actually though, I think I get it

I took down the last of the Christmas decorations today. We had decided to keep the lights on the city street lamp post up through the 2oth. I had a minute this afternoon and climbed up on the back of my Chevy to unclip the zip ties and unwrap the strand, putting it away with the rest of the lights in the garage. We went a little overboard this year decorating for Christmas. It’s been this way every year since we bought our house in 2012. Before that, both of us had always lived in rentals. It took the financial crisis of 2008 and the real-estate bubble bursting for us to be able to afford property in Los Angeles. When I was a kid I was obsessed with Christmas and so now that I own my own house, I go nuts. Add to it the fact that we weren’t going anywhere this Christmas travel wise and so we could spend a little more time on decorating. As a result taking all the decorations down was kind of a month long chore. Every year that I get up on the roof and attach the lights to the rain gutter I ask myself, “do you really want to go out like this?”

My writing partner, who is a director but has worked with me for 24 years, has been writing circles around me lately. Usually it’s a 70/30 split with me doing 70 percent of the writing and him doing polishes before it goes in to the network or the producers. Things have changed because he hasn’t been directing since Covid started. He was on a show that was filming in Canada called “In The Dark” but then decided he didn’t want to go back even with Covid protocols in place. It’s the first time in 24 years that he hasn’t had back to back directing gigs so his writing has kicked into overdrive. He’s gotten really good at it too. Like his story structure used to be a hot mess. Directors are usually terrible at story structure but they know drama. So they tend to write in a style that’s like, “this happens and then this happens and then this happens” instead of “this happens and because of that this happens and as a result this happens.” It’s a subtle but important distinction and makes all the difference between something that is a sequence of events and something that is an actual story. After 24 years he’s finally got it. I don’t mean that as an insult, some folks never get it. We did this series for Bravo five years ago and spent two months in Atlanta shooting the pilot. It was the most time I’d spent with him in the same place. It was cool to see him work with the cast and crew — not something I normally do. I don’t like production at all and avoid it if possible. But in this case I had to be there because it’s different when it’s your show versus working on a show that somebody else created. Anyhow, everyone loves working with him and he’s a total people person. Lots of hugs. It makes sense that if he’d gone to Toronto he’d have to worry a lot about his health. He was super unhealthy for most of his life, only now in his 50’s taking it seriously so before he reversed his type 2 diabetes he was really freaked out about getting Covid.

I’ve always been a bit of a health nut myself. Staying at home for almost a year now has done a number on my fitness. But Monday 300Lbs of weights are arriving! Now I have to set up the squat rack in the garage which is going to mean cleaning the garage. It’s a mess in there! After my husband switched jobs last year he brought home like 400 art books. We have a library in there — it’s ridiculous. I love Yayoi Kusama but she has like 20 catalogues. So now the garage is packed to the rafters with his crap and I kind of sort of need a place for my rack. Before Covid I was benching 225 which is not much but is impressive to me because I was always the scrawny picked last for dodgeball type in High School. I took up weight lifting about 10 years ago as a part of physical therapy for, get this, a back injury! I know! You would think that’s the wrong thing to do for a back injury and in many cases you would be right. But in my particular case, adding muscle, particularly in my legs and upper body made a huge difference. Basically I had a disc rupture and was in excruciating pain for a year and a half after a failed surgery. I went to a sports medicine doctor who got me started on weight training and was able to avoid having a spinal fusion. Weight lifting helped me naturally fuse the two vertebrae together over a few years. Again — consult your doctor. It worked for me but I was able to spend 5 years working with a trainer to learn proper form. I doubt I can still bench 225 — it’s a goal and one I’ll be slowly building up to. I’m just glad to get that kind of training back given that we’re probably a year from things being kind of normal. And even then, every gym in the city is going bankrupt at this point so…

I was thinking about my anger issues. I’m a hot head. Like not in the way you’d think — I don’t get in physical fights, I just get really mad. I remember years ago I was in physical therapy and I kid you not, this famous child actor’s mom (I won’t say who) started spouting off about how Obama was a secret communist and wasn’t born in the U.S. and just a full line of conspiracy bullshit. I lost it and started yelling at her and said, “you can lie to yourself all you want but don’t expect me to just politely allow you to lie to me.” She shut up and I was kicked out of physical therapy! Like not totally kicked out — the doctor thought she was a crackpot too and was sick of her starting in on that shit for attention every day but he did make me reschedule to different days. Fair enough. Anyhow, all this came up because I spouted off here in OD and that’s in direct violation of the OD terms. Like I wasn’t crazy but I was sarcastic and rude to a trump supporter. Today I was thinking about how if after 2016 a huge number of Democrats in office said, “we know for a fact that the Russians rigged the vote for trump and we’re going to contest the election” I probably would have believed it. We already knew then that the Russians were using social media to spread disinformation to help Trump. We even understand that Manafort was passing data to the Russians to help them target their misinformation campaign and that trump did/does a lot of money laundering legally through his real estate holdings for Russian oligarchs. So if the Democrats had gone one further and said “they infiltrated the voting machines and flipped votes — just give us a special investigation and we’ll prove it.” I probably would have believed it. So actually though, I think I get it. I think I get why trump voters really, truly believe the election was stolen. If I were in their shoes, I’d probably believe it too.