It's Sunday morning, and I'm in the backseat of my own car. My husband is driving and my mom is riding shotgun because she needs the legroom. She spent the week with me. It was nice to have her even though it's very hard to work and keep up with everything while I'm taking care of her. I'm tired.
*****
It was almost 60 degrees here yesterday, and it won't get out of the 30s today. Walking outside this morning was a punch in the face. But really, everything is a punch in the face right now. We should all have black eyes and fat lips.
*****
One night last week (and I mean week before last, even before my mom got here) I was sitting on the couch at 8 pm, struggling to stay awake. It had been a long day but I've never been as tired as I've been since January 20. I've always wondered how dictators grab control so quickly - it's always so quick - and how they hold on for so long. Now I'm beginning to understand that it's more than just fear that keeps people from fighting back. It's exhaustion. The chaos wears people out.
*****
And I came to that realization almost 2 weeks before the Oval Office meeting between Trump and Vance and President Zelenskyy. We are no longer on the right side of the good vs. evil divide. We are no longer the world's defender of freedom and democracy and human rights. It's been two days and I still don't have my head around this yet. God willing, I never will, because this is not something that I should get used to and eventually come to accept.
*****
I went to work very early on Monday morning. Now that the feds are back in the office 100 percent of the time, the parking garage, which was never really big enough to accommodate everyone who drives to work here, fills up early. As a contractor, I will actually be teleworking more now because we’re not eligible for parking passes, and my boss is a good person who doesn’t want us to have to deal with public transportation or other cobbled-together transportation schemes. For the foreseeable future, I’ll be in the office on Mondays only. I have mixed feelings about this. It’s nice not to have to rush most mornings, and it’s nice not to worry too much about what I’m wearing, but I really like my job and I really like the energy of the campus and the base, and I didn’t really like 100 percent telework the last time I did it. It feels similar, actually. It feels like I’m hunkering down at home as disaster unfolds outside my front door. Little did I know that 2020 would end up feeling like the gosh-darn good old days.
*****
I watched the Oscars until about 10 PM on Sunday night, so I missed the big awards. The Oscar telecast gets more boring every year; and in past years, I’ve complained about Hollywood and its “courage” in speaking out on issues that pretty much everyone in the room agrees on. Last night, I’d have appreciated seeing some real courage, but I was sorely disappointed. Other than my new favorite actor Kieran Culkin (I really loved A Real Pain), who acknowledged Jeremy Strong’s performance in The Apprentice in rather a pointed way; and the beautiful Zoe Saldana, who talked about her immigrant grandmother, most people obeyed the Academy’s “don’t talk politics” rule. This would have been the year to disregard that rule and to speak the brave truths that movie people are always willing to speak when they’re pretty much guaranteed no consequences other than a round of applause.
*****
It’s Tuesday now. I’m about to start work on a beautiful sunny fake spring day in the DMV. I don’t fall for fake spring anymore, and I'm not getting my hopes up even thought the temperature is going to reach about 60 degrees today. That happened last week, too, and then it was freezing on Sunday. Delightful, Maryland weather is - so whimsically quirky.
I was on the fence about whether or not to subject myself to the President’s address to Congress tonight and then I remembered that I have a neighborhood association meeting and since I have to take notes, I won’t be able to listen in on the speech while I’m on the Zoom call. It’s just as well. Ain’t no good gonna come out of that speech, and I’ll read all about it afterward.
******
Well, I don’t know why I did that to myself. The neighborhood association meeting wrapped up 30 minutes early (God I love when that happens) and so I was finished in plenty of time to watch the speech, and I did watch it - partly out of a sense of civic responsibility, and partly out of sheer morbid curiosity. What’s he gonna do, I thought? Announce that we’re leaving the UN and NATO? Declare martial law? Appoint Andrew Tate as Secretary of the Department of Protecting Women Whether the Women Like it or Not? Anything is possible, I thought. Anything could happen.
It was pretty much just the usual Trump lies and bluster, though, with the added excitement of Rep Al Green’s ejection from the chamber (the rest of the Democrats should have marched out with him) and the surprising news that Melania Trump is somehow a patron saint of foster children, and the President’s inadvertent admission that Elon Musk is in fact the head of DOGE right after he declared straight-faced that the era of unelected bureaucrats is over. They’re still going to get away with doing whatever they want to do, of course, but I hope that the Trump lawyers who backed up Trump’s earlier claims that Elon isn’t really in charge of anything - in court, under oath - are charged with perjury. The rest of this spectacle just made me tired - even more tired than I already was.
Meanwhile, I’m planning to attend my first-ever protest on Saturday. It’s supposed to be sunny that day, with temperatures in the low 50s - perfect weather to recover my energy. Perfect weather to fight the power.
