A Rough Week, Harvest Festivals and Pumpkin Patches, and Poets Managing Good and Bad News

A Rough Week…

This week was rough for a lot of us. As an MS patient, I try to schedule things that take me out of a toxic news cycle or feelings of rage that make me happy. October is usually a favorite time of the year for me, although it signals the beginning of the long Seattle slog of seemingly endless rainy nights that lasts til…June. But it is a good time for books and restoration. This week, I made hot chocolate and cranberry apple cider, pumpkin bread, chicken, cranberry and avocado sandwiches (a Thanksgiving memory for me – eating these wraps with leftover turkey?)  – and made sure to stop by a pumpkin farm, the local farm stand, and Molbak’s Harvest Festival. I’m still recovering from the month of being sick, so I can only do a little walking and activity before I have to get into bed and watch an Agatha Christie marathon (huge recommend for the BBC’s And Then There Were None mini-series, and for a noir satire, A Simple Favor at the movie theater) or read and write. But I’m physically recovering, bit by bit. Emotionally recovering, too, from a wrenching week. I had to work on recovering physically and emotionally.

Harvest Festivals and Pumpkin Patches

Yesterday we had a small window on sunshine so we went to this giant farm in the middle of  the rural outskirts, horse farms and corn mazes. It always reminds me of my childhood in Tennessee. We came home with fresh corn, gigantic Pizazz apples, kettle corn and pumpkin butter, as well as some beautiful squash.
The high temp was 55 yesterday, which is kind of my favorite temperature. There cute kids and puppies running around, which along with the fresh air was sort of a tonic against the terrible sound of men’s laughter and celebration (with beer, terrible taste) at rape victims and women’s pain (A reminder kids: register to vote now and vote for women and get rid of these old hate-filled GOP men who want to preserve their right to rape! Vote out rapists and rape apologists. You can make a difference! Also give to charities for women domestic abuse victims and rape victims.)

Managing Good and Bad News

I had some good news this week about my PR for Poets book but the buzz of the good news was hard to celebrate with all the terrible things happening in the news and the slowness of my recovery (always slow with MS, way slower than I like.) Then I got my royalty statement from Moon City Books for Field Guide to the End of the World (thanks, everyone who taught and bought the book) which was a nice boost too.  Then I did some research on the new MS drug they want to put me on – Aubagio and that was terrifying.

And I watched five minutes of news recaps which was equally horrifying. It’s not good for the immune system to dwell on the absolutely horrifying things happening in our country (and I went on a little unfriending spree on Facebook because I’m not actually going to be friends with anyone who says hateful things about rape victims and positive things about rapists. (Remember who voted how in 2020, kids! Remember who laughed at Dr. Ford’s pain at Trump’s rally and fist-bumped getting an attempted rapist onto the Supreme Court.) I wrote a really angry poem but I realized I already have a book about what being a rape victim – besides the horrifying physical pain, there’s the mental and psychological damage that lasts…forever – Becoming the Villainess. It’s about how women in every society from ancient Greece to modern America can only choose between the roles of victim (pretty princess) and the villainess (evil witch) and that the rage and brokenness that results from sexual assault has repercussions.
By the way, you will never be “nice” enough to protect yourself from the men that want to violate you without any consequences. So, maybe stop being nice.  The men in charge right now definitely don’t deserve nice. Anyone who victim-blames doesn’t deserve nice, either. My nice energy will be reserved for the victims, not the perpetrators.

Friday was a rainfest so we retreated to our local gardening center (Mobak’s) to celebrate the Harvest Festival and also goof around their Harvest Festival photo ops. I listened to the rain on the greenhouse roof and looked at flowers and then we came home and planted 40 daffodil and tulips and hyacinths bulbs. A sign of hope.  I thought, we can make the world a slightly better place – we can donate money and vote and be kind to those that deserve it and we can plant growing things and adopt animals and believe women and we can meet and talk about ways to make things better. It is awfully hard to not lose hope. I am a creative type so doing creative things and being out with plants is a way for me to not lose my mind. Go do something that brings you joy and then take a step, then another step. I am counting my steps.