Monday, November 7, 2016

Brushes with greatness

What a strange time to be American.

There are lots of tense, anxious people milling about my life.  My favorite timesuck, Facebook, no longer serves as the pleasant brain numbing diversion it used to be.  It is instead a swirling outraged cesspool of fighting people. I'll admit I dove into fights more often than I wanted to, unable to keep my fingers off the keys as the steam blew out my ears. I blame it on my Aries nature. Damn fire signs can't resist a good blood boiling fight even though we regret it nearly immediately afterwards.

For the record, I'm with her.  And not in a "lesser of two evils" kind of way.  I firmly, adamantly, 100% believe in Hillary Clinton and her suitability for and commitment to the role of President.  She is awesome with a near lifetime of experience and has dealt with a ton of shit, as most women have.

Bonus -- she is made of steel, as a President, male or female, should be and is not prone to Twitter fights at 2:00a.m if she gets her feelings hurt.

I can say those words, that I support Hillary Clinton, but some things speak volumes more than words ever could.  For instance, I am such a fervent supporter of Hillary Clinton, I donned an ugly pantsuit to go hear her speak at Seattle's Paramount Theatre.


Many friends and family members have politely mentioned my pantsuit, purchased off Ebay from a woman named Laverne in Missouri, may not be my size nor style.  The pickins were slim on Ebay, people, and I know pantsuits aren't my thing, but you definitely can't question that I'M SUPER WITH HER.

The ladies and I were popular at the Hillary event.  We assumed there would be many pantsuits yet we were the only ones.  Many approached and asked if they could take our picture, including the people running Patty Murray's senate re-election campaign, which was very exciting indeed because we love Senator Murray, too.

It could have been the pantsuits that made us stand out, sure, but it also could have been the fact we were the only ones pounding beers in the Paramount lobby before noon. We nasty women were PUMPED and wearing PANTSUITS.


Hillary walked onto that stage like a rock star to a theatre full of lifelong fans.  It must have been nice for her to stop in Seattle, to know that she was not going to have to sway us in any way, that we've been with her from the beginning in our happy liberal enclave.



This will all be over tomorrow, though we live with the dreadful thought nothing is truly "over" and that this is merely a sign of angry and scary things to come.  Like I said, weird time to be an American.


It was one of our finest moments, Seattle Mom.
In our pantsuits, storm bearing down upon the city, 
holding our "Yes we can" signs in front of two very lonely Trump supporters, 
and "I'M WITH HER" emblazoned upon the marquee. 

If you thought Hillary was the only greatness I've brushed up against lately, in the words of Donald Trump -- "WROOONG."

A couple of the ladies and I signed up for Kam Chancellor's bootcamp.  Kam Chancellor is one of our favorite Seattle Seahawks, a member of our Superbowl winning Legion of Boom. You've probably already assumed (correctly) we signed up more to meet Kam Chancellor than exercise.  Exercise is hard.



Kam is a great player and reputedly an all around nice person.  Kam wants to start his own gym in Seattle so he and his trainer have been holding bootcamps all over the city to drum up a following. I'm not sure what made us think we could keep up with a professional football player and his trainer in a workout kind of way but it made sense at the time.

I texted Supermodel Neighbor, who is the biggest Seahawks fan I know, the news, thinking he'd be excited for me.  "I'm going to work out with Kam Chancellor!" I wrote with many exclamation points.  He texted back, "Ha ha ha ha what were you thinking?  You're gonna die."

My friends are not always the most supportive but they are quite honest and don't seem to believe in me too much.

Long story short, I didn't die.  Even better than not dying -- Kam Chancellor hugged me when I introduced myself at the beginning of the session.  It made me swoon a little bit because he is a very tall and handsome man with an incredible smile.  While the ladies and I listened to his intro speech, Seattle Mom leaned over and whispered, "Oooh, no wedding ring!" as if we actually had a shot at dating the guy.

Yet suddenly in that moment, we all believed we did.

Kam came around and gave pointers while we worked out.  He hollered at me to grab my ankles during an abdominal exercise (no way, buddy) and told me to keep my butt up during my planking circuit.  He's such a flirt.

You had to pay extra money to get a picture with Kam afterwards and we are cheap so the best I could do was stage this Kam photobomb with two of the ladies as he walked through the gym --


It's enough.  We were there and he's our favorite strong safety

There was one more brush with greatness that week though it wasn't mine, it was Alex's.  Alex traveled up to Toronto for his work where he met Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau.  I'm not allowed to talk about Alex's work on the blog but we made an exception for this one as long as I "keep it vague."  No problem, I'm vague all the time -- for just one example, my myriad of friends all named "Seattle Mom."

Alex couldn't wait to tell me Justin Trudeau is super charming, as if it was going to be a surprise.  We have several pictures of Alex with Trudeau and there's video of Trudeau saying, "Merci, Alex" after Alex's introduction, which made Alex swoon a little bit because Justin Trudeau is also a very tall and handsome man with an incredible smile.

Alex works too hard.  But his job does come with occasional perks.


I had to do what I had to do to be able to post this pic.
It's a spooky little thing now but it proves it happened.

I held my annual Halloween party a.k.a "the parents with babysitters gone wild party."  It was the biggest one I've thrown so far, and was also the most fun because I finally got the playlist right so people danced until their costumes fell apart.

There were many celebrities to be found at the party.  There was Hillary, of course, getting grabbed by the pussy, of course, by Donald Trump --


(actually two Trumps, though one Trump was losing his hair.  It was quite late by this time so people were becoming a little unkempt) 

John Travolta and Uma Thurman were there reprising their Vince and Mia roles from Pulp Fiction --


that's me and Al in our debut "couples" costume.  It's usually not our thing
but how do you turn down a Pulp Fiction idea.
PS.  That syringe in my heart hurt like a bitch.



And my personal favorite, Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne.  
No surprise, these two Halloween superstar friends bring it every year.

This next one is not a VIP in the world but he was a VIP in our hearts, at least for a brief time. A storm hit Seattle not too long ago and right as it began, as the wind began whipping stuff around the neighborhood, the kids and I found an injured bird in our front yard.  We debated what to do and ended up shuffling the bird to a protected corner of the house shielded from the wind.  We gave him a little of Stella's parakeet seed and hoped for the best.  We also named him Bob.

Bob survived the night then hung around for a few days in the front yard in that corner.  We kept Natani on a leash so she wouldn't eat him, which upset her greatly because she wanted to eat him very badly.  A couple days later, he was gone.

We hoped he had recovered from his injury and flown off instead of being eaten by a raccoon but we weren't sure until he showed up on the front porch the next day and sat there for hours staring at our front door.  Bob was alive!  And Bob wanted more seed. Bob liked Stella's seed very much.  We gave him a little bit more seed and he flew off.  He was back again the next morning for breakfast.


 Bob

This went on for a couple more days until Bob was suddenly wracked with gastrointestinal distress.  He had explosive diarrhea all over our front porch several times then flew off, never to return.  Parakeet seed may not agree with pigeon systems, or whatever kind of bird Bob was.  We're not sure if we killed him with our parakeet seed or just gave him a bad enough stomachache he thought, "F*ck those people" and bailed.

Hope you're well, Bob.  Our intentions were good, I swear.


OK, I'm off to be American, which at this point means quivering and counting the seconds until tomorrow is over.
MJ

6 comments:

  1. Hillary is the most qualified candidate ever to run for president, while Trump will go down in history as the most unqualified... yet a good chunk of the US electorate just doesn't get it... Pathetic.

    That football player is dreamy.

    Justin Trudeau works a whole 10-minute walk from where I live;)

    I'm trying to get that image of a pigeon with explosive diarrhea out of my head...

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  2. Ugh, I've never been so stressed out over an election ever, I just want it to be done!

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  3. I am thrilled to see your eagerness for Hillary. I am much older than you and have admired her since 1992. Very glad to hear younger people (especially women) who believe in her. Delightful post, as usual!

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  4. I am sending this note to you with sympathy the morning after. I have a very heavy heart and a wish to resign from a world full of ppl that would vote for an egotistical psychotic for our POTUS. I am so sad my grandbaby and your children have to grow up in a Trump influenced world. Take care. Kathy in Iowa

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  5. I am just reading your post now on Friday. I'm finding so much comfort in it, Thank You, MJ.
    On Monday night I went to the rally on Independence Mall in Philly. It was incredibly uplifting and positive, with people taking video of their kids, saying how historic this was. I stood in line for 2 hours with a young woman from Sweden who came here just to see "what was going on here", because she said the Europeans could not figure out how this election was not a no-brainer, and considered it "an Intelligence test". She had a Phd in Latin Studies, btw.
    I feel like I'm in bad dream... I am losing faith in this country ever being able to move on from prejudice. This election was about bigotry... plain and simple. Not economics or freedom or health care or wars.I love Hillary, and she stood for all the things that people pretend they voted for when they voted for Trump. They voted for bigotry, they just won't admit it.
    Thanks for listening.

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  6. I have been thinking about you all day...after I read the post yesterday.....I hope you are okay-your faithful reader

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