Tag Archives: currentevents

carnival of sorts – friday five

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  1. Inauguration. The Trump train rolled noisily into Washington with their toots and whistles and backfiring pickup trucks and a predictably low class display of capering. Like a carnival of the bizarre and deeply stupid, in its wake it trailed a dribble of toadie weirdos running the gamut from Proud Boys to Nazi tech bro oligarchs glitching out from their boutique drugs to MAGA fembots wearing lingerie to the Rotunda. The yokels outside with faces pressed against the glass were festively adorned with their cult leader’s name and face on their polyester (made in China) shirts and hats and waving their lil flags. God Bless GW, Bill and Hillary for a few unguarded moments of uncontrollable merriment over some of the more gauche and ludicrous aspects of this spectacle (never in a million years pre-MAGA did I think that I would ever have cause to utter the words “God bless GW” but here we are). It’s going to be a long four years watching this gang of thieves mugging for the cameras while they grab all they can with both grubby fists. Luckily, if the Orange One’s prior administration is any indication, they’ll start turning on each other sooner rather than later and then there will be something to see besides bullies and tackiness.

2. Seems like a good time to pull this out of the archives.

3. To round out my political content, it feels like there are a lot of folks out there who could use a reminder about what throwing a Nazi salute actually means.

4. Moving on. In other news. Polar vortex – the beginning of the week was pretty freaking cold. The kid didn’t have school for two days due to wind chills (what do they do in Alaska, I wonder? Or Minnesota?). I got my office days out of the way early in the week and it was really good to stay in my shearling slippers and fleece leggings the remainder of the week. I usually feed the wild birds and squirrels once a day (and keep a heated bird bath full of clean water available) but when the weather is this cold I fill the feeders as often during the day as they empty, and throw out lots of peanuts. The little guys can use as much help as they can get.

(This not so little guy needs not as much help.)

5. In lieu of watching the news (see number 1) we have been diving deep into the DVR. Brandon always has a massive selection of old movies to pick from. Among other things, we watched a silent film from the great Buster Keaton, “Sherlock, Jr.” It was a masterpiece of comedy and the quality of the 2015 restoration was incredible – crystal clear. I am not usually drawn to movies that old but this one was an absolute gem and what he was able to achieve with film at that time is nothing short of genius. And while I know that his path was a difficult one, may I say that in my estimation, young Buster was kind of a hottie.

Onwards. Keep the faith and as my higher power reminded me this week in a moment of meditation, render unto Caesar.

(Post title based on this fantastic track.)

ruminating

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It’s been a bit quiet around the blog lately, but not in our lives. 

The election was of course a dark time for us, as for many others. I am bitter and I cannot understand my fellow Americans. My heart is broken for all of the people who will suffer under this regime of unbridled ignorance, hate, greed and stupidity – gay and lesbian couples, bi, trans and all others who fear for their safety and their rights to live openly and love freely. The migrants who live in fear for themselves and their family members being harassed, hurt, put into camps and deported. Women and girls who will go without vital health care, contraception, and the right to safe abortions. And who have to know that a man found guilty of rape is considered by a majority of the country to be worthy of the presidency. The kids and families who have survived and those yet to be victimized by school shootings and then see the MAGA deplorables wear their NRA pins and show their AR-15’s in Christmas pictures. I’m disappointed and angry. And more than anything I just hope we have the right to vote again in 4 years. 

However, after the election, Brandon and I got on an airplane in rainy Detroit and after a day of travel, were disgorged, disheveled, in hot and humid St. Croix. We spent the next week there, living in a remote seaside villa with 15 other people that I’ve never met before (childhood friends of Brandon’s). I can guarantee you that we did not see eye to eye on politics with at least half of our fellow houseguests but do you know how many times politics came up? Zero times. For that week we lived quite comfortably and happily in that small community where we were mutually respectful, shared food and time and space and resources, and enjoyed each other’s company. I wanted to love them for the people they are and not even know how they voted and for that brief moment I was able to do that. It was healing to my soul.

I don’t know how to reconcile this with my feeling of deep disappointment in and anger towards MAGA voters. I have wrestled for a long time with my feeling that this is more than a political disagreement, it’s a disagreement on fundamental values and human rights. I don’t have answers about how to reconcile and move forward, but I feel in equal measure that this knowledge and identification of community over and above rage baiting means that we are capable of doing better. I don’t have answers. But if anything, the election and the weeks following have made me think that the answer for me is grassroots. I am motivated to be more kind, to seek to understand and build in my community. I want to work less and volunteer more. I don’t want to argue about politics on the Internet or at all. I don’t want to cut people out of my life but I don’t want to suffer fools or villains. I want to defend and protect those among us who need it. I want to do better, be better and more compassionate while also demanding that same compassion and accountability from the people in my life. And to know how to move forward and beyond them if that isn’t given. I just don’t know the answers on how to seek common ground and live as humans and not parties, and truly if those are even the right questions when such fundamental issues are at stake.

That may be the work of years, not days or weeks. 

Sigh.

Now we are getting ready for Thanksgiving next week – we are hosting my family so this weekend will be housecleaning, menu planning, and shopping, in between the kiddo’s indoor soccer games. We got our first mild snow on Thursday – nothing that really stuck, but after a very mild autumn, it was thrilling to see the weather finally catching up. I hope that you are all well and safe and that you have time to enjoy your people and your communities. 

october friday check-in

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It’s been such a week that I don’t even have a single photograph to add to this post! Unless you want a grocery receipt that I snapped to upload to my Ibotta app.

4 weeks since my Covid diagnosis and I am still struggling to get back to good health. I’m still very congested with a lingering cough and fatigue. I don’t know if it’s remaining Covid impacts, fall allergy symptoms, a couple of small other-type viruses or what, but I am ready to feel better again. Unfortunately no amount of taking it easy seems to be putting a dent in it and I think everyone in my life is getting a little impatient about my inability to operate at 100%.

It’s been a terrible week in the world community. I do not pretend to be knowledgeable about the complex nature of politics in the Middle East. I personally feel anti-Hamas, pro-Israel, pro-free Palestine, and solidly “people are not their governments”. These are most likely naïve statements and I would probably be told by people more knowledgeable than myself that they cannot coexist. These concepts probably put me at odds with everyone in the conflict who demands that a side be chosen. But the thought of all the babies and children and young people being murdered, raped, mutilated and traumatized is so abhorrent that I cannot believe anyone would care whether they were Palestinian or Israeli.

I have to drag my weary and dispirited bones through an ortho appointment, my first workplace-sponsored Spanish class, and a lot of driving of the kiddo for marching band activities before I can lay my head on my Friday night pillow and consider the weekend. I hope you are all as well as can be expected. xo

there’s a world outside of yonkers…

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The first full week of 2023 was one of those strange ones that feel almost like a failure to launch. Although I was back to working in my home office after Monday, Brandon had some light workdays and the kiddo is still off from school. So there was some banging around in the kitchen as they made lunches and snacks and I think there may have been some shared episodes of “Rick and Morty” between the two of them. Otherwise the kiddo is at the age where she can sleep til 11:30 and keep herself occupied – smoothies with friends, working out, art projects and movie rentals on Prime. She’s also been prepping her audition for spring theater’s “Hello Dolly” production so we are all singing “BARNABYYYY” a lot lately.

We also met up with some of her friends and their moms on Wednesday night for pizza and – indoor skydiving (?!) I did not skydive (although one of the mom tribe did and said it was fun but short) instead choosing to knit on my Clinton Hill Cashmere Bandit Cowl and kibbitz with other moms.

iFly Detroit

It was pretty much chaos at work for reasons that I of course can’t share here.

I started a new book – the third in Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb series, which I forgot to mention as one of my favorites of 2022. I’m not sure I understand any of it but it’s phenomenal – the tagline on the first of the series (which was also my favorite) promises “lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space! Decadent nobles vie to serve the deathless emperor! Skeletons!” There’s way more to it but yeah, it’s epic.

Likes this week: black leggings, Wishful enzyme scrub, Essie gel “Behind the Glass” on my nails, Damar Hamlin, Chapstick Total Hydration tinted lip oil, using my Verilux Happy Light at my desk during these dark days, listening to A Little Bit Culty podcast with a player from the Nexivm insanity, taking all my vitamins every day this week and being riveted to the chaos over the Speaker.

Dislikes: rehabbing a pulled muscle in my back and not running all week, Harry and Meghan, menopausal issues on high all week, post-holiday letdown, this time of year until essentially the end of March, people who don’t do what they say they’re going to do / being blindsided by that, George Santos, and bring riveted to the chaos over the Speaker.

This weekend is Elvis’s birthday which we may celebrate by going to see an Elvis movie at the local cinema (if I can stay awake). It’s also the big audition – so tonight it’s thawed leftovers from the Annual Freezer Cleanout, a fire in the woodstove, and a “Hello Dolly” rental for additional inspiration and research. TGIF!

mostly about oxford.

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pot roast had zero sympathy for my time of strife

As is often the case, my gloomy mood this week was a precursor to getting sick. I don’t know if I get sick because I am experiencing a depression, or if being depressed is a harbinger of something brewing in my system that has yet to be felt. But anyway, I was exceptionally ill with some sort of stomach issue and although I will spare you the grody details, it was the sickest I’ve been in a long time. I am thankfully a bit better now, but still dehydrated and fatigued, with lingering abdominal pain. I’m trying to ease my system back into some semblance of normalcy via the BRAT diet and a lot of hydration.

The big news around here is still the tragic Oxford High shooting and the subsequent drama with the shooter’s parents. They immediately went on the lam and during the haze of my illness Brandon was giving me updates about the situation. This is all occurring in our county and our area schools have been closed due to copycat threats so it hits very close to home.

My opinions of this are as follows:

– the parents are entirely culpable and have blood on their hands; I have nothing but rage for these fucked up Trumper parents who fostered his mental illness, put a weapon and ammunition in his hands, laughed at it and encouraged it and then, when he reaped what they sowed, ran – tried to hide in East Detroit leaving him in prison.

– the gun lobby is a murderous greedy cult and gun laws need to be changed; guns and people kill people and NO ONE NEEDS A SEMI AUTOMATIC WEAPON. Now, I know there are responsible gun owners. I have gun owners in my family and I trust them implicitly because they are absolutely committed to doing what they need to do to be safe and well trained. But now is the time for those responsible gun owners to join the fight and get loud about gun laws and about the fact that this is not okay. They need to not just toe the line quietly because they buy the whole NRA “they’re comin to take our guns” bullshit and they’d rather have people die needlessly than worry that their guns are going to be taken. I don’t want your hunting rifle but I definitely do not want AR-15s in the hands of minors! As Brandon said, these gun nuts think if a kid is killed in Biology class, it’s the 2nd Amendment that is under attack and needs to be protected. There have been 28 school shootings in 2021 and they are not going to stop until gun laws are changed. But I am glad to see that the parents have been charged – this is a positive development. Guns used in school shootings frequently come from the homes of the perpetrators. Clearly many of these people don’t care about the moral and ethical ramifications, so maybe they’ll care about what they expose their children to if they’re held legally responsible for it.

– the school district grievously failed those children; there were so many signs that this kid was a time bomb and they mishandled it to the point of negligence. He never should have been allowed back to class, knowing what they knew about his behavior this week. In addition, I would certainly hope that our superintendent would make a better showing than the Oxford superintendent who seemed to only be interested in defending the bungling rather than being open that something went terribly wrong and it is his obligation (and everyone’s) to understand what that was, take accountability, and do everything possible to keep it from happening again.

We continue to follow this situation closely and hope that our kids can get back to school as normal this week; but “normal” is now a strange and amorphous thing, and maybe does not exist at all anymore.

december

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December is here and Michigan is bouncing between snow and spring, in typically indecisive fashion.

We’ve gotten the Advent calendars going – they’re a favorite in our house. And the Christmas tree is up but in typical fashion, it was a battle. I despise putting up the tree (and taking it down) and we had one or two nice days with it before an entire string of lights went out, smack dab in the center. I had to go buy new lights and they didn’t match the other strings so the whole tree had to be redone. I told Brandon I’d be content to just take the whole thing down and put it away. He hugged me, put on some music, and took care of it while I sat on the couch with a glass of wine and kept him company.

I got a good fella.

In other news, between the new variant and the school shooting – which occurred less than an hour away from us, in the same county – I don’t have much to say about the state of the world right now.

This is a difficult time for many and this year seems to be no different. All of my social media feeds are reflecting internal and external struggles. Yesterday I made a list of the things I need to do this month to stay healthy. They seem common sensible – stay active, track my food via WW and stay hydrated. Meditate and use my SAD lamp, limit sugar and alcohol. And one additional item is that I have to turn down some social commitments. Some are for my kid, which are non-negotiable, but the ones that aren’t are coming off the schedule.

Hopefully you are all staying well and safe, mentally, physically, and emotionally. Hope to be back soon, more brightly.