Old Girl is Home and Dusting Off Her Protest Signs

I said I wouldn’t get tired. But I got tired.

I lost my fervor. My sense of urgency. I’m watching Trump send the National Guard to an American city under the guise of getting rid of homeless people and all the terrible criminals and it seems like a movie.

Vacations will do that to you. I guess that’s why they’re good for you. Wash off the heat and the grime, go places that are high up so you can see very far out into the ocean and down the California coast. Eat halibut that was cooked just a minute or two too long and think about that tragedy for the next day or two. You know, halibut being the glorious, temperamental fish it is.

I read a whole book while I was gone. It was about a dog that was reincarnated many times, each time, finding a way to take care of his person. It was a simple book. A fifth grader could have read it, but it felt like peanut butter to me or scrambled eggs. Just so simple and matter of fact. I needed to not be intellectually challenged, to have to leaf back several pages to remember who Bob was and why he was sad or what Olive said to Lucy. I didn’t have enough juice to keep it all straight.

In California, I went to an antique store where, for reasons unknown, I bought this cow. I also bought a remarkably perfect mid-century end table and an owl lamp, which went left lit at night gave my daughter’s beautifully simple house a little halo. I loved it there.

But we are home now. While we were gone, Milwaukee had torrential rain, flooding whole streets and filling people’s basements. Perched on the eastside near the lake, our house was unscathed. But today, thousands are shoveling out water-damaged furniture and rescuing cars that floated away at the worst of it. We were lucky this time. I don’t know why. This morning started with a meeting that was unexpectedly contentious and then a meandering trip to the grocery where I bought four bottles of wine and peanut butter cups. Also, raspberries and ribs.

I bought another flowering plant for the shelf under our big windows.

And then I pulled out the 200 Get Out the Vote Virginia postcards that have been sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be addressed and plan on revving up my 5Calls app tomorrow to get on Senator Johnson’s tail again. Plus, I signed up for a bridge brigade on Thursday and a pop-up demo on Saturday, thinking that form will follow function. If I hold a sign over my head for people driving by on the freeway or stopped at a busy intersection, I’ll eventually get back my mojo, my rage at the regime will rekindle, and I’ll remember what happened to places where everybody went on vacation and came home so detached and mellow they could barely push a cart around Trader Joe’s.

I just took a breather. That’s what we’ve got to do, right?