The Shitshow, Part II? Or...the Nadir! Except that feels like the kind of word that makes people not like you very much because you sound pretentious.

Well, the electoral college did their thing this week, and I don't know what I was expecting anyway.

I had conceived this return-to-blogging as a sort of way to count my blessings out loud, a way to focus on the stuff that won't make me completely foaming-at-the-mouth insane, but this is the darkest time of the year and shit is feeling pretty dark.

SO a couple of weeks ago I sent some winter gear to the folks at Standing Rock. Not much, but something. I walked my dogs a few blocks in the freezing-cold after-bedtime dark. I listened to a tearful nine-year-old who is afraid she and her family will have to go back to Mexico. Threw a few dollars into the Salvation Army bucket at the grocery store. Since not-much-but-something is all I can seem to muster these days, I am going to tell myself over and over that it's working, that it's accumulating, that it's a step into the next day and the next.

We get maybe a minute more daylight today than we did yesterday, and I promise to be in a better mood next time I sit down to write.