Can we hold on to democracy?

Self care & the inauguration

Yesterday I had kind of a rough time emotionally, dealing with the Trump inauguration. I had decided to avoid the news as much as possible, but I couldn’t help checking in now and again. And of course it was as bad as we imagined it would be.

I tried to practice some self care yesterday, which can be hard for me when it feels like any focus I apply to myself and my own needs is selfish, petty, entitled, and privileged; a big part of me feels like that energy should instead be frantically going towards figuring out how to help fix this mess we are all in, how to help others, or what in the world our family’s backup plans are if everything goes south.

I know, I know: I can’t properly care for others if I neglect myself. I get that on a rational level, but tell that to my anxious stomach when I try to read or listen to music or make art.

Nevertheless, I persisted. I read part of an entertaining fiction book (“Agent to the Stars” by John Scalzi), worked on the above mentioned painting, watched a TV show (“Severance”), ran some errands, did NOT give a Nazi salute to anyone, snuggled some cats, and prepped for an upcoming house project.

There’s nothing I can really say here that hasn’t been said emphatically and eloquently by hundreds of others already, but I’ll just go ahead and go on record with: When someone shows you who they are, believe them. They listed out all the terrible things they planned on doing, and they are, unsurprisingly, steaming ahead with it. I wholeheartedly disagree with America’s decision to re-elect this career criminal, convicted felon, misogynist racist rapist the-cruelty-is-the-point manipulative narcissistic liar, and everyone he associates himself with. If you voted for him, or agree with what he’s doing, you can kindly stop reading my blog and go elsewhere.

The latest painting: updates

I worked on more of the sky/background on this painting and I am pretty happy with it right now. Next steps will be to do some more work on the tree branches, and decide if I am missing any elements (such as circles… they always manage to appear somewhere in my paintings and I’m just now noticing they are nowhere to be seen here. Hmmm…).

Carpeting

We are finally (finally!) replacing the circa-1980 carpeting in the upstairs of our house. In 2013 we got rid of the downstairs carpet and replaced it with wood, as well as about a third of the carpeting upstairs, although what we could afford then was pretty shit quality carpeting, and it’s falling apart and the cats have found how easy it is to tear up. So we gotta replace it all.

Carpet is EXPENSIVE, y’all.

This is one of those adulting things that ya gotta do at some point, and you definitely enjoy the results to some extent, but it sucks to have to spend the money.