Crabby

Sunday Missive

No Kings III was crucial. I’m glad I was there. I met new neighbors, ran into a couple of old friends, and felt the solidarity. I am looking forward to finding out the total numbers who turned out nationally, and hoping it’s even more than the 3.5%. More than that, I have schadenfreude in advance, because I know it will hurt the orange pustule’s brittle ego.

So, why was I crabby?

Our protest was scheduled for 10 am.

But here’s the thing: I am a night owl. I don’t do mornings. It’s a biological thing for a portion of the human race, just like eye color or height. I don’t schedule anything by choice before noon. Two is even better. A lifetime of getting up at zero-dark-thirty while being a biological night owl felt like swimming through Jell-O, or being chronically jet lagged. It isn’t whining: it can affect mental health, hormones, insulin resistance, brain function, and even the growth of cancer cells.

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For more about individual circadian rhythms, here is a post from a couple years ago:

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Back to Saturday:

I was tired from the week, and weary-but-committed to hauling my ass out of bed on a Saturday morning to layer up for the below-freezing, still-winter weather on a dark gray March day with no sunshine and a helluva wind off the big lake. I harumphed at not having more time to become conscious slowly enough, and very uncharacteristically scowled at a cup of leftover warmed-up coffee, even as I chugged it down.

Now, I’ve had jobs that necessitated I work a closing shift until 9:30 pm and then open up the next day at 5:30 am—otherwise known as “clopen”: close then open. Personally, I think that sounds like an Ikea can opener, but I digress. The point is that I can get my ass out of bed at any hour for a good reason, which the No Kings protest absolutely was.

In general, I’m an upbeat, positive person who, in spite of (or maybe because of) a well-developed Bullshitometer that throws a skeptical sideways look at life when needed, tends to look on the bright side with very few exceptions. So why was I in such a mood?

I think the anger layer of the chronic Shit Lasagne we’ve all been force-fed in earnest since 2015 was giving me serious mood indigestion. I was incensed because of the time, energy, effort, and attention that this grim period in our modern history has snatched from my life, and I just was not in the mood this morning. Just. Not.

It didn’t help that I reconnected with an old friend at the rally who let me know that two common acquaintances from our artists’ guild from years ago had died. They were old, one being 95 when she went, so not surprising. Just sucky. Both women were talented artists, having equal parts humor and bizarre, endearing, eccentric style. One of them bragged about freaking out her city neighbors by going out into her yard, hiking up her dress, and urinating on the lawn. On a regular basis. The other kept a very large parrot, to whom she would talk in the creepiest voice, worthy of an Alfred Hitchcock fiend. Whoever adopted this bird must be having some interesting dreams.

At one point during the protest, someone in the crowd loosed a Donny-in-a-diaper helium balloon. As several of us watched it float overhead, I said to the person next to me, “For a bunch of pacifists, how many of us would trade our signs for an air rifle with a good scope right about now?”

So yeah, it wasn’t a stellar day, but it was a necessary one. We did some chants of “We - The People.” Some college kids sang and gave us music with an amped acoustic guitar for that nostalgic protest vibe. However, although appreciated, there is nothing like music to scrape emotional scar tissue. It brought back the 70s and all the deep sadness about Vietnam returned: what the U.S. did to the Vietnamese and their country; how the U.S. ruthlessly abandoned the Hmong and Montagnard people who fought fiercely beside U.S. forces and in the CIA Secret War in Laos; and how the American public shamed, spit on, and blamed returning U.S. servicemembers.

Veterans still struggle with homelessness and access to adequate medical and mental health care, and that pisses me off to no end while members of Congress, the Shirker-in-Chief, Spineless VP, and 12 year-old SecDef spew illegal and unconstitutional vomit, toying with sending our servicemembers into harm’s way. Fuck them. Twice.

As the protest wrapped up, the sky remained a leaden granite gray, shrouding the sun just above the gas station, where a bunch of dark pigeons perched along the steeply gabled roofline.

I came home, fed the cats, ate a sandwich, and decided the best thing was a nap without limits.

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