A New Leaf

Hello strangers.

It’s been a very, very long time since I wrote in this blog. It started out years and years (and years!) ago to share funny stories and find solace as I cluelessly raised my three rambunctious children. When marriage equality was being debated in Minnesota, you may remember that this blog became a daily diatribe against faux religious conservatism. Then when I was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer in 2016, it morphed into an online group therapy session and a glimpse into the often-ugly underbelly of cancer treatment.  Writing daily and honestly, sharing my struggles with you all, is still something I consider instrumental in my survival during that tough time. After I recovered, I briefly tried to turn this blog into a book review site since I read so many books, but that did not pan out for me. Books are a purely visceral experience for me, so writing about them felt almost sacrilegious. So, what’s a girl with three independent teens and relative health to blog about now?

Fast forward to 2021. It’s a strange new world and nothing that I could have ever envisioned in my craziest imaginings. I mean – right? The world is pretty effed up right now. Forget potty training and trying to provide adequate nutrition to children who will allow nothing but Tyson chicken nuggets to grace their gullets. And forget gay marriage (actually, please don’t forget gay marriage, but we’ve sort of moved on, right?). Forget cancer and all its glitzy and glamorous trappings.

We are all pretty screwed right now.

Let’s just be honest. 450,000 of us have died in the last year – with many more to follow in the coming months. Our Narcissist-in Chief called the (Chinese) virus a hoax perpetrated by a blood-sucking ring of Democratic child pornographers intent on making him look bad. (See! Who could have ever imagined that sentence being written four years ago??) People are losing their jobs. Their homes. Their dignity. Their minds. Our economy is in the shitter. Our kids can’t go to school. We can’t go to work. We can’t visit friends. We can’t meet up for a much-needed drink. We can’t even drown our sorrows in a volcanic cheese-oozing Jucy Lucy from Matt’s bar where everything in the room – including you if you sit still long enough – is coated in the most appetizing of decades-old grease. I mean, you can get a burger to go I suppose, but the ambiance (perhaps for the best) is not the same on my living room couch.

And to top it all off, 70 million of our fellow Americans voted for more of the same, and Donald Trump (this is the last time his name will be mentioned in this blog) and his Republican co-conspirators peddled daily lies about a free and fair election and encouraged an armed mob to descend on Washington, DC with the intent of storming the U.S. Capital and hanging/shooting/murdering the Vice President of the United State and our elected officials in Congress.

What the actual fuck??

And, if yesterday is any indication, nothing will come of it. Our big orange colostomy bag of an ex-president will face no consequences for his crimes. Senate Republicans are making sure of that. Hell, he can even run again in four years if he wants!

I think all of this may be why it’s been so long since I’ve blogged anything. With the constant, daily outrages of the last four years, it’s been hard to wrap my mind around, much less find the words for, the situation in which we find ourselves as a nation. (That’s another phrase I never expected myself to be writing – “as a nation.” I mean – how haughty am I?) Smarter people than me have written hundreds of thousands of words on our current multiple crises. And I have found myself weighted down by every single one. The cognitive toll has been too great. The anger that boiled over into rage at the most inopportune of moments (my apologies to anyone and everyone who has experienced firsthand the ire of my car horn these past months). The sadness that dissolved into tears when I least expected it. The melancholic wallowing I have perfected to the level of Ju-Jitsu master.  I love writing about a silver lining but have had an extremely difficult time finding any at all for the last four years.

Today, however, I am recommitting myself to the silver lining. Today I am turning over a new leaf. Hell, I might even bathe and put on grown-up clothes today (don’t get excited – I said might)! So here are the TOP TEN positive things I am choosing to focus on today instead of the sorry state of our affairs.

1.  The grown-ups are in charge once again in Washington. Though 70 million Americans voted for the incumbent asshat, many, many, many more rejected him.

2. In February of 2020, right before the pandemic took hold in the U.S., Chipotle released their new Queso Blanco. And like God when (s)he created the earth, they saw that it was good.

3.  The New York Attorney General, the Manhattan District Attorney, and E. Jean Carrol’s attorney in the defamation lawsuit are not beholden to Republicans in Congress, so he may get what’s coming to him in some form or another. Fingers crossed!

4.  President Biden (this is probably the first of many times his name will be mentioned in this blog, as he is kind of my new straight, geriatric, grandpappy crush) rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization. Now when I jet-set around the world, I won’t feel like such a backwoods hillbilly. (Okay, so I realize that I am a backwoods hillbilly by definition, but Grandpappy Biden makes me feel like a Parisian runway model – yeah, or…ummm…something like that.)

5.  Joe Biden is not a homophobic, narcissistic, racist, serial rapist. So…there’s that.

6.  My son has, so far, been accepted to all the colleges he has applied to. We are still waiting to hear from Grinnell College and Carleton College, but he has been accepted to Gustavus Adolphus, University of MN – Duluth, University of MN – Twin Cities, St Olaf, and the University of Wisconsin – Madison. He has received a significant scholarship to most of these schools, so I am an unabashedly beaming momma these days. (I still feel weird bragging about my children. I think it might have to do with 12 years of Catholic school. I feel like I should maybe be yelling at them about the myriad reasons they will be going to hell. But I’m going against instinct here, and publicly praising them instead. We’ll see how it goes…)

7.  I must mention my girl crushes, Kamala Harris, Dr. Jill Biden, Stacy Abrams, and Janet Yellen! (Okay, that last one is less of a crush and more of a healthy respect). First female Vice President! (Woot!) First First Lady who is both a doctor and a teacher and will have a career outside of the White House! The woman who saved us all and turned Georgia BLUE! And our first Female Treasury Secretary!

8.  The Minneapolis Public Library system is a Godsend in times of crisis. As you probably know, my daughter and I are voracious readers. Ruanita, on the other hand, promised herself when she finished graduate school that she would never crack a book again. For the most part, she has maintained that promise over the years. COVID-19, and the soul-crushing, all-encompassing boredom it has rendered, has forced her to reconsider her previous declaration. She actually started reading in the second half of 2020. She now reads ALL THE TIME. It’s almost annoying. (Seriously – have I been that completely nonresponsive with a book in my hand all these years??) She is now outpacing me for the number of books read in any given month. And I’ve read seven so far in January! We haven’t reached the point where we can talk about books yet because our genres are entirely different. She likes light, escapist lesbian romances. I like tragic literary dramas with fucked-up characters that rip your heart out, throw it on the dismal worm-covered pavement after a rainstorm, and dance a jig of shame and degradation on it. You know…happy stuff. Books are my drug of choice. And the Minneapolis Public Library is a most excellent dealer!

9.  There are dogs in the White House again. And we all know that if a dog loves you, you can’t be a homophobic, narcissistic, racist, serial rapist. (Okay, so I am being told that statement may not be entirely technically correct, but my point stands. Dogs in the White House are a good sign of actual, authentic, fully formed human beings in the White House.)

10.  And finally, speaking of dogs, after two failed attempts to adopt puppies (we quickly discovered that puppy energy is entirely too much for our laid-back, bordering on comatose, family dynamic), we will be welcoming a new family member to our lazy fold on Friday. Meet Bleu!

She is a 72-pound border collie/Bernese mountain dog cross (we think) that was rescued from a breeder. She recently weaned her last litter of puppies. She is just the sweetest, most gentle girl. She has the most soulful brown eyes that look straight into your psyche, as if she sees every questionable decision and regrettable choice you have ever made in your life, and is saying, “It’s okay, Shannon. You tried your best. No one is perfect, but I see you. I see you striving to be better. And I will always love you for it.” Yep. That’s the conversation I had with her eyes. Verbatim.