I was hoping to post more often this year, but January was “one of those months”.
[+] Sick. I got a sinus infection early in the month, and then Daniel very politely shared his virus with me, which has been causing bad asthma exacerbation. What is even more fun is that they can’t do a lot for me because I can’t have oral steroids like Prednisone or Decadron. I’ve had to reschedule doctor’s appointments, miss the People’s March, and basically put my life on hold while I bond with my inhaler and nebulizer.
[+] The Felon of the United States (FOTUS). I expected Trump’s annexation of the Oval Office to be an utter dumpster fire, and I have not been disappointed. Thankfully, our former Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who is now the governor, spent last year with his staff going over every part of Project 2025 and have filings drafted for every contingency. His successor as Attorney General, Nick Brown, has scored a point against the Trump administration on his first filing, which was the lawsuit that caused a federal judge in Seattle to put a moratorium on ending birthright citizenship. Judge Coughener (who is a Reagan appointee, by the way, in case anyone wants to complain about liberal judges) was pretty irritated that he had to rule on something so clear cut. Here’s hoping for more victories against Trump and his minions!
Hello to everyone except the IDIOTS to re-elect Donald Trump and the 20 million people who decided not to vote.
Yes… I just said that.
I’m astonished at the stupidity of our country in electing someone who cannot speak in complete sentences, who claimed that people were eating dogs and cats in Springfield even after THE FREAKING MAYOR OF SPRINGFIELD AND GOVERNOR OF OHIO TOLD HIM TO CUT THAT ISH OUT AND THE PROUD BOYS SHOWED UP, who claims that he’ll raise money for things by imposing tariffs on China… despite the fact that THE IMPORTER IS THE THE ONE PAYING THE TARIFF AND PASSING IT ONTO THE CONSUMER INSTEAD OF THE COUNTRY IN QUESTION (was I the only one paying attention in Economics in high school???), who is imposing tariffs on Canada and Mexico despite us getting a lot of our imports of food and other things from them, who doesn’t know the origin of the word “grocery” (Google is free, y’all!), who is claiming that there will be mass deportations even though he doesn’t actually have any clue of how to do that or how much he is going to hamstring agriculture or building in this country by doing that (because migrant workers are the ones who actually *DO* those jobs), who incited an insurrection which killed several people, and who, along with his derpy followers, has no idea how basic things in the economy work. His Cabinet choices are the dumbest people imaginable for each position (like they were in his first administration) to the point that even his followers are objecting to them. (Seriously? Matt Gaetz for Attorney General? Well, he is a pedophile like Trump…)
I’m positively dreading the next four years as a member of a church with members who could possibly deported because our immigration system is effed up in so many ways, I’m a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, someone who is neurodivergent with chronic conditions, and someone who had a pregnancy condition. I’m struggling to keep my head up already, and the Orange Idiot taking offices means that I’m going to have to fight twice as hard to keep things working for me and Daniel when I barely have the mental and emotionally energy to get out of bed.
And yes, you can absolutely unfollow me if you’re offended by anything that I’ve just said. I’ve never forced anyone to read this blog.
I guess I should go look on BestBuy.Com for a new laptop before the Mango Mussolini hostilely takes over the Oval Office again and prices jump 25% because he is incapable of understanding the purpose of tariffs…
I just cranked the heat up in my office today. Outside it’s in the low 50’s and I was chilly. Then I signed into my computer and checked the news. All of a sudden, the room felt hot.
This is the last week before the election, and polls show a wildly varied scenario of potential outcomes. Everybody is anxious. This is par for the course. This time around, however, there is a real threat of violence. There are people who believe that if their candidate does not win the election, violence to put them in the White House by force would be justified. Vulnerable people will be targeted. I am opening up my church as a sanctuary.
My Christian faith teaches me that the world is saved by dying, not by fighting, by serving, not by forcing, by giving rather than taking, and by loving rather than hating.
Dear fellow human beings, it’s high time to turn down the heat!
Crocheting. My happy thing these days is to crochet while watching YouTube in the evening. So far this year, I’ve finished prayer shawls, 2 NICU blankets (including one with the frogged yarn from another blanket), and I’m almost done with another prayer shawl.
Health. I’ve been dealing with serious fatigue, which my psych nurse thinks is the depressive phase of bipolar 2. Oh freaking joy… Daniel has also been adding stress to my life, so that isn’t helping.
Politics. I’ve been writing postcards for my local Democrats and Activate America to help get out the vote in Ohio, Arizona, Montana, and here in Washington. It doesn’t feel like a lot, but it’s something that needs to be done and I have a lot of spare time.
[+] But seriously… The RNC’s roll call was orderly and parliamentary. The DNC had a dance party for theirs complete with a DJ and turntable. 🙂 The whole thing is below, but you can skip around the video if you want to see how they pulled it off.
[+] Best speeches. Not gonna lie… Michelle was better than Barack… and that takes some doing!
[+] Republicans at the DNC. I’m sharing this video not to gloat, but because they have good things to say.
[+] Geeking out over Pete Buttegieg. If you watched Pete Buttegieg’s speech, you know that he joked about how some people might know him from FOX News, and that’s because he goes on there somewhat frequently to bring his message to a group of people who might normally not hear it. People act like he’s stupid, but he very calmly explains why the commentators are incorrect and does so in such a way that said commentators don’t realize that he is calling them “stupid” until the end. Dude is a Harvard grad, a Rhodes scholar, a polyglot, and a veteran. He can talk policy like nobody’s business, and I’m really hoping he has a prominent place in Kamala’s administration.
[+] J.D. Vance. Dude cannot talk to regular people. Like seriously, his donut shop video (which is below) is embarrassing. He was nice to the woman who didn’t want to be on camera, but it’s apparent that he doesn’t talk to working class people regularly. I mean, how about GOOGLING the place where you’re going to be visiting? I’m pretty sure his staff could have done that!
He, like the person at the top of the ticket, insults people, and doesn’t talk about policy at all. He comes off as an incredibly unpleasant person, and I am biting my thumb at the Ohioans who put this troglodyte in the Senate.
[+] The feel of both campaigns. As I said before, Trump insults people, does not talk policy at all, which is not good because we need to be able to vote based on policy decisions, not personalities. Ditto with Vance. Kamala’s campaign is best described by something Michelle Obama said in her DNC speech: “The contagious power of hope”. She is running a fairly positive campaign, and there is this air of hope and joy. Her choice of Tim Walz as a running mate was excellent because he can actually talk to people and he has actually accomplished things in Minnesota to which he can point when people start asking about his fitness to be vice-president. I actually *LIKE* listening to him talking, and he gives off the air of caring about people’s needs rather than the Trump/Vance power grab.
Wow. My break from posting lasted longer than expected.
[+] To nobody’s surprise… I’m laughing my butt off at how Joe Biden played the GOP with the timing of his announcement that he was dropping out of the race. He hasn’t said that it was intentional, but he completely managed to foul up Trump’s campaign to the point that Cheeto Guevara has had to redo his attack ads.
Also…
Why wouldn’t I be??? I’ve been voting her into various statewide and national offices since her first run for California Attorney General in 2010. The last thing I did before moving to Washington in 2016 was to vote for her in the California State Primary for U.S. Senator! I’m even getting involved in her presidential campaign.
[+] Vance. I did my due diligence and looked into J.D. Vance… and it just turned me more and more off from him. It’s not just his bitchy remarks about cat ladies. He solicited money to create a charity to fight opioid abuse and used the money on a political consultant to decide about running for office instead. (Appalachians are big mad about this.) He had a lot of advantages and he could have used them to actually *HELP* people… but he didn’t. He and Trump are very focused on what will benefit themselves, and that is not an appropriate attitude to have for the offices they are seeking. Also? He’s allegedly a techbro, and none of my Silicon Valley friends in the industry have anything good to say about him. He has almost no political experience, and his foot-in-mouth comments show that.
Not to mention, a lot of Appalachia thinks he’s a loser. There’s a whole Twitter hashtag about this.
[+] Books. I finally got a Mount Vernon City Library card (which only took me 8 years), and I’ve been curled up in Joanne Fluke’s books since. A new one is coming out at the end of this month, and I’m reading through all of her previous ones to get ready!
[+] Skagit County Fair. Daniel and I finally made it to the county fair for the first time in 7 years. We had been thwarted by surgeries (2018), family funerals (2019), and the pandemic (2020-2023). It was hot, but it was still worth it. My monster indulged me traipsing through all the animal barns, the quilting and craft displays, and standing in line to cross a few “fair food” items off of my bucket list. (The deep-fried Snickers was a 9/10, and the deep-fried Twinkie was completely forgettable.)
[+] Camp NaNoWriMo. I attempted Camp NaNoWriMo in July, and only made it to 20,000 words because of severe writer’s block. Given that it was completely a last minute decision, I’m going to do some planning and re-attempt it in November.
It’s 12:39 a.m. on August 7th, and I have very little to tell you about my life because I’m eating, drinking, working with students, watching too much YouTube, and not sleeping near enough. All the student stuff is kinda sorta protected by FERPA (and I’m not feeling like getting into the Come to Jesus conversations I’m having to have with a few of them), so here is the stuff I’ve been watching for the last week or so on YouTube. There’s A LOT of them, so I’m putting a cut in this post. Click on “Continue reading” to see the whole shebang. (And yes, I have a weird YouTube algorithm.)
