not getting my $230 refund anytime soon. 

My next stop is Walmart to grab pumpkins for L. and I to carve on Halloween [this is a yearly tradition] and candy, but when I arrive I find that Walmart is OUT of pumpkins – they’re all gone! Most of the candy is gone, too, although I’m able to purchase a few bags for tomorrow. I text L. and let her know I was unable to purchase pumpkins which I feel terrible about. Poor planning on my part. Since I’m at Walmart I purchase a few staples: eggs, almond milk, jam, pepper jack cheese, zucchini, spinach, ground turkey, and champagne (Yes, champagne is a staple [insert happy face emoji here] ) 

5:30-6:00 – Return home and; 

6:00-6:30 – I put the groceries away. L. texts me that she was able to purchase pumpkins at Trader Joes!  Yay!  Crisis averted. 

6:45-7:15 – Drive to B.’s house. 

7:15-9:30 – Cocktail hour! and we start with salad, followed by: 

9:30-12:30 – salmon and a baked potato.  B. and I talk politics, then; 

12:30-1:00 – Nighttime routine. Bed.