Fri. April 4, 2025: Beyond Ridiculous

image courtesy of Terri Stalons via pixabay.com

Friday, April 4, 2025

Waxing Moon

Venus & Mercury Retrograde

Gray & cooler

Once the storms passed, by late morning, it was sunny and warm. Go figure.

I forgot to mention that, yesterday, before the power went off, I had a dish soap spill in the kitchen. Tessa likes her bowl washed in hot water with one drop of Palmolive in the morning. When I picked up the dish soap to squeeze out the drop, the cap came off and a whole lot more than a single drop came out. Fortunately, it was a bowl, so it caught most of it, and I did it over the sink, so I just used the extra soap to give the sink a special scrub down. I mean, we clean it every time we use it, but it can always be shinier.

Tessa gave me a glare that clearly said, “too much.”

Mercury Retrograde. Sigh. At least it was dish soap and not something terrible.

I did the rounds of my elected officials. The tariff thing is ridiculous. Tariffs on an island with penguins? Really? Congress can stop this any time they want, and 4 Republicans already joined with Democrats to roll the Canada tariffs back. Chuck Schumer, get going. EVERY one of these can and should be rolled back. AND legislation needs to be put in place (although I thought it was already there, so maybe enforced?) to remind That Thing it can’t do whatever it wants. This is not the time to sit back, smirk, and try to fundraise off it.

We really need a new Senate minority leader.

Every legal firm that’s capitulating to the regime needs to lose all their clients. As several people pointed out, if they won’t stand up for themselves, they won’t stand up for those they defend.

Every university that’s capitulating, not protecting students, eliminating DEI needs to lose all their enrollments. They’ve forgotten that they have no reason to exist without students.

Had to deal with some admin stuff, but the bulk of the day was spent working on the ghostwriting project. I added the extra information it needed, and I polished it. I will give it another polish and send it off. I’m not sure if they will want revisions (if they want to keep working with me, probably), or if I will invoice and we both move on. I have no idea. It’s kind of like being in a television writing room, with so many voices having a say in the final product (and it very much is a product). I know I’ve put in some solid work. Whether it’s what they want, who knows, since those parameters keep changing. All I can do is the best I can do, and then let it go. It either lands or it does not.

I’m hoping to get it out the door by late morning. Then, I need to go to the library for a drop-off/pick up, and maybe run a couple of other errands. Tonight is First Friday. I have a lot to do this weekend, so I don’t know if I’ll be up to going out. I’m grateful for the lack of script coverages in the queue this week (although there was a deadline on March 31), but I hope some come through for the next couple of weeks. Next week, I will also check in with the audiobook producer, to see if we’re closer to a start date.

I heard from an organization in Boston. I’d forgotten I’d pitched to be part of a public art project there this summer. They are holding off on making decisions on the word part until later in the process.

I finished reading a diary of the process creating and putting up the musical BIG on Broadway. The writing was awfully dry and didn’t really dig into things, but it was written by an observer to the process, not a theatre person. The musical ran just as I was making the transition from working off-Broadway was a wardrobe supervisor/dresser to Broadway as a dresser, which is a huge transition and requires a lot of focus and energy. I was on MISS SAIGON in ’96, along with having one of my own shows in the Adelaide Fringe in Australia in February and a different show in the Edinburgh Fringe in August, all in the same year. So I kind of missed BIG entirely. I remember hearing about it, and how theatre people who saw it felt that it wasn’t enough of a straight up adaptation to please movie audiences, and, at the same time, didn’t differentiate enough from the movie for theatre audiences, and was overproduced. There was a sense, from those I talked with, that it didn’t really know what it wanted to be, and by trying to please too many, it struggled with its own identity. Whatever the reason, it didn’t run very long, and that’s always sad for people who put years of heart, soul, and creativity into a new project. Nobody goes into something like creating a new musical lightly. It takes EVERYTHING that everyone involved has on physical, emotional, and creative levels. There’s never a good reason to celebrate a project that doesn’t make it. Keep an eye on those who do – you want to avoid working with them in the future.

Draft2Digital is now charging processing fees on royalties through PayPal, which is annoying. And with That Thing defunding and firing everyone at IMLS, many libraries will lose access to Hoopla, which is where I made a good chunk of royalties in the last few months. Again, That Thing doesn’t have the authority to do so, and Congress needs to give it a good bitch slap as a reminder.

Yes, I’m deliberating using “it” because That Thing left humanity behind a long time ago.

I heard about a bill being introduced to defund DOGE, which needs to happen. Support for that will be part of today’s legislative rounds. I mean, they were never funded in the first place; they’ve just been looting. They need to put all that money back AND be refused any future funds. AND anyone who works for them needs to go through the stringent vetting that all government employees do.

I forgot to reprogram the automatic timer on the coffeemaker yesterday when the power came back on. I’d only reset the clock. I woke up just after midnight wondering why I smelled coffee. Because the coffeemaker decided it was the perfect time to make the coffee. Sigh.

Mercury retrograde. I’ll be glad when it’s done on Monday.

Can you tell I’m grumpy this morning? Part of it is that I’m overtired. I want to get this project out the door. Either it lands or it doesn’t, but I need to get some rest and move on to other stuff. And get paid for this one! Hopefully the payment for teaching will show up in my account either today or Monday. I was told we’d be paid the first week of April, and that’s nearly over.

This morning’s poem was “Harvest Journey” by Michèle Roberts, which took an interesting turn.

There are many things going on all over the country this weekend that matter. Plus, I need to work on books for review, contest entries (I want to complete the first category by Monday), and some proposals. I also have to catch up on my library cohort homework. I want to talk about the board plan in office hours on Tuesday. I would like to get some of my own writing done. I feel so disconnected from my own work. I need to restore that balance.

Somewhere in there, though, I need to rest.

Have a good weekend, and we’ll catch up on Tuesday!