Day 6 - LA County moves into yellow tier

The Charcuterie Box - another Mother’s Day/Birthday gift from L. !!!

5/8/21. Saturday.

8:00 – 9:00 - Today’s Mothers Day/birthday gift is a dozen yellow roses, with irises thrown in for good measure!  L. wakes me up with the flowers, before she leaves for work, and I absolutely love them!  L.’s been up since 6:00 this morning, running around, buying flowers for my Mom and I, trying to pick up a charcuterie box for me.  There was a snafu and the stupid lady said she made a mistake when she told L. to pick up the charcuterie box at 7:00 a.m. L. says the charcuterie box is on the way – it’s scheduled to be delivered around 12:00.

-Downstairs to put the roses in water straightaway.  I say good morning to the dog, quickly rub her tummy, and outside we go. She runs around the yard but doesn’t go potty – it’s irritating.  I take the flowers outside so I can cut the stems on the diagonal, treat the water with the “vitamin powder”, and arrange.  Beautiful!   So now I have TWO vases of flowers on the counter – B.’s flowers are holding up surprisingly well.

-The fountain is barely running so I unclog it. Pick up dog poop. I go inside and give the dog her treat: pieces of rigatoni pasta for her-coffee for me.  I go upstairs.

9:00-10:30 – I’m 101 today and I don’t like it. Shower. Lotion. Make-up. Covid-19 uniform. I listen to The Daily and What a Day.

10:30-11:00 – I check email at College No. 2 – it’s quiet.

11:30 – 4:30 - B. arrives for patio coffee.  He has Starbucks and a chocolate donut for me and same for him. He also has 6/7 terra cotta pots that his daughter, J., said I could have.  The pots are great!  He unloads them near my trashcans and then we take our coffee to the patio.

-B. and I talk politics.

-The charcuterie box arrives and we devour it, being careful to leave enough for L.  It is sooo good!

-L. makes a pit stop after work to have some of the charcuterie box, then leaves to visit my Mom and Dad and drop off a painting that she finished.

4:30-6:00 - B. leaves and I finish Devotion.

What can I say about this book?  White, suburban, upper-class soccer-mom/writer from Connecticut and an obvious recipient of whie privilege goes on a spiritual journey to get in touch with her Jewish roots. Perhaps the first step should be to stop dying her hair blond as the author, Dani Shapiro, keeps lamenting the fact that she looks like a “shikse”, and not like a proper Jewish woman who belongs at synagogue.  I’ve heard positive reviews of Dani’s work in the past, but the fact that she has the luxury to spend upwards of 6 hours a day, in solitude [while her 9-year-old son is at school] doing yoga, meditating, reading the Torah, and embarking on this spiritual journey and reconnection to Judaism is extremely irritating. This trope has been played out.

 However, my irritation may be more a product of the pandemic, as thousands of woman have been shoved out of the workforce only to return home so they could supervise their children’s Distance Education after the schools shut down.

This book was written in 2010 so it’s not Shapiro’s fault that I’m immediately put off by the luxury of endless hours of time at her disposal.  As she continued to explore her spirituality [for hours on end, every day], I kept thinking, “Who has time for this? I have to work for a living.”  I give this book a hard pass although the few passages of the book, detailing Dani’s relationship with her bat-shit mother [RIP], are quite good…but there are not enough of these passages in her memoir.

6:00 – 7:00 – I take the dog for a walk.

7:00-7:30 – My French Cinema  partner gives me the thumbs-up on our presentation, so I submit it to my teacher.

7:30-9:30 – Blog posts.

-L. returns from my Mom and Dad’s.  She said she had a great time!

9:30-10:00 – I have celery and almond butter in preparation for my Insanity workout. Surely celery won’t result in a weight gain? I read a Money Diary.

10:00-10:45 – L. takes a break from homework and we talk for awhile about her day and her visit with my parents.

11:00-12:00 – I do an Insanity-Pure Cardio workout.

12:00-1:00 – While I recover with a glass of champagne, I color my hair and listen to What a Day.

1:00 – 2:00 – Shower. Rinse hair. Lotion. Blow dry hair.

2:00-2:30 – Night time routine. Bed.