My delight in being free from all the obligations of Hosting Christmas has been tempered by being somewhat cooped up. First of all, it’s frickin’ cold out there, and second, it’s been obvious that going out and doing things, surrounded by people, is a bad idea right now with flu everywhere. (my brother is recovering from it, many friends have had it)
Also, as I was saying to Mike, an owner of my favorite corner restaurant, last night, I realized that I’ve actually worked my way through all the Christmas leftovers, except for a big container of potatoes au gratin and a lot of cheese and crackers. Not sure what dinner’s going to be tonight, except there will be potatoes. Probably chickie nuggies. And a vegetable soup.
But I’m enjoying my beautiful apartment with all the Xmas decorations and getting stuff done. For instance, one of the two Medeco locks on my door had been sort of falling off for quite a while now, basically because the screw holes were now too big for the screws. My hope was that I could get thicker screws of the same length – and I finally did, although the process of identifying them and ordering them took way more steps than I though. I wasn’t sure what size I needed, so I’d ordered two. When packages started showing up again after the holidays, I got the first batch of screws – and they were too thick to fit through the holes in the lock housing. Damn! If the second batch had had the same problem, I would have been up a creek. But they arrived yesterday and they worked beautifully and the lock is now securely in place and a nagging annoyance that had been bugging me for months, nay, years, was finally addressed.
I also finally got a replacement set of doorknobs/shaft for the door between the butler’s pantry (I’m fancy) and the back hallway, a door that is almost never shut so it wasn’t at all a priority to fix that – except while Dad was here, I tried to close the door partway to block noise from the kitchen while he was still asleep and ended up shutting it completely. Oops. Needed a screwdriver to open it up, but that took just a minute. Anyway, new doorknobs and I’ll put them in this morning.
I’ve also been dealing with this toilet seat issue in the maid’s room (I’m fancy) powder room. I’d removed the old toilet seat completely except for ONE BOLT that is trapped in there by a cruddy old plastic nut, and it’s so poorly positioned (far corner, no room, right by a hot water pipe to burn you while you try) that I haven’t been able to remove it. But the other order from Home Depot besides the doorknobs was a small bolt-cutter type thing and the second project for this morning is to see if I can either snip the bolt completely or use it to chip off the nut. So simple, yet such a pain. And then finally put on the new toilet seat.
Then… yesterday I brought up the Xmas boxes, even though it’s not time to take down Christmas yet, so I could then (today) take advantage of the relative emptiness of the storage closet to go in there and reorganize, dust, throw stuff out. There are boxes in there without lids, and it gets dusty enough in there that that’s a bad idea. Anyway, I’d say an hour of inventory, evaluation, dusting and maybe ordering some plastic tubs or something will help that out. And the Xmas boxes can go back in next weekend or whatever.
After all that, I’ll get cleaned up and then finally pay a New Year’s visit to the cemetery.
This week is a little up in the air… I’m on standby jury duty, and have already determined that I don’t need to come in on Monday, but do need to keep checking until they either call me in or tell me I’m done. Luckily, I work for a legal services organization, so they won’t give me grief about jury duty. And I won’t mind if I end up serving, that’s cool, but it will screw some other stuff up. (Including trying to avoid rooms of contagious people)
Oh, yes, so what’s happened since Dad left? I’d bought a ticket to A Christmas Carol down at the PAC center, immediately north of the old World Trade Center site. So Tuesday I went into the office (was basically alone there, which was fine), then headed down there. Pity it was so cold, I’m rarely in that neighborhood and would have loved to spend time at the WTC memorial pools and generally walking around. I did a bit of that.
The PAC center, which is pretty new, is a performing arts space and probably other things too. I’d been down there last year (well, two years ago now) to see Cats: the Jellicle Ball so I knew the drill. It really is not user-friendly. I’m sure there’s a mobility-challenged way to get in, but you are expected to climb quite a flight of stairs just to get into the building. And then you wait in the lobby for the house to be opened – more stairs to climb, or take the elevator. It’s quite a bizarre warren. I killed time by having a cosmo at the bar, and ended up chatting with each of the two single ladies on either side of me. All very convivial.
Finally allowed to go up and in. I’d gotten a nice single seat. The stage layout was a large cross in-the-round, and I was right by the entrance on the west spur of the cross, just a bit up from the floor. This production was a revival of the Matthew Warcus production that was on Broadway back in 2019. I had forgotten that had been a thing – C and I are/were huge Christmas Carol fans, so how did we miss it? Oh, yes, 2019 was the year of the helljob (and I got laid off Dec. 17th, which meant the first few weeks of the holiday season were just the worst in that job) and also my mother dying, so yeah, it just didn’t cross our radar. This production starred Michael Cerveris (fun fact: my dear friend Susanna did a joint recital with MC when they were both at Yale – she has the poster up in her music studio), and he’d been posting online about missing a lot of shows due to voice strain, but he was back in for this performance.
A beautiful production, with a bazillion Dickensian lanterns hung overhead. Not much set of course, because it was in-the-round, but costumes were great and there was lots and lots of music – traditional carols, instruments and even handbells! (also snow) They took a lot of liberties with the script, which is fine if it works – for instance, the Ghost of Christmas Present was not the big burly bear I longed for expected, but a lady wearing dark glasses, implying she was blind. And the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come was Scrooge’s sister Fan, which I thought was a nice touch.
They skipped enough material in Act I (up through Christmas Present) that I was annoyed, and it wasn’t doing a lot for me, but the performances were good. But Act 2 worked so well (also some changes in the script, like Scrooge visiting Belle after his transformation) that I was in tears. Tiny Tim wasn’t drippy, but delightful. (The young actor seemed to be genuinely differently-abled.) Overall, the acting was excellent – Cerveris is always excellent and was here. Nancy Opel was a tart overly-enunciated Edith Evans type of Christmas Past, which was delightful. Most of the others were working actors without a lot of name recognition. But it was really great. The audience interaction was great – before the show, they handed out cookies and clementines (I took a cookie. What were the people supposed to do with the rinds for the clementines?). And the bit where they swooped banquet food and goodies from the balcony to the stage in large cloth chutes was delightful, including a ziplined turkey.
So yeah, eventually it did for me what any stage production of CC should do. I love the story so much and they served it up in a thoughtful delightful way. I was thinking back – what other CCs have I seen on stage? The Mencken one at Madison Square Garden (we saw Tony Randall!) and the G&S one at Amore, with my buddy Martin as Scrooge. I’d really like to be in one at some point, should manifest that.
So since then, I’ve been basically getting caught up on TV and stuff. I finally watched The Holly and the Ivy, a very-recommended Christmas movie which I’ve had on DVD for a while. I liked it, although it’s melancholy – don’t see myself watching it regularly though. I did blow through the rest of The Diplomat, which is effing amazing. I’ve decided to give up on Poker Face. Such great guest stars, but the character of Charlie is so annoying I don’t want to watch her adventures any more. And Drag Race and Shetland is back, and The Pitt is coming back, and we have Olympics and figure skating coming up. Plenty of content.
Oo, you know what I’m doing in the middle of the month? I’d figured out a while ago that my year’s going to get busy starting in February, and I do have a Monday off in the middle of January, so let’s go do something. I was thinking about a cruise, but then realized it would be expensive and wouldn’t actually bring me forward. But a bit of googling later, I’ve doing a writing retreat! I’m so excited! A getaway to a lovely winter spot where I will have nothing to do but write. (And hike. And eat.) It’s at Boyds Mills in the Poconos. Silly me though it might be at most two hours away by car, it’s more like three and a half, but that’s fine. I’ll be there Friday through Monday over the long weekend. I love that I’m moving forward with an area of my life I have long wanted to explore, but have never created time for before. Let’s see where this brings us!
coming up (soon, I guess): 2025 wrapup and reviews
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