Here we are, some more. What is this, week 8 since shutdown? Something like that. I still go out once a day, and have a mild feeling of shame that I don’t wear a face covering until I go into a store. I could, I guess, but I know the point of the face covering is to protect when you can’t social-distance, and passing someone on the sidewalk, no matter how close you get, isn’t really a danger. But still… I have a mask, but go for bandanas mostly, because I have more of them and they don’t hurt my ears.
Speaking of hurting my ears, I have a confession to make. I admire very much the efforts to clap and hurrah and make a lot of noise at 7:00 each evening to show appreciation for our healthcare workers and others on the front line. (My friend Gary, ever the theater man, calls “Places” every night at about 6:58 on Facebook.) But I have some sort of revulsion to participating in that myself. Part of it is cacophony makes me wince, and part of it is that I dislike performative displays that probably have more value to the performer than the intended audience. (I don’t much believe in protests either.)
Maybe the cacophony is the problem. My horn repair guy, Josh Landress, has made the news because he plays taps from his balcony every night after the hooting and hollering. That makes sense to me. But, as in other covid-related things, I’ve come to realize that I can best contribute by staying out of the way.
Personal update: I’m healthy, C is healthy, my father and brother are healthy, we don’t have anyone in the family who’s sick (or was sick). I have friends who’ve gotten sick and recovered, and I’ve been blessed to not know anyone who’s passed away.
Of COVID, anyway… Sunday was Mother’s Day, of course, the first without my actual mom. My brother posted, “Even though Mom is gone, I’ll do what I always did for MD: honor her teachings by not buying stuff for a made-up capitalist holiday.”. I responded that C and I always sent her flowers and candy, but if we hadn’t, she wouldn’t have noticed. She genuinely really didn’t care about that kind of stuff.
Isn’t this sweet? Part of the spoils of the very slow scanning project of the photos I took from Dad when I came home at the end of January. C points out that Dad looks like Dennis the Menace’s dad here. Mom looks so sweet with her gaze off to the side, I look like a deflated beachball and they’ve dressed Sam as a girl for some reason.
I’d also meant to scan Mom’s poems from her college literary magazine, but I cannot find them. (They were with her yearbooks, I thought, and I have those.) A couple of possibilities – maybe I didn’t actually include those in the box that I mailed to myself, and Dad then threw them out (arrrgh)? Or I threw them out myself, by accident (arrgh)? Or, most likely, they got stuck in a stack of music or something and will be discovered at some point. If I get really antsy, I guess I could go to her college library and look them up and copy them. No one is clamoring for them, but I think it would be nice to enjoy them and share them as a memorial.
Job hunt continues. I actually have an interview for the mayor’s office this week. That would be kinda cool, working for the city government (I’d be a contractor). What’s notable about this is the staffing agency is pushing for me because I was recommended by one of my former co-workers, laid off at the same time, who lauded me to them. So, yeah, networking (which I hate, but I’ll take it).
I also noticed that my old company (the one that laid me off the first time) has a job open that’s right in my wheelhouse. I’m definitely going to apply for that – I was perfectly happy working for them until they laid me off. We’ll see.
Also still studying for the CBAP. Waiting for the CCA results. Oh, speaking of waiting, Amex, which is handling my car accident, said they are closing the claim (for the moment) because they need documents from Avis, have asked for them multiple times and have not gotten them. Avis has not been bugging me about reimbursement, so I’m assuming at some point the clog will be cleared and this process will continue. But of course there’s a vague fear that Avis will come after me for the full amount and Amex won’t cover it because Avis won’t give them what they need.
Again, all this waiting. Waiting to get a job, waiting for lockdown to be lifted, waiting to be able to go to the dentist again and get this toothache taken care of. We have it really good, I realize that, but the uncertainty is really a drag.
Media consumption: we watched Dangerous Lies and The Wilde Wedding this weekend. “Dangerous Lies” is dreadful, despite the presence of Elliot Gould, but it’s not unwatchable. “The Wilde Wedding” isn’t good, but it’s entertaining and has some great actors in it. (I had trouble remember who all the young people were in relationship to the elders and to each other.)
We finished Hollywood, which is tremendously entertaining. On their patrons-only TV podcast, my Linoleum Knife friends Dave and Alonso point out that it suffers from waffling between being true history and alternate history, and it’s disorienting. But it’s beautiful to watch, often hilarious and naughty (I’ll bet lots of people who only know Jim Parsons as Sheldon would be shocked off their gourd by his dialogue in this). The cast is fantastic. So, recommended.
Also, “Becoming”, the little Netflix documentary about Michelle Obama’s book tour. C and I both liked the book a lot, and she of course is just such a lovely woman. You can see her all the time working those public-relations skills she’s been forced to learn by the position she’s been in, and see all the time that she really would rather just not be out there doing that stuff. Boy, it would be fun to be at a cocktail party with the Obamas.
Bookwise, I started my reread of the Mage Winds trilogy. It’s really jarring how badly it’s written, compared to the Tarma/Kethry books. I don’t remember whether this trilogy gets better as it goes along, I suspect it does. Part of it is I couldn’t give a hoot about the Hawkbrothers and their Vales and ekeles and all that. I’d rather be back in Valdemar with court intrigue and magic horses. Feh.
Did I mention I’m reading Dear Rachel Maddow? It’s a YA novel, epistolary, and it’s delightful. Plus Mariah’s “Death of an American Beauty”, which is fantastic and (IMO) the best of the series so far.
Oh, I did get my piano tuned.
And here’s two more “performers need to perform, even when locked down” videos, one funny, one uplifting.
This post is part of a larger project, #MOC19. Read more about the Mass Observation COVID-19 project here. Also, we are trying to publicize this projects – if you have any ideas about good ways to do so, please let me know.
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