The long goodbye

Trump was impeached today, for the second time. It’s merely symbolic, of course - despite our best efforts, he will, in fact, serve out his presidency, down to the last bitter drop. I doubt the Senate will move to convict. And so it goes. This is going to be the longest week of our lives.

The second half of this school year did not start off well for us. I woke up in a terrible mood - annoyed that I had to get up two hours earlier, disoriented and stressed. I opted not to do a walk because I wanted to be around in case the kids acted up or couldn’t find things; which was a mistake, since not getting out in the morning left me even more out of sorts. Bobby was a disaster in his violin lesson, which left me cringing. This is a huge trigger for me, and it triggered all right. The whole day I was just miserable. I miss having a business to run, I miss my band, I miss my friends, I miss having a life outside of these four walls. 

I know everyone is in the same position I am - in disbelief that, nearly a year on, we’re still at home, still without income, still out of school, with no end in sight. It makes me want to stomp my feet and yell, “noooo!” Sure, vaccines...but the general public won’t have access to them for months, and even then, it’ll be months until we get the pandemic in any way under control; most people are saying “late fall”. Late fall is almost a year from now. 

Everyone is suffering, all kids are antsy and unwilling to get back to work (another reason I loathe these three week winter breaks), it’s tough all over. I hit a wall yesterday, hard. But nothing happened to help me out of it; I just had to get up today and do it all over again. And tomorrow, and the day after that. 

It’s going to be mid-80s here for the next few days which should cheer me up a little. I’m very much enjoying escaping to the porch to read or listen to podcasts or just stare at the mountains across the way. The house is just too loud and chaotic most of the time. 

So tomorrow I get up and drag recalcitrant children through schoolwork for hours and hours, cook meals that aren’t eaten and then thrown away, shower, rinse, repeat. Try to keep my mind busy with inspirational podcasts and aspirational living (our next camping trip! A destination wedding on Hawaii! A new hair product! How to make pickles!). Meanwhile counting the days until we can at last say goodbye to Trump although not to Trumpism, and try to make sense of what happened at the capital last week. My brain is still not fully recovered.