Hello my darlings.
I know so many of us are feeling overwhelmed or discouraged or furious or completely numbed to all the tragedy around us. I’ve become increasingly convinced that the way out is through helping other people. I’ve seen you all do it so many times: sending messages, shooting Venmo payments to each other, scrolling in the We Got You Club to help someone else you don’t know. If you find yourself feeling helpless, the best shock to the system is to find a small way to help. This has been the only thing that’s kept me from getting in my car to give Ted Cruz a thorough verbal lashing, or from laying on the floor in abject misery. I love you guys and thank you for showing me how to love each other. Let’s keep going.
This week has been bonkers, and I don’t have much in the way of words, but we do have many delightful treasures, so let’s just jump into those, shall we?
💍 Our beloved Sarah got engaged, and I was supposed to post the pic last time, but I completely forgot. BUT HERE IT IS! Look at these angels. If you’re new here(Also, if you are interested in being a virtual hostess for Sarah’s Lil Swipes Shower [‘cause yeah, we’re doing that, any chance to celebrate], email me and we’ll get a group going.) (Also this makes me want to do some sort of monthly celebration where we just get to share our good things: new jobs, promotions, quit jobs that sucked, had a baby, bought a house, got engaged, did a hard thing. I gotta figure this out.) Congrats, Sarah and James!
💙 Not a treasure, but my heart has been heavy for my home state of Texas this week with the news of power and water outages across the state, made even worse by extremely cold temperatures. To distract from the ABSOLUTE RAGE I felt because Ted Cruz is a human being that I have an insanely difficult time with, I compiled a few resources in an Instagram highlight of ways to donate, food help, warming shelters, etc. Thank you guys for continuing to send me those resources and ways to meet needs! Please share with anyone you know who may need it during this time. Texas friends, we are praying for you!
✝️ Lent started this week! It’s not too late to join me for this year’s study, called Memento Mori. The online community (aka Substack group) will close TONIGHT at midnight though, so make sure you go grab your copy ASAP. If you’ve never observed Lent before, this is a low-pressure situation. I’d just love to have you along for the ride as we study The Sermon on the Mount together. You can purchase your study (or even buy a gift card for someone else to do the study) here!
⚜️ Like many other events, this year’s Mardi Gras celebration and parade got canceled due to COVID. The people of New Orleans said cool, we can still make this work - and TURNED THEIR HOMES into beautiful, creative parade floats. Read the New York Times article here!
👑 To all my fellow Dolly Parton fans out there, please read her response to a bill that was proposed to erect a statue of her on the Capitol grounds in Tennessee. Long live the queen.
🦠 I need you to watch this COVID + Kelly Clarkson remix. You’ll never hear the song the same way again.
Good tweets? Good tweets!
I know it’s short today, but it’s full of my undying affection for you all. Can’t wait to see what you’re treasuring this week. Stay safe, my friends.
Friend from TX here. Survived the week!! And the plus side is the weather delayed my Galentines delivery so still had that this weekend to bring me joy. Thanks to this community!!
Umm. I’m late. Does anyone still check in here after the Friday onslaught? 😬 I’m just going to go on record anyway with the week’s recap, especially being a Texan and how we were all over the news again. [I’d very much like Texas to have a *good* news event for once. The “leaders” (ahem) of this state are making us all look bad, all.the.dang.time.]
I currently live 10 miles from the Red River, the border with Oklahoma, straight north from Dallas, so we got the inches of snow but were very fortunate to avoid the ice. In my 52ish years of life I’ve never seen straight powder in a winter storm. It was gorgeous and so much less threatening than I’m used to. Ice is our enemy – black ice especially – and we have no equipment or infrastructure to combat it. Hence the stories you hear (and jokes at our expense) about everything just shutting down. But when you get true winter once every 5-10 years, it’s just not cost-effective to keep all the equipment on hand to combat it. This particular winter event hasn’t happened in 100 years, I think, and these kinds of low temps haven’t happened in 30+ years, so you can see why it was such a shock of unpreparedness for us.
I felt waves of delight and sadness throughout the storm, equally irritated at people not changing driving habits when the weather changed (and causing preventable wrecks) and at the failure of our power grid, as well as great joy over the outpouring of assistance from across the country. I hated seeing so many suffer, but I also hated all the blame from our governor on the “system” when I know that the legislators don’t give money to the entities that can shore it all up. (And Texas apparently thinks “independence” is the answer to everything, so that even our power grid has to work alone.) A lot of blame got thrown around this week, and it was just a wicked display of anger at the symptoms instead of taking responsibility for the root causes. My dad spent his career in a Texas electric company and I know from his years of working ice storms that the *workers* do everything possible to restore electricity and keep it stable, but the state (and boards) do very little to support them. It’s always a money issue. It’s always about cost-cutting. But it’s the individual power companies (and managers like my dad) who have to field the anger and balance the power grid in their areas. I spent a lot of time this week yelling back at the governor and other blame-shifters about where the problem lies and how “they need money to fix the problems!” It was not pretty. I felt such great sympathy toward the CEO of ERCOT (the grid’s overseer), knowing he was taking the heat for a problem that stretched far beyond his job description. I also learned more about our Texas power grid from The Daily than I ever knew from actually being a lifelong Texan. 🤦🏻♀️
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/17/podcasts/the-daily/texas-statewide-blackout-climate-change.html
For us personally, we never lost power and only completely lost water for a portion of one day. The water pressure was very low all week, and we still have a boil order due to power loss at the water treatment plant, but Mom and I both got showers on Thursday-Friday and were soooo grateful to leave the community of The Great Unwashed. In the midst of the worst temperatures, I found myself grateful for our continual heat while also feeling guilty while so many were literally freezing inside their homes. Guilt was certainly a companion this week. I was torn with wanting to help and offer our homes to others but knowing we could not because of my mom’s vulnerability and COVID concerns. I thought of you guys A LOT when guilt cropped up; I could hear you in my heart reminding me that guilt is a lie and should not be entertained. I could hear you guys reminding me to stay focused on my mom, as she’s the current work of my life. It has truly carried me through this week (and continues to carry me through this season of life).
With that in mind, we had a good week, all things considered. Mom’s shoulder is healing well; she’s not fighting me on exercise and movement; and her mind cleared up from the drug fiasco of the previous week so that she was back to her new-reality self. We have a first evaluation with a psychologist this week in order to determine next steps regarding mental degradation. Her neurologist wanted a full 6-hour eval to look for dementia/Alzheimer’s/etc, but Mom balked at it last month. I’ve convinced her it’s necessary, so we’re going on Wednesday for the initial conversation. (Prayers appreciated.) What I’ve learned is that I can set the tone with my mom and she’ll follow if I can show her *why*. During the weekend after her shoulder surgery, with Mom hopped up on an opioid, my sister was with us to help with Mom’s physicality, and my mom saw how different we sisters are in caring for her. I’m very logical, very evidence-based, and use intellect to point out all the ways Mom’s brain and body are failing her. My sister is emotional, using a lot of language like “yes, you *are* going to do this” and “no, stop that. I think you need Home Health.” My sister spent one challenging day with us (the worst day) and has decided I can’t care for Mom and Mom can’t do anything on her own. I know better, and I’ve spoken with all the doctors about Home Health, and Mom’s just not a candidate because of her high level of mobility. After spending just a couple days with my sister, my mom sees the difference in how I care for her. And she’s more willing to work now than before, if only to keep my sister away. 😏
I had a few treasures this week, too, in the form of binge-watching while being creative with my hands. I hopped around a lot on streaming platforms but finally landed on The Looming Tower on Hulu. It’s based on the book about the rise of Al Qaeda, written by the author of the best book I read last year (Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11), and it’s just so compelling. I don’t quite understand the casting of old-guy Jeff Daniels as the womanizing head of the FBI task force (but there’s also Peter Sarsgaard as a wily snot for the CIA counterpart), but the story itself is just riveting. I have learned so much about the failures of our government agencies in the “war on terror” and about how relevant those 9/11 events still are to today’s political climate. It’s a great miniseries, if this subject interests you or you just feel the need to see America in a new light.
Alright, that’s a lot of review on the week. I think this place has become my personal diary. 😬 But I appreciate the platform. 😊
Praying for you guys this week, especially those of you walking through Lenten together. (I miss that!) Just wanted to share that we’ve had a better week, respectively, and y’all have been on my mind a lot. Much love!