In a pleasing pairing, I found two unrelated lost things on the same day. The first and most important was a favorite and irreplaceable Old Navy zip-up hoodie, navy blue, with red/orange/yellow/lavender/white stripes at the elbows, lost for half a year or so. I noticed almost right away that it was gone, and could not fathom it not being in any of the places it could possibly be, and so I imagined I must have somehow left it behind in some coffee shop or whatnot, even though that is Not Like Me. When I was a child, my mother left her purse behind on SO MANY MEMORABLE OCCASIONS (multiple times on LONG ROAD TRIPS, necessitating LONG TURN-AROUNDS), I grew up to habitually/reflexively check where I was sitting before I leave a place. (My mother now habitually wears a fanny-pack…which she will still unclip and leave behind.) But the hoodie was nowhere, so I MUST have somehow left it somewhere. Fall turned to winter which turned to almost-spring, and I got out the light jacket I wear for about two weeks each spring and two weeks each fall—and the hoodie was inside it, completely concealed. The joy! I cannot express. I have worn it every day since, with tears in my eyes and stripes at my elbows.

The second thing, which I am deliberately putting second for the sake of levity, was a Sour Patch watermelon candy I dropped in the car when we were taking the twins back to college after spring break. It fell out of my fingers and vanished into, apparently, the ether. It was nowhere. It was completely unimportant, except that it made me feel as if I had lost my mind. Then, yesterday, finishing off a bag of snack-size Kit Kat bars, I found the Sour Patch watermelon candy in the bottom of the bag. Almost as exhilarating as finding the hoodie, in its own special way.

There was a work meeting, at which my fear was realized that we lowest-paid-no-benefits workers would be asked to divvy up the duties of our former well-paid-with-benefits supervisor who also had a title and a seat at the department-head table. I got to almost the end of the two-hour meeting without finding a moment to say my piece, and I was afraid I was going to whiff it for lack of opportunity. Then a co-worker absolutely teed me up, and I seized the moment and said my thing—and, encountering pushback from boss and boss’s boss, managed to RE-ASSERT my thing, WITHOUT CRYING. Afterward half a dozen coworkers separately approached me and thanked me for saying what I said. A triumph! even if it results in nothing! because at least I SAID IT, and my peers HEARD IT, and also I would be FAR MORE UPSET AND AGITATED if I had NOT said it! …Except, my brain and body are treating this as a disaster. The situation loops back into my mind every few minutes, each time with a little surge of “SOMETHING WENT WRONG AND WE NEED TO ENDLESSLY DISSECT IT!!!” adrenaline.

The U.S. news has been an absolute barrage of disaster and trauma. What are we to do. I have been wondering if our senators were up to the task of removing a dictator, and instead most of them are falling down at the first, easiest hurdles. There is some good news in rulings from federal judges—but the administration is so far ignoring those judges, so now we wait to see if the center can hold or if all is lost.