Still in New Zealand. Please Forward My Mail to my Empty Field of F*cks.

Seriously. To quote the great Andy Borowitz: "This country is exhausting." I honestly cannot keep up with the daily barrage of unimaginable idiocy. My mild-mannered daughter-in-law posted on FB the other day, sincerely asking her conservative friends if this is what they voted for. No responses. So surprising.

OTOH, today I was behind a pickup truck. It had two bumper stickers: "GOPWTF" and "Do you really think Jesus would have owned a gun and voted Republican?" And I had the opportunity to pull up beside it to see the driver, expecting a Millenial. Nope, a white guy around my age. We are not all crazy in FL.

And of course Hillary Clinton actually won the election by probably around 2 million votes when the count is done, and got more votes than any other presidential candidate in history except Barack Obama. There is that.

And there is the fact that the Electoral College has failed six times in our country's entire history, but two of those failures have been in this century. Al Gore won the popular vote in 2000 (and we know how that story went) and now this. If that's not evidence that it has outlived its usefulness and is now actively circumventing the will of the people (or being manipulated), I don't know what is.

And there is the other number crunching that brings it down to about 25% +/- of the voting-capable population "winning" the election and putting a goddamn (let's just say it) leader of white nationalists into the highest office in a major and heavily armed world power, thank you Electoral College.

And you know, here's the weirdest thought I've had about this: I could hate everything he stands for, but I'd be less scared if I thought he gave a shit about anything involving this country, and wasn't just a front man for a flashy circus. You can fight on policy, you can fight on law. How do you fight batshit crazy? At last check-in, our president-elect has been whining on Twitter about those meanies in the cast of Hamilton for two fucking days. As I said on my son's FB page, if he really cared about being president, this would have been an incredibly easy way to say, "Of course we respect the contribution of immigrants, blah blah...wonderful speech from the cast of Hamilton!" and this would have been a non-story. He could not do that. Think about that.

He hasn't paid much attention to being president since being elected, but has met with his foreign business interests. And let's be clear: this guy hasn't been a "developer" as in building things with his own capital in a long time. He's a brand. Other people do the hard work, he slaps his gold-plated name on it to make it more valuable. And yes, it will be more valuable now, if he's in the White House, and this is of course a breathtaking and illegal conflict of interest. His daughter apparently sat in on a visit with the Japanese Prime Minister, to the amused horror of the Japanese media. Then of course there's the whole Russia meddling in the election with the help of the FBI, and WTF is going on?

Seriously, this situation scares the shit out of me. My best consolation is that it appears he has no idea what it means to separate himself from his business interests, no clue how the government works, no concept of the Constitution and can't stop being an asshole on Twitter, and will probably be impeached in his first year in office by his own people who now have the majority in both the House and the Senate, and that will leave us with President Pence, somebody nobody actually chose with their vote, so that is cold comfort indeed.

Remember those innocent days of a few weeks ago, when earnest liberal opinion writers were saying how the Clintons must step away from the Clinton Foundation, a very highly rated charity bringing life-saving drugs and clean water and good things to poor nations, because otherwise it would LOOK BAD? We can't have any taint of impropriety on the Office of the President! Yeah, thanks for all that, you certainly helped create this pathetic, embarrassing shitshow.

So, it's Thanksgiving this week!!! What am I thankful for? That's a bit of a stretch right now. Such a stretch that about half my coworkers and I have decided we will work Thanksgiving Day, and maybe bring in treats and hang out, working our real estate puzzles together. I don't mind a bit, I have more work than I can say grace over right now. I'm not in the mood to be festive yet. I'm working through the stages of grief, but there will be no acceptance. More on that later. Probably after my very compressed work week ends.

BUT I think things will look up after Thanksgiving. My daughter has wanted to do the Candlelight Processional at EPCOT, and Neil Patrick Harris will be the reader the night we attend. And before the performance we will be dining at a Middle Eastern restaurant on the water, which is entirely appropriate because Jesus wasn't born in Ohio, people. It's just a mother-daughter evening this year, to see if it's something Delaney would enjoy. Her mom thinks it's too much sitting still for her this year, and they do plan to take her to a couple of other church events that they won't have to pay for, so her Christmas will be sufficiently focused on the birth of Christ. Her mom just wasn't inclined to drop those extra bucks on an event with someone who might be BORED, MOM! We are doing the test drive, figuring that next year she will be six and ready for it. It's not like she's getting cheated on Disney Christmas, because a week later we will go to the Magic Kingdom to see the decorations and she can sit on Santa's lap and tell him her insanely long wish list.

The good news? I'm knitting again, and I finished the first Log Cabin destined for Willa. The second? It's a color palette failure. I just wasn't happy with it. So I ripped it back and took two huge 2.5 gallon plastic bags, and sorted the colors. After looking at them for a while, I decided that the two pale colors I regretted buying would really work with cream and pale gray. Meanwhile, I finally pulled out that Cascade Pacific I bought months ago for my own log cabin, but decided on the spot that I didn't want the "moderne" version. I love these bold colors and want them in a more intense stripe. I'm feeling bold and dramatic.

So, when I have the energy to write anything for fun again I will share what I've decided to do to resist the bullshit, on my own small and limited scale. One tiny candle, and all that.