FATIGUE.

It's the weekend before Thanksgiving. Covid cases are surging here, and our head-of-school won't close school, deciding instead to postpone re-opening for a week (So we essentially get two weeks of break? Or maybe the second week is online? I'm unclear.), but even a week doesn't put us at the 10-14 days we'd need to be sure there were no holiday infections. 

I imagine that someday in the next few days, they will shut the city entirely down, like in March. It will mean that we definitely won't be seeing family over Christmas. 

We usually go over to our friend Margaret's house for Thanksgiving. There are often 30-40 people there, but sometimes more. For most of them, Thanksgiving is the only time we see them, and we have gone - or at least made an appearance - every year that Arlo has been alive, even if it meant doing two Thanksgivings. 

Anyway, we're not doing that. 

Thanksgiving is my holiday. Christmas is ok, and I do enjoy waking up on New Year's day, but everything else is garbage compared to Thanksgiving. 

When I lived in Portland, we used to host an Orphan Thanksgiving, for friends who couldn't make it home for the holiday. It started with about 16 people, and grew and grew and grew. Years when our friends actually could go home, they instead convinced their parents to come to Portland, so they could all come to our house. One year we had to have three giant turkeys, each cooked at different houses and brought over. Maybe that same year, my roommate Sam and I built three tables out of saw horses and salvaged doors, and moved all the furniture out of the living room so we could all fit. 

Once I moved to LA, the holiday became kind of depressing, because who was I going to invite? But we did a few. In 2012, we hosted Andy's aunts and uncles, a couple of friends, and my mom and grandma. My mom and grandma came early in the afternoon to help cook, and they had already been arguing when they got to my house. Nothing made my grandmother more mischievous than a good argument, and my mom got so frustrated she left and went for a walk. My grandma and I opened the wine up at 2pm, and cooked together and had a blast. We were tanked by dinner, which meant my grandma was in fine form, holding court with all kinds of stories, and the entire table was laughing so hard they were literally crying. My friend's husband begged her to stop, because he was afraid he was going to laugh so hard he'd throw up her sweet potato casserole.  She did, kind of. For a few minutes anyway, until dessert came out. 

Anyway. Three weeks later, she fell and broke her shoulder and had to have surgery. She was in the hospital for three days and when they were getting her ready to go home (my mom was already on her way to the hospital), she had a heart attack and died. 

So I haven't cooked Thanksgiving since then. We just went to Margaret's. 

Which we can't do this year. 

So,  I'm cooking here, just for Andy and Arlo, which is more than slightly awkward, considering that we split up a year and a half ago, and I'm doing it in my kitchen, instead of the kitchen we shared for 14 years. I'm cooking a chicken, because neither of them like turkey, and I'm having some really big feelings about it...some kind of fuck this goddamn pandemic and trump and all these fucking people and how is this still going on and why didn't anyone listen to Dr. Fauci when he said this was going to get worse in the fall...

So...all of that.  The last 36 hours have been just rough. No matter how often I shower, I still don't feel really clean, and I have two cystic stress pimples, one on my jawbone and one smack between my eyes, and I just don't want any of this. 

I want the whole thing to stop. Lift the needle off this record and play something else. ANYTHING else.