I am hiding up in my room because our FURNACE decided to quit DURING AN ELECTION DURING THE WINTER DURING A PANDEMIC, and I admit I am exaggerating when I call the first week of November “winter” but I am STICKING WITH IT FOR THE INDIGNATION FACTOR, and also even if we say “autumn” it’s all pretty outrageous timing and I think we can agree on that, FURNACE.

Anyway. Strangers breathing in my house right now. It’s fine. It’s fine. I keep thinking of solutions and then realizing those don’t solve the problem. “We could all leave while they’re here and go to the….oh.”

On Election Day I was cheerful and energetic and LFG. The day after the election I was saggy and discouraged and I ate a lot of candy. Today, the day after the day after the election, I am feeling better than yesterday, and ready to count the good things (while still being kind of flattened by all the bad things). I know it’s counting chickens, and we still have a coup to avoid, and we still have a large part of the country believing in an alternative reality, and we will in the best case scenario be blocked at every step by the Republican-controlled Senate (I am not currently accepting applications for hope re: the Senate)—but I am also imagining how we can perhaps soon AT LEAST remove some of the corrupt/incompetent appointees. We can perhaps AT LEAST have someone in charge who believes in the existence of the pandemic and the need to react to it. And there’s the possible-VP-elect to think about. We can think about HER.

And there are lots more good thoughts we could be having, but even as a person who does NOT believe in The Universe as an entity that waits eagerly for me personally to say Unwisely Hopeful Words so it can rub my face in the dirt of irony, there is only so much cultural superstition a person can shake off. It is plenty bad enough that I ordered some flags IN CASE there is a reason to use my brother’s idea of Democrats displaying the U.S. flag again once it no longer symbolizes approval and support for a white nationalist administration. I wouldn’t have ordered them ahead of time, but…I wanted to have them on hand If It Became Time To Use Them, and already they won’t be here until Saturday. If I don’t need them, I will wrap them carefully and put them aside for a future election.

Oh, here is a happy thing that won’t make anyone uncomfy about taunting The Universe. I mentioned I’d read the first book of N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy, and I think I mentioned that when I went to order the next two, I found that the cost of ordering the whole trilogy was LESS than the cost of ordering Books 2 and 3, so I ordered the whole trilogy. (A LITTLE disheartening since I’d already BOUGHT Book 1 and could have saved even MORE money if I’d bought the trilogy to begin with—but this is a perfect example of SUNK COSTS, and the trilogy STILL cost less than buying the other two books. Plus, if I hadn’t liked Book 1, I would have wasted money if I’d bought the trilogy. LIFE IS A SERIES OF GAMBLES, WE WIN SOME WE LOSE SOME.) (And now I can add Book 1 to the pile of books I’m planning to pass on to others who might like to try them.) I ordered the trilogy on November 2nd, and I ordered it from Target because I am trying to reduce orders from Amazon—and that meant the predicted arrival was November 9th instead of November 4th. I’d HOPED the books would arrive sooner, but I couldn’t count on it. I started re-reading the first book because I didn’t feel like reading any other story—and I just got an email notification that the trilogy is arriving TODAY, days and days before it was expected! I can start reading the next book TODAY instead of NEXT WEEK!

Well! Yesterday’s energy and relief were short-lived! Today I am back to having to force myself out of bed and into the shower. I had been hoping, perhaps stupidly, for a thorough trouncing: a good symbolic rejection of this president and his corruption and his incompetence, and also a punishment for some of the most blatantly terrible congresspeople. But no. I don’t know how to pass the time as I wait for what can in THE ABSOLUTELY BEST-CASE SCENARIO, in the absolute HIGHEST ACHIEVABLE DREAM, be a tepid victory that is not followed by a violent coup.

We always went to my parents’ house for Thanksgiving, until they started coming to ours. This year our households can’t quarantine enough to mix safely (Edward still has to go to his Remicade appointments, which are not just at a hospital but in a BIG CITY with a much higher infection rate than our small town; Henry still goes to orthodontist appointments; Paul has to go in to his office about once a week), so we’re on our own.

I have considered the idea of…skipping it. It’s three days of cooking for 20 minutes of eating, and I am not entirely sure I know what it celebrates or whether we should be celebrating it. At this point I think of it as a celebration of Thanksgiving Foods: the cranberry-raspberry Jell-o salad, the chocolate-crusted pumpkin cheesecake. I do enjoy being in the kitchen, making the familiar recipes, imagining so many other people in THEIR kitchens making THEIR familiar recipes. And I enjoy the leftovers. But it is a lot of work for one meal. Well, several meals, considering the leftovers.

Or, our local grocery store has a Thanksgiving package: a meal for 4-6 people, with a couple choices (turkey or ham, pumpkin or apple pie), but basically a box of pre-cooked food you pick up and heat up. I have been curious about that (can it possibly be any good?), and this might be a fun year to try it. I floated this idea to family members, who raised issues: we’d still want to make the Jell-o salad and the pumpkin cheesecake, and also we’d need to make our own vegetarian stuffing, and some of us prefer turkey and some prefer ham so we’d want to make the one that wasn’t included in the box—and at that point we’re basically cooking the meal anyway, so what is the point of the box? Except it still might be fun to try.

Another issue is that with more of us home, more of us can HELP COOK. I made this point rather pointedly when people were expressing doubts about doing the grocery pick-up box, and seemed to be thinking it didn’t save THEM any cooking so why would they prefer that?

Well. What are your Thanksgiving plans? Do you feel like talking about recipes, either ones you always make or new ones you’re going to try this year? Have you ever tried buying Thanksgiving dinner from a place where you can just pick it up in a box, and how did that turn out?

I woke up cheerful for the first time in days. I am the same about stressful travel and medical things: I can be weighed down with stress until The Morning Of, when I wake up like HERE IT IS LFG. One way or another, we are out of Weighty Anticipation Mode and into Keyed Up Go Time Mode. A local friend who is voting in person this morning posted on Facebook that there were hundreds of people in line, wrapping around the building; this in a town where I have NEVER experienced a line OUTSIDE the building. Sometimes there are a half dozen people ahead of me at the check-in table when it’s a presidential year, but that’s all.

ANYWAY. Commenter Samantha suggested today would be a good day for chatty distracting topics of the sort where people might like to keep coming back to check in, and I think that is a GREAT idea. I am MOST interested in discussing gift ideas, so I’m going to do some of those posts separated loosely into type of recipient, and then I’m also interested in Thanksgiving thoughts, so anyway let’s get going. (LFG!)

Also, even if you’re not normally interested in baby names, we’ve been doing an alphabet series on the name blog that could be distracting: we’re going backwards through the alphabet, one letter per post, and you play the game that you MUST choose a girl name and a boy name starting with that letter. We’ve done P-Z so far, and I’m planning to post on the letter O later today.

Today seems like a day to eat for Emotional Wellness, and so that is what I am doing. I had scrambled eggs and half a bagel and some Raisin Bran Crunch for breakfast, with a big mug of this lemon-ginger probiotic tea that may or may not work but makes me FEEL like I’m doing something nice for my digestive system, and also it tastes nice (the lavender chamomile is nice too: I don’t think it’s as yummy, but it’s more emotionally soothing because of knowing that lavender and chamomile are supposed to be soothing).

Since starting keto a few years ago and getting used to “a day off”/”a treat day” and what that looks like, I am gradually realizing that what I THINK I want to eat on my days off (CANDY, COOKIES, ICE CREAM, CAKE) is not what I ACTUALLY want to eat on my days off. I don’t know if I can ever get my brain to understand that Raisin Bran Crunch is more satisfying and delicious than a chocolate bar, and why should it? That’s patently ridiculous. It CAN’T BE that a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of potato soup are more transcendent than a box of See’s. Well, yet here we seem to be. (I do ALSO want to eat some chocolate/cookies/cake/etc. But I always want less of it than I thought I was going to want to eat.)

So here is our first topic: What foods do you find most Emotionally Satisfying? And/or which of them are you going to eat TODAY? And/or do you have a thing like I have, where you THINK you want certain foods but ACTUALLY you prefer other foods? And/or what is your favorite cereal? (Mine is Raisin Bran Crunch. SO UNEXPECTEDLY TASTY for bran and raisins.)

I have been rethinking my Election Day plans. For one thing, after burning up with energy yesterday morning, I spent the rest of the day glazed and unmotivated. Then I lay awake for three hours before finally falling asleep, and today I am feeling as if I don’t want to commit to cleaning toilets next Tuesday.

Here is what I am considering: Is Election Night one of those situations where I would rather have a sleeping pill than alcohol? I think it might be. I think that might be a sweet relief, to know that at a certain time I will take a pill and then I will GO TO SLEEP. Maybe I want to save the alcohol for when we find out the results, which could be awhile. Plus, when listing alternatives to alcohol, I kind of talked myself into the idea of reading/watching something riveting while eating lots of snacks. I bought actually and literally over 20 pounds of Halloween candy, so we should still have some of that left I guess, and I have most of a bag of mixed snack-size bags of assorted chips, and one of my favorite snacking practices is to sit next to a large bowl of mixed snacks and pick each next snack based on the whim of the moment. (I put any snack I don’t want to finish in a separate little bowl nearby, and it magically disappears somehow, and then I can move guiltlessly on to the next whim.)

AND. And. I have watched the first five episodes of Schitt’s Creek with some of the children, and I think I can talk them into binge-watching that with me, taking breaks between each episode to check in on election progress. It’s a re-watch for me up through the first few seasons (four? I don’t want to check, because I don’t want to get spoilers, but I’ve seen both versions of Simply the Best) (or I guess I should say “two versions of Simply the Best,” since there could be more), but I haven’t seen it all the way to the end; and this is a first watching for the kids. Originally I didn’t want to watch it with them because of all the embarrassing parts, but I changed my mind. We are on Season One, so I say a lot of “Yes, I am afraid this is going to continue, but let’s just power through it” and “I’m sorry, this is about to get much worse, but then we will have seen it and it will be over.” …Maybe I don’t want to associate Schitt’s Creek with the election, though. It is so hard to know. Perhaps a riveting book instead, and keeping Schitt’s Creek as something to look forward to.

But in case you were thinking of joining me for tipsy housecleaning, it seemed important to let you know I am currently leaning more toward media + snacks + sleeping pill.

After my first pregnancy, there were certain things I did in each subsequent pregnancy. For example, shortly after getting a positive pregnancy test, I would give the toilets and the floor around the toilets a thorough, thorough cleaning. It wasn’t pessimism: I wasn’t saying I WOULD FOR SURE soon be barfing at a whiff of Paul’s towel or a taste of raisin. I was just saying that the LAST time taught me that if I WERE to be throwing up for the next couple of months, it was nice to start with a shining clean toilet lingeringly scented with bleach, rather than the alternative; and it was nice not to have to have the toilet-cleaning chore on my list when I was exhausted and queasy. And if this pregnancy were different, if I never threw up, if I floated through without wishing an anvil would fall on my head to stop the constant, constant nausea? Well, then, no one ever thought, “Boy, I wish the toilet were grubbier.”

It is less than a week until the U.S. presidential election, and I remember last time. So there are certain things I’m doing this time. After a week of flopping despondency (I’d thought I’d get ahead on Christmas shopping, but it turned out no), I’m feeling a surge of restless energy, so I’m using some of it to get caught up on and/or ahead on cleaning. Maybe in a week or two I’ll have plenty of mood available for merrily cleaning the shower, humming an optimistic little tune. But if not. If not, then I won’t mind that the shower has already been cleaned and I don’t have to do it for awhile. And if it’s the humming-merrily version of reality, I’m not going to think, “Darn it, I wish I hadn’t cleaned the shower! I want to do it NOW!”

I am going to go grocery shopping and I’m going to get two cartloads. Not just to stock up in case of the armed and violent protests threatened by our current president’s supporters if he is not re-elected, but also because in the reality where things go a different way and I don’t have to worry about armed and violent protests, I am not going to feel like weeping my way through the grocery store, holding my breath as I change my damp mask every few aisles.

Last time, the day after the election (this year we likely won’t know so soon), Paul and I ate nothing all day. We didn’t talk, except the talking we had to do with the kids, and to make sure we didn’t duplicate the donations we were making to various organizations. At bedtime we each drank two shots of vodka and went to bed, hoping we’d be able to sleep. After the grocery store, I will stop at the liquor store.

I plan to spend Election Night sipping and cleaning. People in my house are going to have the TV on, and I have to live through those hours either way, so I am going to use my naturally-generated adrenaline, and I am going to use the anesthetic available to me for home use, and I am going to clean. Or maybe I will not: maybe I will use the anesthetic available to me and then sit numbly in a chair. It’s hard to predict feelings. But the plan is to tipsy-houseclean. When company is coming and we clean the whole house and then the company cancels, we don’t say, “Well for heaven’s sake, I sure wish I hadn’t done all that CLEANING, then!” It’s nice to have been able to use the motivation, even if the motivation turned out to be false. I’m going to change the sheets: it’s nice to have clean sheets, whether or not you might soon be spending a week in bed.

I know there’s a lot of alcohol in this post, and that’s not an available option for everyone, so let’s talk about a few alternatives. In times when I have considered alcohol not among my options and/or not worth it, I have self-anesthesized by alternating a few bites of savory with a few bites of sweet: See’s chocolates, then Pringles, then Little Debbie cakes, then cheddar-cracker Combos, then Cadbury bar, then kettle corn, and so on. Eat slowly, and just a little of each thing, or else you’ll get too full too fast, and it mostly works WHILE you’re eating, so you want to draw out that effect as long as possible. If you are not as much into snacking, I find a Big Sustaining Meal Including Carbohydrates serves well: spaghetti and garlic bread, or chili and cornbread, or chicken and sauce over rice, that kind of thing; and follow it with chocolate chip cookies, or cake, and a glass of milk. (There is some risk of associating this meal with election night, which is why it’s not one of the things I’m leaning on.) Another thing that works pretty well for me is reading very exciting books—horror or thrillers. I relied on those to get through a very bad break-up long ago; they were the only thing that could distract me. Another thing I’d recommend is re-watching a favorite comforting or riveting TV series, and only allowing a five minutes news check-in for each episode watched. I would think you could mix-and-match either food option with either book/TV option, for a moderately successful combination. (And with any of those no-alcohol food/book/TV combinations, I would end the evening with a sleeping pill, which is one of the advantages of not drinking. If I decide against tipsy housecleaning, I will go for snacks-and-horror-novel-and-sleeping-pill.) I have a prescription for actual tranquilizers, but I have found that while those are good for reducing adrenaline and racing/relentless thoughts, they leave me feeling sad and listless, which is sometimes better than the alternative but in this situation I think not. If it is available to you, I have heard good things about pot, though you should consult with someone who knows the differences among the types: we want a sense of universal perspective and detachment on election night, not potential paranoia. (Also, the children tell me no one calls it “pot” anymore, and that I sound like a mom. I mean, yes?) And I have heard good things about meditation and yoga, but I trust you know you can look elsewhere if you want those kinds of ideas suggested to you.

I have been waiting for something FAIR to happen. I don’t believe in the popular versions of karma, or The Universe, or deities—the versions in which those entities lie in wait to zing someone who has been behaving badly. But that is the KIND of thing I have been waiting for. I have been waiting for MOVIE/TV/BOOK JUSTICE, where things look bleak but then it turns out the very bleakness is what whips around to destroy the forces of badness.

If this were an episode of The West Wing, and the Republicans had tried to push through a Supreme Court Justice less than a month before an election, after THEMSELVES saying ONLY ONE PRESIDENCY AGO that NINE months before an election was too close; and if they had tried to do this while NOT dealing with legislation to approve relief for their constituents during a pandemic; and if they had themselves not worn masks and had gathered in person during all of this, spreading infection among themselves while trying to do their unfair, unjust, corrupt thing; then what would have happened in that episode is that too many of them would have become ill with the virus to be able to approve the Supreme Court Justice in time. That’s what would have happened. Things would have looked SO bleak, so BLATANTLY unfair and unjust—but then: NATURAL CONSEQUENCES would have stepped in! You can’t break ALL the rules and expect to WIN, you bad, bad politicians! SATISFYING SMITE!!

Part of my problem is TV/movies/books, which lead us to expect these plotlines. But certainly another part of my problem is that I was raised Christian. The type of Christianity I grew up in believes that although God won’t intervene if, say, children are being raped and beaten, even if those children pray to God for help, because that would mean breaking God’s own voluntarily-established-and-voluntarily-held rule about free will for the person doing the raping and beating, he WILL allow Natural Consequences to punish people—and the universe is set up so that Natural Consequences DO punish people. In fact, that is why he in his wisdom has made the rules he has made: not because he’s a meanie who won’t let us do what we want, but to PROTECT us. Because the things he has told us not to do are all things that will hurt us, and he lovingly and mercifully wants to spare us the consequences of those things. And so here is what I expect: when people break rules and do terrible and unjust things, the Natural Consequences should show them why those rules are there, and the people should suffer the way God tried to protect them from suffering.

But here is what I realized this morning. Right now, the terrible things that are happening are things that many, many Christians believe are instead showing us all that God has a hand in everything. They think that the appointing of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court shows that God did indeed want our current corrupt president elected: that God can use EVEN AN ACTIVELY EVIL PERSON to do his ultimate will, which is to bring about their version of conservative evangelical Christianity everywhere. For everyone’s good.

The fact that I can see from their point of view how things appear to be working out for the absolute most righteous BEST right now means that I have to deal with the idea that what I grew up thinking of as the natural order of things is in fact a system that supports what I now consider Active, Deliberate Evil.

Originally I continued that paragraph, but now I want to leave it on its own for a minute to make sure you pause to see what I’m saying. When you grow up fervently believing in a set of religious beliefs, you grow up with that religion braided into the entire structure of the world: there isn’t a single aspect of anything that isn’t infused with the beliefs and world view of that religion. Extricating that religion from my brain and thoughts and world view has been hard and traumatic, and this is yet another aftershock of it decades later: realizing that what I used to be able to lean into as a system of justice and righteousness is instead a system that in fact works IN FAVOR OF a corrupt United States president, a corrupt segment of Congress, and the establishment of an unjust justice system. When they are unjust, when they are unfair, when they work against the equality of human beings—then THEY get the “fair thing,” the TV/movie/book triumph thing, happening in THEIR favor. They work so hard, they give up so much, they compromise so much of themselves and so many of their principles to bring about something corrupt—and THEY get what THEY want. THIS is the system that, if there were a God, he is supporting with his system of natural consequences.

I had already, back in childhood, worked on understanding that God was not going to intervene to prevent evil things from happening; then in early adulthood I worked on extricating the braided-into-my-psyche idea that God’s Natural Consequences were going to punish people for doing evil, and that there was an afterlife that was going to take care of any justice we didn’t see happening on Earth; now I have to work on the idea that what I USED to see as God’s Natural Consequences For Good are actually things that support and bring about evil—and so what I USED to pray for and celebrate were things that were evil and wrong. This is the fresh, nauseating realization I am dealing with this morning, one week before the U.S. presidential election.