Things are wacky in the home of Apt. 11D right now. I had a 1,700 word article on special ed that had to be totally rejiggered after Betsy DeVos opened her trap in the Senate this week. We’re supposed to leave for our first weekend ski trip at 3:00 today, but Jonah told us yesterday that he has a mandatory track meet down at the Jersey shore on Saturday morning. So, we’re going to have to leave him alone in the house on a Friday night (ugh!), where he’ll have to drive to the meet on his own and then drive two hours to the ski resort after the race. We don’t have ski gloves yet. We haven’t packed. The laundry isn’t done. My insomnia flared up this week again, because I haven’t gotten enough exercise this month. There’s a nest of little animals in the attic. I don’t have shampoo.
And the country has elected a totally insane individual to run the country. Who knows what’s going to happen to healthcare, education, taxes, foreign relations? I’m assuming the answer is nothing good.
My facebook page is scary. Too much emotion. Too much tension. I’ve never seen anything like this.
At the same time, it doesn’t do anyone any good to panic. I’m managing my own chaos with lists and deep breaths. We need to handle the new presidency in the same way. As grown ups.
Poor Hillary.
(I’ll keep adding to this post throughout the day.)
Apt. 11d 
Exercise helps. By now you know whether your crap shot in leaving the kid alone in the house for Friday night had consequences. We had some consequences for kid actions, Arlington’s Finest, etc. Followed by Deep and Serious conversations with the teen in question.
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Kiddo was born on inauguration day which always amplifies this day every four years. I sent her off to Canada with her dad for the day.
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My son came home from school and asked me if I knew Trump paid people to pee on him.
I just said yes.
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Is not every day that a head of state makes claims that his country’s prostitutes are world beaters… “Firstly he is an adult, and secondly he is a person who for many years has organized a beauty pageant, socialized with the most beautiful women in the world. It is hard to believe that he ran to a hotel to meet with our girls of a low social class, although they are the best in the world. But finally, you know, what I want to say, prostitution is a serious, ugly, social phenomenon, young women do this connected to the fact that they cannot survive any other way and that is a problem of society but people who order false information and spread this information against the elected President, who fabricate it and use it in a political fight, they are worse than prostitutes.”
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I didn’t go to a march, but it sure has been nice to see my FB feed dominated by reports from around the country from friends who did. And also to see the national media feeds, dominated by “American carnage” stories, having to include at least one story with a bit of pink, maybe off in the corner.
If nothing else, this helped a lot of people deal with their fear and misery about the inauguration. I’m hoping it will keep them going in the days ahead. And it’s also good to build that kind of protest infrastructure – where do we march, with whom, how do we get there, what protest signs do we make – just like we’re starting to build resistance infrastructure by knowing our reps’ phone numbers and getting into the habit of calling them and showing up at their offices. Realistically, I know this may make no difference, but there are millions of people who are willing to do things, and we are all trying to identify what those things can be.
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It’ll make a difference. I was picking up my signs for the march today and the woman helping me is from Poland. Her husband was jailed for 3 years for taking part in Solidarity back in the day. She told me of how they organized and protested. They didn’t give up.
We can all do something within our circle of influence. Every little bit helps and protesting/marching is only part of it.
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Participation was the cure for what ailed me, at least today. We had about a thousand down by the Brandenburg Gate.
Every little bit does indeed help.
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Rebuild the wall.
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Geht nicht, Genosse.
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That wasn’t Doug, that was me.
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We’ll never know who it was.
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I was at the NYC march. So crowded. Amazing peaceful happy vibe. We just couldn’t stay in the parade route, either. They closed down Madison Ave (not sure if that was planned) for overflow, plus we walked down a bunch of the streets east to west in the mid 40s.
Walking up Fifth, it was fun to see a bunch of employees in a window at Saks Fifth Avenue, holding up a sign saying “We Support You,” waving down at us.
Good day, but my 50 year old body is now having its own protest. It wants to march me right back into bed.
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The pink flooding my FB feed helped with my mood, if nothing else. I didn’t march, but practically everyone in my feed did. Several travelled cross country to DC. The crowd totals in our city were estimated at 130K and videos showed a stream of 3+ miles of pink in the streets.
I did manage to knit a pussycat hat, which was worn by a friend (and that made me happy). When discussing the pussycat hats with my parents, my parents remembered and told us about Gandhi hats (which were traditionally made of khadi cloth, homespun cotton), which were a symbol of the Indian Independence Movement against the British. Which loops me back to my favorite poster from the Amplifier Foundation (by Ernesto Yerena) — a poster of an older Native American, headed “We The Resilient” and the tagline, “have been here before.”
My “swing district” from the swing voter site that’s been circulating is Alaska’s at large district. Disturbing and potentially questionable, but, that reality didn’t stop the pictures of the 1000’s of people marching in -15 degree weather in Fairbanks Alaska from lifting my hopes. My favorite poster there, an older white woman, who I would have prejudged as a non-supporter from her face, carrying a handmade sign that says “All Americans are Real Americans.”
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