Yesterday was quite cold most of the day, only crawling slowly up to near 40 degrees. We had rehearsals in the evening, right after it started getting colder again, so I bundled up inside my winter coat which was wrapped around my costume.
Since I'm playing the part of the Prosecutor in this little scene, there's not much to my costume. It's just me in a suit. I'm not bothering with a briefcase since my scene starts with me questioning the accused and ends with him falling apart on the stand (or "at the bar", since it's a British play).
I couldn't find my suit jackets, though. They were put away sometime last year and I forgot where that was. I forget a lot of things these days. Names, mostly. Sometimes words that dance around on the tip of my tongue but never resolve. It's maddening. If I focus on it long enough, the word will snap into reality. Sometimes. Other times, it just makes me angry and frustrated to realize that my mind is going south.
That's one of the reasons I wanted to get into acting again - to strengthen my memory retrieval by learning my lines. Not a full-blown play; that would be too much stress and anxiety. Start slow. Just one scene. Just 46 lines. I should be able to handle it.
Right?
We'll see.
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There are so many other distractions around here, so many broken things that need fixing, so much junk that needs to be thrown out, so many household repairs and patches and maintenance items that I just can't keep up. Then there are also the various trips we have planned for this year, all of which are happening too soon or not soon enough, all of which are going to cost us money we don't have, all of which involve spending time with loved ones who live so far away at moments in their lives when they need the support of other family members.
I don't know how to fit it all into the schedule or the budget and my brain just can't handle all these things right now, so instead I'm going to sit at my drawing desk and make cartoons, which is something I haven't done in a very, very long time.
Maybe I'll share some of them, if they're not too awful. Like I said, it's been a long time.
(That rather frightening thing up at the top is not a drawing, it's a photograph that's been rendered via an edge-sensing algorithm to produce what looks like a drawing. A very scary drawing of me playing the part of an Old Man. Which I am.)