as I start this it is 8:19 AM. I’ve put my sheets into the wash because I found a giant dead wood beetle UNDER WHERE I WAS SLEEPING this morning. (sunday is bedding day anyways but I was hoping to put it off while I watched some netflix and wrote this post, but no, I’m a beetle murder in my sleep so new plan…) it is raining so I have some hope that it will stay bleak enough to facilitate day-watching of Haunting of Hill House while I clean in anticipation of the housekeeper.

before ALL of that, before I’d ever gotten out of bed, while the beetle was still in pieces beneath me (AAAAAAAH) I had already read three things:

1. a text from my mother asking why my daughters “dumped (her)” – they left a group chat that she put them in with my sister, nephew, uncle and myself. They didn’t ask to be put there but she was spending 2 weeks in Disney when she did it so I think they thought it was a way to share her Disney experiences, which, you know, we are ALL about. Yesterday out of the blue she sent us this text: “M is reading a book about Trump and he has a weekly Bible study at the White House. Soooo perfect! I can trust anyone who wants to serve God!!! You can too.”  — OF COURSE I FUCKING RESPONDED!  I have avoided having this conversation with her for two years, I never wanted to have it. But now it’s out there, and so I had to ask the question that burns in my throat whenever a “Christian” talks about their president.
   

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2. the first thing on my Facebook feed this morning – super appropriate to thing 1 on today’s list. This piece about Religious Trauma Syndrome which explains my life from 7 when I was praying I would be a martyr because I knew I was already an undeserving sinner and there didn’t seem like ANY other way into heaven.  Until the day my youngest daughter asked me about this statue at Epcot (everything happens at Disney) in the Germany pavilion where St. George is slaying a dragon. I said “that’s Saint George, he’s killing a drago….” and that was it. I wasn’t taught that that dragon was a metaphor, I was taught it was an ACTUAL DRAGON. And I believed it. So my 20s were especially fraught as I tried to figure out who I was and what I believed and where, as a loud, smart, independent but married, woman, and mother, my place in the world could be.  So that was the second thing I read today.
   

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3. the third thing I read today is about beer. (<<<read that, it’s very interesting, a little frustrating, but good)  and also ‘men’s rights activists’ because if there’s anything men in this country are lacking, it is equality. amirite. I’m not a giant beer drinker – I like red ales and Kolsch and lagers and pilsners. though plenty of guys have told me that Kolsch isn’t actually beer, that real beer tastes like carbonated stomach bile – like the acid you use to strip your car battery. No thank you. not for me. but some people are into IPAs and porters and stouts and that’s cool, more power to you sister. So in LA, Ting Su, cofounder of Eagle Rock Brewery started a Women’s Only Beer Forum, to help the ladies explore their beer love. Like a wine class, which apparently we can have endless numbers of, but for beer. which is obviously only for the mens.  Anyways, Ting Su started this super-sexist-against-poor-men-who-don’t-get-to-do-anything group and got sued, by a professional plaintiff, and now she’s defending herself. And there’s a Go Fund Me.
   

   

   I want to go there and drink these! talk about GREAT packaging design. Also the word Manifesto is something I hold near and dear going way back to the early days of the Patriot Act. But there’s a conversation to be had here about beer, and equality and safe spaces and douchebros who can’t even pay for sex.

Which brings us back to Trump. (kidding) it brings me to 10:15 AM and I need to put my sheets in the dryer.

Prost, xoxo