Keep going

It is very easy to get discouraged right now. Truly, I get discouraged almost every day, at which point I want to give up on my plan to do a political task every weekday. Then I remind myself that I am not trying to achieve anything. I am just trying to stand up for what is true and right, so that I can sleep at night. 

It is hard to remember that what I'm doing is not supposed to achieve anything. I keep feeling responsible for all the disasters. 

I am not responsible. Senator John Hickenlooper might be responsible, but I am not responsible. I'm just doing what I can, and hoping the Universe will take that into account.

I thought I should make a plan, or a set of rules of thumb, for how to approach this goal, since I struggled this week.

Ten Rules of Thumb for Doing a Political Task Every (Week)Day

1. Try to get outside to a rally, protest, or march once a week.
2. Try to make one phone call to an elected representative each week, but if I can't do it, don't get all upset about it.
3. Write at least one letter/email each week. More are fine. It's OK if every task is a letter/email, since that's easy for me.
4. Try to think of one creative, off the wall thing to do each week (but don't stress if I can't think of anything).
5. Write or call about things that matter to me, not just whatever is the news of the day. It will come across as more honest and committed if in fact it is.
6. In a pinch, a BlueSky post can count as my one thing. A Reddit post does not count, because those are anonymous.
7. If someone encourages or invites me to do something with them (go to a rally, sign a petition, whatever), don't hem and haw, just jump on board.
8. Plan ahead, if possible, since it's not useful to get stymied and not be able to think of anything to do and waste the day trying to think of something. 
9. Except for rallies, etc., try to do the task quickly and early in the day. Don't drag it out.
10. As much as possible, try to be positive. Write letters thanking people for what they do, or encouraging them to do good things. Don't yell at people for doing the wrong things (such as Sen. Hickenlooper voting to confirm that idiotic Education Secretary). Don't waste time criticizing Republicans for being in a cult. Look for points of common interest.

This was kind of a tough week for political tasks, though I tried. There were four things that interfered.

1. A problem with my right eye that turned out to be nothing serious, but took up a lot of my time and energy until we got it figured out on Thursday.
2. A bout of stomach problems that took up all of Tuesday.
3. Signing up to bring food to the school musical dinners on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. 
4. The twins' 17th birthday, today.

 

Monday

The week started off well with a wonderful protest at the Department of Commerce down the road. It was estimated there were around 1000 people there. Rocket Boy came with me and though we arrived early, several hundred people were already there. There was lots of press, lots of photos taken, even a helicopter circling overhead. I felt good, waving my new sign (I somehow managed to lose the old one), but also sad, because how ridiculous to have to defend the Weather Service from Trump.

Also that morning, Rocket Boy finished writing a letter to our Representative and our two Senators, about how stupid his firing was. (I edited it so it didn't sound like it was written by a nonnative speaker.) He made some points that I hadn't thought about before, such as how his contract work was in some ways just as important to national safety as his previous work with the NGA in St. Louis (which was classified). And yet he wasn't allowed to give his work to anyone, write it up so that someone else could continue it. It was just: you're fired. Stop working this instant. So all the money they paid him, from November to February, maybe $30,000 or more, was a complete waste. No one benefited.

Political tasks:

• Protest at the Department of Commerce
• Letter to elected representatives
  

Tuesday

This wasn't a good day. I needed to get bloodwork done for my physical next week, and I decided to go to the lab on only a mug of tea with milk because I didn't want my blood sugar to be too high. By the time I got home again I felt really ill, and then I didn't eat breakfast for a while on account of that (even though I think eating breakfast would have helped). When I finally ate, I couldn't even finish my cereal, so I dumped the rest in the compost. Then I took my pills and went back to bed. In less than 30 minutes I was running to the bathroom and throwing up everything, over and over and over.

I spent the rest of the day in bed, mostly asleep. Around 3 pm Rocket Boy asked me if I needed any help with my task for the day: baking 12 potatoes for the high school musical tech week dinner. I realized that yes, I did, so he did all the work of washing and pricking and oiling and salting the potatoes. He got them in the oven by 4:15 (they were due at the school by 5:45). It was close, but he got them done, wrapped them all in foil and Teen A helped deliver them. My good boys.

I didn't eat dinner, but later I watched part of a movie with Rocket Boy ("The Conversation" with poor Gene Hackman on the Criterion Channel) and tentatively ate a few Wheat Thins and drank a little juice. After a bit, I said to RB, "Could you turn that off and get me a bucket?" And up came the Wheat Thins and juice, right there in the living room (but in the bucket). And then there was the diarrhea.

Political tasks:

• Nothing

Wednesday

This was recovery day -- my stomach felt better, but I was very cautious about what I ate. Eventually I realized that I was fine and even had the leftover lasagna for dinner. But it was a catch-up day, since I'd missed Tuesday entirely. 

I went ahead and made my planned contribution to the high school musical dinner, which was vegan chocolate chip zucchini bread, very weird. My idea was that if any other family members started to feel sick, I'd know that what I had Tuesday was a bug, so I'd buy something pre-made from Sprouts and Rocket Boy could take that to the school. But of course no one else got sick, so we took the zucchini bread to the school (along with some vegan cookies from Sprouts as back-up). 

The only vaguely political thing I did today was worry about trans teens. (I know there are so many things to worry about right now, but that's one of my big ones. They seem so helpless and so persecuted.) I did write a short post on Bluesky about that, but it wasn't very interesting and no one responded to it. I googled a few variations of the question, "what can I do to support trans teens?" but the answers were things like, "Tell your trans teen you love them." I couldn't find any information about what to do when you're worried about all the trans teens in your kids' high school music and theater departments but you don't actually know any of them personally.

Political tasks:

• Bluesky post

Thursday

I had a bad night for some reason -- one of those nights when you just can't fall asleep. I wasn't doomscrolling in my mind or anything. I just wasn't sleepy. I was also in some pain from all the vomiting on Tuesday, although I took a couple of Tylenol. That is the worst thing about vomiting, in my opinion -- the pain in your rib cage for several days afterwards. It hurts to sneeze, it hurts to cough. 

Anyway, I was a bit of a zombie that morning. But I had to get going so that I could get to the eye doctor by 8:15, so they could check my right eye for possible retinal detachment. Fortunately, it turned out to be only posterior vitreous detachment, which is not serious. I have a gigantic floater in my eye that could be seen in the picture of the eye, and it is still there three days later, very annoying, with long strings coming off of it. But not serious.

Today I had signed up to make vegan banana bread, so I got right on that. I put a lot of brown sugar on top, hoping to make up for the lack of eggs, the weird oil I used (all we had was grapeseed oil), and the fact that the bananas weren't really ripe enough. It actually turned out to be very good! I also put away the clean dishes and started a load of laundry, after first putting away the laundry from the night before, and I made appointments for the boys' physicals, and an appointment to get the cat's nails trimmed, took the cat to said appointment, did an hour of genealogy, and took a 30-minute walk. Then I stopped by Sprouts to get more vegan cookies and drove both the cookies and the banana bread to the school. We had frozen pizza for dinner because I was tired.

Political tasks:

• Wrote a comment on the Health & Human Services website, asking why the meeting to plan the flu vaccine was cancelled.
  

Friday

There was a "Support Science" protest planned for today (both in Denver and at CU) that I wanted to go to (probably the CU one), but I ended up not going (they had a good turnout without me, fortunately). It was a gloomy gray day, and I just kind of lost hope. So I did laundry and dishes and cleaned the litter boxes and put out the trash and recycling for pickup and paid bills, and then I baked the kids' favorite Banana Bread Coffeecake (they were cross that I'd been baking for the school but not for them). And then I sat and stewed about what political task to do today. I knew I ought to call one of my elected representatives, but I didn't want to. I'm so phone phobic. While stewing, I read an absolutely horrific interview with Christopher Rufo in the New York Times about what the right actually wants to do to DEI and education. And then I wanted to kill myself. Literally. It was that bad.

So, instead, I gave up on the phone call and wrote a message to Senator Michael Bennet about the flu vaccine. It's been a week since RFK Jr. canceled the annual meeting to plan next year's flu vaccine and I can't find any follow-up on that. Will the meeting be rescheduled? Are we going to have a flu vaccine next year? How many people will die if we don't? And then I went for a long walk. I was still very unhappy when I got back, but I wasn't suicidal.

For dinner, Rocket Boy and I went to a Catholic church in Longmont that was having a fish fry for Lent. Lenten fish fries are a big thing in St. Louis, and RB got quite attached to them while he was there. It is a nice custom, and not very expensive. We got three fish dinners (two grilled, one fried) and three pieces of cheesecake. We brought them home and had a nice dinner (Teen A joined us a little later -- Teen B was eating at the school).

Political tasks:

• Wrote a message to Senator Michael Bennet, via his website.

Saturday

I didn't plan to do anything today, which was good, since I had to focus on the coming Birthday. I had to buy the ingredients for a cake and make the cake, and I had to go birthday shopping with Rocket Boy. I also had to help Teen B with his Language Arts project which is due sometime next week (and which he has no time to work on next week, due to the musical).

However, while doing nothing, I happily boycotted both Target and Amazon. The Target boycott (which is due to the store's canceling all its DEI programs) began on Wednesday, and fortunately I went to Target last weekend, so I didn't need to go this week. I believe I can stay away for 40 days. There are other places to buy Easter candy and I don't need any more Barbie dolls right now. The only reason to go to Target would be to buy something from a Black designer, such as Jungalow home furnishings, and I don't need anything like that right now. If I suddenly find myself needing a shower curtain or whatever, I'll remember to buy Jungalow.

The Amazon boycott began on March 7th, Friday, but I've been unofficially boycotting them ever since Trump's inauguration, when I saw Jeff Bezos in the audience. Unfortunately I did actually buy something on Amazon on Friday, thus violating my own boycott AND the official one. Teen A wanted some cargo sweatpants that were only available on Amazon. We compromised, though. One of the reviews of the sweatpants said they weren't as good as some other cargo sweatpants, so we found those on a separate website and ordered one pair of that kind and then one pair of the Amazon kind (better than buying two from Amazon). Also, I used some of our saved gift card money, so it wasn't like we gave Jeff Bezos MORE money. Traffic to the site, yeah, I couldn't avoid that. But it was like an early birthday present for Teen A, so I'm OK with it. And I'm going to go on boycotting them after this, definitely until March 14th, when the official boycott ends, but also as much as possible forever and ever, as long as Jeff Bezos remains an asshole.

Political tasks:

• Boycotted Target
• Boycotted Amazon
  

Today

So, the twins' 17th birthday. It's going OK. Well, not great, but my expectations were low. I did have one fight today with Rocket Boy, which was bad, because it makes the atmosphere in the house unpleasant. Yesterday I made an angel food cake (from a mix) because that was Teen A's request for a cake, and today I had to frost it (with lemon-flavored whipped cream). So I found my favorite bowl, put it in the freezer to chill, and then got it out and set it in the sink (I always whip cream in the sink, less messy that way) while I was getting the beaters ready, and while I was doing that, Rocket Boy came along and washed his hands in the sink, right into my bowl! I got so mad at him, and he was so offended that I got mad. Men.

I always have a bad time on the twins' birthday, but this year I feel as though I deserve to feel bad, since I didn't get them any lovely presents (that they don't want). All we got them was some fancy sodas from Rocket Fizz (and Rocket Boy ordered them some t-shirts, but those haven't come yet). When you google "what to give someone who doesn't want anything" the answer is usually "give them a shared activity." But the LAST thing my kids want right now is to do something with me, spend even more time with me than they do already, and I totally get that and don't mind at all. I was 17 once, too.

The cake looks pretty nice. We'll have it later on this afternoon (Teen A is out with friends right now). I'm going to make Brenda's sticky tofu for dinner, as that's a favorite.

Perhaps that's a good lead-in to the Mounjaro report.

• Weight the morning I took my first shot: 254.6
• Weight last Sunday: 223.8
• Weight this morning (after 37+ weeks on Mounjaro): 222.8

I didn't expect to go down this week, even with the vomiting day, because two days after that day I was up three pounds. But it came off again, and here I am, a pound lighter than last week. So now I'm down 31.8 pounds. I got my bloodwork done this week, as mentioned above, and the results were mildly interesting. My total cholesterol is 111, which is what it was last September too. This is below normal (normal is 125-199, according to some websites). But I know my doctor will say it is fine, even though my HDL is too low (39). My A1c, however, went up slightly from December, from 6.3 to 6.4. So I will probably have to go up to the next level of Mounjaro, 10 ml. I see my doc tomorrow.

This wasn't a great cooking week, for obvious reasons. Teen B ate dinner at the school every night, because of rehearsals. I made that veggie lasagna on Monday and we had the leftovers on Tuesday (not me) and Wednesday. Thursday we had frozen pizza and Friday the Lenten fish fry stuff. Last night we ate out at the Gondolier. 

Next Week

So this coming week I will try to do a little better, but it's another weird week, even worse than last week. Teen B will eat dinner at the school on Monday and Tuesday, but Wednesday through Friday I'll have to get him to the school by 6 pm, which means feeding him something early, like at 5 pm (we're going to the show on Wednesday, so we'll eat early too that day), and on Saturday he has to be there from 1 to 5 and then 6 to 10 (we're going to the later show too), so I don't know what we do that day, I really don't.

What else is going on this week? I have my physical tomorrow morning, and that's about it. Rocket Boy has a couple of appointments. I told him, you don't have time to work! All you do is go to the doctor. It's his leg -- he has endless appointments for therapy. Also, he has serious arthritis in the other leg, the ankle, and he has therapy appointments for that too. 

I need to sit down and make plans for my political tasks this week and then try to get them done early each day, so I have time to do my usual stuff. I didn't write at all this past week or the week before, and I miss it so much. I'll try harder this week.

And maybe not read any more interviews with right-wing activists who want to destroy the country. It doesn't do any good to make myself feel so bad.