Be Like Odd Trundles

smushface

Odd Trundles knows it’s been a long week. He knows Mum is upset, and when Mum is upset, the best thing to do is put his face on her ankles at every opportunity. He wants to reassure Mum that he loves her, and that he stands ready to schnorgle.

This is a hard job.

Trundles also knows that in order to do his best schnorgling and comforting, he’s got to take care of himself. Proper hydration is key, as is remembering to eat. And, of course, taking steps to ensure he’s rested enough to schnorgle his heart out, day after day.

Things are rough right now. They will probably get rougher. Trundles would like to remind you to take care of yourself, so you can take care of others more effectively.

Be like Odd Trundles. Take care of yourself right now. Even something as simple as looking at this picture and taking a few deep breaths can help. Let the power of his napping soothe your weary nerves and give you strength.

Trundles is here for you. So am I.

Inconvenience Bigotry

wonder-woman

So. The popular vote elected our first woman president, but the electoral college will hand it to a racist orange malignant narcissist and his super-evil twopence piece who will, God help us, probably be doing the actual governing. Hatred has reaped a rich harvest. I am hoping its sowing methods are not sustainable and the ground will be exhausted ere long. Optimistic, maybe, but I have to believe that or I’ll go even madder than I already am.

In light of this, I have two things to say. (I have more, but two will suffice today.) The first is simply this:

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”

Fred Rogers

I would add, when scary things are happening, be one of the helpers. If that means you practice self-care so you can be strong for others, great. If it means protesting, fine. If it means hugging everyone you love and committing afresh to daily kindness and decency, okay. You know best how to help in your own circumstances and life.

The second thing I have to say is for my fellow white people. Yes, I am talking to you. Sit up, pay attention. This is on us.

Do not be polite to bigotry anymore.

I’m hearing a lot of “come together” rhetoric right now. I’m hearing a lot of “part of my family is racist but I still have to see them at Thanksgiving.” Here’s the thing: you don’t have to lend yourself to hatred. You really don’t.

Racists often talk about how they’re “ostracized” for their “beliefs.” You know what? Good. Racism is ugly. Hatred is ugly, and it is not worth a whit of social acceptance.

When your elderly Fox-News-swallowing neighbor starts in with the coded dog whistles, walk away. When your family members make “Killary” jokes, make your disgust plain and walk away. When that guy on the bus is yelling at a PoC to “go back to where you came from” or “sit at the back of the bus”, say something. You don’t have to engage the asshole directly, but sitting next to the target of harassment and striking up a conversation about the weather, using your body language to shut the harasser out, can work wonders.[1] Let your face show how disgusted you are with that asshole. Make it clear their behaviour is absolutely repugnant.

One of my favourite things to say to assholes like that is simply, “Stop that. You know better.” Because they do.

Look, everyone is saying “the polling mechanisms are broken!” No, they’re not. What happened is simple: People know racism and hatred and Donald Trump are repugnant. They know. Having to say you support Trump while talking to a pollster is repellant. You could not believe yourself a good person and do that, and most people want to believe they’re good. (I could go on a rant about most people stopping at four on Kohlberg’s stages of moral development here, but I won’t.) In the voting booth, nobody is watching, and you can be as much of a shitheel bigot as you want to be.

Which is fine. I’m okay with the voting booth letting people show the aggregate ass-end of white supremacy. It’s not like anybody didn’t already know, and the right to vote cuts both ways. But out here in other spaces, we have the absolute right to be disgusted, and to show our disgust.

Let’s make racism so socially unacceptable that even their “polite” dogwhistles and little euphemisms are repellant. Let us make it clear how fucking loathsome bigotry and hatred are.

Now, I can hear some of the bigots whining already. That will make us a minority! You can’t pick on minorities! Nice strawman, try again. I am not advocating violence, simply clear disgust. I’m saying it needs to become the norm to treat bigotry, hatred, and harassment with the contempt it deserves in every social space. When it becomes an inconvenience and a moral and social cost to be a Turmpist “alt-right” asshole, less people will do it.

Why am I saying this directly to my fellow white people? Deploying our privilege to show everyone that this shit is not okay is on us. Getting up and pointedly leaving the room your racist Uncle Bill holds forth about building a wall and making Mexico pay for it is the least you can do for humanity. Using your privilege to shield the target of harassment on a bus or the street or in the workplace is a righteous act.

Maybe it’s just because I’m forty and I have little to no patience for bullshit. Maybe it’s because the field in which I grow my fucks is barren now, or maybe it’s because I have kids and I want the world I leave them to be a little better than I found it, or at least a little less hateful. Maybe it’s because I’m goddamn tired of people nodding and smiling and smoothing things over when some crepe-necked white man assaults everyone around who doesn’t look like him. Maybe it’s because I’m a fucking human being. I don’t care.

Do not give people a pass when they spout bigoted bullshit. Let them find out that hate is lonely and ugly. Let that truth inconvenience them. A very wise friend of mine is of the opinion that Americans don’t make a move until their convenience is threatened, and I think she’s right.

So let’s inconvenience the fuck out of bigotry, my friends. Because we know better.

[1] I can already hear a bunch of people saying, “But what if it’s unsafe?” Well, you’re the judge of that in the situation, fine. Do as your conscience and safety dictate.

Weekend Past

Zzzzzz Odd Trundles ate breakfast–not out of his bowl, alas. No, he ate from Miss B’s bowl. The two of them have a ritual most mornings, and it involves sitting in their accustomed places while I place the bowls, sniffing at their breakfasts, then switching bowls and gobbling the other dog’s (exactly the same) ration of kibble-and-whatever-else. So, Odd stuffed himself, then ambled into my bedroom and hopped onto my bed. He is currently snoring so loud I can hear him from the office.

Oh, to be a bulldog.

The weekend passed, as weekends do. On Saturday my writing partner and I went to the Ladybug Bazaar, as we are wont to do. The regular people she buys from soap from were not in evidence–they have an orange patchouli bar I love with a fierce abiding passion–but there was someone new, a leatherworker who had moved from from Boulder, CO. I am now the proud owner of a pen bandolier, and the Princess has a new (refillable) journal. (So do I. It will be used for Afterwar things.)

We also stopped by a tea shop we were both desperate to try, but after being snubbed for a good twenty minutes or so we left. *shrug* (Be warned, the website has an autoplay.) Given the amount of tea we both buy, and the fact that we both love high tea and all its furbelows, not a good move on a business’s part. But there are other tea shops, ones where we (and our cash) will be welcomed.

SPEAKING OF MY WRITING PARTNER, LOOK AT THIS SHINY NEW BOOK SHE WROTE AND YOU SHOULD READ.

wordlessDisaster reporter and internet celebrity Jack Tucker is disillusioned after a stint embedded in Iraq. The IED that destroyed his team’s Humvee brought him tragedy and regret, robbing him of the joy he took in his job—or anything else. He spends his days in a small Camden bookshop, struggling with writer’s block, until the elderly proprietor dies, leaving him adrift.

Lexie Worth abandoned a promising career to keep her uncle’s beloved bookstore alive. But the store’s tabby cat hates her, local poets invade twice a month for scurrilous readings, and she knows she shouldn’t get involved with sexy, troubled strangers like Jack. When the FBI comes knocking, with suspicions of fraud and racketeering, Lexie realizes someone’s after more than a first edition or two.

Someone’s been using the bookstore to hide their crimes. Someone dangerous—maybe even deadly. Jack wants to protect Lexie—if he can believe her. And if she doesn’t find out exactly who he is…

Just so you know, it’s available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and many other fine retailers. There’s a paperback version coming out soon, too.

I am beside myself with joy, because I love this damn book. Library ladders! Pink horsehair sofa! A grumpy cat! DANGER AND IDENTITY THEFT! BUY IT READ IT LOVE IT LIKE I DO!

Ahem. Anyway, yeah, that’s my Monday. Afterwar and Harmony both need wordcount in the worst way. Fortunately, I can run now for the first time in a week or so, and the twitching under my skin (and Miss B’s) will no doubt enjoy being purged with sweat and effort. I can breathe now, and the snot had slowed to a trickle. (You’re welcome for that mental image.) So it’s off to the races, in more ways than one.

Over and out.

Punkin Games

punkins

“No, Mum,” they initially said. “We’re too old for punkin-carving this year.”

Then the Princess found out she had the Great Day off work, and the Prince found out the Princess had decided to carve one because she would be home, and the Princess furthermore let me know she LOVES the way I roast punkin seeds, and where the hell were the several pieces of punkin-carving kits I’d bought over the years anyway?

Answer to the last: under the stairs, with all the other holiday decorations, the place I thought I would NEVER forget to look. I did forget, and it was the Princess who found them.

As usual.

Things change, as the passing years remind me. But just as many things stay the same, world without end.

Amen.

Not Too Wild-Eyed

That moment, after a super intense period of stress, where your body takes revenge for the emotions, whatever repression you’ve done to manage the worst of them, and the nail-biting anxiety? That’s where I am. The Princess brought home a cold from work, and I put off getting sick until the gauntlet was finally run. I knew I was storing up trouble, but in classic Lili fashion, didn’t care.

*sigh* I give myself very good advice, sometimes don’t follow it, and often decide to just run the fuck through at full speed and worry about the bruises later.

The good news is…the stressful events are done. I am once again producing paid work for a publisher. Someone I love very much has passed on while in hospice care; he is in no more pain and I was able to see him before he went on that greatest of journeys. I am over the worst of the cold and can get back to running next week. The meds mean I’ve been sleeping, at least.

Now it’s just fallout to deal with. I retreated into a good 200 pages of the third volume in Shelby Foote’s Civil War narrative yesterday. A good fifty of those pages were lit with sunlight coming in the front window, so there was probably a little vitamin D in there. The cold is retreating, and I think I’ve probably cried all I’m going to for a little while. I’ve turned my email autoresponders on; whatever business is left over for the rest of this week can wait.

The kids are healthy, my sisters are in contact, the dogs are content, the cats are their usual selves and the cavy is monstrously fat and extremely active. Agent and editors seem to be happy enough with me, though I’ve been somewhat of a trial to them in the last month, I’m sure. The people I rely on to keep me on the straight and narrow tell me it’s fine, I’m not too wild-eyed.

I had to make an emergency trip to the PO box recently, and buy stamps from the automated kiosk there as well. It was after hours, and a woman who spoke little English was in distress, with something she had to mail. My fierce maternal instincts took over, and I went to work–grabbing an envelope, addressing it, putting her return address on it, popping enough stamps on it to cover the cost of the envelope AND the postage. We both had Google translate on our phones, and between that and gestures and babble, we solved the problem and got the thing into the mail for her.

I tell this story because I realized, when I got into my car–still in my pyjamas, having driven all the way over muttering to myself over having to leave the house at all when I felt like warmed-over crap–that I felt…better. Helping someone else is an anodyne, especially when one’s own life holds some unpleasantness. It feels good to pitch in, to help solve someone else’s problems or to simply listen to them and share the weight, knowing you’re relieving some of the pressure inside someone else just by being there.

It almost makes me pity people who lack empathy, because the dopamine hit from helping someone else out is so nice. I wonder if they just don’t feel that, and it baffles me. Doing the Right Thing, pitching in, helping where one can is one of the few surefire ways to ameliorate the black hole, at least for me.

All the way home from the post office, the sun peeked through clouds as it sank, and the light was golden. The crows were out, and they help too. They’re smart, strong survivors. I know the recent stress won’t break me, that the overwhelming feelings will pass, and that even the runny nose and annoying body aches will pass as well. It’s not comfortable, but I can get through it. That’s what forty has become for me: the consciousness that I’ve made it this far, that the feelings will pass through and away, and I’ll still be here when the wave is spent.

It’s enough.

Joy in Candy

I was going to write a long post about this past weekend, but…no. I just can’t.

Instead I will wish you a happy Samhain, a fruitful New Year, and much joy in candy and delight tonight. Thank God I have the kids and the dogs to keep me busy. I don’t want to brood tonight. I mean, a little bit of brooding is good for the soul and necessary as a mirror to judge one’s reflection in, but I’m afraid I’d fall down the well and have to climb out without even a Lassie to bark for me.

Anyway. Happy Samhain. 2016 can be done anytime now. ANY GODDAMN TIME NOW.