Stuck

I’m still stuck on the election results. I’ve started draft after draft of a post explaining my feelings, but they all got deleted in the end. Maybe with time I can talk about it coherently, but for now, I just need to find a way to think about other things.

While I’m not saying it’s a good thing to drop out or back away from our civic responsibilities, the short-term answer may be to focus on simple pleasures and enjoy the time that has been given to us.

And so I’ve been dabbling in retail therapy. My priority was fuzzy slippers, but I’m picky about shoes. Although I have some boots that are grandfathered, retirement footwear specs include only Hoka and Birkenstock. I’m pleased to report I successfully procured shearling-lined Birkenstocks.

As I was thinking about how to describe them, I was reminded of a woman we knew years ago who was quite frugal, perhaps unnecessarily so, but that’s how she rolled. She made her children drink powdered milk for a long time, but then she decided to upgrade to regular milk from the dairy aisle. One of the kids said, “Mommy, this milk is thick and rich!”

That’s how I feel about my slippers. Believe me, they are good for what ails you.

You may recall I purchased a slow cooker a couple of years ago, but it failed to cook anything at any speed, so I returned it. That model has been discontinued … yay to a little validation that it’s not me. To celebrate, I purchased a new one, which was launched this week with jalapeño pulled pork. Delicious!

I’ve spent much of this rainy day browsing slow cooker recipes so my bundle of joy can embark on its next culinary journey. Food might be the ultimate cure for the blues. Dale’s making pizza tonight with garlic parmesan bechamel for the base … topped with mozzarella, smoked gouda, smoked salmon, capers, red onions and chopped tomatoes.

Tomorrow is a New England thing called beans and bread. We get heirloom beans from his family in Maine. We’ve always known them as Marafax, but I’ve seen them on the Internet as Marfax. He bakes those in the oven with dry mustard and salt pork. Then a pan of big puffy yeast rolls and cabbage salad – which is like coleslaw but with green olives and celery seeds.

Then we start the countdown to Thanksgiving. I’m making pumpkin cheesecake this year.

My sister was here last week, and we had a great visit. She’s quite the crafter and lives in a rural area without a lot of retail options, so let’s just say shopping was involved. We went to Hobby Lobby, which I loathe because of all that conservative Christian rhetoric, but it really was the mother ship, so I’m glad I was able to give her that experience. We got the “have a blessed day” at the cash register, and I was annoyed at first, but then I thought, oh well, anyone anywhere saying anything nice. Take it.

And I did actually buy two Christmas cookie tins and a nice piece of wood for my art. I love my scrappy pallets, but sometimes I yearn for pristine wood, so now I have it. Praise the board!

Nothing else to share right now, but I wanted to check in and say hi. In addition to my post-election funk, for some reason the barometric pressure changes hit me hard this year and everything hurts. I looked it up, the barometric pressure effects – and it looks to be a real thing. Like many Americans, I always feel better backed by nebulous facts.

23 thoughts on “Stuck”

  1. Any time you need a break from Dale, you can always lend him to one of your readers. We’ll be happy to yield our kitchens to him.

    I just spent two weeks in Paris trying to walk off my election depression which wasn’t helped by cabinet nomination stupefaction. It was beautiful walking but not much of a cure.

    1. Well, Paris is not a bad way to try and walk off the blues! We used to live within a 4-hour train ride to Paris. Sweet memories.

      Thanks for the offer, but I’m keeping him. Not that there aren’t days when … well, you know.

  5. I`m living in Tokyo. In the first terrible days after the election I would walk out into the streets and be surrounded by people going about their lives, going to work, bustling with errands. All of them seemingly unaffected by the American election. It was surreal.

    Then English cousins weighed in, one of them writing, “The American people have spoken!” (Exclamation point!) When she knew very well that THIS American person had spoken otherwise. Jesus, Coz, you might read the room a little. (Also, enjoy your Brexit.)

    So those of us truly suffering from this are in a distinct minority, both in our own country and among the world`s. But that`s no reason not to honor what we are feeling and do whatever we have to about it, now and later.

    1. Your paragraph about the English cousins made me laugh. And thank you for the perspective. We are but a tiny dot. I was going to say I hope you have someone to talk to, but even when it’s just the two of us, we can barely discuss it.

  6. I love your humor, please don’t change! 😄

    I think I’ve gone through the five stages of grief post-election. That is really what it felt like. And while I’m not quite to the final stage, acceptance, I’ve decided to accept that yes, America really is primarily a racist and misogynistic country, and there is no use pretending or wishing it were otherwise.

    So I’m going to lean into my relative wealth, live my good life, spend as much time as I can outdoors and at the ocean, and shrug my shoulders at the pain and misery I know will be coming to his base. I did my best, I voted, I tried to protect those less financially fortunate than we are. But if they don’t care, well fine, then I don’t either going forward.

    It will be a relief, it already is, to check out and zone out and just enjoy the h#ll out of what we’ve got going on, and not worry about those I think of as the idiots in this country. The poor, uneducated idiots.

    1. I agree with you about the stages of grief. I’m not at acceptance, either, but I can see it on the horizon. Hello, acceptance! Can you come a little closer, please?

      Your comments reflect some of the reasons I couldn’t articulate my thoughts on this whole thing. Part of me wants to blame the uneducated masses. But I know affluent educated people who voted for him or didn’t vote at all. Same thing. I even wrote a draft about trying to understand people who want to break the system, even though the system worked well for me. But then I look at all the people who surround Trump, and it seems to me the system worked just fine for them, too. There are just too many facets to this, and I don’t understand any of it. I also agree racism and sexism played a big role in the outcome.

      1. His base wants mass removal of those ‘go#$amn illegal immigrants,’ which I swept under the broad umbrella of racism.

        That will increase prices like nothing else; it’ll be a literally freight train of price increases. Which I can afford, but their poor uneducated asses cannot. And no, I don’t believe their poor uneducated asses will be clamoring at the door to be hired to do low paying, fairly labor intensive tasks.

        Hey Donna, see how well I’m doing with acceptance over here? 😅😅😅

  7. I chuckled at your “praise the board”!

    Lots of folks in a funk atm… I read some of the other comments about grief and acceptance. I’m kinda in denial… if being numb and ignoring social media is denial. Of course, I’m dealing with a different grief, so that’s kinda understandable.

    1. I’ve been reading your posts about recovering from the hurricanes. Yikes. You have enough to worry about.

  8. I’ve turned off my subscription to the WP, but I still get a headline here and there and it just upsets me so much. I’m not sure if I’ve moved out of the shock phase yet. As Tamara says, just wait till those workers who are in the fields picking our food, in the factory farms, killing our chickens, cows, etc. are deported and the price of food sky rockets. what white male/ female is going to head out to the Salinas Valley and work in 100 degree weather? It’s horrifying to me the people he’s picking( yes a few of those snippets have come through. i want to get to the place of being done with it but I think it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. Honestly, if I had money, I’d be leaving the US.

    1. I’ve been reading way less news, too, but those headlines will get you every time.

      Although I’ve talked about leaving, I’m not going anywhere. I mean, look at New Zealand. Everyone’s liberal darling until it wasn’t. The turn to the right is all over. About the only benefit of being in a different country is that it would be easier to stick your head in the sand. There used to be an expression in the military called ROAD — retired on active duty. Basically you check out mentally and emotionally while you’re still on the job. Perhaps some lessons to be learned.

  9. I am in the same boat about the election. I am staying mostly closeted inside my house since a traumatic encounter with my favorite handyman, rendering me unwilling to chance further encoutners with humans outside. Every day I decide to go out, and then it’s evening and I haven’t done it. The weather is on my side, as it is our first cold snap, with even a bit of snow. Hoping to venture to my favorite place for lunch tomorrow. We’ll see.
    Nina

    1. We have a neighbor who poses the same risk. He has a second home and is rarely here, but we fear the next encounter. Lunch is good! Go!

  10. I agree with all of you regarding acknowledging what we are feeling regarding the election. For all of you who are feeling stuck, I would recommend learning to embrace radical acceptance. Please Google the term if you aren’t familiar with it. If we allow our negative thoughts to ruminate on those things we have no control of, we will only inflict pain and suffering on our emotional and physical health. I’m choosing to focus on simple pleasures i.e. warm cosy slippers, planning enjoyable activities, and all things that bring beauty into my everyday. Yay for art!

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