Tags
Andrea James, blog, Caitlyn Jenner, Calpernia Addams, Caroline Cossey, Class of '74, Cornell, Dana Beyer, Deirdre McCloskey, Diane Sawyer, Donna Rose, Jennifer Leitham, Joy Ladin, Kate Bornstein, Kristin Beck, Meggan Sommerville, Monika Kowalska, New York Times, Polish, The Heroines of My Life, Trans woman, trans women, Transgender, Tula, women's fashions
I am still in the process of following up after my most difficult tax season ever. Normally I have 10-12 tax returns on extension after the April due date. This year I had 26. I also have more tax clients outside of the United States than ever before, and their due date is June 15. And there is much follow up work on top of that with clients whose returns were prepared at the very end of tax season. I also had more of those this year. In a normal year, I am able to work diligently enough so that I make my crunch time a few days before the due date. On the due date, I am usually left with one or two returns to complete, and that only because I am waiting for one item from each client. This year, there were 18 returns that I didn’t even start until the morning of the due date. I filed my last extensions 40 minutes before the deadline.
In addition to my professional duties, I have had some dental issues to deal with as well as health insurance issues. That has taken a significant portion of my time. And then there are activities with support groups (I am on the board of one of them), my church and with friends. There are a few people who lean on me in some way and/or look to me for some sort of mentoring. And once tax season has passed, people who have been waiting for weeks to contact me do just that.
And living alone, I have to cook (and eat), shop, do laundry, deal with personal hygiene, pay bills … and if I get a rare spare moment, clean. (Too often that falls by the wayside.) And I need a break once in a while. So Lois has been a busy girl. And my blog posting continues to suffer. I do have a four-part series that is almost ready to post. And I have started working on another idea.
There was one additional activity in recent weeks that I deliberately did not mention until now. I had the delight of meeting and being interviewed online by questionnaire.
Monika Kowalska
Monika Kowalska is a Polish trans woman who has an English language blog site with over 2 million page views. On her site called “The Heroines of My Life” she has interviewed over 400 trans women. Last month, she chose to interview me after reading the mini-bio I submitted to the NY Times shortly after the initial Sawyer-Jenner interview in 2015.
Among those who Monika has interviewed: Kate Bornstein, Caroline Cossey (aka Tula), Deirdre McCloskey, Kristin Beck, Donna Rose, Joy Ladin, Andrea James, Jennifer Leitham, Meggan Sommerville, Calpernia Addams, and Dana Beyer.
For those who are interested in my interview in general and the site in particular, here is the link to my interview. The archives of the other interviews are to the right.
http://theheroines.blogspot.com/2017/06/interview-with-lois-simmons.html
At my Cornell 40th reunion
I am also adding this URL to my links page.
I hope you will enjoy the interview. It will give you a capsule of my views on a variety of topics, even some on fashion! And I give a mini-bio of my life from A to Z: my interests, my career, my schooling and so on. Monika asked me great, open-ended questions and didn’t put the editor’s knife to my answers. (As long as some of the answers appear now, I switched from writer’s hat to editor’s hat and did some of the heavy lifting in that area for her.)
And while you are there, I hope you sample some of the other interviews, and maybe even make a comment or two while you are there.
… I do the more cheerfully answer for myself: – Acts 24:10 (portion)
God bless,
Lois
