Summer of Endings

     My parents are moving out of the house they have called home for over forty years. They feel forced out by a changing and unsafe neighborhood. I want them to go but at the same time I am sorry to say good-bye to the house where so many of my life’s important events happened. We moved there the summer before I started junior high or seventh grade. I was a tall skinny girl with stingy blond hair and acne. When we moved back to the US from Guam I had struggled to find friends and fit in at my old school across town. A year later my dad came home from his tour in Vietnam we moved to this house where they’ve stayed after about fourteen years of moving once a year. The house has always been too small for a family of five, but it was built in the early sixties when you got a real backyard with your house. I’ve spent many hours in deep thought sitting in the porch swing on that patio. The old growth plants and single-story neighbors kept the yard private and oasis like. From high school drama all the way through my fight with breast cancer that backyard has given me solace that I haven’t found anywhere else. The new yard is tiny and has huge two-story houses looking down into it.

     I spent my last night in my old room on the 23rd and the next day helped them get ready for movers. I wasn’t there when the movers came, but that day I had dinner with my friend Heather who was packing up and heading home after finishing grad school. Heather invited me to her apartment in the Berkeley Hills to drink wine, eat some food and watch the sun set. Her apartment was high enough that we looked down on the fog bank that coated San Francisco Bay leaving only the tips of high rises poking through. We could see the sun set to pale oranges and purples. And then I said good-bye to Heather the person that has been my closest friend from school.

    The next morning, Thursday, I woke up in a paralyzing depression. Almost unable to get out of bed I was wondering if I was okay. And as I lay there I realized that it wasn’t one event like a death or tragedy, but the culmination of so many endings and so many employment rejections that had weighed me down into feeling very tiny and small and almost unwilling to continue the fight. The only bright light in the past eight months is graduating from graduate school. Losing my job on January 12th put me into this spiral that doesn’t appear to have an ending. I lost a good friend from work about six weeks later. He had lived a good full life until his heart gave out. He always had my back and gave me emotional support during very tough times, calling to see how I was feeling when I was sick. When I finished the first draft of my thesis I missed him the most because I had been counting on him to read it and fix my punctuation. I know he’s sorry he didn’t get a chance to read it. He would have been so proud of me for finishing school.

     So with no job to go to, no school, no close friend nearby, no familiar family home, I feel as though I’ve had too many endings this summer and really need a beginning or a new opportunity show up soon. I deserve something good to happen, it’s about time.

Day Five Without Healthcare

      I was happy to see fellow breast cancer survivor Elizabeth Edwards on Larry king tonight. Finally someone smart and calm is speaking out against the Rabid Republicans. She was saying all the right things hopefully people were listening. It’s too bad that it would be too difficult for her to go out on the info trail opposing the bad propaganda mongers like Tommy Thompson who she was opposite on Larry King. Tommy Thompson believes that healthcare reform and the democrats will destroy the current insurance system. Elizabeth mentioned Fed Ex and UPS who have not destroyed US mail. He ignored that and said something else stupid. His wife and daughter are both breast cancer survivors and yet he thinks that we need to concentrate on preventative medicine not destroying the current system. Please Tommy tell me what I need to do to prevent a cancer recurrence that doesn’t include having healthcare. Obviously his wife and daughter are not worried about having insurance now or in the future.

     Two days ago the media was saying that the President was willing to back off on the public option since that was what was riling up the Rabid Republicans. I have been hoping that in the future I would have that option since I have a pre-existing condition. I immediately sent an email to President Obama asking that the public option be something that he fights for. It is the most important part of reform to me any one who can be denied coverage. I told him that I had worked my whole life and now at fifty-one have no job and no healthcare. The next day the president’s office said that reports that they were backing off on the public option were wrong. Coincidence? I think not.

     Astra Zeneca has a program to provide its prescription medication to the uninsured or low income for a year. Two weeks ago I tried to get a brand new prescription for Arimidex to mail into the program. It is an estrogen inhibitor that I must take for a minimum of five years since my tumor was estrogen positive. I couldn’t get anyone at the Tang Center at UC Berkeley to write a new prescription for me. One of the two women I had seen previously retired and the other was off for the summer so I saw Dr. Batten. He has no bedside manner and was so hurried when he walked in the room that the first thing I said to him was, “Are you in a hurry?” He is very young, around thirty and looked like he had just finished med school. He acted like I was wasting his time. He refused to write a new prescription since I would not be in his care after the fifteenth. Later I found out he is the doctor for the CAL football team and specialized in sports medicine. That explains a lot. There was a huge difference between him, who has possibly never lost a patient and all of the other doctors I’ve had in the past four years. 

     The very nice pharmacist at Tang Center Keith Dong gave me three months of Arimidex for one co-pay. Thank You.   Onward!

Only Have a Party If You Want To

I apologize to my readers (and there are few) for not posting sooner. The past week has been full of disses and disappointments and one win.

            I work for a temp agency for servers, chefs, and whatever you might need to put on a private party, large or small. Most of the clients are small to medium catering companies who need to supplement their own on call staff for big events. The jobs that everybody wants are house parties. Which translates into working directly for the party giver, i.e. there’s a tip most of the time.

            Usually people are grateful to have professionals come in and take care of everything so they can have a good time at their party. They treat us like guests, introduce themselves and help out when needed. And then there’s BW, of BEBE woman’s clothing company. I can’t lose my little barely-above-minimum wage job so you’ll have to figure out her name if you care. She’s mid-fifties and doesn’t seem to have family since there were no photos in the house. She has a house on the water, without a view, in Mill Valley. It’s nice but I’ve been in bigger and much nicer homes. The house and décor are minimal and modern with no personality, just like its owner. BW greeted us in curlers, a long dressing gown in blue paisley polyester, and thick pink flip flops. She seemed nice and told us exactly what she wanted, she had detailed everything even to the time frame what to do and when serve the food and printed it all out. She went to get ready. She took the curlers out of her hair showing a need for some sort of color and changed into big chunky wedgie shoes, leaving on the outfit which was a maxi dress.

            We set-up and were ready to go at 4pm when the guests were supposed to arrive for this wedding reception for a couple that had been married for six months already. The couple was there, another couple arrived at four, and a friend of the bride. That was it at five when, just as another couple was arriving; the first couple passed them in the entry saying they had to go. As time went by it looking like the 50 to 70 people might be 30. BW got more stressed and unhappy. From then on BW was pretty pissy and could hardly wait to get the party over with. I think we all felt that way. I could hear people talking as I waited by the front to greet the people who weren’t coming. The groom was an artist who had painted several of the pieces in the house. He was a small stocky South American man, the bride was a much taller late fifties woman happy to be on her second or third marriage. These two did not match at all. The guests were all friends and family of theirs, mostly hers, not BW who was throwing the reception. Finally right before we were to serve the main course(s) two large groups of the brides family arrived. Three hours late. When BW filled out the post event email for the company I work for she took out her frustration by being hypercritical of us. Thanks BW, we don’t want to come back either.

            On a different note, I had a phone interview for a full time job today and the lady said I didn’t have enough experience in formal dining. They are looking for someone with five plus years. That seems to be the new magic number in hiring. Because they can, employers are requiring way more experience than necessary for the positions they have. Is there really a huge difference between two and five years of serving? My college years of serving didn’t count since it was to long ago. This afternoon I had an interview with a woman who owns a small catering company to work directly for her. The interview lasted less than ten minutes and I left with the assurance she will call me soon for a job. She and the chef were both really nice and came well referred. Yea!!

Another Day Cutting Red Tape

     Patelco update: It took seven days for my check to be deposited into my account for good. And here’s the ironic thing, I still haven’t signed it. My bank didn’t care. The branch manager of Patelco told me that the risk with government checks is that they have seven years to come back on unendorsed checks. I asked if he ever heard of that happening and he said no. Basically if someone other than Lynellen had been working that day my check would have gone through. I had to go visit the branch on Tuesday to get an answer about where my check physically was. It was mailed US mail on Tuesday to my banks offices. So on Wednesday Branch Manager Bryson called to let me know it was in my account and all fees reversed. Except for the fee that Patelco charged me for reversing the deposit and creating hell for a week.  Banks are totally online and transfers are instantaneous, and they want you to do as much as possible online to save money on labor. But when something goes wrong and they need to notify you they mail you a letter. The same day I got the money back into my account I finally got the letter from my bank letting me know that the check deposit had been reversed by Patelco. Why aren’t businesses using our emails, which they all have to send us plenty of advertising, to tell us important information like our account is negative?

            Besides the banking bureaucracy I’ve been dealing with getting a prescription for prevention of recurrence of breast cancer. Astra Zeneca has a program to give low income patients free medication for a year. I just need a new prescription to mail in with the forms. But I can’t get one out of the UC Berkeley med center. I have one they wrote that I can refill but suddenly since the death of Michael Jackson doctors are afraid of being seen as improper. There is no Oncologist on staff so now they won’t write a prescription for anything to do with cancer or prevention. I lose my healthcare on August 14^th and for the first time in my life I will have no healthcare. In the back of my mind I’m afraid of my future health. I felt so safe and secure during treatment because I knew I had great healthcare with great doctors and surviving was not about the care but about something outside of their control. What I’m going through now is more frightening than breast cancer. There is no rutted path of what to do for the best results in this economy with 11% percent unemployment. I just hope that all of the decisions I make in the coming months are the right ones. I can’t bear another July.

Not All Mistakes Can Be Fixed

     Today I was thinking about mistakes. The kind we all make, but can be so different and have such a different effect on our lives. There are those mistakes where we forget to turn off a light or the TV and come home eight hours later and think; damn I wasted so much money on electricity. Or, mistakes like to forget to call or email someone and look rude or mean. And sometimes when we are tired or distracted and we make a mistake that can be permanent. In July I made several mistakes it was like when you have a boss that doesn’t like you and watches and waits, and you’re so nervous trying to be so perfect that all you do is screw up. That was my July 2009.

     The biggest mistake I made was one thousands make every day. But I made it at the wrong place at the wrong time because the wrong lady caught it.  I got my unemployment check on Thursday July 30^th and decided it needed to go right in because I had written the check for my HOA(home owners association) fees against it and mailed it a few days before. You know the old float the check trick. So at about ten or eleven at night I drove to Patelco the co-op credit union in town associated with my credit union and deposited the check. I put it in an envelope sent it in and drove home. It wasn’t until Saturday morning that I checked online to see if the HOA check had cleared when I found out that I had a negative four hundred dollars in my checking. About a hundred of that were in returned check fees. Scrolling through in a panic trying to understand where my money went I discovered that the credit union where I made the deposit had at one pm on the thirtieth taken my money back out of my account when they discovered that the check was unendorsed on the back. I had to leave for a job were I work barely above minimum wage to make ends meet and couldn’t go to the bank and straighten it out. But I assumed the check would be at the bank on Monday and I could sign it and deposit it.

     When I went in on Monday I happened to walk up to and explain the situation to the person who takes care of ATM deposits for Patelco. She wasn’t very helpful since I was interrupting her from the current stack of checks she was going through. She was further frustrated because it was now August third and that had happened last month so she had to go find that binder. When she found the record of my check all she had was a photo copy. Which I looked at in horror thinking she may have destroyed the original. But she had copied it and sent it to their accounting department in the home office.

     She told me that since I wasn’t a member of that bank they didn’t know who I was so she had to send it in. Really? Even though I inserted my card and put in my pin number and you knew what bank and account the money went to and you found it to take it back out you didn’t know who I was??? She also gave me a lecture on signing my check since it was a government check. I never said I didn’t make a mistake I just wanted my check back so I could sign it.

      So when she finished her speech I said “Please tell me what I need to do to get this check back.” And she didn’t know, she told me that I needed to contact my bank. So I left and drove to my bank in the next town over and met Branch Manager Bryson. Young enough to be my son but a branch manger. He did everything he could while I was there and he could not crack the ridiculous bureaucracy of Patelco. What was he supposed to do? Patelco had the check somewhere in the bowels of their corporate office in San Francisco. I would have driven there to get it, but even Bryson couldn’t get any help. After two calls and being on hold he was connected to the person that was supposed to help but got a voice mail reporting they were at lunch.

     While we waited on hold. I had time to ask Bryson questions about the banking processes. Surely I’m not the only person to deposit an unsigned check. Doesn’t it happen if not daily, weekly? Well yes it does, and the banks don’t worry about it and just put them through. Nobody spends time checking and returning and putting people through this. So that was why nobody seemed to know how to fix it. Miss Lynellen at Patelco had decided not to make good on my check and send it off with the attitude that it wasn’t her problem, it was just a piece of paper to her. And I was just some number that didn’t belong to her bank. As of this writing this has not been fixed. My guess is Patelco never got back to Bryson because honestly they don’t care about getting my money back to me.

     Since it was a State of California check I can’t just call and say can you stop payment on the one that Patelco won’t give back and write another one. I’m lucky that through all of the State mess I even got checks. So here I am, Bryson has reversed all of my NSF charges and I’m only $200. in the negative. It’s only Monday.