Done This Week

It's hard to do much when the weather is consistently over 100 degrees--114 yesterday, with today predicted to be worse. Trying to stay in the house and putter about.

Lewisia: 3 new pieces written, having a plan for this arc is the structure holding me up

Gratitude journaling: 35 new entries

Tumblr queue: 35 posts added

Day job: 42

Cooking: homemade pizza

Cleaning: reorganized the cheese and condiment areas of the fridge to keep stuff properly cooled

Art: did a bit of drawing/painting and incorporated some of the flowers I dried in the piece

Other: went to a specialty store out of town to get mum new insoles and boots to help with her tendonitis

Today's Keyboard Smash

My local movie theater reopened this month, as they promised they would. I check the listings on Saturdays to see what's opened for the week and if there's anything I care about enough to see on the big screen. I mean, for the last few months, I've been checking their listings mostly as an exercise in self-imposed sadness, because of course they were closed.

Well, they're bloody well not closed anymore! But I guess the studios aren't providing the films like they normally would, or there's some other form of deep business fuckery at work that is well beyond my ken. In any case, the theater's listing is all classics. No, not those classics--my kind of classics. Grease. Jurassic Park. E.T. That sort of thing. (And Black Panther, which, huh. Not sure if that choice is meant as commentary of some sort. I approve, in any case, insomuch as I approve of any of this.) Three showings a day of each, so they seem to have cut down their hours of operation substantially. Concessions are open too.

And here's the thing. This is a terrible plan. Movie theaters are notoriously and almost endearingly disgusting. The floors are sticky, for pity's sake. I'm not sure there is an amount of money you could pay me to go sit in one for a couple hours right now, especially with other humans at the same time. (There might be an amount--times are tough--but let's not test the theory.) I'm certainly not going to pay for the privilege.

What absolutely imagines my dragons, though, to borrow a phrase, is that I would have been all over this in the Before Times. Get to watch Jurassic Park on the big screen for the first time? (In '93, I was definitely Too Young for that movie. I would never have slept again.) Nostalgia movie nights would be my jam in the extreme. What a great service to provide!

I MIGHT EVEN BUY POPCORN, DAMN IT.

(I trust theater popcorn and the underpaid, underage employees who dispense it as far as I can spit a rat. I knew people who worked in theaters in high school. I won't say I know what's in that pump dispenser of butter--I DON'T, and that's emphatically the problem.)

Now, though? Now? I don't feel like dying, thanks very much. Ironically, they are showing Jurassic Park while entirely failing to grasp one of the themes of the movie: some things are not worth risking for the sake of ~entertainment~. "We spared no expense," and all that.

Maybe, just maybe, we can remember some of these good ideas when we're no longer laboring under a pandemic. Work from home is possible and should be available to everyone without ableist handwringing and fuss? Making a point of supporting local businesses because they are part of the community we live in? Putting together fun and nostalgic activities that appeal to a wide range of people, rather than just chasing the latest new release or fad? Spending quality time with the people we care about/live with?

Maybe after this, we can remember that life can be as good as we make it. These are choices we can make about what we build into our lives and communities. Fine, let a pandemic be the reason we figured it out, but don't let it be the only time we make that choice.