Everything is too much. So i broke my "no frivolous spending in February" plan for supplies for a fanciful showgirl headpiece for an online gathering scheduled later this month. I feel pretty conflicted about the spending part, but not at all conflicted about the hours I spent drafting the pattern pieces. I have not been focused like that on anything in what feels like years--and probably is actually close to a year.

I read some costuming blogs; looked at a few vintage hat patterns; looked at some vintage hats. Measured my head and just started drawing on butcher paper and pinning things to the wig head (which is smaller than my head). I changed direction two or three times, but I think I have a plan now. And maybe some overly-ambitious further plans.

But it felt good.

I dreamed that I was watching hundreds of pages flash before my eyes.  Some had only slight differences from each other, as if they were evidence of the multiple-worlds hypothesis.  When the changes slowed enough for me to get the gist of one article, I memorized the details.  It was written by someone with the unusual name of "Jicknicy" and it was about Penn State athletics in the 1950s.  When I awoke, I actually FOUND that article, and showed it to my wife as proof of my psychic abilities or photographic memory or something.

Except... THAT didn't happen, and when I awoke for real I found only trace references to obscure usernames on sketchy websites.

So... if someone reading this is one level up from me, I'm ready for that kick to wake me up again.

Failing that, you could try identifying the source of these lines that I probably didn't make up entirely, and which Brett also vaguely remembers in this reality:

"Oh, what shall I do?  Oh, where shall I go?  The streets are sloppy and full of snow!  My boots are old and full of feet, and I must face everyone I meet!"

A chemical test for iron helps archaeologists search for this, at sites such as altars and slaughterhouses...

Me:  "What is blood?"

Daughter:  "Baby don't hurt me..."

I am end-of-the-rope. My hair is a horror. i can't reliably get groceries I need for things I'd like to make. I still can't get fenders for my bike. Everything I touch at work explodes. The cat's health is failing. I miss my friends. I never get a chance to be alone. I miss bars. I miss restaurants. I miss my parents. 

I'm tired of clicking on headlines or texts or emails promising to tell me how, where and when to vaccinated only to learn I can't, no-one knows, good luck and be patient. 

I'm sick of this ineffectual, limp Congress. I'm sick of my incompetent, wealth-chasing mayor. 

I'm tired; I can't sleep. I'm bored; I can't read occupy myself. I'm drinking too much. Eating too much. Spending too much (how? I can't leave the house!). My temper is short. My humor is spent. My patience is absent.

i'm just like everyone else. 

I watched Queersighted: Queer Fear on the Criterion Channel tonight and then The Seventh Victim. Which I had not seen since college. I wished Farihah Zaman had had more time to explore her thesis about the exchange of objects standing in for kisses in Code movies and how the man in the love triangle stands in for lesbian kisses in the films. I'll have to look up her essays or more of her criticisms at least.

Wow. It's unfamiliar. having my head filled with something . . .maybe not frivolous, but not dire, not political, not pandemic. My father has gotten his vaccine--I was unclear from mom's note whether she had hers too, or just an appointment. My in-laws, too, have appointments. It's telling, isn't it, that I already know more people who've been vaccinated than who have been ill, who have died.

So there, it's never far from my thoughts, but it's getting less oppressive.

I can't imagine my household will be vaccinated before the fall. But that means, maybe, hoidays with my parents and my sister, and maybe, if there's still such thing as snow, skiing next season.

I have a very ambitious reading list. I, like others I know, have not been able to make my brain read since 2016. I envy the people who are not having this problem.

I managed to read a good chunk of Jen Howard, Clutter: An Untidy History (Belt Publishing) and the first bit of Joe Allen, People Wasn't Made to Burn (Haymarket Books). And then got fidgety. I dipped in and out of Martin Aston, Facing the Other Way (The Friday Project) and Sasha Petraske, Regarding Cocktails (Phaidon Press). I'd like to read Mexican Gothic (hey! Fiction) and I have a long reading list from an agency we partner with as well as some stuff from a funerary customs class I'm interested to take (but fear I'll be overwhelmed).

So there's my theme, isn't it? I feel so overwhelmingly incompetent all of the time. I'm not sure when it started or how to break out of it. I sometimes think "oh, if i just commit to [giant project], that'll do it," but I am a little smarter than that. I don't know--maybe I could do with a therapist.

Once I had a therapist and it was extremely helpful. Once I had a therapist and it felt unnecessary. Once I had a therapist and it felt like a complete and aggressive waste of time. I feel almost like committing to another one is the same issue of not being able to accomplish anything.

The buzzword in philanthropy these days is "Time, talent or treasure" which of these do people give, to whom, how much, why? I've lost the ability to apply either of the first two and my means for the third are limited. Not just where philanthropy and service are concerned, but also where life is concerned. 

Or perhaps I'm just tired. Perhaps if the rhythm of life gets back to more swithcing among home, not-home, home, society, solitude I'll get capacity back.

It should be obvious that when an enormous weight is lifted from your shoulders, your natural reaction is to want to sleep for a long time. The body, so used to having that extra hit of cortisol and adrenaline, now doing with less, realizes that shit comes with a cost.

This morning's soundtrack, because when I am happy, I sing showtunes.

One Day More, Les Miserables, OBC

Do You Hear The People Sing?, Les Miserables, OBC

Everything's Coming Up Roses, Gypsy revival w/Bernadette Peters

Comedy Tonight, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way to The Forum, OBC

Free!, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way to The Forum, OBC

Love Makes The World Go 'Round, Carnival OBC

Direct From Vienna, Carnival OBC

Yorktown, Hamilton OBC

Here's Anna Maria Alberghetti singing "Love Makes the World Go 'Round":

"OBC" = Original Broadway Cast (Album)

Trump is not President. I will be able to hug my parents in 2021.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been inagurated as President and Vice President of the United States of America.

Other sources of happiness:

• The odds that no one I love will die of COVID-19 have dramatically increased. 
• The odds that no one else I love will be permanently affected by the after-effects of COVID-19 have also dramatically increased.
• No one will be inside the Capitol of our United States wearing Nazi fashion ever again. The leader of the free world will not tell anti-Semites that they are "good people" and that he loves them.
• A competent government will handle vaccine distribution and injection. Said government will not prioritize people based on "red state"/"blue state" or who they voted for.
• My sons will be able to safely go to school in person.
• My sons will be able to hang out with their friends again.
• My college boy will be able to get up to normal college shenanigans. (yikes!)
• I will be able to hang out with my friends again! In groups! 
• When the President speaks, he will tell the truth (to the best of his knowledge) and he will speak in full, coherent sentences.
• The President of The United States will speak of progress, not of grievances.
• We elected our first female, Black Vice President of Indian Descent. Also, her husband and kids will be the first Jews to be a Veep's family.
• I won't be embarassed to be an American. At least, not mostly. We Americans are very talented at embarassing ourselves.
• If I want to watch a train wreck reality show, I can choose to, but I won't be forced to watch one because it's our government.
• Vacations!  Remember traveling?  Maybe Europe will even let us in again.
• Archer will be able to improv again and I will be able to watch him perform in person!
• Hunter will finally be able to take his archery lessons!
• My mental health will be at its normal level of fuckery.
• And ... and theatre will be back. 

There are more reasons to be happy. And more work to do.

We have a Republic, America. We may even be able to keep it.

Hello, all!  I've missed you! 💗

I finally got caught up reading all of everyone's posts I've missed for the past good while (though I did not read all of the comments yet). I'm sorry I haven't been around; I just have pandemic-brain or something and am having a hard time getting motivated do do much of anything. 

I haven't posted here at all... so it's not like I've been writing stuff and keeping it private. Just haven't really had anything to report. 

What I Did On My OPW Vacation, in Eight Parts by Jill Knapp, Age 49 

1) Family Update

Things are pretty good right now, considering, y'know, the world and stuff. My folks are doing well-- Dad is a brand-new guy since getting his heart fixed up in July, and Mom's dementia doesn't seem to be getting worse, thankfully. A home health aide comes to their house 3x/week for 4 hours, and her job is to keep an eye on Mom so Dad can get a little mental break; and he'll also schedule his doctor appointments for those windows so Mom won't be alone while he's out. I'm very grateful their health has been stable, and that my folks take the virus seriously. 

2) Hot Breakfast! (our band)

Matt and I are still doing our 2x-weekly afternoon Coffee Break Concerts -- we just played our 89th one on Friday. We played a NYE show from 8-10pm which was fun. We still hate that we feel forced into using FB for these performances, but we know we have to meet people where they are. The good news is that we were able to set all the shows to Public, so anti-FBers can still attend even without an account. 

We tried broadcasting on Zoom and YouTube and they just don't work well given our current gear limitations, so I'm investing in a bunch of gear upgrades (thank you, Delaware Dept of Small Business/CARES Act!). These equipment upgrades are primarily to benefit my main company to help me stream my classes and provide a better learning experience online for my students, but this new equipment is absolutely perfect also for Hot Breakfast, too.  The money just hit my account two days ago, so let the Small Business Upgrades begin! 

I have been so, so, so grateful for our afternoon concerts and the truly lovely community that has sprung up around them. The in-jokes, the little rituals ("Yo!"), the recurring dumb gags, the title card artwork-- they all fill my heart so much. All of my job-related work has pretty much vanished, so if we didn't have these Coffee Break Concerts happening every Wednesday and Friday, I would generally have no reason to get out of bed. 

3) Foooooood

Since March, we have pretty much only cooked at home, with only 5 exceptions: 

(1) Over the summer we did one outdoor dinner with another couple at a verrrrrry long picnic table-- despite all safety protocols it just was not worth the stress.  (2) We did one outdoor brunch with Matt's folks at a place with outdoor seating. It was... fine.  (3) We had pizza at my folks' house in NJ twice. (4) We ordered our very first take-out meal on Christmas Eve (we got Chinese). It was tasty.  As much as I want to support our local restaurants, I don't think this is something we'll do again soon. We haven't even done Door Dash or anything like that. We're very lucky that Matt loves to cook and he's really good at it, so we just don't really have a good enough reason to spend the money. (Also, since I only worked 4 days (four!) in 2020, spending money for someone else to cook seems extravagant.) 

4) Sleep?

Since the pandemic started, our night-owl ways have only solidified. We wake up around 12:30/1PM each day, but we don't go to sleep until Jenn Abrevaya ​​​​​​ is already in her first meeting. 😀 (Seriously though, we usually hit the hay around 4-5am.)  I am happiest and most functional like this, believe it or not.

5) Birds!

I installed a few bird feeders in our front yard two clear lucite bird feeders and attached them to our bedroom window because we're almost always in the bedroom. I do not have sufficient vocabulary to express the pure joy this has brought us. I love learning about the different birds, which species get along and will share a perch and which ones won't, their calls, their colors, their nests, who feeds on the ground, who feeds at the feeders, etc. So far we've seen a lot of sparrows, we have a mated pair of titmice, a mated cardinal pair, a bunch of mourning doves, a pileated woodpecker, a Coopers Hawk (he killed and ate a mourning dove in front of everyone last week-- it was awful), a blue jay or two (the males and females look so similar that I can't tell if it's just one bird or two birds visiting separately). I'm probably forgetting some. Oh-- we had a bunch of crows, too, but they haven't been around in a while.  But maaaaan, do I love my birdies. :)

6) Books

I've never been much of a book reader, which I never liked about myself... especially because I have such book-loving friends. I devour magazines and newspapers (The New Yorker, the NY Times, Wired, The Smithsonian), but books just seem to stack up without getting read, which only reminds/taunts me with how much I suck.

So I decided to use one of my tablets as an eReader, and it's been great. With a Kindle account plus a Dropbox folder with Project Guttenberg books easily accessible, I've been reading more. Plus I can read all of these Kindle/Guttenberg books on my phone.  When I'm caught on Hour 7 of a doomscrolling marathon, I convince myself to just read one page of a book, and 99% of the time that one page will get me excited enough to bust out the tablet and read a lot more on a more eye-friendly device. Because they're all connected, I never lose my place even when I switch devices. That's handy

Since Spring 2020 I've read:

--"Liberty" which is Liberty DeVitto's autobiography (he was Billy Joel's drummer during Billy's most successful years)

-- "Everything's Bigger in Texas," A biography (with some autobiography) of Kinky Friedman-- it is hilarious. 

-- "Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung," a collection of writings/essays/music reviews by Lester Bangs,

-- "Where I'm Calling From," a collection of short stories by Raymond Carver (WOW),

-- A fabulously fun read called "VJ: The Unplugged Adventures of MTV's First Wave" which is an oral history of the early days of MTV as told by the original VJs (it is FANTASTIC).

And now I'm working through a few other books:

-- "Harpo Speaks!" by Harpo Marx-- it is an absolute treat! What a gifted writer, especially for a guy who didn't get past 2nd grade. This book is his autobiography, and his description of growing up in the early 20th century in New York is soooooo immersive and tangible; I loved the history lesson. I'm only about 20% of the way through it, but I look forward to reading it all the time. 

-- "What Unites Us" by Dan Rather. Dan Rather is a total gem on Twitter, and when he throws shade it is THE BEST. Holy crap, he's a treasure. This book is a balm for this divided country, and he was careful to write it so no matter what side of the political spectrum you're on, you will feel invited and welcome to read it. Obviously Dan leans somewhat left socially, but the righties won't throw the book out, I don't think. I sprung for the extra few bucks for the audio version as well, because sometimes when my eyes are tired and my soul is weary, having Dan Rather read to me in his 89-year-old steady voice is so, so comforting. 

-- "So You Want To Talk About Race" by Ijeoma Oluo, because it's important and I want to do better. I'm still on the first chapter. 

-- "Disloyal" by Michael Cohen. Haven't started it yet, and I may not ever because I just don't wanna get involved in a story about someone I find so abhorrent and exhausting (Trump). But I do find Michael Cohen fascinating and would like to hear more about his change of alligiance. 

-- "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley, because I never had to read it in high school, and it's about time. Haven't started it yet. 

-- "Animal Farm" and "1984" by George Orwell. See above. It's time to fill in some knowledge gaps. Haven't started these yet either. 

-- Matt bought Obama's new book "A Promised Land," and once he's done with it, I'll likely read it. 

7) Frozen shoulder

At the end of the summer, I royally screwed up my left shoulder after a few nights of sleeping weird. The pain was absolutely awful, and I had verrrrry limited use of it.  I was starting to think it was time to finally see a doctor, but the covid numbers started rapidly increasing in the fall so I didn't wind up going.  Thankfully the pain is almost all gone, but I still can't use my left arm for much of anything-- it just doesn't go where it should.  Some friends of mine suggest it may be Frozen Shoulder which is a thing that is some peri-menopausal women get. I don't know, but I hate not being able to put my left hand on my hip or in a pocket, or to lift it at all. If it is actually Frozen Shoulder, it usually works itself out in 9-12 months. So I'll watch and wait for another month ot two, and once I've got my two vaccines in me, I'll be ready to maybe go to PT or whatever. 

8) That's it for now!

This is already WAY too long, and I promise to update in more reasonably-timed and sized chunks. 

Love youse. :)