My plan for yesterday was to stay home and let my body heal. I’ve had pain from the surgery and even more from arthritis in my back. It proved an excellent plan. It was the first day in weeks that I didn’t need to take acetaminophen. I’m still not 100% but I made significant progress. The trick for today is doing laundry without aggravating anything. My plan is to put the laundry into many small bags so I don’t have to do any heavy lifting. I’ve been putting off doing the laundry at all for so long that I suspect that there will be too much for one trip to the laundry move. I’ll just leave whatever I can’t get to until my next laundry day. By then perhaps I’ll be 100%.
What made it easy to do nothing yesterday was the release of Good Omens on Prime TV. It’s based on the book by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gammon. As My Gentle Readers know, Terry Pratchett was my favorite living author, until his timely death. Now he’s my favorite author that hasn’t been dead that long. He’d appreciate that description. Sir Terry can always make me happy.
The series had more than Sir Terry, Neil Gammon is no slouch either. It starred former Doctor Who David Tennant, and featured David St. Hubbins himself, Michael McKean. It’s funny, it’s thought provoking, it’s brilliant. Nobody can write about religion like Pratchett, he takes the premises of religion and follows them to their natural conclusion without making excuses. So you get a story of an angel and demon on earth, going native, and becoming best friends. I’m a sucker for an odd couple buddy pic. The book and series were made just for me and everyone else who likes it just got lucky. I’m delighted that so many of my friends do. I’m so often a denizen of cultural wastelands that I appreciate it when I’m not alone in my tastes.
Which leads right into discussing Hadestown. A day doesn’t go by without one of my friends spreading the Hadestown gospel on social media. My friends can be divided into two groups, those that have seen it and those that plan on seeing it. It’s a cultural imperative. Strangely it brings to mine a comparison to the characters in Goodfellas. When Tommy (Joe Pesci) is going to become a made member of the Mafia; Henry (Ray Liotta) says that it felt like he and Jimmy (Robert De Niro) were being made too. Tommy was one of them. The folk world feels that way about Anaïs Mitchell. She is one of us. Her success feels like our success. We’re not happy for some abstract artist whose work we admire, as I would for Terry Pratchett, but for part of our community. It’s why we all need to share our love for the show. It’s not just great; it’s great and it’s ours.
Today’s plan is do my laundry, get my infusion, and go shopping. Let’s see if can do that without hurting myself. I might have to skip the shopping if I hurt myself with all the lifting needed for the laundry. The infusion is easy; it’s sitting in a comfy chair for half an hour plus whatever time I have to spend waiting for the infusion to be prepared.
Wise Madness 