Yeah, I’m Still Here

I bet you thought you’d seen the last of me. Ha ha ha (that’s an evil laugh). Just when you think I’m gone for good I’ll resurface, like lice or horsetails.

I started a post a few weeks ago that was supposed to be a recap of what has been going on around here for the last six months. I kept holding back from hitting the ‘publish’ button though, and I realized what was bothering me. What I wrote was hideously boring. So I’m going to spare you most of the bitching and moaning and trim it down to just the basics, so that we are caught up and I can move on to other subjects.

The fall was a dynamic few months. And by ‘dynamic’ I mean that there was a strict Advil, adrenaline and red wine diet enforced around here. Robert and I finished the house we were building to sell even though it felt like swimming upstream though mud to get it done. In the end we were really happy with how it turned out and it sold right away. Though we vowed at one point to never again take on a project like that, it was successful and well received so who knows. We’re kinda dumb like that. Those of you that I know in real life have seen pictures of the project, but here it is anyway, proof that I was busy for a while:

After the house, the holidays came and wreaked havoc, leaving the usual exhaustion and apathy in their wake. I love Christmas, I think I do anyway, but truly, it makes me and everyone else crazy. I didn’t get my one perfect moment this year, because perfect is perhaps just a little hard to attain, and I was resentful about it. But we made it through. Next year I will have to just obsess a little more and control things a little more tightly because that is the key to happiness. (I’m kidding, totally kidding. Like 97% kidding.)

I can’t do a summary of the last while without touching on the darkness that has permeated our collective consciousness since November 8th. It is so hard for those of us who live in our liberal bubbles to understand how we ended up in such a mess. The thought that our country is not safe from tyrannical rule, that it only takes one charismatic man and his lackeys, no matter how unstable, to upend everything, goes against what I always believed about my country. As flawed as it is, I thought the system would work. I’m afraid for us. But I have also found hope in the fact that a fire has been lit in so many, including myself, who have been complacent. For the first time in my life I have been moved to tears by the bravery and goodness of my governor, I have grappled with explaining white privilege to my daughter, I have stuttered my way through calls to senators asking to be heard, and I have marched with my family and a hundred thousand others. My kids and theirs may have to work for years to repair the damage done by this administration, but they are going to know how to stand up for what is right. Kindness and fairness, these are the values we will defend. Onward.