Of Loss, Resilience and Comfort Food

Born in the U.S.A., and it's still my sacred ground, no matter what happened November 5. Image copyright Columbia Records.

It's 11 days after the 2024 presidential election, and I only just now watched Kamala's full concession speech from Howard University. What a time, what a loss. I guess I've been taking things in slowly. Not all at once.

Between the daylight savings time change and the election results, I've been tired. It gets dark early. I lace up my sneakers to walk and then decide not to. That kind of tired. My Apple MacBook also died after seven years, so I had to scramble and buy a new one. You know that stress. Didn't have $1,000 lying around and don't use credit. I jumped on Dan's laptop early in the mornings and went to public libraries in Montclair and Verona, but you only get an hour at a time on the free desktop computers before you're knocked off.

Finding our way in the dark. Keep on keeping on. But this is America. The people spoke. I don't have to like it, but short of moving to Ireland or Scotland (dreams), I have to live with it. I will continue to speak my truth as best I can, to be honest and fair. I will donate blood. I will pray. I will contribute food for families who need it. I will believe. I will keep close my promise to be a good person in my own life, under my own roof, and out in the world. I will tell stories. I will write. I will help guard what I can. Figgy and I were talking about some ways to do that.

BTW, did you know Kamala's plummy pantsuit with blouse for her concession speech was custom-made by Tory Burch? (Thank you, Vanessa Friedman, queen of fashion reporters, reigning at The New York Times.) 

I made meatloaf tonight. I turned the oven to 375 and let it bake.

I filled a big blue glass pie dish with blueberries and topped them with a quick stir of raw oats, cinnamon, ground ginger, almond flour, toasted pecans, pinch of French sea salt and 2 T organic turbinado sugar, which is sweet and sandy, and maybe a tiny bit less deadly than full-fledged sugar might be for some. Known as raw sugar, it is less processed than the fully refined kind. Anyway, it was on sale at Kings so the bag hopped into my shopping cart.

Well, I have to try to talk some sense into someone and her friend upstairs at 10:28 p.m. on a Saturday night. Yeah, good luck with that.