We Most Likely Won’t Be Friends Anymore After I Vote On November 8th.

I am voting on Tuesday, as we all should. But I have decided to stick with my gut, and vote with my heart. I will be writing Bernie Sanders in. He told his supporters months ago, to not listen to him if he tried to convince us to vote for someone else.

And I trust he is right.

Otherwise, I am stuck with voting for two humans…a man and a woman…who are, combined, the most loathed candidates at one time in U.S. Presidential election history.

Both equally shady. Both equally disturbing.

I won’t tell anyone who to vote for, but I sure have had many people attempt to convince me to drop the Bernie act, or else.

I see it as a much bigger problem though.

We can be bullied into voting for one of two people who most likely will wind up having to be pardoned or impeached. I choose to save our country a little time a money, and be more optimistic.

We had a candidate that crushed the GOP candidates in almost every poll. We had a candidate that surpassed the other choice in many polls and won a shocking number of states in the primary…

But somehow he lost. We let him go.

We really needed someone-anyone like him to revive this self-destructive country from even more potential damage.

We should have been focusing on what was truth and what we needed to heal as a nation from years of failing healthcare, violence against each other, hate, low wages…

Instead we were distracted with even more violence and hate and even more of a headache with more insane plans for healthcare, how to stop violence, and creating jobs and equality for all.

We were told we were not sensitive enough to blacks, to gays, to police, to refugees…we were told to hate the other side even more because the Orange guy said racist and bigoted things. We were told to hate the lady in the pantsuit because…well, because she is a lady.

We never stopped to look around at the rubble…of the senseless murders of all the blacks and gays and police we were all too busy hating on.

The smoke is so thick in front of our eyes…

We have been blinded by the media and government…this hate never went away. Martin Luther King Jr. lead the path to transparency to seek truth and justice…but it wasn’t over yet.

It never really went away.

The Orange guy says all those dirty little secrets that have been whispered for ages…he spoke truths for those who were silenced by the media and government…and that’s ok in my book. We were fooled. We began to think people were more empathetic towards each other…enlightened after too many years of hate. These folks never decided to be more open-minded or more liberal. They kept talking, but no one was listening…until now.

The Orange guy handed them the megaphone on a silver platter…for ALL the world to hear…yes, world, this is how many Americans still feel. They are full of hate and fear and loathing for all things different-sexuality, abortion, race…nothing has changed.

And as for that lady…I wouldn’t give her that dignified title as a Lady…

She may have a vagina, but she has the balls of a hundred men.

To brazenly try to walk back in the White House as the rightful heir after she and her husband and their entourage of thugs were ever so nicely kicked to the curb…for many good reasons.

So now we are to forget about all their scandals, and all the hate speech the Orange guy spews and celebrate Tuesday night as we elect one of two criminal psychopaths? We are to cheer and to praise God he won/she won? That it is finally over?

Wednesday will be a hangover that will last for four very long years…

America made the wrong choices…for both parties.

 

I will not tell you to write in Bernie (although if you want to, that’s great!), but we need to reflect on how we got to this point, and how we will survive four years of pure hell. We had plenty of options on both sides…and now we have come to this…

I will have to live with your choices…I voted for Bernie. And I will not be told to or bullied into voting for either of your candidates. I will not make this bed…

You can make the bed…I won’t be lying in it.

 

 

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Snapshots.

After very little sleep last night, I decided to take a quick cat nap this morning after getting the kids off to school. Knowing I have a long full day ahead, I usually cannot nap and don’t like to, but thought it was necessary.

I closed my eyes and immediately had a dark sensation overwhelm me. I thought how lucky I was to be afforded this time, and also how peaceful it was at that very moment, but how quickly things can change in an instant.

After a stressful morning and short fuse, I really needed this rest. But my peaceful moment was now being flooded with memories swirling like snapshots in photographs…

Within seconds I was there again…so clear and vivid…so chilling.

My mind was telling me a story again that I think about occasionally, but always on this day…every year…for eight years.

The time span of these snapshots this morning was not even thirty seconds maybe, but enough (coming fast and furious) to bring me to tears and wide awake.

The hotel lobby…the room…the smells…the pool…our luggage…

There were no cat naps or resting now.

I remembered the dark room in the spa. The knock on the door. The annoyance visibly spread over the masseuse’s face. No one ever interrupts a massage.

This was my moment of relaxation after several days in Disney with family-we finally planned it right…de-stressing from a whirlwind five days in Disney, now in Clearwater at a quiet hotel on the water.

The de-stressing never happened.

The car ride to Clearwater was more stressful than the visiting of the parks…the children were tired and cranky. We became tired and cranky…we should have just headed home.

But after several trips to Disney, we saved for this treat, knowing we always wished to find some chill out time after long full, yet fun days in the parks.

The following morning after we arrived in Clearwater, I was treated to a massage-a little Mommy pampering (maybe a belated birthday gift from a few weeks prior?), then back to the husband and kiddies for some beach or pool time…whatever we wanted at our own pace…we were relaxing…finally.

The knock on the door during my massage immediately made me think something was wrong with the kids, or maybe my husband’s 98 year old Grandmother back home who wasn’t well before we left…

The girl at the door told the masseuse it was an emergency and I needed to find my husband right away.

I quickly got dressed and found my phone buzzing away and noticed several missed calls from back home…oh shit.

What on Earth is going on????

I walked back into the vast lobby and see my husband charging down the stairs white as a ghost…where are my babies?

What is going on?

My husband was running to the car to search for his cell phone after getting a call in the room from a friend back home…

It’s gone…all gone.

Our home burned, not to the ground…but everything is gone…

The rest of the story now leaves me in tears as I write this…the hysterics on our children’s faces as we tell them what happened…

Their toys, their clothes, pictures…everything…their stuffed animals and trophies…their beds…

Where will we go?

What will we do?

The nightmare trip home of begging to get on a flight…only to have it delayed overnight because birds flew in the engine…

Are you frigging kidding me??

Why? Why now? How much more bad karma can one family take?

It could be worse, we were told…after almost 24 hours trying to get home, then arriving to family and friends covered in soot with tired eyes and heavy hearts…

These snapshots will haunt us forever.

We rebuilt a stronger and safer home…our family and community surrounded us with love and food and shelter and clothing…even Halloween decorations to cheer up our girls…

We came out of it all that much stronger…

When we feel weak and can bare no more, we remember these snapshots as I did this morning from eight years ago today, they lift us up and tell us we can and we will be stronger.

 

October 20, 2008

“Strength doesn’t come from what you can do. Strength comes from overcoming the things you thought you couldn’t”- Unknown

 

 

Coffee.

Sitting here attempting to enjoy my millionth cup of coffee (since age fourteen), in one of my favorite cheesy mugs… I love collecting mugs now for some strange reason. They remind me of things I guess.  We have a nice set of matching mugs, but I have taken to mugs with pictures on them from our travels, or favorite campground. This is truly the highlight of my morning.

That first sip…

God forbid I put too much creamer in it. But it is always fixable.

I never ever get to finish an entire cup of coffee. So these first few sips are like liquid gold to me. Even in the summer when I am broiling.

I am not a Starbucks fan, unless we are on the road ( and sick of having watered down coffee at any given random hotel other than a Marriott) and we are in need of a good strong cup of coffee… I have a special blend at home, to avoid the jitters…and Starbucks always gives me the jitters. So I now stick with decaf when hitting up the rest stop long lines at Starbucks.

Anyway, my husband prefers coffee at home…with me. And I feel the same. It is our ritual in the morning before we do battle with breakfast/lunch, combing out hair, tying shoes, and getting the world in order (at least in our house) by 8 a.m.

My hubby manages to down his coffee each and every day…I am envious of this. Maybe because my hands are busy slopping butter on toast or making sandwiches…but he is a true “enjoy every moment as it happens” kinda guy.

I am not.

I am that frazzled mother who may flip out on occasion in the morning…or any given moment. I feel the chaos running through my veins…if I sneak a sip of my coffee…ahhhh...all is right again in my whacky world.

I have mastered a way to eventually enjoy my coffee…it is now my treat…but this treat also has to sit and wait for me to slow down and drink it.

Iced coffee.

I take that cold sad little cup of coffee that has sat there since six a.m. ( with a few shots to warm it up) and add ICE and a little sweetness!! Voila!  Am I genius or what?!

Not really, but it makes me feel like I didn’t lose this sacred part of my day altogether.

I used to drink tea as well…not a huge tea fan but can tolerate it if I need be (generally when under weather).

When I ask someone if they would like a cup of coffee, and they say no thanks they drink tea, well something triggers in me. It is kind of like a jolt actually. I take immediate offense.

I am sad for them in some weird way…”oh wow, I am so sorry you have never acquired a love for coffee as much as I have” is what I would like to say to them. I feel like the bond between us has just been frayed…and some of these tea lovers are the closest people to me…I think how nice it would have been to sit on the sofa with a warm cup of freshly brewed joe, and have a nice chat (not that this ever really happens in real life…or at least not in mine) holding our mugs of warmth and goodness.

I guess we could still do this, but I may find myself staring at their mug with slight irritation the whole time…these dear people I love who drink tea do also cradle their tea mugs like I try to do with mine (before it gets to room temp).

There is really no point to this blog today, other than my odd obsession with coffee loving and tea bashing…sounds like I am being judgmental.

Maybe I will stop now before I enrage my loved ones anymore than I already have, and go make an iced coffee…

It’s about that time now…