posts tagged with 'complaints'
a tough week
The election was kind of terrible, and its aftermath pretty much cast a pall over the whole past week. I didn't write about it much here, but I was all-in on voting for Clinton—excited by her policies but even more by the tone of her campaign, and of course by the chance to have a woman in the White House. And naturally I'm disgusted by Trump and everything he seems to represent. So the results were hard to bear, even before I started to hear that friends are wondering if they should leave the country.
Other minor things contributed to my feelings of dislocation. I made some stupid mistakes in trying to bring my computer into the current decade through a series of updates—until a few days ago it was pretty much stuck in 2007. Despite that it was at least deeply familiar to me, and fairly well-customized; now with the botched update it's still out-of-date but strangely unfamiliar. And my camera's not working, so even when we did have moments of delight this past week I wasn't able to capture them for posterity (except with my crappy phone camera).
I don't mean to suggest those little annoyances are anything like our national catastrophe; far from it. But as I wandered around the house in a stunned daze I often found myself sitting down in front of the computer only to realize I basically couldn't do anything useful with it—it had no comfort to offer me. It didn't help that I've sworn off the news, because it turns out reading about politics online occupied maybe 20% of my time over the past couple months. Avoiding it now leaves me with lots of time to wonder what I'm doing with my life.
But we had a good day today, even if I didn't manage to photograph it. And I'm beginning to accept that my elderly computer is as updated as it's ever going to be, and make my peace with that. At least it won't ever change again! The national picture's no better, but I'm encouraged by what I hear from friends in person and online about how the election results has made them think harder about what they're doing to be kind to people and to make the world a better place. That's small consolation in the face of Tuesday's catastrophe, but at least it's a start...
the state of the family, early September
When I look back at my photos from the last month and a bit I despair—so many adventures un-written-about! But then I look at the dirty dishes and adjust my priorities: an unusable kitchen is more serious than a blogging deficit any day, even if it does mean that Zion's "first day" of "school" has to wait to be described until we have a little more time—to say nothing of a terrific last full day of our August camping adventure and our lovely mini-vacation this past weekend.
But all hope isn't lost! Yesterday was the first day of the school year program at church, and I managed to make it all happen the way it was supposed to—a big load off my mind. Even better, Lijah went to his own Kids Church class happily (reasonably happily) and made it through the whole hour-and-a-half without needing us to rescue him! Actually, it seems like he loved it; it may be that he's been waiting his whole life for a chance to play with toys by himself, without his brothers bothering him. Sure, I wouldn't be surprised if we have to deal with some tricky drop-offs over the weeks and months to come—Harvey is in second grade and sometimes has tricky drop-offs, for goodness sake!—but it does feel like we're starting to turn a corner back towards being real humans who can have interests beyond surviving. I'm even working on building a third kid bed!
Maybe I overstate our difficulties: Leah is in the midst of painting the interior trim downstairs (not right this second, but generally) and I'm learning to play guitar, among other useful amusements. But those are only in spare moments amongst piles of laundry and kids' toys and assorted detritus. Just think what things'll be like when we don't need to read to Lijah for two hours every day! We'll be unstopable. And you'll get to read about that camping trip.