July 2025 Snapshots

Dark times. Trying to enjoy things! I’m out of practice!

Kitten sitting for my brother and Melody. The kittens are sisters. They are bonded and sleep together, bathing each other. When they curl up together, you can’t tell where one starts and where the other ends. They have bouts of being absolutely insane, racing around the house. I loved visiting them and seeing what they got up to.

The kittens have a bunch of paper and fabric tunnels lying around the house, and they go absolutely mad running in and out of them, skidding them across the floor. They have so much fun with them so I bought one for Frankie. He loves it. He stalks it, he tosses himself aside, he skids across the floor, he hides in it, the only part of him sticking out his tail. It’s hysterical.

Our great friends Sheila and Mike came up for a weekend visit. It’s been way too long since we’ve seen each other. They stayed at David and Maria’s, and I met them over there in the morning. Mike does these amazing chalk drawings – he even takes requests – and has a whole Instagram feed displaying his work. They came to the Paris Theater in New York a couple years ago when I presented Viva Las Vegas, which was a total blast. Before the movie started, they were hanging out across the street in front of the Plaza. And Mike, the irrepressible chalkman, drew a huge pink swirly flower on the pavement outside of the Plaza. A cop came over and told him he had to stop. It was still there though after the movie. We sat outside and had coffee, quiche Maria made, and just enjoyed being together, talking about everything in a really cathartic way. We decided to drive over to Newport to go to the kite festival out on the Point. I love free shit. Free events you can just attend, and have a nice day out. It was really windy out there on the Point, and the air was full of kites. We set up our lawn chairs on a patch of grass next to the ocean, and just enjoyed the show. I ran into my sister’s best friend in a SEA of people. Welcome to Rhode Island. After a couple of hours, we went shopping for dinner and hung out at David and Maria’s. Dinner was delicious. We talked about the world and all its problems, our nation and what’s happening, and again, it was so cathartic to just share and vent. Good good friends. I drove home late at night, satiated, happy, feeling grateful for my friends. Oh, and Sheila leant me an SPF scarf made out of a piece of stretchy fabric, so you can wrap it around your head, neck and shoulders, and it doesn’t move.

I’m never out in the direct sun for hours on end. I’m so careful about my skin. I’m a vampire. This scarf was so great and so effective I bought one for myself.

I have no photos of Mitchell’s visit. He’s still here. He comes for a month every summer. He stayed with me for a week, the hottest week so far of the summer. It was a high point of the month, even with all of the challenges we currently are facing in terms of family illnesses and managing care. We talked stuff out and supported each other. We lay in our beds and talked, the AC blasting.

I was packing up to go away for five days. I had just come back from a short trip away and Frankie hates to see me take out my suitcase. When he sees it coming out, he sits in it. He wanders around anxiously. It’s so upsetting. I tell him, soothingly, everything is going to be okay and he will have visitors and nothing bad will happen. (His food anxiety is always a worry: it’s so much better now but it ruled his life when I first got him). I packed and when I came out into the living room I saw him sitting on the couch like this. Turning his back to me! I don’t blame him but it still was so cute in its eloquence. I don’t blame him for being mad and “punishing” me.

We stayed in this huge rambling old Victorian house with a pool in the backyard. We all were there. All the kids, all the adults and significant others. The kids spent all day in the pool. I had some work to do (of course) but there was a lot of time to just lie by the pool and read and talk to everyone. My family. I love them.

On Siobhan’s suggestion, we drove to Fall River to see the wonderful Eric Hutchinson play at the Narrows, an incredible performance space. Siobhan is the one who got me into Eric Hutchinson years and years ago after Perez Hilton (blast from the past) linked to him, which catapulted Eric Hutchinson into a kind of fame a singer-songwriter can barely hope for. He woke up in the morning to find that his album Sounds Like This was #1 on iTunes. He was like “What on earth has happened while I was asleep?” That was the power of Perez Hilton back in the day. Hutchinson could have been a flash in the pan but he has continued making music, for over 20 years at this point. Siobhan has kept up with him and has seen him many times. I am now catching up with the rest of his discography. I love Sounds Like This but there is so much more to explore. It was a wonderful night. I haven’t been to Fall River in a long time. The battleships on the waterfront, the warehouses, the smokestalks, the old train tracks … all lit up by the sunset’s dying rays.

We worked on a very challenging puzzle during our vacation: the Great Gatsby puzzle, I think Barnes & Noble brand. It was hard. The image involves three nearly identical fountains, lines of cars, tiny little partying people, multiple nearly identical fireworks … piecing together any of it felt like a major triumph.

The entire plot unfurls in the puzzle. Even poor Myrtle getting mowed down. There are different little Gatsbys all through the puzzle. Lucy did a great job on the main one, Gatsby lying in the pool where – of course – he would eventually die.

We went to go see the production of Midsummer Night’s Dream, put on by our excellent local community theatre. I think I’ve seen five productions so far by this group and I am so impressed. We get really excited and this is now a little tradition we do every summer. It makes me so happy. The play is indestructible – you could have terrible actors up there it wouldn’t matter. The play cannot be ruined. Actors are practically irrelevant. The play’s the thing, etc. But how much fun it is to watch a production of it where everyone was so good, so spot on, where the staging was inventive, the characters were broad but all were grounded in reality – it was the little things, little behavioral things in the background, gestures, Hippolyta literally rolling her eyes as her bombastic husband to be made some lengthy speech. There were so many funny little details. We had a blast. They put the summer Shakespeare plays on outside, and it was packed. The night was so hot we all were drenched, and a little river flows by so there were mosquitos about as well. I kept hearing this noise – a buzzing vibrating kind of noises – and I thought it was someone’s un-silenced cell phone. It was very annoying, especially because the person just refused to silence it. Then Lucy whispered, “It’s the bullfrog.” Oh my God. The bullfrog thought he was in the play. He kept interjecting ad-libbed lines at random points. I love this community theatre because you get to know all the actors – they’re all in everything – so it’s fun to see them again. Hippolyta was a Merry Wife. Bottom was Don John. and etc. People coming together on a hot muggy summer night – with all of the other things they could be doing – they chose to do this. Sit with their community and roar with laughter when Titania wakes up and falls instantly in love with an ass.

Reading
Lord Byron’s letters. My Frankenstein book might be done but I can’t leave the Romantics. Not yet. Byron is so entertaining. He was describing going out with his mistress in Venice and he forgot there were canals so he almost hoisted her into the waves. His description of it was hysterical.
The Anatomy of Fascism, bu Robert Paxton. He used to give a class on fascism and so wrote this book out of his years of analysis and experience. This book came out in 2004. It’s really a study of compare-contrast with Hitler and Mussolini, but it’s broader than that. How these “movements” play out. You can predict it. You can watch it happening in real time.
Happy Hour, by Marlowe Grenados. What a ride. She’s a Gen Z Truman Capote. I devoured it. Adored it.