NPR is my primary source of news, if we don’t count Bluesky and let’s not. I appreciate NPR’s relentlessly calm, measured tone, especially in contrast to what I’ve been forced to see/hear from programs that are not legally allowed to categorize themselves as news, such as F0xNews. But on the other hand, sometimes they are SO calm and measured, I miss that something enormous has happened. “Israel and the U.S. applied military strikes in Iran. Iran has confirmed the death of their Supreme Leader, and an estimated forty of their highest-ranking officials. Breezy and sunny today, possible snow flurries, highs in the 40s.” “The Pentagon canceled a contract with Anthropic AI, after Anthropic said their AI could not be used to spy on U.S. citizens or to use autonomous deadly force without human involvement. The Pentagon has made a new contract with OpenAI. Now it’s time for the weekly puzzle, with Will Shortz.”

Two of my weakest subjects are history and geography and, as you’ve heard me say before, I did not truly tune into politics until 2015. This means that when my country teams up with Israel and bombs Iran, I need a lot of relentlessly calm, measured context, and I need to hear it repeatedly until it starts to sink in. I had a 7-hour drive (Edward was home for an infusion and needed to be returned to school), and I listened to hours of commentary, trying to understand. By about the third run-through, I felt I had the gist, or at least the outline of the gist.

But I think NPR could go even a little deeper/clearer, or perhaps have a daily/weekly program for people who need remedial-level news. For example, I needed them to tell me what a Supreme Leader is. It SOUNDS important. But what IS it? If someone killed the United States’ “Supreme Leader,” who would that be, approximately? And it wouldn’t be silly to remind me what our own government’s rules are about killing one of those. And maybe go ahead and do a little sidebar on which one is Iran and which one is Iraq. That kind of thing.

Also, sometimes NPR tries to put things into a relatable context, but I feel like they miss. The other day, they were explaining that Russia says they’ll only make a peace deal with Ukraine if Ukraine gives Russia a large chunk of Ukraine—about a quarter of it. The newscaster said that Ukraine is about the size of Texas, so this would be like if the United States had to give up a quarter of Texas to another country in order to stop that country from attacking it. NO. No. I am bad at geography, but I am good at similes. This is like if the United States had to give up a quarter OF THE UNITED STATES to another country, in order to stop that country from attacking us.

Out of the blue I remembered the kids’ assistant karate teacher, who was more into sword-fighting than karate, but apparently parents are less willing to pay for instruction in that. During a break, he presented me with a thought puzzle: You are in a fight, and a knife is drawn; what do you do?

Well, let me just tell you how much I hate questions like this from strangers. My brain turns into blue Icee slush. I am being tested, I am on the spot, I did not know there would be a test; this differs from my stress dreams only in that my stress dreams are more about not being able to find the classroom in which the test will be given, and being increasingly late for the test.

Coming up with The Correct Answer is more important to me than anything else in this life, and that is a normal thing to feel, especially for a person more inclined than the average person to freeze when asked an unexpected question. I came up with, “….Uh. I’d. Run away?” He said, “Ah!” So pleased, so very “Ah, young grasshopper!” even though he was probably fifteen years younger than me; “And why did you assume the other person had the knife?” Ho ho HO! It was a GOTCHA. A set-up. A trap. I was SUPPOSED to fall into that trap, and he WANTED me to fall into that trap, and he would have been DISAPPOINTED if I had NOT fallen into the trap—and yet I have spent over a dozen years blushing and cringing for falling into that trap.

Later, I thought: why didn’t I say “Um. Because I don’t, um. Carry a fighting knife? Or have fights. So. Like. If I were in an physical altercation, and a knife were drawn, that would be an altercation in which I would not draw a knife, because I would not have one? Or know how to use it in a fight? That’s why I RIGHTLY assumed it was the other person who had one, in this hypothetical scenario?”

Or why didn’t I say, “You are not correctly imagining the typical situations in which a woman finds herself in an altercation where a knife is drawn.”

Instead I listened to our young fellow explain to me how important it was to know how to defend yourself with a sword.

I finished a book that I would like to recommend to you but I cannot. Instead I will tell you about it, and you can decide for yourself if you would like it to be a recommendation.

(image from Amazon.com)

All Fours, by Miranda July

Relatedly, this headline from The Onion:

(image from theonion.com)

This book READS LIKE autobiographical fiction. I’m not in any way saying it IS autobiographical fiction: I don’t know what Miranda July’s whole thing is. But it READS that way. Often that is one of my favorite kinds of fiction: either the author is writing about what actually happened, or they are writing realistically about another way their life could have gone with the same real cast of characters they have, and either way I am ALL IN.

I try to wait awhile before looking at an author’s photo, because it can strongly influence how I perceive the book. In this case, I looked at the author’s photo about 1/4th of the way through the book, and my thought was “Yep, that checks out.” It made me like the book MORE, because it FIT. The author’s photo makes her look MISERABLE and COOL, and that was the vibe I was getting.

The ONLY reason I can’t recommend this book is the sex stuff: I can’t recommend it, and then imagine you reading it and thinking about how I read it too. And we can spend hours and hours unpicking why exactly someone might not like to read really explicit sex scenes in books, but the enduring fact is that I don’t like to read really explicit sex scenes in books. Maybe you LOVE to! In which case you can consider this a recommendation! Unless you only like CERTAIN KINDS of explicit sex scenes, and find OTHER kinds of explicit sex scenes upsetting! And maybe you’d like to spend hours and hours unpicking THAT, or maybe you’d just like to say you prefer not, and move on!

But MOST of the book is the kind of thing I would really like to recommend to you. ONE: the narrator is a perimenopausal woman! TWO: I liked the way the narrator thought about herself, and about this stage of life: I felt she was SMART and INTROSPECTIVE and INTERESTING. THREE: the narrator consults with her friends in ways I found appealing and aspirational; I ended up loving her friends as much as I loved her! FOUR: despite the fact that the narrator sort of persistently and convincingly describes herself as a difficult person, I found her very likeable and interesting, to the point of consistently and significantly preferring her over her husband who is described much more favorably (see also: Catherine Newman). FIVE: the narrator makes the kind of life choices that many of us in more mainstream timelines might like to explore mentally if not actually! SIX: the room she creates with a decorator makes me want to CRY, because I want that exact thing so much for myself! SEVEN: I love the characters and the dialogue. The exchanges the narrator has with the decorator and with the motel owner! I made Paul listen to me read them out loud.

I am finally taking the holiday cards down from around the kitchen doorway. I wait until I am GOOD AND READY. I do not rush it. If they are up until the next year’s cards begin arriving, SO BE IT.

LAST year I bought some reusable cloth gift-wrap bags, so THIS year I am cutting up some of the cards to make gift-tags for NEXT year. I have taken a break from this activity because it is feeling a little futile, in light of who I am as a person. I have cut up old Christmas cards to make gift-tags before; I even bought large specialty craft punches to make a nice decorative edge. Have I ever used a single one of those tags? No. Do I know where those punches are now, or the tags? No.

I am having trouble focusing on this task in part because I woke up at 2:45 a.m., and lay awake feeling fizzy and sick and having imaginary conversations with library management, and did not doze off again until after 5:30, and then woke up for the day at just before 7:00. There was a little feature on NPR the other day about how people who are sleep-deprived don’t realize they are acting irrationally; their behavior and feelings seem normal to them. Many people who claim they can get by on six hours a night, or four, are like people who are not getting unbiased external feedback on the efficacy of their natural deodorant.

I probably should have taken that into account when choosing to deal with an ongoing insurance issue. But, the thing is, I think it is the sleep deprivation that made me spring on it. I had HAD IT. I send blessings to the customer service representative who had to deal with me and my breaking, shaking voice and fragile disposition. I did stay civil, remembering always that she was a person and a representative of her company: she was not the company itself, nor its management, nor was she the previous representatives I have dealt with who evidently did not do what they said they would do, nor was she any of the many, many previous representatives I have dealt with over many, many years of dealing with insurance issues; and at the end of the call I thanked her for her help and also for her patience.

But for the love of god. I have had to make four separate lengthy phone calls, three to the provider and one to my insurance; and my insurance has also contacted the provider directly telling them I am not responsible for this bill, and I am still getting bills threatening me with collections. “CAN YOU SEE HOW MADDENING THIS IS??,” I asked the provider’s customer service representative at one point in the call. “…Yes,” she said. That calmed me more than anything else could have done—well, other than, for example, fixing the problem, which at this point feels like a fantasy. “IT IS STARTING TO FEEL AS IF BILLING IS NO LONGER CHECKING THEIR MESSAGES,” I said to her at another point, after she had explained that I could not contact Billing myself, but could only wait for her (as with the representatives before her) to “send this to Billing for review,” AGAIN. I want to remind you that this is for a bill my insurance company says I SHOULD NOT pay; and my insurance company has personally contacted the provider to “remind them of their contractual obligations not to harass the patient,” and a representative of the provider assured the insurance company that the balance would be wiped. And yet I am still getting threatening bills claiming I have not responded (NOT RESPONDED!!!!) to their requests for payment.

Meanwhile, the hospital where Edward goes for GI has utterly borked their own billing, so that we regularly get demands that we pay our delinquent account of $0 owed for a June 2019 visit. “THIS ACCOUNT IS PAST DUE,” with a big red block of ink around the text. You do not want to know how many times I have attempted to address this. “Wow!,” each representative says in turn, “That’s crazy! We’ll get that fixed for you!” The next month: another red, threatening letter. My hope is that whenever it goes to Collections, which it must have done NUMEROUS times by now over the years, Collections says “????” and puts it directly into the recycling. I hope they add an “Excuse me, WHAT?,” and maybe a big eye-roll, and maybe they show it to a coworker so they can roll their eyes together. Maybe they put it on a breakroom whiteboard for everyone to laugh at.

And then we got a delivery of oil; we have an oil furnace; it was here when we bought the house. In the last three weeks, we have used SO MANY HUNDRED DOLLARS’ WORTH of oil. This is not sustainable. We keep the thermostat at 65-66 degrees when we are home, and I am always cold; I wear a sweater over a shirt; I wear two pairs of socks and one of the pairs is wool; I have electric heating pads for my chairs; we have a down blanket on the bed in addition to another blanket and a quilt and flannel sheets. We have modern windows. I know there are places that will come out and do an evaluation to tell you where you are losing heat; we did this at our old house; probably we should do this at this house. I can barely make myself do things I WOULD enjoy doing, so it doesn’t seem likely that I will do that, but we should. At one point we had a geothermal guy come out, because we’d rather not be on oil heat; he persistently tried to talk Paul out of it, tried to sell him a gas hook-up. Gas is not better. We think it must have been a scam.

I had a brief conference with Paul and William while we were making our dinners. We are going to try using electric blankets and turning the heat much lower at night. When I stay over at my brother and sister-in-law’s house, they turn the heat way down at night and have wool blankets on the beds, and I sleep SO WELL. Getting up to pee is hell’s own torment, of course, but getting back into bed is delightful. We should have done this years ago, but we have had more than the typical number of bed-wetters, and also we have barfy cats, and so laundry has been a consideration. I think even if we have to throw away the occasional electric blanket, that will still be better overall.

I accidentally started two trilogies at the same time, one of which changed mid-trilogy from a trilogy to a series. Both have turned out to be the kinds of books I keep wanting to get back to, instead of doing what I am supposed to be doing.

First I read The Book of Koli, by M.R. Carey, but my library doesn’t own the second and third books so I had to order them from another library.

While I was waiting, I started reading Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir—a book I didn’t expect to like or finish, because it looked very Y.A. and the cover reviews mentioned bones and violence and “grotesque horror.” I thought I would just get it out of the way while I was waiting for the rest of the Koli books.

(image from Amazon.com)

Why, you may wonder, was I trying the book at all. It was because Paul had, in one of those internet rabbit-hole situations that started, if you can fathom it, with the “none pizza left beef” meme, found the book’s Wikipedia page and thought the “Style” section sounded like maybe we should get it for Henry for Christmas. But we already had enough books for Henry for Christmas so I got it out of the library for him, and he wasn’t interested but I thought I’d try it and see if I wanted to recommend he change his mind.

(screenshot from Wikipedia.org)

I DID like it, despite all the things I generally do NOT like, such as being thrown into a world where nothing makes sense, and where there is a lot of violence, and where fights are described blow-by-blow. Also, almost no one has a normal eye color. There is violet of course, and at least three kinds of grey, and golden, and something called “hurricane” (maybe that’s one of the greys?) and I just can’t adequately express how much I hate that—but it didn’t start until I was over 100 pages in and it was too late for me, and no one looked at themselves in the mirror to muse about their own eye color, so even that was well-handled as far as I was concerned. Like, if we MUST have purple and amber and storm-grey eyes, then let’s at least do it the right way. Also-also, it was in some cases necessary to the plot, so fine, FINE. But seriously, is there any universe in which we can just stop with the eyes.

There is no denying this is a book that includes violence, and confusing world-building, and annoying eye colors. But this is also VERY MUCH a book about characters and relationships and dialogue. For those who would find it relevant to their interests: this book contains the hate-to-love trope, and I felt it was done well rather than stupidly, and that it felt earned rather than contrived. Things never get explicit, and I’m not even 100% sure anything ever Happened In That Way. I have a nibling who likes to read but does not want to read sex stuff, and I would recommend this book to them. I think it would be fully possible to read this book and see only intense emotion and friendship. I think it is likely the author deliberately left some options in there for various kinds of readers.

The cover design amazes me, because while reading the book I went from deeply disliking the cover to LOVING it, and even spending time gazing at it affectionately. Think on THAT! I LOVE to look at that weird skull-faced person now!!

So there we were: I had finished Gideon the Ninth. By then the other two Koli books had come in for me; but also one of my coworkers, upon hearing I was reading Gideon the Ninth, said “If you’re liking it, I recommend getting the next two books right now: the people I know who liked this series REALLY REALLY LIKED IT.” So I’d brought home the next two books. And instead of returning to the first trilogy I’d started, I continued with the second. I read Harrow the Ninth and loved it, and loved the cover. Then I read Nona the Ninth, and learned to love the cover as I’d learned to love the cover of Gideon the Ninth.

Interestingly, the third book was supposed to be a different book. The author describes the actual third book as having “sucker punched” those plans. So now there will be a fourth book in the trilogy! Maybe more!

I should mention that after reading three books in the Locked Tomb series (that’s what the Tamsyn Muir series is called), I still have no idea what the hell is going on. This is what I mean about it being character/relationship-based, deep-down. If I were reading to understand what is going on with the world-building, I would have noped out, and long since. But I have GOT to know what happens with these PEOPLE. And I guess I would like to know what is happening with the war / revolution / deities??? / planetary soul energy???? / etc.

Reluctantly (because I wanted to start reading the next Locked Tomb book instead, which I can’t yet do), I went back to The Rampart trilogy, which is what the M.R. Carey series is called.

(image from Amazon.com)

Within about 15 minutes I was fully back into it. I finished the second book and have started the third, and basically that is my plan for this long weekend, which celebrates nothing I want to celebrate right now.

The Rampart trilogy is post-apocalyptic, where the apocalypse happened in a future one or two big steps ahead of our time—like, more-advanced technology and weapons and science had been developed than when we have now, and then most but not all of the human world fell to ruin. But aside from the better tech, the basic gist is familiar: the world ended because of climate change (described as the cities gradually going underwater inch by inch while politicians stood around and argued with each other about whether or not it was happening) and violence/war, and also by certain scientific advancements that were well-intentioned but turned against humanity (e.g., making trees more resistant to climate change accidentally made them evolve to consume humans and other animals by killing them and mashing their nutrients into the soil around their trunks).

People live in small villages again. There is a problem with villages dying out because their populations are too small for successful continued reproduction. There are diseases that no one knows how to treat anymore. The forests are alive with dangerous genetically-altered vegetation. People find old technology but they don’t know what it’s for and how it works; sometimes someone figures a piece of technology out, and that person is treated like a monarch/godlet. There are new religions that seem based on old religions, but in a way that makes all religion seem freshly strange. Things like that. I’m really enjoying it.

As with the Locked Tomb series, there is plenty of violence and death and hardship and scary things, but there is also a lot of character development and relationships and dialogue. There is a quest, and there is found-family, and there is a lot of stuff that feels PRETTY RELEVANT to our own times and our own issues.

I don’t know why it popped into my mind, but as I was folding laundry I remembered out of the blue how confusing and unhelpful the term “heavy petting” was for me as a pre-teen and teen. Honestly I still don’t understand it. I’m interested to know where I heard it, because I am pretty sure it was from dated teen fiction I checked out of the library AND ALSO from youth pastors AND from the Christian books for teens we had at my house. I had a mental picture of someone running their hand along someone else’s side, like from shoulder down to hip, WITH STRONG PRESSURE (to make it HEAVY). I was imagining this happening in a car: the teens would be on their sides facing each other from their respective seats in the car, seats tilted back, and I pictured the boy teen (I definitely, definitely, definitely pictured the boy teen being the one doing the Heavy Petting) running his hand down the girl’s side, repeatedly and probably kind of uncomfortably. It was hard to understand why God/parents/pastors/anyone would be so opposed—but it also didn’t seem like a temptation it would be very difficult to resist, so I did not worry too much.

I remember when I was in 7th or 8th grade, a couple of girls from the public school transferred to our Christian school. This represented a roughly 33% increase in the number of girls in our class, which was a combined 6th-7th or 7th-8th grade class, I don’t remember which year it was. These girls taught us right off the bat that knee socks (we all wore them) were NOT COOL, and showed us how to slouch them—and for this I thank them, even though my thin dressy knee socks WOULD NOT slouch properly. The next year I transferred to a public high school, and by then I had a nice full wardrobe of actual slouch socks.

These were also the girls we asked about French kissing. We picked our moment and asked during a sleepover, when it was dark and it felt like we could be bold. We instinctively felt they would know, and they did, though I don’t remember their explanation solving the mystery of why anyone would WANT to. We asked them if French kissing was the same as angel kissing (heaven knows where we’d found that term), and I don’t remember whether they said it was or whether they said they didn’t know, but either way I still don’t know what angel kissing is, if anything.

I am feeling simultaneously very smart and very dim, because of my winter coat. I have TWO winter coats, actually, because one of them looked great when I tried it on but it was very fitted and felt a little snug, and I am now a little larger than I was when I bought it, and it will not zip. So I bought a second coat on a good clearance in my current size, but I bought it online, and it will zip but it does not look good zipped: it was made for someone with somewhat different proportions, so there is plenty of room in the up-top but not so much in the down-below. Why, you ask, do I not get rid of both coats and buy one that fits? It’s because of the despair.

ANYWAY, normally this is not an issue: I am the indoors type, so I rarely need to zip my coat. And on the coldest days, if I DO want to zip my coat, I CAN zip it; it’s just not FLATTERING, or COMFORTABLE. So that’s fine.

However, now we are looking at winter protests. I need the coat zipped, and I need it zipped for a longer period of time, and ideally I need room inside for more layers. I put on my to-do list that it was time to conquer the despair and buy a bigger coat in the right proportions. It’s not as bad, shopping-wise, as shopping for jeans, but it’s pretty bad, and I dreaded it. Plus: it’s January, almost February, and the coat supply will be picked over if not gone entirely.

I fervently wished I had held onto my old coat, the one that fit a decade ago and then became much too big. It was a pretty color; it had a hood; it was flattering and comfortable. I cursed myself for having given into the idea that we shouldn’t keep things that no longer serve us.

This is when I had another thought. I have kept certain of my larger clothes, because we have a barn but no farm and therefore AMPLE storage space, and because I have had opportunities (the pandemic; post-knee-surgery) to be very grateful to my past self for realizing I might not be the same size forever. (It can be Quite Fun to buy smaller clothes; I find it much less exciting to buy larger ones.) Would I have…KEPT the coat? I remembered laundering it before donating it, but maybe I was instead remembering laundering it before storing it.

I made the freezing journey to the barn, and looked at the bins. Two bins are transparent plastic, and I could immediately see that there was no coat inside. The third bin, on the bottom, was opaque plastic and was labeled “t-shirts, flannel, hoodies”—not “coat.” I turned to go back into the house and then on to my dreaded coat-shopping trip—but then turned back, dug out the bottom bin just in case, and looked in it. THE COAT. THE COAT, RIGHT ON TOP.

So I felt very dim (Why did I get rid of the coat? and: I almost went out and bought a new coat!! and: How could I have forgotten I kept the coat?? and: I almost walked away without opening the bin containing the coat!!) AND very smart (I kept the coat! I remembered the coat! I found the coat! I did not waste time and money on a new coat! I can stay home instead of having to go shopping for a coat!).

Listen, if you get the opportunity to hang out with friends and at the same time protest the demolition of your country’s democracy, I vehemently suggest you take that opportunity. So heartening, on so many levels. Maybe, like me, you would rather stay home/warm/indoors. No, it turns out, you wouldn’t, not if you knew what it would be like. Imagine me putting my freezing hands on the sides of your face and looking earnestly into your eyes, while with my thawing toes I attempt to place an order for warmer winter boots and a selection of HotHands hand and toe warmers, so that I will be ready to attend future such hangouts. And, as I’ve mentioned before, but I think only on Bluesky: if you can’t attend a protest, but you can honk and wave as you drive past a protest, YOU ARE ATTENDING THE PROTEST. I’d never realized how bolstering and cheering that could be to the protesters, but it’s HUGE.

Also, make yourself a mental note to go out for drinks/snacks/treats afterwards, to reinforce the psychological payoff.

In the words of author John Scalzi: what a deeply embarrassing day to be a U.S. citizen, on so many levels.

Presumably in the future we will not remember which specific embarrassments went with this particular day, so I will pin an example: the U.S. president texted the prime minister of Norway, saying that because “Norway” hadn’t given him the Nobel Peace Prize, even though he had “stopped 8 Wars PLUS” (citation needed), he “no longer feels an obligation to think purely of peace.” He went on to say that he personally has done more for NATO than anyone else (citation needed), and that therefore NATO should let him “have” Greenland, which he has said we will take the hard way if we can’t get it the easy way, because we “need” it. I feel I should mention that the actual winner of the Nobel Peace Prize (a prize not in fact given by the government of Norway, as the prime minister of Norway said he has repeatedly explained to our president without effect), María Corina Machado, GAVE OUR TERRIBLE PRESIDENT HER MEDAL. This makes me feel like sobbing, gagging, and burning everything down, all at once.

Embarrassing doesn’t cover it. It is mortifying. Excruciating. Horrifying. Terrifying. Nauseating. We are afraid for our lives, of course, and for our country, and for our future, and for our children’s futures—but also for the lives and countries and futures of everyone else on this planet. We are on a rollercoaster driven off-road by a mad clown who does not have a valid driver’s license, and also is under the influence and not watching the road, and also that rollercoaster is headed directly for a nuclear device on the edge of a cliff, and also our mad clown thinks that cliffs and nuclear devices are Democratic hoaxes to make him look bad. It is not a good ride, in case you are wondering.

This situation, and by “this situation” I mean the one that began in 2016, has changed the way I talk about world politics. I should have changed sooner, but I’m embarrassed to say it took me that long to tune in. In the past, I would have said things such as “Russia is attacking Ukraine,” or “Germany attacked Poland,” or whatever. Now, I might still lazily slip into that kind of speech, because I am new to this and also not good with history or geography, and because of what William, who co-majored in linguistics, tells me is called “synecdoche“—but generally, when my brain is engaged, and when I remember how it feels to hear that “the United States” is trying to take Greenland, I now try to remember to say “The government of Russia is attacking Ukraine.” There is no reason the world should grant the U.S. similar grace as we ONCE-A-FUCKIN-GAIN overstep our bounds to step all over everyone else and rob them of whatever we can carry—but it would be so sweet if they would say that THE U.S. GOVERNMENT is once-a-fuckin-gain overstepping its bounds to step all over everyone else and rob them of whatever we can carry, or even more specifically that TR*MP is doing that. Some of our citizens would do it if they could—that’s undeniable! But the majority of us would not, and NONE of the citizens CAN do it or ARE doing it. It is our leadership that is doing it.

Imagine yourself, as you are, a citizen of your country. Now imagine how much power you personally have to stop your country’s leaders from doing whatever they choose to do. No, no: I know you are imagining you would RISE UP or whatever—but we ARE doing that, and our government is sending our own military to shoot us in the face, so what is the NEXT idea you have for stopping your own highest leader, and does it seem like it would…like, WORK? Picture YOU, or even you and a group of like-minded citizens…against your country’s leader. What power do you personally have? What SPECIFICALLY would you do to stop it, chosen not from Fantasy Dream Options but instead from Things You Could Actually Do That Would Stop It. Right. Right. Exactly. It is the same for all the world’s citizens against all the world’s leaders, except that some are even worse off than that, and get their homes burned down and their families shot for trying. A citizen can SUPPORT the actions or DENOUNCE the actions, but a citizen is not DOING the actions and has no actual power to PREVENT OR STOP the actions.

My inclination is to apologize for my country’s leaders, but of what use would that be? It’s approximately as valuable as the power I have to stop them, which I have just said is none. Nevertheless, for what it is worth, I do apologize. I kneel before you and put my forehead and palms to the ground. The behavior of my country’s leadership is shocking, shameful, reckless, irresponsible, offensive, disrespectful, callous, dangerous, disgusting, traitorous. I am so unhappy that this MUST, absolutely MUST, result in my entire country, including me and all the other people who oppose the leadership, being exiled from the world’s friendship. An alliance cannot stand when one member of that alliance is swinging its dick around and forcing other members to kneel and kiss it. I hope you will pardon my vulgar metaphor. It is hard to avoid vulgar language when trying to describe a vulgar leader taking vulgar actions.

I hope the citizens of other countries realize that many, many of the citizens of the United States not only support but CHEER other countries’ efforts to resist ours. PLEASE stand with Greenland. PLEASE stand with Canada. PLEASE support retaliatory tariffs, and sanctions against the United States. PLEASE do what you can to resist our country’s leader from the outside, as we do what we can to resist him from within. Insofar as you have any power, as a citizen, to affect anything our leaders do.

I went to my one-year-post-knee-replacement-surgery follow-up at the hospital building today, first for knee x-rays and then to the knee surgeon’s PA for a check-up. I’d estimate 90% of the people working at the hospital (info desk, receptionists, volunteers, medical professionals) were wearing masks. Approximately a third of patients were wearing masks. This was not in areas where many sick patients would be seen, such as emergency intake or regular primary care; this was x-ray and orthopedics. Nevertheless: significantly wider-spread mask usage than I’ve seen since early in the pandemic.

I went to the grocery store afterward, and saw four employees and approximately the same number of customers, all wearing masks. This is up from seeing, like, zero or one mask per grocery trip.

I know multiple people (one coworker, one coworker’s spouse, one relative) who have been sick with one of the worst viruses they’ve ever experienced. I have heard there is an unexpected flu strain going around, a mutation that appeared after the vaccines had been formulated. The local news has started reporting deaths from flu, and also mentioning that hospitals are near capacity, so please stay home unless you are experiencing life-threatening illness. This too is reminding me of earlier on in the pandemic.

My coworker with a sick husband said he was fine when he went to work that morning; mid-afternoon he texted her that he wasn’t feeling great; by the time he got home, he had a 103-degree fever, went straight to the couch, and she wasn’t sure he’d moved since then. This was the next day.

My sick coworker had a similar report: she said one evening she had a mildly sore throat and she sneezed twice; by the next morning she had a fever and could only get out of bed to use the bathroom. She came into work after being out for a few days, but was still very visibly/audibly sick. She wore a mask—and, for the first time in quite awhile, I wore one too, because some of my work had to be done in her vicinity. One of the upsides of not being very good at decluttering is that I still had several masks with me: in my lunch bag, in my coat pockets.

I also wore a mask to my appointments at the hospital. I didn’t wear one to the grocery store, but the hospital felt more clear-cut. As I was checking in, an elderly woman was checking in at the next desk over; both our receptionists were masked, as was a nurse behind them, as was I, but the elderly lady was not. The elderly lady asked in a jocular way if everyone was sick, and her receptionist said no, and the unmasked elderly woman said “Oh good! Because I don’t want to catch anything!”

I do like that mask-wearing, while still catching some unwanted attention/reactions, now exists as a thing in the United States. It did not exist in my area of the country before the Covid-19 pandemic; now it does. My coworkers frequently came into work when they were sick, but now some of them wear masks when they do; and now I can wear a mask when people around me are clearly sick, and people know what it is and why I’m wearing it. They might think I am the sick one, but they don’t wonder WHAT I am wearing on my FACE.

After I wrote the last post, about needing to find More (more to do, more out of life, etc.), I had a little panic. HOW am I supposed to find More, when there’s nothing I want to do and nothing appeals? When I’m getting older and doors are closing, and I don’t even care because I didn’t want those doors anyway, but it still feels weird? When I can’t seem to take any action anyway, or even keep my desk tidy?—a sick overwhelmed feeling. Then I thought, “Would I feel a little better if I made my desk a little more tidy?,” and started doing that. Within 30 seconds I was tidying a different area of the house (I’d noticed the reusable Christmas bags and realized they needed a home), but no matter: any and all tidying goes to the overall benefit of the mental health bar. (And I did come back around and end up tidying my desk.)

In finding a place for the reusable Christmas bags, I noticed some boxes that were in the storage area but seemed to be mostly empty. Empty boxes are good to have, but these looked at the end of their useful life, and had just a few scraps of easily-dispersed clutter in them: a packet of replacement Christmas light bulbs, a plastic Target bag, two Christmas ornaments with the clearance tags still on them—things like that. In the bottom of one box, there was a string of metallic garland beads—so pretty, but I haven’t put them on the tree in the whole time we’ve lived in this house (7 years), because they get SUPER tangled SUPER easily. And, happily, I recently saw someone post online that you do not have to keep all your holiday decor just because you once thought you’d use it. So I moved the beads, which I’d wrapped around a piece of cardboard with notches cut in the sides to keep them untangled, to the Goodwill bag.

And, under the cardboard panel of beads, the cardboard having created the illusion of being able to see the bottom of the box, I found my tree skirt. The tree skirt that has been missing since we moved. The tree skirt that this year I gave up on finding, so Elizabeth and I went to the post-Christmas clearance sales and bought a new one. I texted Elizabeth “I found the tree skirt.” “Bruh,” she replied.