General wondering

My fear of flying …

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Mine was never so bad as to cause me to avoid flying, but I would break out into a sweat just thinking about booking a flight!  Somehow, I was convinced my getting on the plane meant certain disaster, and – yes – I researched the odds of accidents and knew I was in more danger getting to the airport than being in the air.

Then one day, something miraculous happened … coming back from a Christmas trip to London with my parents, an angel who was on earth working at the British Airways counter, offered us seats in business class.

Picture it … you leisurely board first.  And with ample room to move around, and fewer people to dodge, you effortlessly find room for that carry-on luggage.  You ease into a nice roomy seat, and before you’ve had time to locate the emergency exits, a smiling flight attendant is offering you a glass of champagne.  It’s amazing how patient one can be after a bit of bubbly.  I didn’t care how long the plane took to get in the air as long as the legroom and champagne lasted.

And the delightful surprises kept coming!  Real food!  Real china plates with real metal silverware.  Real glassware and linen napkins.  I don’t eat so civilized at home!  Even the snacks were real – no piffy little bags of pretzels.

It was sublime … and I never wanted the flight to end.  It was the best part of the whole vacation, but – as with every highpoint – there’s a flip side.  The offer has never been repeated.  Now, I see the curtain from the other side and sigh wistfully.  Now, I know what I’m missing.

Now I’ve gone from a fear of flying to a fear of flying coach.

After the haircut…

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Well … I did it.  After decades of long hair, and the battle cry, “I’ll die first” (a little dramatic, granted) whenever anyone asked me about the subject …

I cut my hair.

Eleven and a half inches.

Gone.

With a few snips, my old life fell away and the new me looked back from the mirror.  A little dizzy with adrenaline and slightly breathless.  Maybe I over-react about things … but this wasn’t a simple or straightforward thing.  It was an outward sign of an inward (and ongoing) metamorphosis.  The last thing that had this big a change on my life was getting Lasik surgery.  After a lifetime of being chained to glasses … with recorded vision of 20/400 … chained was how I felt.  20/400, by the way, uncorrected is considered legally blind.

So getting surgery was akin to being liberated from a tight and restricting cocoon.  Life was divided into WG and AL … with glasses and after Lasik.  There was such liberation and freedom, I felt the whole world must have felt the emotional impact it had on me.  Lots of people are happy with glasses, and I wore them for almost 40 years.  They were a huge part of my identity.  I was the girl with long hair and glasses.

Bye Bye glasses.  And I felt a subtle shift in myself.

Many years (decades) later, bye bye hair.  And another subtle shift … where will this one lead?

The hair by the way, was shipped off to “Locks of Love”.  Who will it help?  I’ll never know, but that’s the way of change.  Like ripples in water, you never know what shores the expanding ripples will touch.

 

Deceiver in chief

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It is something to marvel at … the lies coming out of the white house and the absolute conviction with which they’re being delivered.  Imagine having a conversation with someone and you both look up at the sky about which they remark is a bright shade of pink.  100% dead sure of it when any other right thinking person, no matter which side of the aisle they live on, would argue the sky is blue.  You may not believe in climate change (although, how can you not?!) but you can agree the sky is blue.   You may not believe the Russians had anything to do with affecting the presidential election (although, again how can you not?!) but you can agree the sky is blue.

Yet there stands delusional don, and his clown car of a white house (more and more silliness keeps pouring out, as if from an infinite source) spouting absolute nonsense.  Trump claims to have certain people have called to heap praise upon him … these people, for the record, said they did no such thing.  And whatever he does, it’s the greatest in history … he’s the greatest speaker, the greatest deal maker, the greatest –fill in the blank- EVER.  I’ll happily fill in that blank with something he’s the greatest one of.

He keeps announcing the impending death of the Affordable Care Act … and then, gleefully, states “I was right” when even the “Skinny repeal” failed to pass and insurance industry experts expressed worry at the uncertain future.  Of course, he was right!  He was right in the same way a burglar, upon robbing a house, says “you failed to install a burglar alarm, so you got broken into.  I was right!”  He’s cutting the legs out from under the plan, and then claiming victory over its assumed failure.  That isn’t being right.  It’s stacking the deck and gloating over the outcome.

Every day, since the election, I’ve been a mess of anxiety and worry.  What will he do or say next?  What shady appointment, conversation, or email will stir the pot next?  What if the situation were reversed, and Hillary Clinton at the center of this insanity, what would happen?  I’ll tell you what would happen … the republicans would be handing out subpoenas like free samples in front of a new lunch stand.  There would be so many charges filed, hearings held, and calls for immediate impeachment flying around, it would be like a political hurricane was sweeping through.

It’s time to stand up to this insanity – republican, democratic, independent – whatever your political affiliation.  Insanity is insanity.  And in this case, it’s in sitting in the white house.

He’s the ultimate pot calling the kettle black.  “Investigate those people, nothing to see over here.”  “Do as I say, never mind what I’m doing.”, “it’s not my fault” … in other words … the buck stops wherever it’s convenient in order to avoid responsibility.  If it benefits him, he crows “look at me!” but if it doesn’t – well, blame anyone else.  The trump reality … for him it’s cherry picking what to believe … for us, it’s living with a temper-tantrum throwing child posing as president.

There’s a magnet on my refrigerator, “I love my country … it’s the government I’m afraid of”

Ain’t it the truth.

Time to get political (it was unavoidable)

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The “Skinny” repeal has been defeated and it’s one of the few times since the election, I’ve had cause to relax a little.  Living with trump as president is like living with a full blown addict.  You never know what they’re going to say or do next, nor what will set them off and every moment is a knifes-edge of worried waiting.

Pre-trump life had enough shit to dodge, but the current environment is like one big mine field.  I’ve been a solid mass of anxiety since the election – alternatively going from denial to depression and back to denial … rather like the stages of grief but for the fact I can’t imagine entering the stage of “acceptance”.

One of the proudest times of my life was participating in the Women’s march on Washington, the day after the inauguration.  It was an amazing experience.  There was little, if any, of the kind of conflict that would draw the attention of police – at least I didn’t see nor hear of any.  There were plenty of police all right, but all the officers I saw – while observant and no-nonsense – were likewise relaxed and non-threatening.  They didn’t engage the crowd nor did the crowd taunt or tease.  There was a palpable feeling of co-existing.  Of live and let live.  Of respect for the right to protest as well as the right to keep the peace.  There were no arrests.  No scuffles.  Nothing set on fire.  People bore up under crushing crowds in the streets with amazing tolerance and civility.

Now it feels like I’m mourning the death of tolerance and civility.  My neighbor had an anti-trump bumper sticker on his car which earned him several near road-rage encounters and more than a few “birds”.  He finally removed the sticker out of fear should his wife, driving alone sometime, become some zealot’s victim.  Now, there are people who despised President Obama – but I don’t recall hearing of any Obama supporter flipping off or driving to intimidate anyone with an anti-Obama bumper sticker.  It seems that to be anti-Trump, at least publicly, it to risk being attacked.  Since when was it permissible to disagree so physically and abusively?  When did bullying become the new normal?

It’s bad enough there’s a narcissistic, self-absorbed, megalomaniac child with the attention span of a housefly as the leader of our country … and it’s bad enough he can’t seem to control himself, but that doesn’t mean we have to act the same way.

Surely we’re better than that.  He may not be able to act presidential, but we can act like adults.