Today was a special day. Happy birthday, Dad! I’m glad we got to celebrate it together, and I’m especially glad one of your cats gave you the present of telling you where to find the snake alive and well, so we don’t have to wonder if it will suddenly slither out and curl up with us in the middle of the night.
Today I managed to let a garter snake into my parents’ house through their front door. (They live in the woods. This has happened more often than you’d think.) I panicked. The snake panicked. The dog got very excited. The snake slithered over the first door mat, under the second door mat, and down into the air vent along the baseboard. And disappeared.
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
As I was driving back to my folks’ place this evening, I saw this hot air balloon coming in for a landing near the town of Pomfret.
As I was writing this post, Manchin confirmed he’ll be voting for Kavanaugh. While I won’t rule out a last-minute change of heart, particularly from those swing folks, I’m not going to count on it.
However… this still holds true:
This is your final opportunity to call your senators to ask them to vote against confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Even if you know how your senators are voting, call and them them you support them or call them and tell them to change their minds. They are using calls (or a lack of them) as talking points.
The Senate switchboard is (202) 224-3121. Call in the middle of the night tonight if you don’t like talking to real people and leave a voicemail.
As Elizabeth Warren said last night, “I am angry and I own my anger.” We will survive this because we are strong together and we believe and support each other. We will water the roots of political dissent with the tears of our disappointments and our fears and our exhaustion. But we will also then channel our rage and our secret, desperate hopes for the next generation and volunteer and donate and show up between now and the November elections and between then and the 2020 presidential election. We will not stop. We are a force of fucking nature and I am so proud to fight beside you.
I’ll see you on the other side.
Three beautiful things from my past week:
1. Trying a new ice cream shop. Brown sugar baked pear? Yum!
2. Both street festivals I attended on Sunday had great music in common at their stages — Caribbean and Turkish beats — perfect for getting the crowds moving.
3. I finally painted my nails again — this time in autumnal hues.
How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?
I have not finished any knitting projects recently, which probably means I need to focus my attention on one or the other or the third and finish one off. While later this week is supposed to return to the 90s, fall weather has to show up sooner or later, doesn’t it? I wore jeans on Saturday night, after all, even if it was too warm to be accompanied by anything but a tshirt on top.
I have bookmarks in many books right now. (Figuratively, of course. I have nothing keeping my spot in any of these books for some reason.) On paper, I have Grace Lin’s Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, Joan Aiken’s The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, and Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X going, alternating between books depending on where I’m reading or which bag I’ve taken to work.
In my headphones, I have not yet finished Being Jazz, in part because I’m bored by it. It’s not long and I should just finish this frequently banned memoir about a transgender teen girl’s experiences already. I got the alert earlier tonight that one of the other libraries I borrow audiobooks from on Overdrive had a copy of Crazy Rich Asians for me, so I quickly downloaded it and just resumed listening. I paused the start of the third and final part to start writing here. I also have Julia Alvarez’s TÃÂa Lola Stories and local author Lillian Li’s Number One Chinese Restaurant downloaded to my phone.
How about you? What are you working your way through?
Head over to As Kat Knits for links to more knitting and reading.