The Stone Cold Bench is back

[Leighton]

Sending love, Martin 

[Hester Jean]

Spent my Dad's last hour with him yesterday. He was 85 and had become very poorly so it's a release for him and for my Mum who has been his primary carer for years and was struggling. He gave me my passion for a great tune and a brilliant lyric, and my joy in language and verbal imagination. His many characteristic phrases, curious neologisms and playful ditties ring in my head and always will.

I'm sorry, Martin! 😔😚

[Bookman George]

My sympathies, Martin. It is difficult to lose a parent, at any age. It sounds like he was a bright man who lived a good life. You will keep him alive in all the things you remember about him.

[DiveMilw]

I'm so sorry to hear this, Martin.  

[AmyG]

My condolences, Martin. He sounds like a great guy.

[valmont]

So sorry to hear, Martin, but I'm glad you were with him at the end.

[mrssondheim]

I need to sit here for a little bit. I am not sure if I am allowed to just bitch for a bit, but I didn't know where else to go.

I get quite angry when people get upset with me if I do NOT come out right away after a show. Just ask someone to let me know you are here and I will come out to say HI as soon as I can. I know I don't like to know ahead of time that you are there, as I just want to be in the moment when I am in a show, but even after a show, you can always grab an usher and they will let me know promptly and I will come out.

There are a few reasons I do not like to come out right after a show. Yes in our county the actors are encouraged to run right out in our costumes to greet the audience. I will do that when it is expected, and informed of this when cast. If it is not expected, I tend to be very old school about it, and choose to separate myself from my character after a performance. I wish that was still a norm as I think the other is tacky, except in certain cases.

I am also allergic to most scents, and am putting my health at risk each time I come out. Even if you are NOT wearing anything, chances are someone near you is, and that can ruin my voice for the rest of that weeks shows. Not going to risk it. Sorry. Not to mention all the colds and flu's.

Add to that, I am DRIPPING with sweat at the end of this particular show and really just need a moment to take my costume off, hang it up, and just be for a moment before rushing out to greet people.

Audiences expecting cast members to come out after a show is getting ridiculous. I do not owe it to you to come out on the off chance that you are there. I owe it to the show itself to be able to perform the show again the next night. I owe it to the costumer to hang up my costumes. I owe it to the wig person to gently remove my wigs so that they are not a fucking mess that they have to restyle night after night after night.

I am angered that I am to be made to feel guilty if I am responsible. Or guilty that I have ever worsening allergies, that you know about, but think I should just suck it up because I should just sense that you came to the show today.

Just completely frustrating.

[KathyB]

I need to sit here for a bit today. This was a Monday disguised as a Friday. 

I don't like being told I need to stay late ten minutes before I'm otherwise supposed to leave. Even worse, I suppose in a way, is figuring out myself that I need to stay late ten minutes before I'm supposed to leave, because I can't stop thinking that if I organized my time better, I wouldn't be in the position of needing to stay late. 

I know that makes no sense, and I don't care. That's why I'm on the bench!

[scenicdesign71]

I'm more angry and scared than I've been so far during this crisis (which is to say, I may be venting more built-up anxiety than the following particular event might warrant).  (Trigger warning: this is an all-out rant)

My mom -- who turned 85 last week, is in quite good health for her age, and lives here in NYC, about 30 blocks north of me -- had to go to an eye appointment yesterday; after putting it off for the past two weeks due to Covid concerns, she was strongly urged by her doc not to postpone any longer.

I'm glad, first of all, that she even mentioned this to me the day before, as she would have just taken the subway downtown were it not for my panicked insistence on getting her a cab.  While the subway situation may be improving from the horrifying shitshow it's apparently become since the pandemic began, I was still not having her anywhere near it.  A quick swipe on Curb -- for an NYC taxi, with a glass partition, as opposed to an Uber -- seemed to more or less solve that problem: her trip was less than half an hour each way, and I guess about as safe as possible, whatever that may actually mean under these fuckedup circumstances.  Fussbudget that I am, I kept her on the phone to make sure she was wearing her mask and gloves, and that she opened the windows to get as much outside-air circulation as possible in the back seat (the better to quickly disperse any potentially lingering viral exhalations or micro-droplets from a previous passenger). And that she washed up and changed clothes as soon as she got home afterward.

No, what bothered me was the appointment itself, as my mom described it after the fact.  I'd been reassured by a couple of friends who had been to necessary medical appointments recently that city doctors were being very cautious: accepting only one patient at a time in order to avoid crowded waiting rooms, and getting people in and out as promptly as possible.  But instead, it appeared that my mom's visit was appallingly business-as-usual: she was there for three and half hours, most of it spent in a waiting room with about a dozen other (thankfully masked) patients all waiting their turn.  For some reason I had thought this was a relatively small practice, but apparently not -- the one possible saving grace was that (according to my mom), with "only" twelve patients, the waiting room in question was easily big enough to accommodate them all with plenty of room to stay spaced more than six feet apart -- more like 8 or 10 feet, by her estimate.

Still.  Even under normal circumstances, it utterly baffles me why NYC doctors can't schedule their appointments so that they are not -- always, every single time, with metronomic predictability -- an all-day waiting game.  Under the current conditions, it strikes me as criminal recklessness.

Adding to my anxiety, while I've been getting groceries delivered to her for the past few weeks, it seems my mom is still occasionally venturing out to shop for herself.  I trust she's at least been using the (non-medical) masks, gloves and hand sanitizer I got her, but I'm still not one bit thrilled.

But then of course, from the opposite perspective -- lest all these groceries and safety supplies and cabs and general fussing seem like overkill on my part -- I of course don't want to infantilize her, or to force my paranoia (however justified) on her, or to insist that she stay cooped up inside her apartment 24/7, or to otherwise ruin her quality-of-life, which was modest enough even pre-quarantine.  I know she would've dearly liked to have seen me (in person) the other day for her birthday.  But, two months in, I'm still just too petrified to put her at any risk, on the off-chance that I might have contracted the virus on one of my own occasional, brief excursions outdoors (or might do so, say, on the way up to her apartment).  There are still a surprising number of morons out on the streets, even here at the epicenter, not wearing masks (or wearing them uselessly around their necks or on top of their heads) and/or not keeping their distance.  And who knows how safe cabs really are, even with partitions and open windows.

Mostly I'm just FUCKING OUTRAGED by the absolute federal imbecility and derangement that allowed this pandemic to spiral so out of control in the first place, and continues to do so, Every. Single. Day.,  with what any sane onlooker might easily mistake for some kind of perverse, ever-accelerating zealousness on the part of our utterly-moronic, suicidally psychopathic "leaders".  The really terrifying thing is that, at this rate, it's all but guaranteed that things are going to get incalculably worse before any of this is "over".



What will be will be, I suppose.  Deep breaths.  Apologies to anyone who's read this far and been triggered by my bad mood.

[KathyB]

Aaaaaarrrgh.

I've been working on a job application for a state job for a week. All the paperwork I have says that the closing date is July 7 at 11:59 pm. I was all prepared to submit the application, and the website told me that the deadline to submit is past, so I can't apply for this job. I go back to the posting, and the closing date had been changed to July 2 at 11:59. Don't ask me when they did this. I worked REALLY HARD on this stupid application. I spent two therapy sessions going over this application. I think this is unfair, but I don't have any specific people to complain to. So I'm here.

[DiveMilw]

I'm sorry, Kathy.  I have seen a similar thing happen to postings at work.  In my case I have been only a bystander so I wasn't affected.  Hopefully they will open the posting back up and you can quickly submit since you have everything done.  Or another, even better, opportunity will present itself

[KathyB]

I am here because 2 Blondes All Breeds Rescue doesn't think I'm fit to have a roommate. Over the past two weeks I've been jumping through hoops to answer their questions, first about my HOA's rules on pets and then about my admittedly small backyard. Today they told me that they had concerns about the security of the fence around my yard, and they were not going to further process my application. The fence is the HOA's responsibility. Even if I knew what to do to make the fence more secure, I wouldn't be able to do it.

I was told I could reapply if my situation changed.