The Quiet before the war

Sunday, February 20, 2022

It's quiet here tonight. The boys are at a video game event and Erin has Kaileb quietly in the basement and Shayla is asleep on the futon in my office.

It's calm. And weird. 

We are waiting as a world to see if Putin will invade Ukraine. We have a good solid President in Biden so we know that the US and Europe are doing the best that we can, but we are waiting. Holding our breath.

At home, all hell has broken out at the local level with the crazy Republicans. I wish we could give them another name, but they own it now. School systems are banning books, the Florida governor is trying to forbid talking about LBGTQ issues and people - and at the same time "outing" students at school.

There is a state trying to overturn a 60 year old law that allows a husband and wife to decide which birth control they will use.

I don't recognize my country. It is obvious it will be generations before we get back to where we were when I was a young adult. If we ever do.

At the same time, my daughter is struggling with how to end a marriage to an abusive narcissist with whom she shares my 5yo grandson. Once again, her life is totally upended. And after she totalled her car 2 weeks ago, she has nothing. No car, no home, no family. They are camped in our basement and my office again, but that isn't a good long term arrangement for the kids. We all have no idea how to get her on her feet again.

I'm struggling with the aftereffects of my latest kidney stones: cystitis. I've coded a thousand of these cases but never thought I'd have it myself. 24x7 pressure and soreness in my bladder. It can make a person insane. So thankful it's calmed down enough with meds so I can function. But it's always something with this body.

This lovely body I am so fortunate to have. It has done so much for me! I have to remember to be thankful for all it has allowed me to do over the decades: bear children, ballet and ballroom and club dance, ski, travel, tai chi, yoga, climb hiking trails and so much more. I've had 60 good years of adventures and decades more. It is holding up pretty well for this old gal. That is, if I can continue to manage the pain that is everywhere always. 

And it is allowing me to be an artist really for the first time in my life. I've been sketching as long as I can remember. Horses as a child, then my children, now almost everything. 

Right now I am working on a graphite sketch of my friend's mother. I am using a 100dayproject challenge to get myself to work on it a little every day that I can. It's turning out beautiful. I want it to be perfect...but I also want to accept it if is not. 

So I am deeply enjoying the quiet this evening. Tomorrow morning starts my three day work week and I am so grateful for that as well. A job I can do at home that is a REAL job, which matters every day to the patients I code, and that I do well. I get paid respectably and can still contribute to the household bills and help pay for college when Ben starts this fall. And I am just as glad it is only 3 days a week because by Wednesday I am exhausted. I am so deeply deeply grateful that I do not have to work a 40 hour work week anymore. My husband is amazingly supportive of me...I am truly blessed.

So ... I'm off to enjoy my blessings again and to Pray for Ukraine, the land where my husband's family is from. Trump is finally gone, Maybe one day Putin will be too.

- L

Being part of history can suck

Feb 11, 2022

Today is my oldest child's 37th birthday. That should be my primary focus but for some reason this year it isn't. 

Is it because 37 is firmly is adulthood, actually almost midlife? 

Is it because I'm 60 and all birthdays feel superfluous?

Or it because daily life is now so ludicrous that reality doesn't fit anymore?

It's 11am on a Friday morning right now. I'm 5 years into working from home and 2 years into working part time. More importantly, it's beginning the 3rd year that COVID is in the world and 5 years since Sweet Potato Yam Pants became our president and ruined the GOP.

The world is so different is so many ways Just yesterday I was reminded of why. I was Facebook chatting with a cousin who lives in Canada. Our crazy has leaked up there and the Trucker Convoy protest is ongoing in Ottawa. I said I hope she was okay..and she was actually rooting for them. 

Once more, I had to do a stop and reset with a relationship. My hind brain realized that they were on the "wrong" side of crazy and that changes alot. I'll make sure not to broach certain topics with her - and I'm pretty sure I won't be rushing to meet her again when she comes back down to visit the US.

I've wondered alot in the last few years what it would be like to live in an autocracy. For a while, it seemed we were one. We are trying very hard with President Biden to dig out of that hole. But part of it is still here. We know our words are identifying us as "with" or "against" the government. We watch what we say. We keep our opinions close to our chest. We never know who is the "enemy". And when sometimes it turns out to be friends or family, the relationship changes in an instant.

In my case, the minute that I find that one of my loved ones has believed any part of the crazy, I have to shut down because I realized they are living in a different world than I am. They are not hearing the facts and don't want to know. The propaganda station they are watching only feeds them things that make them feel good about the GOP, evil government, "free-dumb" and gun rights. All the other things...a former President and his party breaking every possible law...never get shown to them and they all believe we are lying anyway.

So, there really is nowhere to feel "safe" anymore. I realized my own husband does not watch the same news feeds I do and get different information. Sometimes he is genuinely surprised when I bring up the latest crazy of the day. So we don't talk about it anymore. If the January 6th hearings start and everything proves "our" side, maybe he'll see it - but I'm actually thinking he won't watch it with me because it will provide too much cognitive dissonance. And he's the smartest man I know...so it's actually kind of terrifying. 

If the GOP wins the midterms, our country will head back to Jim Cross and pre Roe v Wade. His reality will come to pass. Maybe he'll regret it, but I think not. He is too far set into his belief system and I don't think he has it in him to change. It would be too degrading to leave "his" party.

That makes life lonelier both at home and outside. Put a Biden bumpersticker on my van and my husband would be furious and my car would probably get keyed somewhere. Everyday there is some really powerful weird shit revealed and I have no one to talk to it about. This week is was that Trump took 15 boxes of documents from the White House when he left - some Top Secret - and he routinely tore up, chewed and flushed documents when he was President. An outright violation of the US Code 2071, I think. Just add it to the list. If convicted of everything he's done, Trump would be serving enough time for 2 lifetimes. 

Yet it's quiet from Merrick Garland in the Attorney General's office. He is a crackerjack lawyer who prosecuted Mayor Marion Barry in DC and worked on the Oklahoma City bombing. I've read he is slow, methodical, deliberative - and good. So I am hoping SO much that when everything busts wide open all the evidence is on live TV with Congressional hearings, that the truth will out and the crazy lying thieves will be put away.

But that doesn't fix what has happened to all of us on a daily basis. The dog whistle words of Patriot, American, Christian and Rule of Law have all been usurped. The world now is one that members of my generation hardly recognize but one that my youngest children and grandchildren will only know. If they decide to get a job outside of the country after graduation, I wouldn't blame them.

And so I write here, because there is almost NO one that I can speak freely with about how I feel. And most of them are women my age. That's not a coincidence.

White males are on the ropes. Hence, the protests and anger. They were in charge without question for the last 200 years and now that is threatened. There are BIPOC and female and LGBTQ+ citizens who are actually better than them these days. And they can't see it, believe it or acknowledge that. And they may burn down the whole country rather than secede.

L