Working My Way Back to Normal: Joy, Fear, Anger--But in a Good Way.

Forward! Onward! Upward!

Part of our small but intrepid crew—in the wrong place

I had my surgery on Monday, March 23, and it went well. (A radical mastectomy on my remaining left breast, if you didn’t know.) I stayed in the hospital overnight and came home with a drain sticking out of my left side that has to be emptied twice a day. I’m happy to report that the draining has almost stopped so I should be able to have it removed in a day or two. And then I’ll be back to whatever ‘normal’ is for me now.

So there’s that. The surgery and aftermath was far more exhausting than I’d expected. I’m just now getting any kind of energy back, six days later. Lots of resting and naps and not much ‘working’, which, in my case, means writing. My brain just wasn’t up to it, even to give you updates, and I’m sorry about that.

So yesterday was No Kings Day and I was determined to get out there and do my bit. I ordered a “No Kings since 1776” sweatshirt to wear, and I thought ordering it more than two weeks ahead of time would be enough, but nowhere did it say it was being shipped from SPAIN!! And of course it still isn’t here, though I got an update yesterday that it has arrived in U.S Customs. So one of these days…

My daughter Sue and I drove to our local NO KINGS protest site yesterday and found a parking place that wasn’t too far away, which amazed us. But when we got up to where people should have been lining the highway, there were only a few people there. It was about 15 minutes before it was supposed to begin, so I thought maybe they were rallying somewhere and any minute now they would all appear.

But, no…

There might have been 40 people there in total, all of us commiserating, sad that the turnout was so poor, and finally someone came along and told us there were hundreds of people gathering in a park up the road a mile or so from where we were. The destination had been changed, and I was furious that we hadn’t known, but when I got home I looked at my emails (something I apparently hadn’t done for a couple of days) and there it was: The announcement about the change and the reasons why. (Our crowds had outgrown the other site and it was becoming a safety hazard—a perfectly wonderful reason—and this new site turns out to be much better.)

So we hung around in the wrong place for a while, waving at the honkers who probably felt sorry for us stragglers, and then we drove over to the new, busy site. There were no parking spots that we could see, and it was freezing cold and windy, so we drove around and became honkers, waving to the crowd lining the highway. All in all, we were there in both places for about an hour and a half and I felt good about even being able to get there, but sad about missing the interaction with the crowds that were there all along. Still, the crowds came—an estimated 300-400 in Petoskey, a town with a permanent population of 5800. Not bad!

No Kings Day in Petoskey, MI. Honking in solidarity!

So now that I’m energized and about to be finished with doctoring, I’ll be able to turn my attention once again to the problem that is Trump. And what a problem it is. Is there anything his child mind won’t come up with. Anything he won’t do?

Is there nothing anyone can do to stop him? I mean…war with Iran?? And suddenly the Republicans think it’s great, even though they weren’t informed, nor where they asked for permission to go to war, something every congress has insisted on for as many years as they’ve existed, and even they can’t miss the out-loud anger coming from other countries, our former allies, who can’t wait until that child-president is gone.

Trump is a one-man show, a deluded, ignorant, reckless one-man show—and all I can say is thank goodness there are still millions of us who refuse to get used to it. There’s hope yet. His poll numbers are going down, though not exactly plummeting, which would be even better news, and some of his formerly loyal henchmen are showing signs of revolt.

It’s a start.

Donald is growing more furious, more child-like, because in his privileged mind the entire country should go along with whatever nonsensical daydream he comes up with during his off-hours—which are nearly 24 hours a day, since he’s decided he has no real day job.

A furious Trump is a dangerous Trump. We’ve been warning about what would happen when he goes over the edge, and he went over that edge long ago. Now he’s just making stuff up in order to get back at his perceived enemies, while his loyal (on the outside) minions stay busy kowtowing, begging to be included because to become excluded would be just awful.

Their greatest horror is that they might someday be seen as either unnecessary or personae-non-grata. No inner circle for them. A thumbs down from Trump is about on a par with the thumbs down that sent those poor Christians to the lions. Unimaginable. (I’m shuddering for them, poor things.)

But here we are, my friends, on the side of right. I love the side we’re on. We’re the in-crowd, working for good, seeking justice, never shutting up about those other guys who are nothing but trouble. May we reign supreme, but not as kings or queens. No, as good Americans working to make big change—the change we need to rightfully call ourselves a democracy, a republic, a country deserving of respect again.

We the people. That’s us. Proudly, loudly, us.

NO KINGS DAY at Minneapolis/St. Paul. Photo Credit: WFXG, Karem Yucel

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