Episode 52 (11-06-15)
Miranda visited daily to get her Chinese reflexology treatments. Daisy put Miranda on a strict vegan diet; and told her to avoid any foods with industrial chemicals. Within a month Miranda lost 20 pounds, and the numbness in her feet diminished by 50%.
Episode 51 (11-05-15)
A few months after their marriage at Stanford Memorial Church, Christi and JJ navigated into the waters of marital discord. On the horizon was a conflict over whether or not to have children.
“I’ve changed my mind,” Christi said. “I do not want to have children.”
“Why not?” asked JJ, disappointed.
“I just don’t want to spend my life picking up after other people,” Christi said. Having grown up in an alcoholic home, Christi felt she already had raised children—that is, her two alcoholic parents.
Episode 50 (11-04-15)
With the shortage of housing in Palo Alto, and the high cost of hotel rooms, Miranda’s friend Peach told her she could get a $1,000 a day for her place, as an Air Bnb, renting it out to families who came to town for graduation ceremonies at Stanford, or weddings, or other events.
Peach had turned her own Palo Alto family home into four small AirBnb units, and was now grossing more than $10,000 a month.
Episode 49 (11-03-15)
At 26 years of age, Jeremy was still living with his mother in Palo Alto.
“Jeremy,” she said to him one morning over bran flakes, “I want you to get a job.”
“I have a job,” said Jeremy. “I work at the Aquarius Theater. That means I have a job in ‘The Industry.’ Do you know how hard it is to get a job in The Industry when you live in Palo Alto?”
“Jeremy,” said his mother, “You sell popcorn. That’s not a career.”
Episode 48 (11-02-15)
Did Miranda have enough money to retire, or not?
She’d read recently of a 91-year old woman who was still working. Miranda knew that the happiest people were those who loved their work and who kept working.
When people retired, she had observed, they often declined rapidly–mentally, physically and emotionally. Like her father, who fell into an alcoholic depression.
Episode 47 (10-31-15)
[Jeremy’s movie] was shot in black and white. And much of it was set in various homeless encampments around Palo Alto. There was an encampment in the hills, and another along San Francisquito Creek.
The film’s characters were a rough group of survivors. Old school homeless, like Eddie, were joined by younger characters who were former employees of Silicon Valley’s big tech companies, and other startups; who had been thrown out on their ears when they reached age forty; and found themselves living in a futuristic economy with no support system.
Episode 46 (10-30-15)
As Miranda walked down Emerson Street towards Whole Foods (or as Jeremy liked to call it, “Whole Paycheck”), she saw a woman sitting in a car holding an ice balloon to her face.
“She must have been at Skin Spirit,” thought Miranda. “I could use some Botox myself. Or maybe just some perlane for my lips.”
Episode 45 (10-29-15)
Christi was in tears over her Stanford Church wedding plans. She and her fiancé JJ had just had their first fight.
The fight was over whether she, as the principal wedding organizer, would permit her fiancé to have 14 groomsmen.
Episode 44 (10-28-15)
When Christi and JJ finally made the decision to have their wedding at Stanford Church, Christi went into wedding planning overdrive and seemed to love it.
At her suggestion, the two decided to have their reception at Stanford’s Faculty Club, since it was next door to Kingscote Gardens, a campus residence where JJ had lived as a Stanford student.
Episode 43 (10-27-15)
With the approach of Christi and JJ’s wedding, Miranda began to reflect on the fact that she’d never gotten married.
Miranda had been part of the first wave of widespread American feminism that came out of the sixties. She was smart; she liked to work; and she liked to be independent.
She had never thought of herself as someone who would not get married; and not have children; rather she thought of herself as someone who would do those things.
But her life did not unfold that way. The man she fell in love with, Guy, and lived with for five years; told her one night that he was gay, and that their relationship had to change.