Hi Cindy! Noah and Grace are 11, so, you know, not great. Noah actually is 70% delightful and Grace is 100% a handful.

I look at the date and 11 makes sense, but it still doesn't compute. Mine are 18, 19, and 22 now, so I might envy your 11-year-olds, but I'm sorry things are hard. I'll start vibing at you now for what is to come.

The White House authorized the FBI to expand the scope of the investigation. I wish I could stop feeling that slight flare of hope each time something non-horrific happens.

I'm trying to stick it all in a box. I can't do much about it. My senators are Warren and Markey. Their votes are foregone conclusions and would have been, without the sexual assault allegations, perjury, etc. I'm trying to stay away from both hope and despair. It's not really working though, so I'm stress eating.

I'm not usually a person that wants to go live off-grid, but I'm at the point where retreating into the woods and becoming a terrifying urban legend is sounding like the best plan ever.

Oh, this does sound more tempting than I'd expect.

See, I almost always feel like retreating to the woods and becoming an urban legend (I don't know if even the legendary version of me can be terrifying, maybe Boo Radley scary) is a great plan.

Ok, I had one thing that absolutely had to get done today, and it is; two urgent things came up and I've done what I can on those, and my usual daily tasks are where they are supposed to be. That's enough, right?

Just tried to RSVP to a professional networking event on Wednesday which will involve free drinks and food, and probably lots of people bitching about 45's environmental policies. Here's hoping it's not too late.

I keep trying not to follow the news, but it's compulsive. Politics is my hate-watch fandom.

A little apathy now and then is good for the soul. You just can't live there. I think of it as...meditation. A period of no-mind where the conscious shuts down for repairs and the subconscious works on things--sort of like Wash under the dashboard, till all the little lights start blinking again.

For me, fighting too hard against apathy just sends me deeper, longer, when that dam inevitably breaks. At the moment I'm kind of skipping across it, like a stone. Maybe I'll sink at some point, maybe I'll make the other side of the pond. But with this much, all at the same time, and no real end in sight, I've had to soft-pedal action and caring to what I can manage. For now.

I've declared a weekend news blackout for myself ... gives me a chance to decompress. I may become a subscriber to Baba Yaga's school of feminism.

I saw an article where they asked women what they'd do if there were a universal curfew for men after 9:00pm ... some of them just wanted to be able to go to the grocery or take a walk after dark.

Timelies all!

Much as I'd like to turtle, I have to adult. Don' wanna, but I gotta.

Yeah, I'd like to turtle for a week but ltc still expects me to parent.

I may become a subscriber to Baba Yaga's school of feminism.

Yes. Yes, this is a good plan. Also, I want that statue of Baba Yaga.

I am Being Productive. I've done laundry and making food for the next few days, and next it's unpacking and testing two pieces of equipment for the upcoming media empire, and editing the GCS post that goes up tomorrow.

Jesus Christ, there was a jillifont in the house that I honest to god thought was a Halloween decoration that Tim's BFF left as a joke. It was the biggest fucking jillifont I've ever seen in the house. In any house. It was about as big as those plastic jillifont rings people give out for trick or treat. Fucking enormous. I will never call the jillifont on the back porch "big" ever again.

I squished it with my sneaker, but it took a minute, because it was on the baseboard and kept moving, and when it moved I'd have to pull the furniture aside to get at it (a basket full of winter hats, an end table stacked with books, etc.), so then the living room looked like it had been ransacked.

Also, I killed that motherfucker about 45 minutes ago and I'm still twitchy and wired. Fucking ENORMOUS. Oh my god.