Post 294 - December 30, 2020

Day 294…

Something that is happening on a construction site near us makes a sound similar to the one the cat makes when he’s barfing up a hairball.

That’s what I woke up to this morning.

Michael, enslaved to his sour dough starter, was asleep on the couch when I woke up and the cat was with him, so, happily, there was no slimy surprise to be found. I dimly remember Michael’s alarm going off while it was still dark outside, but I went right back to sleep.

The leven was ready - it seems to rise faster in the dry warm environment inside the apartment - and could not wait. Once Michael had done whatever the next step in the bread-making process was, he conked out again on the sofa.

Michael started baking bread in January - before the pandemic hit. A friend of his, who is, among other things, a remarkable chef, was teaching a group in her kitchen and somebody had dropped out, so she invited him to join.

He has gotten very good at it.

One of the benefits of this strange extended period of time at home, has been that he has been able to keep working at it. These days, the finished loaves mostly get sent out to friends and family because eating them all was definitely starting to have an effect on our waistlines. We do keep the occasional one, but we slice it up and freeze it so that we don’t eat it all in one sitting.

(To be perfectly clear, otherwise he’ll kill me and then leave me, Michael is NOT taking orders!)

For me, having this year to write every day has been a blessing that I never would have imagined happening. There have been a few days that have been tricky in terms of coordinating the time, but for the most part, it has become such a regular part of my day that I don’t consciously notice it anymore.

I am rarely aware of the hours passing when I’m writing. Once I start, I just kind of check out of the day and go.

Soul, the truly wonderful new film from Pixar, is all about how the spark of inspiration ignites who we are. It is the perfect film for all of us, these days, who might feel that we are being kept away from what we usually do to express ourselves.

That these days, Michael gets into his zone of creativity kneading bread and I do it sitting on the couch with my computer and a variety of news stations on, in front of me, I think has surprised us both. Neither of us planned on doing what we are doing, but this is what we’ve fallen into.

Both of us are also doing other things. I don’t want to suggest that Michael spends all of his days pummeling dough in the kitchen any more than I spend all of mine typing, but both of us seem to have found something that we enjoy doing. Both of us also seem willing to keep at it, too - both when it’s working and, maybe more importantly, when it isn’t.

I don’t know what Michael’s ultimate goal with his baking is. I don’t know that he’s even thought about it. We are both somewhat obsessed with the Great British Baking Show, but it hasn’t made Michael branch out into wanting to bake other things - yet.

He cooks for us both almost every day. I think that I am a somewhat annoying person for him to cook for because the things that I like to eat fall into a fairly narrow column. That said, over these past months, Michael has rarely made anything that wasn’t fantastic. I tend to be fine with eating much the same thing over and over again, but Michael isn’t, so he’s rarely repeated anything within a week.

When he’s in the kitchen, whatever is going on for him during the rest of the day seems to fall aside and he moves into a calm and focused zone. This year, given that we basically eat only two meals a day these days, he’s made well over 500 individual meals. Occasionally, one of us will be out or busy and then we fend for ourselves. Usually, though, we are sitting together at the table - the first meal falling sometime after noon and the second one somewhere after seven.

I do the washing up.

The more contagious UK mutation of the coronavirus has, indeed, showed up here in the US in Colorado. The victim, who is in his 20’s, hadn’t traveled anywhere which means that he got it from someone else in Colorado who had.

Given the timing of this - around all of the ill-advised increase in traveling around the Christmas holidays - if it’s there, it seems inevitable that we are going to start seeing it crop up everywhere. Our surveillance system for being able to detect different strains is woefully undeveloped compared to other countries so it is likely already made some solid inroads into multiple areas all over the continent.

The United States has now reached 19.5 million cases of the virus. That’s the entire population of Chile or Romania.

There are 82 million cases of it worldwide. We have seen 338,742 deaths.

That’s almost the entire population of Honolulu - wiped out.

California’s healthcare system is so overtaxed that it seems certain that they will need to start rationing service. They are going to have to move into critical crisis mode and hospitals are going to need to start pooling their resources. Patients, who desperately need care, are going to be turned away.

Twelve days ago, on December 18, Congressman-elect Luke Letlow, a Republican from Louisiana announced on his Facebook page that he had been diagnosed with COVID-19 but that he was home resting and following the CDC protocols. Yesterday, in an ICU bed, he died.

He was 41. He leaves behind a wife and two children.

He was a member of a political party that considers the virus a hoax. I am sure that his family will be comforted by the Governor of Louisiana’s announcement that flags throughout the state will be flown at half-mast on the day of his funeral. He is the highest-ranking political figure who has lost their life. So far.

Meanwhile, the squabbling among what would have been his future colleagues in Washington continues.

The Senate Majority Leader has dug in his heels and is trying to add provisions to the extra stimulus bill that will make it unpalatable to Democrats. Senator Sanders has dug in his heels and is stalling the much-needed vote to override the veto of the Defense Spending bill to try and force the other bill to the floor.

So, we wait. The President golfs and the rest of us do whatever it is that we do.

Given that the current surge is still climbing with no end in sight, the new, more-virulent strain seems to be spreading and the release of the vaccine is stalling due to the appalling lack of coordination, it is harder than ever to say when we might see our lives begin to start turning back to normal.

Michael and I are not just sitting around waiting for that to happen. We are living our lives as they are now.

When theatre starts up again, whenever that might be, we will happily be a part of it. But, until that happens, we are going to continue doing what we are doing now. For us, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

I learned while traveling like a lunatic that if I downloaded enough entertainment onto my iPad and brought my own food with me that I’d be happy.

There are always delays in air travel - it’s inevitable. Taking on all the responsibility for making myself comfortable meant that I never needed to stress when I got stuck somewhere. I always had something to eat that I liked, and I always had something to watch or do that I liked.Hunger and boredom are what can make travel unbearable. Making myself responsible for ensuring that neither of those happen took all of the anxiety out of it. I could leave the house and despite almost anything that cropped up, I’d be fine.

At the rate we are going, it truly may be another year before we can really start to make theatre again. Until that happens, Michael is going to cook and bake and concentrate on the TV and film portion of his acting career. When he gets an audition or an actual gig and has to memorize lines, working the bread dough turns out to be the perfect activity to help him do that.

As for me, my general plan is to keep writing these daily posts until mid-March when I will have done it for a full year. Day 365 will be my last regular one. I am sure I will have things to say after that, and I will, but I won’t be posting them regularly. Instead, I am going to work on some other ideas.

The photos will continue but the writing will be channeled into new projects. I will likely start with trying to tell my Father’s story.

I thought about other points where I might end the daily postings - the conclusion of 2020, the inauguration, but none of those seemed right. A full year seems complete.

Rather than planning on going back to work in theatre in March, then having it pushed off until May, then to August and then to next winter, I am just going to assume that we have another year ahead of us without it and behave accordingly.  If things do open up sooner, then it will be a pleasant surprise. If not, that’s fine too.

In two days, we will be living in a new year. In less than three weeks we will have a new President. As exciting as both of those things are, neither of them are going to change anything about how we are living now. At least not right away. We may someday be able to look back and say that’s when things started to improve, but it is going to take a long time before we really start to experience those improvements in our lives.

In the meantime, we are on our own.

We are all more than capable of taking pretty good care of ourselves. We’ve already been doing it. We just have to keep doing it.

We’ve got this.