• Last night: thunder, lots of it, really loud. Oh good! Rain! Nope. This is the way it has been around here most of the time this summer. Radar shows storms heading our way – nothing. The rivers are shockingly low. We really need rain. The latest? Possible rain this morning.

Claudia’s forecast? Highly doubtful.

• Woke up far, far too early this morning and it isn’t pretty. But Don and I had nice chunk of time for our second cup of coffee – we sat on the porch glider and chatted and it was lovely. Now he’s playing the guitar while I write this.

• We got the results from his Lyme test. Yes, he has Lyme. And it sure looks like his numbers are high because his doctor called in a prescription for two more weeks of Doxycycline. We were as sure as we could be without an official test result that it was Lyme. As I said before, we are very familiar with it. Don’s had it before. I’ve had it before. The dogs had it more than once. Though he’s been feeling better, he has the ‘foggy brain’ that often is a part of Lyme. He’s very tired. He runs out of energy quickly.

The first round of antibiotics knocked out the acute symptoms; the fever and chills and general aches, the way in which it hit his nervous system. This round will hopefully knock out the rest of it.

• I received a sad email from Hartford Stage yesterday. Due to COVID-19 and the fact that there will be more than one round of it before we get a vaccine aided by the fact that people aren’t following social distancing and the imperative to wear a mask, they have decided to cancel the winter/spring part of next year’s season. That means no performances until next fall. A year from now. My concern has nothing to do myself – there is new management there and I don’t expect to get any more work from them. I am concerned, though, for all my friends who work there. They have been on furlough since March. Now they will be on furlough until well into next year. How will they survive? This is heartbreaking. It really hit me when my friend Samantha, who is the company manager, posted on Facebook that she is leaving. She had been studying real estate and I knew that, but her hope was to start to work part-time in real estate and keep working at Hartford Stage. Now that there’s no hope of coming back from furlough for another year, she has made the decision to leave.

These people are like family to me. I always said that Hartford Stage was my second home.

I imagine we’ll be hearing more of this from other regional theaters. It’s maddening because this cancellation of the entire 2020/2021 season didn’t have to happen. It most likely wouldn’t have happened, at least to this extent, if Covidiots had heeded the advice of medical experts, stayed home, practiced social distancing and wore a damn mask. This is on Trump and the GOP. They proudly flaunt the fact that they don’t wear a mask and then the almost inevitable headline: “so-and-so has been diagnosed with COVID-19.” I don’t wish this on anyone, Republican or Democrat. It’s awful. Herman Cain? No mask at the Tulsa Rally and proudly tweeting about it. Louis Gohmert? No mask sitting in a hearing, no mask in the hallways of Congress, no mask in his office around his staff who were made fun of if they wore one. And on and on. Was all that bravado worth it? Is it worth their lives? Is it worth the lives of everyone else they have come into contact with?

Is it worth the tanking of the economy, which means that the GOP/Trump/DeVoss now push to send kids back to school, putting everyone at great risk, because they have to get people back to work because Trump did nothing, constantly tweeted misinformation about the virus, disbanded the NSC Pandemic Unit, ignored the book that the Obama administration passed on to them about how to handle a pandemic, ignored it simply because it was from Obama and Trump has the thinnest skin of any living being? Over 150,000 dead and no end in sight.

Hearing Barack Obama speak at John Lewis’ funeral was a breath of fresh air. How I long for the days when he was President. Articulate. Compassionate. Leading us at a time of great loss. Speaking to the pain in our hearts. And forcefully and passionately compelling us to fight for our country. He is everything that Trump is not and could never hope to be.

Okay.

• I’ll close with a Happy Birthday to my mom. She would have been 93 today. I miss her so, so much, especially today. I’ve been on the edge of tears all morning; lack of sleep, the state of our country, the loss of John Lewis – and how I wish I could hug my mom, inhale the scent of Oil of Olay that always was a part of her essence, make her laugh, sit on her lap (which I did even as an adult.)

I love you Mom.

Stay safe.

Happy Friday.

Things are slowly getting better here at the cottage. Don is still pretty weak, but he is staying downstairs for longer periods of time. We even watched a few episodes of Frasier  last night. His sleep patterns are off, his dreams are very intense, and the weather we’re having doesn’t help. We’re under a heat advisory and an air quality advisory through tomorrow night. It’s extremely hot and humid here.

After I write this post, I’m going outside to water everything. We try to keep the a/c off as long as possible in the morning but I suspect I’ll turn it on soon.

We’re very grateful. It’s been a scary week but Don is improving and his eyes are clear and he’s had no fever for the past 24 hours. We’re both wiped out, for different reasons, so we’ll take it easy today.

I finished Death in La Fenice  and have now started two books: Weather  by Jenny Offill, which I bought several months ago – it seems a lifetime ago – from Oblong Books, and Let’s Just Say it Wasn’t Pretty  by Diane Keaton, which I’ve had on my shelf for a few years. I pulled it out because Don and I were having a conversation about Keaton, about how much I have always loved her ever since the Annie Hall  days. I love her wit, her style, her humor, her talent, and her determination to live life on her terms. I follow her on Pinterest – though I almost never go there these days – and on Instagram, where she has been doing wonderful videos during lockdown. If I could sit down and chat with anyone it would be Diane Keaton. I think of her as a long lost sister.

She recently did a video about wearing hats (I love hats) and I showed it Don, saying that I needed to get some hats like hers. After researching, I found a place in Hollywood that designs a lot of hats for her. The one I liked was $750.00. Gulp. I guess I’ll have to find a Claudia version that is much less expensive. And then there’s the pair of jeans she wears: wide leg, almost like the bellbottoms we used to wear way back when. They are so cool! I’d love them. On to the research: they’re from a company in Italy and they cost $650. Gulp again. I also love her house, which she highlighted in a book I used to have The House That Pinterest Built. Why I donated it to the library, I’ll never know. Anyway, it’s not my style, but it’s really fabulous; so unique, so her.

Though I can’t afford that hat and those jeans, I love her nonetheless. She inspires me. She’s down to earth. She sees the absurdities in life. And this book, which is a series of essays on beauty, perceived beauty, her family, children, friends, is so honest. She’s insecure just like the rest of us. She doesn’t like the shape of her eyes. Her forehead is too high. Her hair is too thin. She, like me, has to come to terms with aging, with things that cannot be changed, with negative self-talk, for want of a better word.

I will always be an adoring fan. And this book is a lovely read.

Okay, friends. Thank you again. I have to do some watering STAT.

Stay safe.

Happy Sunday.