Chaos Attraction

Mother's Day Minus My Actual Mother

2020-05-10, 10:03 p.m.

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Sharing Day - 2020-05-15
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Trapped Under Something Heavy - 2020-05-13
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Cast list as of November 2019

We’re all relating to that Dreams sketch on SNL, right? I dreamed of Scott and Cameron walking around last night, so make of that what you will. Sigh.

Today’s Tempest was much fun.

Jessica (playing Ariel) made a bird mask for her moment of harpy. “I feel like a luchador.” and “This is what you get with a YouTube make a bird mask.” She also had a feast set up, with a sheep.

The guy playing Caliban (John?....seriously, I need to see people’s given names before they get replaced by the character names): “Ariel is proof of what happens when you stay indoors too long. Love you, Jess!"

The lady playing Stephano (Lindsay?) to her kid: “We’re not tickle tickle right now.”

"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."
“I like a good pun.”
“That was not one.” -Caliban and Claire.

Before the show started, we discussed the problems of finding a public domain show that is doable and not incredibly depressing. Or one where you can get the playwright’s permission, which has not gone well so far. I concur with Claire that “I am finding that I need a lot of fluffiness in my media consumption these days.” Some suggestions went to more cheerful Shakespeare. Claire’s mom is rewriting a show. “If you have a draft around somewhere...

Lysistrata was suggested:
“I’m not sure how that’s going to work...” -Claire
“Fair.” Caliban.
“There’s so much physical comedy with giant penises...”
“Who doesn’t have a giant penis on standby in their house?”
(Don’t recall who said that, but love all of it.)

"So Titus Andronicus doesn't qualify as uplifting?" -Boatswain
"No, Titus Andronicus does not count as uplifting." -Claire

“I love you all, let’s do some Tempest.”

During the show: Ariel played harmonica, and actual birds were going off at Alonso’s. This was less charming when a plane flew by later. Oh well.

Stephano and Caliban’s kid had some issues at one point. “It’s also an island with a whiny 4-year-old in the distance. He had to pick the scene that Daddy and I are in together to start whining for something.”
“Strange sounds are heard on this island.”

Stephano, Caliban and Trinculo are supposed to show up wet at some point. Trinculo did not because it would have messed up her beard makeup, but the other two did. “I love how we discussed not running our heads under the faucet and we did it anyway.”

Post-show commentary:

“Hey Stephano, there’s a whole lot of not killing Prospero going on around here. You know what would fix that? A whole lot of killing Prospero!” -Calban. (“Kill the wabbit” was later discussed.)

“I (missed this word) this assassination attempt and all I got was this stupid T-shirt.” -Caliban.
“Now I want that shirt.” -Claire, later offering to do a shirt.

From the chat:

From Me to Everyone: 12:36 PM
The biggest mystery of the play: WHERE IS ALL THIS ALCOHOL COMING FROM????
From Adrian to Everyone: 12:37 PM
sea turtles
From Stage Directions to Everyone: 12:38 PM
bats
From Stephano, a drunken Butler to Everyone: 12:38 PM
the unmentioned booze fairy


After the play was over, I did my every two weeks of actually leaving the house. Getting the mail. Taking out the trash and recycling. Driving the car for the requisite ten miles so it doesn't die. Taking it to the car wash since it's been a month and a half and it gets dirty doing nothing. It was hot-ish and yet it felt like the AC wasn't blaring at all, but obviously not gonna do anything about that one. I saw two cars with hearts in the license plate. I had forgotten that was a Sign Thing with me back in the day. Then "Bohemian Rhapsody" started playing in the car.

I will note that the people of my town are still not wearing masks whatsofuckingever--I only saw one on one person in a car. I don't care if "the law says it's fine" to go outside taking a stroll or running or biking without them, I don't think it's okay to just stroll around without one. Not a one of them looked prepared if they suddenly had a person walk up and surprise them, which has happened to me every time I've gone out. (Though I do note that my masks did come in the mail by today, and the fucking unwanted webcam. So presumably I can retire at least some of my improvised setup that I still had on today.) Like today I wanted to throw out some trash and there was a guy still looting through the trash like that's a good idea to do any more? Dude, the age of freeganing is over! Everything is covered in coronavirus now! I had to run away until he was done.

I worked on my bills while in line and going through the car wash. There was a lot of it, mostly ads and bills. I am still getting bills from the periodontist, which seems....weird since I haven't been in months and obviously won't be going again. I guess they are in desperate need of money since nobody can work any more. I got the home insurance bill. I got a bill for my credit card where the transfer wasn't going through, so there went half of my stimulus check towards that one. On the other side, my phone-and-gas credit card bill was nice and cheap and PG&E didn't charge me anything at all this month, go figure. Then after writing the checks and realizing it had been a good move to order more stamps recently, I realized that I had no way to seal the envelopes, per the other day's work conversation. There was no way in hell I could get to my mouth to lick anything and yet I didn't to have to re-enter my house all contaminated from the outdoors and then go back outside to mail the mail. I had to do the latter to get a glue stick. I'm going to have to leave one in my purse.

After that, I walked into the shower with all my clothes on. I didn't cry this time, but I was shaky for a while and poured myself most of a new bottle of alcohol. I've seriously been wondering if I'm losing my ability to walk this week because I didn't do much exercise at all Tuesday through Friday and have felt shaky walking on my left leg. Maybe I'm just sitting on it funny or something lately, but after forcing myself to walk around for over an hour and a half, it seemed better. Actually I think I am crossing it funny because I just got up from writing and it felt weird. I need to switch which leg I customarily cross or something.


Mom wanted to talk after that and she sounds like she's just fine and dandy, getting takeout and got a lot of cards (she hadn't opened mine at all yet, and frankly, it's 9:39 p.m. as I write this and I'm guessing she still hasn't) and cake delivered to her door. She got texts from Jackie and told me she told Jackie that the only person she misses is me (go figure).

She also heard from my aunt. My cousin Cassie is now out of vet school for the summer and flew home.* and apparently the flight (American Airlines) was very full AND, of course, some woman was coughing on it the whole time. I'm told Cassie (a) changed clothes at the airport, (b) left her suitcase in the garage and washed everything on her upon arriving home, and (c) hasn't hugged anyone. I hope she's self-quarantining. I tried asking but my mom seemed to miss what I meant by that. Anyway, Cassie has a job this summer working on covid-19 and how it affects zoo animals and has been having to learn how to do surgery online. (Man, if you can do that online, I bet you can do almost anything online....) My cousin Kristen has a job for the moment but sounds like she may lose it for obvious life reasons, and the next bar exam has been pushed back to November. I did get a card in the mail from them today.

* I was horrified about this and thought, "Why the hell didn't she drive home like usual?" and then thought, "Well, driving is just as fucking bad these days because it'll take days, and who the hell knows where you are going to eat or sleep or use a bathroom, that's probably even WORSE." Though Mom told me that a family friend's daughter is going to adopt a kid and has to drive to Utah to do that and I was still horrified.


This psych recording I listened to was brilliant: this Israeli therapist was talking about even if you're not diagnosed with official mental health stuff, you're still probably living with tons of anxiety even if it doesn't qualify as an anxiety disorder, per se. We also have issues dealing with our own problems, then hearing about someone else having it worse and then feeling bad about THAT. Seconded!

He thinks we need to have some kind of huge broadly based (probably Internet) intervention for everyone, but the closest we have to that is "keep calm and carry on," which he calls "a refrigerator magnet." In our culture, we essentially say suck it up and we're dismissive of emotional injuries and mental health (hi, work!). We have a finite amount of resources, and emotional distress is using up a lot of that and our intellectual functioning is taking a hit (again, hello, work).

He noted that in the hierarchy of needs, “the need for physical safety precedes the need for happiness and for life satisfaction.” Which is how I feel about it. I'll sacrifice fresh air, sun, decent exercise, fresh healthy food, whatever, if it means that I don't catch it because I had to go out for some sun and fun "so I can feel normal" or to improve my diet. Safety overrides everything. If I turn into a gibbering, screaming, insane mess who's looking too closely at the stash of Benadryl and/or kitchen knives in the future, then so be it, because safety overrides everything else I might have done to improve my sanity before this. I might be able to come back from a mental breakdown, but I can't come back from dying on a ventilator like my dad did.

He also pointed out that when you've got loneliness and anxiety going on, you start to feel abandoned by your friends because people aren't reaching out to you enough. Maybe they are reaching out to you, but you're so starved that you feel like your needs are not being met. Loneliness also makes us very risk-averse, and we think that others care less about us than we truly do. (Note: while writing this, I was all "oh, wait, Loretta emailed me this morning, I should go write back." So I did.) So "we become very hesitant to reach out" That disconnection has a ripple effect that keeps going, and it makes it harder to interrupt the cycle. It's a subjective feeling. He said that these days you have more of an excuse to reach out to someone than you would have before, and it can deepen connections.


Other than that, I started pinning together my Arne and Carlos squares into a vest (I will need to make one more) and worked some more on the hamster play set. Claire forwarded on auditions for a "femme fatale" play festival in June, so I signed up for that. I also listened to an excellent recording of a talk with a psychiatrist, to the next radio play Linda wants to do, and then went on to watch Biosphere 2... ‘Spaceship Earth” on Hulu. This weekend would have been Whole Earth Festival weekend. I have been trying to not think about that since we’re all missing out on everything anyway (I didn’t even wear any tie-dye, but did have non-tie-dye hippie pants/shirt on), but sadly, this movie mentions the “Whole Earth Catalog” and features hippies running around in geodesic domes. Sigh. It also just focuses on hippies being rather ambitious hippies at the start, which feels...off topic? I wanted the bio-dome! Where is the bio-dome! It’s like 30 minutes to get to that, and then they are in 1981 saying that the earth is being ruined and I am all WHERE IS MY ALCOHOL I NEED TO REFUEL NOW. And then they showed some bunnies, which helped.

Roy Walford sure doesn’t seem to like clothes because it seems like most of this movie, he’s running around shirtless and/or in just a Speedo, bragging about how he’s going to live to 120. I would have found this to be very annoying if I was stuck living with him. Alas, he got ALS and died in his 70’s. So fucking much for a healthy lifestyle and having a six-pack at 60. What good did that do you?

Anyway, it sounds like the real issue was that the CO2 was building up in there and literally screwing with everyone’s heads, the poor bastards. Literally, “we were suffocating and starving.” They get told to take up yoga because it uses less oxygen. “I started to resent John Allen” (hippie bigwig/kinda cult leader) for restraining them from talking to people. Yiiiiiiiiikes. ....um, shit, that’s not gonna be an issue with me, right? The apartment isn’t hermetically sealed.... Anyway, they talk about “everybody was losing control” as they show one guy dancing around at random, toes twitching, people being on oxygen, too many bugs.... But once they literally got fresh air in there, everyone felt better and then the documentary shows everyone dancing, climbing the walls, throwing giant dice around, posing in the bushes....


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