The new year, for better or worse

This year started out so terribly for several thousands of my neighbors, and it's hard to get beyond that. For them, of course, it's impossible. They're living in hotels and borrowed apartments, with friends or family or in shelters. Every bit of news about this is bad: for example, families have been told not to go to their burned-down houses and sift through the ashes looking for anything that might be left because the ash is toxic and even N95 masks won't protect you from it. I think this is kind of ridiculous. We could have another "wind event" next week, and the ash will blow everywhere.

I'm trying to help. I've donated money to two organizations and a GoFundMe account, given away coats and boots, and bought household items at Target for a family. I'm trying to keep my eyes open for opportunities to help. One thing that's amazing is that whenever a call goes out for help, tons of people jump in to provide it. I was going to donate Teen A's old trombone to an instrument drive in Lafayette today, but they got so many responses -- and I feel really down -- so I decided to skip it. I'm sure there will be more opportunities in the future. I may ask his music teacher if he could use it. 

It occurred to me that the closest I've come to this kind of disaster was the floods of 2013 when we lost most of the contents of our basement. We still had a house! but we didn't have a furnace for several weeks, nor did our tenants next door. And we had to deal with insurance companies and FEMA, and the whole thing dragged on for months. So I think about how horrible that was and then attempt to multiply it by 10 or 100 -- or whatever number would be appropriate. I don't think I can really understand how to do that multiplication. And I feel guilty even suggesting that there's a comparison there. 

But I think there is -- it's much less, but it's similar. I remember the feeling in the pit of my stomach when I realized that the Christmas tree skirt my mother made me wasn't salvageable. It had gotten soaked and then sat around for a few weeks until we found it, and it was falling apart and had worms on it. So we threw it away, along with the twins' Christmas stockings and tons of books and papers and other stuff. I can't really remember what all the stuff was. I blocked a lot of that out. I just remember ALL the big black garbage bags full of stuff. These days, when I can't find something that I used to have, I wonder whether maybe it was lost in the flood.

The people who lost their houses in the fire will now KNOW that their stuff was lost in the fire, because everything's gone. I can't get my mind around that. 

OK, so this post was going to be about the new year. It's definitely hard to get 2022 started, with this as the beginning.

I've started working on my resolutions, slowly. I'll probably post them this coming week, or the next. I'm going to do the Classics Challenge again, and I'm working on my list for that -- it might be a couple of weeks before I post that. 

It's hard to gather the energy to make plans. It's hard not to be dragged down by the misery. Someone pointed me toward a good article on CNN, about how terrible our community feels after our terrible year. Because we didn't just have a mass shooting and a disastrous fire, we also had (like everyone else) a pandemic! I went to one of my support groups yesterday, and we have people who zoom into it from other states, just because there isn't much like it anywhere else. Some of the out-of-staters were talking about how the pandemic made their current losses so much worse. And I kept thinking, oh, right, the pandemic. That's actually faded into the background for me, despite its continuing, looming presence, despite the fact that some of my California relatives actually have Covid now -- because of this new disaster. Then a local person in the group would talk about how the fire was magnifying their current losses, and I saw the expressions on the out-of-staters' faces change, like oh, wow, they're dealing with something really big out there.

Oh, and King Soopers, which was just about to re-open our grocery store, 10 months after the mass shooting closed it down, is apparently unable to negotiate a fair contract with its workers and they're going to go on strike. The strike is scheduled to begin January 12th (this Wednesday). Our store is supposed to reopen on January 20th, 8 days later. I wonder how long the strike will last. I'm not going to cross a picket line -- I'll shop at Safeway or Sprouts. But why did this have to happen now? Why can't the corporate offices give up a little bit of profit to make the workers' lives better?

I need to pull myself together. Things are very sad, things are very hard -- but they are not made better by me falling apart. On my neighborhood listserv, people have been screaming at anyone who brings up anything but the fire -- anyone who dares to complain about anything when they still have their house. I think everyone feels like screaming at someone right now. But it doesn't help the people who lost their homes. And it is not necessary to be a martyr because other people are suffering. It does not help them. It would be more helpful to the fire victims if we all bucked up and had a cheerful, positive attitude and thus were able to help out more.

But it's really hard not to be sad.

OK, I can't leave things there. I'm sad, yes. It's hard to start the new year, yes. But I have to at least try, even if it's in a low-key way. Last night, it being Saturday, the twins and I drove to Lafayette to eat out at Chili's. But Chili's was dark. There were no cars in the parking lot. We were just there a few weeks ago! What happened? There seemed to be a sign on the door, but for some reason I felt nervous about parking and getting out. It just seemed so dark. So now I don't know what happened -- were they just closed for one night? Are they closed for good? Did their manager lose their home in the fire? (I know of two Boulder restaurants whose owners lost their homes in the fire; one is mentioned in the CNN article.) I can't find anything online about it. It's so strange.

Anyway, I was so befuddled by Chili's being closed that I suggested we go to McDonald's instead (it's practically next door). Oh, what a horrid meal that was. And expensive! Over $30 for stupid McDonald's food. I don't know why we ever eat out anymore. So in a minute, when I finish this, I'm going to Sprouts to get some ingredients for tonight's dinner. I'm going to make red lentil-sweet potato soup. It's one small thing I can do to make our lives better.

Happy 2022.

P.S. I actually made the soup and it turned out beautifully. Lovely healthy soup full of vegetables and non-animal protein. It also has coconut milk in it which is, hmm, not the greatest, but it's OK. All plant-based, anyway. The twins ate it willingly. And there's plenty to have tomorrow, too.

I'm puzzling over today's news -- the terrible fire in the Bronx apartment house and all the people who died of smoke inhalation. It's so different from our fires. Very little property damage -- I think I read that only one apartment burned -- but so much loss of life. So terribly sad. And there was also the fire in Philadelphia. This year is just not starting out well.