After the election

For the last two weeks, I’ve been thinking, “well I’ll get to that after the election” – projects, calling friends, etc., etc. As you can tell from my prior somewhat whiny post (OK, OK, definitely whiny) things have been really busy. And stressful.

So now it’s after the election, well after, since it’s the Saturday after the Tuesday that was election day. I guess there are a few federal house of representative seats yet to be decided, but pretty much it’s all over but the crying or gloating depending on your persuasion. The Republicans will probably have total control on the federal side. Democrats have made a few gains here in WI, since we are less gerrymandered than other years, and our gay female senator beat the rich white businessman who was running against her, but not by much.

So the question lots of us are asking ourselves is, is half the country really so awful that they’re willing to vote for someone as awful as Trump? Or is half the country really just so misinformed and not paying attention and so wrapped up in their own concerns that they believed Trump’s lies about how he’d fix things? Yes, inflation has really bad the last four years, but the people who remember doing better in 2016 are forgetting, or not realizing, that was Obama’s economy, and we had pandemic in there to really screw things up. Nothing Trump is planning to do will make things any better for working people, certainly not working poor people and not even middle class. Trump’s tax cuts only benefit bajillionaires. The financial stuff is the shred of hope I am hanging onto though, because when things don’t get better in the next two years for all those people who believed what Trump said, they’ll get sick of him and look for the next change.

I’m just waiting for planes to start falling out of the sky since everything’s deregulated. And no funding for any environmental preservation or alternative energy, probably not education either. Although I hear that a lot of the alternative energy development dollars are slated to go to red states, so that might be a problem for Trump.

And yes, there’s been a lot of criticism of Democrats being too woke, and people not voting Democratic because they’re sick of being told what to do and how to act – like don’t drive that gas-guzzling SUV so much, being belittled for using the wrong pronoun, etc. etc. I heard a financial data analyst on public radio the other day say that Trump’s promises of a better economy are somewheres between fabrication, fantasy, and lies, but he still said to voters I see you’ve been hurting, and I’ll fix it, and Harris never did. 

The Wednesday after the election was a Jasper day. Taking care of a two year old is quite good distraction from politics. We did watch more TV and eat more sugar than usually. In the first pic he’s got a dino cookie made from extra crust from a pumpkin pie. We had pie later.

Cooking for comfort during election week has been a mixed bag, mixed results and sad vegetables. Monday was ok – I went to work an extra shift packing up absentee ballots to be sent to be counted at polling places. I was home by 7:30 and we had leftover cauliflower curry I’d made the week before. We also had plenty of cookies since I’d made chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin to take to the polls.

On election day I only worked the morning, so after that I had time to go do a little grocery shopping and laundry and make pumpkin pie. I thought I’d used all the mashed squash I had in the fridge in some pumpkin muffins, but I found another container that needed to be used, so, pie. There was some slightly suspicious slime on the top that I scraped off. That was a good save. We had some broccoli I asked Mark to get from the farmers market, and by Tuesday it had been smelling really strong in the fridge ever since Saturday and I thought I should cook it. I roasted it with cauliflower and carrots and we ate it over peanut noodles, but it was really starting to go. When I was cutting it up I pulled out a few slimy stalks and threw them in the compost, and the roasted stuff tasted OK, but there was a little that wouldn’t fit in the roasting pan and I boiled it and tried some dipped in the peanut sauce and it still just had too much of the smell. After dinner I composted it all – not saveable.

Thursday I made stuffed squash with a green squash I got at the market, the kind some people call Japanese pumpkin and some people call Kabocha, with a filling of quinoa and dried cherries and tamari almonds. I’ve always though of Kabocha as a sweet squash but this one was a little bitter. And the tamari almonds looked a little too dark but that’s really just the tamari. Anyways another night when everything just seemed a little gross. It all tasted ok when we sat down to dinner. 

Then on Friday I made pickled peppers with some peppers I got at the market that I think I left in the fridge too long – especially the green one. I trimmed them up and pickled them and was afraid the green strips were mushy but I let them chill, and they taste fine. I made another batch anyways.

And I guess that brings us around to now. Like I said Tuesday afternoon I had time to do laundry and that night I was hanging a zip up sweatshirt in the hall closet and reaching for the string to turn on the closet light, wacked my head right into the door and raised a big egg. I haven’t wanted to put on my bike helmet, not wanting the helmet to press on the bruise, so I’ve been driving to places instead of biking. The sky over our driveway looked hopeful this morning even though I was getting into the car instead of onto my bike. I did go for a ride later in the afternoon. I wore my blue beanie instead of a helmet – seems like lots of people bike in just a hat instead of a helmet so I thought I could too.