Four days

This was the best find two days ago. I was, and continue to be, Maude. Without apology, but with appreciation for relocating cats and teaching pigeons to shit on pedestrians (of certain stripes).

I feel this is 100% true.

Meanwhile, Mom and Dad are about 50% moved into their darling rental home, have flown back to Louisiana to vote proudly for Biden/Harris, and are really such troopers.

Jack and Ol are eager for Halloween; both are participating in our neighborhood’s socially-distant, individually-wrapped-treat festivities tomorrow. After angstily detailing my kitchen cabinets today, bringing Mom and Dad to the airport, getting Ol off to school for the first time since March 13, and angstily detailing the interior of my fridge, I began obsessively, perhaps angstily, creating a bespoke Han Solo a la Solo belt and holster for Ol to wear for Halloween tomorrow. He is, as you have surmised, going as Han Solo from Solo: a Star Wars story. Jack is some character from some video game and it involves a suit and a mustache and a bullet-proof vest. #IDon’tKnow

Anyway, I guess I just needed more to obsess about as my NC voter hotline shifts got canceled (so many volunteers! yay!), so I ordered random shit from Michael’s for curbside pick-up and then got busy. I am extremely pleased so far as I really cannot even sew a new button onto anything that is then worn.

the real deal, my attempt

Tomorrow I will add snaps and figure out how to fully attach the holster to the belt and so forth, but it’s all leather and hand-sewn so I imagine it’ll last at least until next Halloween. Fingers crossed.

VOTE LIKE YOUR MOTHER EFFING LIVES DEPEND ON IT BECAUSE THEY DO! VOTE BLUE ALL THE WAY UP AND DOWN THE TICKET. THROW THE GOP BUMS OUT. WE GOTTA BURN THIS SHIT DOWN AND START FRESH, Y’ALL.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

(Can you even imagine what it would be like to sleep well and read books -actually read them- and not be freaking out all the time? I am losing the sense of what that would be like, so again, VOTE BLUE!)

17 Oct 2020: To and fro, and 16 days to go

Yesterday morning at the crack of dawn, I flew to Atlanta to meet up with Dad. We visited with my almost-94-year-old grandmother for a few hours and then got in Dad’s car which was hitched to a Uhaul and started the drive back up to Maryland.

We made it to Raleigh last night just after 8, and into Chevy Chase this afternoon around 2:30. Dad was hellbent on making it back in time to return the Uhaul and watch the Georgia-Alabama game, and I’m glad we will ultimately accomplish both. That said, I admit to being a bit tuckered out right now, y’all. And so sad I couldn’t march in DC this morning.

In any case, 16 days until the election! When you read this, it’ll be 15. I have finished my election judge training and will be working 11/3 from 6a-10:30p. My only dismay about that is that I have to leave my phone in my car so will have no idea how anything is going until I leave the polling center that night. I’ll do some more phone banking and vibe-sending but feel I’ve done my part. And I guess that’s all I can do, or could have done.

Hope y’all are well.

6 October 2020: 27 days, Mom and Dad, the gray area

It feels as if we’ve all lived another year since RBG died, which was, in fact, just a few weeks ago. Since then, we have learned, conclusively, that the “president avoided paying federal income tax in 10 of the 15 years preceding his election. In 2016, he paid $750 in federal income tax, less than one night’s stay in a suite at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.” And yet he also received a $72+ million refund.

We watched, not ten days after RBG died, as the GOP, too many of whom are classless power-grabbers, printed “Notorious ACB” shirts as if Handmaiden Amy Coney Barrett could possibly, in any way, deserve that moniker.

We watched as her nomination party turned into the grotesque superspreader spectacle it was in that person after person has since tested positive for COVID-19, including trump, melania, kellyanne, kayleigh, stephen, thom, mike, and ron, paragons of honesty and class every one.

We watched as the US reached the 215,000+ dead mark but trump flew Marine One back to the White House after just three days at Walter Reed Hospital on our dime, and in care of an osteopath who sounds like a complete and scripted fool, to demean every death and every struggle by saying that Covid is just not that bad. Man up, and you’ll be fine. The dismissive cruelty and privilege in that is stunning.

Meanwhile, I returned south to help my parents with more of their move, to celebrate my dad’s 70th, to try and keep some ship steady somewhere. Masked up, staying distant, hugging few, and feeling so far away from normal, I realized it has been more than 30 weeks since life changed so dramatically yet again. For the most part, the rest of the world is moving on, but here? Americans are all at home, those of us following the rules at the shitty mercy of idiot anti-maskers, disinformation, and, above all, the deranged man-child who will kill us all in his single-minded, selfish quest for power.

Our children are lonely, their educations at best a fraction of what they should be. We are all stressed to the nines in the best of circumstances; those facing illness, eviction, joblessness, hunger, and those in need and deserving of all form of insurance and support are in crisis mode. And, winter is coming.

The years since the 2016 election have felt like an eternity. A daily slog of exhaustion and stress and ugliness. It is taking a toll. The gray areas of nuance seem to be slipping into the far reaches of sparring corners. I see it on our neighborhood listserv as people yell back and forth in fairly anonymous screeds about leaf blowers, safety cameras, and the like. I see it in southerners who boast about their communal spirit and who do go above and beyond to help those who look like they do but then rage in blanket, dismissive disgust about all who don’t. I see it in parent communities all.the.time. In those who feel competitive and in those who don’t, in those who grasp for a majority of the pie while stepping on others as they reach greedily forward. I feel it in myself and my anger and lack of reserve.

I know that none of this is new, but shit. Can’t we just take responsibility, appreciate fact, be kind, and go forth? Can we stop lying, cheating, and throwing others under the bus?

Tom and I just rewatched the Chernobyl series. If you haven’t yet seen it, I can not recommend it more. Tough? Yes. Important? Crucial.

“Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid…What is the cost of lies? It’s not that we will mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that, if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all. What can we do then? What else is left but to abandon even the hope of truth and content ourselves instead with stories? In these stories, it doesn’t matter who the heroes are. All we want to know is who is to blame.”

27 days. Vote!