Good-bye, Ruth

 RBG is dead.  I'm surprised by how profoundly that has affected me.  I'm feeling very, very low.  Of course McConnell and Trump are rushing to try to fill her seat, which would or will tip the Supreme Court to the right for decades.  The Supremes have already overturned voter protection laws, given corporations the rights of individuals in Citizens United, made GW Bush President in a contested election.  It's sickening.  After McConnell refused even to consider Obama's candidate.  All the hypocrisy and partisanship and ignorance and meanness is really getting to me today.  I've already had to warn SH that storms may suddenly come upon us, and with them bristles and weeping and ranting.

I've sent an email to a friend who is going to vote for Trump because he, my friend, wants abortion made illegal again.  I tried not to blast him too hard with my scathing words, but really, I can't stand the fact that men think they have the right to tell women that they have to carry to term children they don't want.  It's so easy for men to say "You have to" when no man in the past present or future has ever suffered or will ever suffer the consequences of an unwanted pregnancy, even though they caused every one of them.  And I can't stand that the Catholic church is against both abortion and birth control.  I am so furious today, I feel as though I could burn something down if anything pushed on me even a little bit.

I keep telling people that keeping an open heart and a light spirit is our duty during these harsh, challenging, anguished times, but today I'm giving myself permission to feel as low as I feel, to eat potato chips and drink Dr. Pepper and not exercise and cry whenever I feel like it and be as angry, as outraged, as exhausted as I really am.  It doesn't help that I slept very poorly last night.  If I wake up for any reason, the cat hollering or hot flashes or having to pee, my mind quickly starts to gnaw on something or another, have righteous conversations with villains, search desperately for haven.  Oh Ruth, Ruth, we needed you, and you never even got to enjoy retirement.

I can't stand what the Trump Presidency has revealed about this country.

At least the sky is clean again after a week of smoke.  That's something.  I'll be more cheerful tomorrow.  I promise.  But today, it's a bad, bad day.