I have often wondered, when I read historical fiction set during periods when my grandmothers were alive, what they thought about them. My grandmothers were born in 1910 and 1911, so they were young children during World War I and probably only had vague, if any, knowledge of it. But they were in their twenties during the Great Depression and in their thirties—having their families—during World War II. Why didn’t either of my grandfathers, who would’ve been right in the middle of the draft age, get drafted? Did they grow victory gardens? How were their lives impacted by rationing? What did they think of having babies during the middle of a world war? How did they help with the war efforts? Did they have any friends who went to war? Did they pay close attention to the war or was it just background noise to their regular lives?

It has always bothered me that none of my ancestors wrote down much of their history. That bothered feeling is one of the impetuses behind keeping a blog. During the 14+ years of The English Geek, I’ve written about my response to many social issues. Maybe no one in the future will care, but it makes me feel a sense of…fulfilling a responsibility, I guess. Clearly, the COVID-19 pandemic is a huge social issue right now, so I wanted to write down how it has impacted our life so far.

Kendell was already working from home, so for him this hasn’t been a huge change, at least as far as work goes. He works in the two-window bedroom, which has been the computer room for a long time. The PC is in there so that is the computer he uses, along with his work laptop. He had three heart doctor appointments in March and they were all cancelled until it is safer for heart patients to gather in groups again. His heart doesn’t make him more susceptible to catching it, but if he did get it he would have a harder time recovering.

I am mostly working from home. For the past two weeks I’ve gone into the library once and then spent the rest of my work hours at home. People get puzzled at the thought of librarians working from home, but unless you work at a library you probably have no idea how many projects we work on. Yes, helping patrons is a big part of our job, but we still have a lot of non-patron work that keeps the library going. I am working on rewriting all of the discussion guides that go with our book group sets. We have more than 175 sets so there is plenty to be done. I have my laptop set up on the desk in my scrappy space (the old desk I inherited from my grandpa Fuzz), which is in the one-window bedroom. I like the other room better because it has so much more light, but my tables and supplies work better there. In my non-work time, I’ve been scrapbooking again, but I think next week I am going to work on a table runner and some masks to donate to hospitals. I have been blogging less because I usually write my posts in the morning and that’s when I’ve been working.

Haley’s job is considered essential, so she is still going to work. She said that her hospital has cancelled all non-emergency surgeries and is working on getting everything stocked and ready for a large influx of patients. Austin is recovering from pneumonia so he is staying in their apartment. Three cats, one bedroom…hope it is going OK! We are keeping in touch with texting. I am trying not to worry about her being in a hospital during a pandemic. (But I worry anyway. Even though worrying won’t change it.)

Jake is still living at home and we have been so grateful he is here. He works for a call center that manages rentals and is able to work from home. For him (as for me), working from home is a mixed bag. The reality of never leaving “work,” because work and home are at the same place, can be draining and emotionally problematic for both of us. He is spending time at his friend Geoff’s house to get away. Mostly, though, we’re glad he’s here because he doesn’t have to deal with the stress of paying rent or finding groceries. I’m glad we can take care of him.

Nathan is still in Monterey doing his guard training. I think this has been the hardest for him (or maybe Kaleb). His classes are done online now, which isn’t an ideal way for him to learn, and the base is on lock down. (Meaning he can’t leave at all.) We are helping by sending care packages. Haley sent him a hammock and he’s found a little spot in some trees where he can hammock and read. I sent him cookies, art supplies, and books. We talk on the phone, text, and sometimes I even remember to check my Snapchat!

Kaleb…whoosh. I don’t have any little kids so I can’t say for sure, but I feel like this is hardest on teenagers. He out of all of my kids is most involved with his friends. He LOVES spending time with his friends, especially playing basketball. So, now that school isn’t meeting and he is doing his assignments online, and he can’t hang out with friends except for online gaming (they are all playing Fortnight together a lot), he’s kind of sad and frustrated. I haven’t done a great job at getting him on a healthy schedule and I’m going to work on that this week, but the has been good at staying on top of his schoolwork. He and Jake both use the computers downstairs, and I am really glad we have enough technology for everyone.

For the most part, we’ve been able to find the food and supplies we need. I had already stocked up on toilet paper, which is one of the things that people are panic buying. I’m low on paper towels but we really don’t use those very often (a habit from my childhood…my mom wasn’t a big paper towel user!) so we’ll be OK. We got lucky one Sunday at Costco and found both rice and flour, and another day I got a bag of sugar. Rice was worrying Kendell, so I’m glad we found some just so he won’t worry about it. Sometimes we’ve gone to Costco and they’ve been out of milk, eggs, butter, and bread, but we’ve still found them on different days. Baking supplies are especially hard to find, and it took me two weeks to find brown sugar, but, again…with patience you eventually get what you need.

My friend Wendy had to self-quarantine so I’ve been bringing her groceries when I go out. We also have been helping Cindy out with getting groceries. We bought a just-in-case bag of basmati rice, before we lucked into getting the kind we like better (Calrose sticky rice), so we gave that bag to Jeff. Whenever I go to a store, I check for baby formula because that is really short right now, too. I think that helping others has been one of the positives of this experience.

My biggest struggle has been stress eating. I just can’t seem to stop snacking. Like Kaleb’s schedule, that is one of my goals this week for things to improve. I need to end it now, at the start, before it gets to be a real problem.

What about you? How are you recording your experiences with the pandemic? The details I wrote today are the broad strokes---there are so many other small stories I could also tell, so maybe I will write about it more often here. I also want to think about ways I could photograph this experience. More next week?!

One of the post-holiday, survive-January traditions I’ve established is to scrap the previous December’s photos in the following January. (So…I scrapped December 2016’s Christmas stories in January of 2017.) But at the end of December 2017, my mom got really sick. And then through most of 2018, she was ill, in and out of different facilities, and she didn’t actually make it back home until October of 2018. Then she passed away in January of 2019, and the process of cleaning out her house and settling her estate (not to mention grief) took up much of that year.

Also Kendell had knee surgery in February 2018, and then he started working from home, and I had whooping cough in the middle of my marathon training, and somehow in all of that mess, scrapbooking just kind of fell by the wayside.

But it has always felt important to me to keep the Christmas stories scrapbooked. I’m not sure why Christmas feels so important to me, except for the fact that there are always great stories to go along with the holidays, and because it’s the time I feel strongly connected to both my own family and my own history, and because I wish I had more photos and stories from my childhood Christmases.

Or it might just be the fact that Christmas supplies are pretty fun to use.

So even though it’s March and I didn’t do any scrapbooking at all in January (but I made several quilts and got acquainted with my new sewing machine), I’m going to use the next week (and, let’s be honest…maybe all the way into April) to scrapbook some stories and photos from 2018 and 2019.

If you’d like to join me, just for fun AND to relieve some of that COVID-19 stress, here’s a list of challenges:

1. Write your journaling in the form of a letter.
2. Scrap some photos you’ve had printed for more than 5 years.
3. Use an alphabet stamp to create your title.
4. Combine an old product and a new product on the same page.
5. Use a non-Christmas-themed supply on a Christmas layout.
6. Make a layout with FIVE or more puffy stickers, THREE or more washi taps, and TWO or more different patterned papers.
7. Combine silver and gold on one layout.
8. Make a double-page spread.
9. Make a layout about yourself.
10. Make a layout using non-traditional Christmas colors.

You can use all the challenges or some. You can make one layout or 27. You can even just print out your photos and put them in your photo album if you don’t make scrapbooks. You could finish up your December Daily or Journal Your Christmas or however else you document your holidays.

If you play along and want to share, use the hashtag #christmasinmarch2020 so it is all grouped together. I’ll be sharing here and on my Instagram, which is @amylsorensen. Hope you’ll join in!

When I was a kid living my Jack Mormon life deep in the heart of Utah County, my mom had an on-going joke. Whenever anyone mentioned something about food storage (and living in Utah County in the 70s and 80s, even as a Jack Mormon, “anyone” might mention this often), she would say “I don’t need to have food storage. If the apocalypse happens, I will trade my fabric for food.”

Even then, she had an enormous stash of fabric. (She also had, in the very same room as her fabric stash and sewing machine, two floor-to-ceiling cupboards that were filled with food she’d canned during the summer, anything from apple pie filling to refried beans, green beans to a weird pickled succotash with carrots and jalapeños that I don’t think anyone ever actually ate, even shredded beef and of course salsa and tomatoes. Was this not food storage?)

By the time she passed away last year, she had a dragon’s hoard of fabric. If trading fabric for food ever really became a thing, she and her family and her neighbors and probably some of her neighbors’ families would’ve never gone hungry.

What’s the likelihood of ever actually trading fabric—or any craft supply, really—for food? It was just a family joke.

Of course, until now none of us had ever actually gone through anything apocalypse-esque, so we really had no idea.

But now there’s COVID-19. There is shelter-in-place, and no sit-down restaurants, and the library is closed. The movie theater is closed and school is online and the stock market crashes every single day. There are riots in the aisle of Costco. (Literally: TWO Costcos in Utah have had to call in police because of fist fights.)

It’s not really the apocalypse. At least, I don’t think it is, but it is surreal. I came out of Costco yesterday feeling like was floating because I was so relieved that they had milk. When in my life have I ever worried about being able to go to the store and buy milk? Never.

Yesterday morning, I woke up with a quilt. Meaning: I dreamed about making a quilt, and when I woke up I knew exactly how I would do it. What it will look like, where I will put it. (It’s a table quilt if you were wondering.) I don’t simply want to make this. I need to make it. I lay there in bed, figuring out fabric measurements in my head, fueled with creative energy.

Except, you know? I don’t have a fabric stash like my mother did.

Sure: I have fabric. Scraps from previous projects, of course. I have four different boxes where I am accumulating small scraps for different types of projects. I have a huge box of 6x6 squares and another of 8x8. I have fabric in the closet under the stairs and in a box in the storage room and in stacks next to scrapbooks in my crafty space.

But the quilt I brought out of my dream is yellow, blue, and green. Colors, especially yellow and spring green, I don’t have a lot of.

And plus, shopping for fabric is one of the fun parts.

I’m serious: it almost felt like a compulsion to go to the fabric store. Like a deep itch that could only be scratched by looking at bolts of Moda and Riley Blake.

I tried. I tried to talk myself out of it. I tried to be logical and calm and socially responsible. Fabric isn’t a need, it’s a want. Nevertheless, I found myself in the Fabric Mill parking lot later that day. It was completely empty, but the store was open, so, I confess: I use some hand sanitizer and then went inside.

I bought the fabric for my quilt.

Maybe this wasn’t my mom’s intent or understanding. Maybe it really was a joke. But at that moment in the fabric store, where I kept my eye on the door just in case someone else came in, where the feeling of guilt for not being socially responsible battled with that fabric-store joy of being surrounded by color and print and possibility: right then, I understood our inside joke in a way I never had.

In times like these, we don’t only need the essentials. Yes: toilet paper and canned chicken are required. We have to eat. We have to take care of our bodies.

But if all we do is exist, that isn’t really living. And for me, a large part of living is making. Creating things helps me feel alive. It is, in fact, one of my reasons to be here on this earth in the first place. Making things gives my life meaning. And if we can’t have lives with meaning, why try so hard to stay safe from the virus? Life without meaning is life without joy. And during stressful times like these—not just individual trials, but social ones—we need joy. Maybe we need it more than we do in regular, non-pandemic times.

So even though it goes against the goals I made for myself when March started (and doesn’t March 1 seem so far away? So long-gone, those times when we didn’t get anxious about getting milk or shaking someone’s hand?), I’m going to make my dream quilt. I’m going to make it because I am alive right now, and because making things makes me happy.

I’m also going to bake cookies (as soon as I can find a source for dark-brown sugar, that is; I’ll trade a fat quarter or ten sheets of patterned paper for two fresh bags) and make scrapbook layouts.

I’m going to work on the other thing I brought out of a different dream, which is a poem about protective kittens.

Because in addition to loving my people, I make my mark on the world by making things. Maybe you make your mark by collecting stamps or by perfecting your golf swing. Doesn’t matter what it is. What matters, especially now, is that we honor who we are by doing what we love, because in the end—and that is the terror, yes, that this coronavirus experience could be our end, or the end of someone we love—that is what we have to offer.

A funny conversation I had with my sister-in-law has left me thinking.

I was at Costco hoping to get the few things I hadn’t gotten in Friday’s insanity. I needed rice, flour, and tortillas and they had been entirely out of those things on Friday night, so I went in this morning. She got there a little while after me, and we chatted for a bit.

She noticed I had flour in my cart and said “I keep hearing people say they need flour and I just keep thinking…what do you do with flour? Why do you need flour?”

I think I probably got a weird look on my face before I could stop it.

“Well,” I said, “you know, for, like, when you make rolls or biscuits to go with dinner? Or maybe I will make a pie, or cookies, or…”

I paused for a second because she was looking at me in surprise.

“I mean, I guess I just bake things.”

It’s true. Even if it’s not a holiday, I bake quite often. I make cookies of some sort about twice a month. Banana bread if there are browning bananas. Sometimes we have homemade pizza.

My sister-in-law is divorced. She works at a hospital and is also going to nursing school. Even if she wasn’t so busy, if she didn’t ever bake that is just fine. Not everyone enjoys it or wants to or is obsessed with homemade cookies.

It’s just a thing I enjoy doing so I choose to do it.

But as I drove home I thought more about the conversation, and what it says about my life.

I probably complain a lot. Too much. I get frustrated with Kendell working from home and my lack of solitude. I get annoyed that while I have two degrees and feel like I am a relatively intelligent person, my career is one I can participate in only because my husband has a great job; if I had to support my family on my librarian salary, even if I worked full time, I couldn’t do it. I get bogged down by depression and man I am tired of my knees being stiff. My family has gone through a lot of hard things, medical crises, depression, injuries, mistakes, heartache, death. My marriage is, quite frankly, often a struggle. I never have felt like I found a tribe; I have individual friends but certainly not a social life.

My life isn’t perfect.

But still. I have time to bake things that are entirely unnecessary. No one needs chocolate chip cookies. You can eat a meal without a hot roll (even soup although Kendell would disagree). Pasta without garlic cheese sticks is still delicious. Homemade pizza is fun but a pie from Domino’s or Marco’s is cheaper and easier.

But I still bake things. I have a kitchen with a stove and a refrigerator. I have a Bosch to help me with the process. I have eggs and flour and a stockpile of chocolate chips and a back-up bottle of vanilla.

Because my husband has a good job, I can indulge myself and work (PART TIME!) at a job I love.

Because I work part time, I can decide on a Thursday afternoon to go on three-hour hike with my husband just because his afternoon calls were cancelled.

I have time to make things—baking, yes, but also scrapbook layouts and quilts. I spend time writing a blog that no one reads, for hellssake.

I read novels in the bathtub.

I get to run and to go to the gym. Some mornings I sleep in until 8:00 a.m. Some mornings I go outside and talk to my trees before spending time pulling weeds and pruning rosebushes.

I’ve been blessed that for literally my whole life, save a one-year stint when Kendell was unemployed, I’ve had health insurance and access to medical care.

Just that—just that.

Some of my blessings have come through choices. I chose to go to school in my twenties, even with little kids (Haley was one when I started working on my English degree, and I had Jake and was pregnant with Nathan by the time I graduated; when I got my Education degree I had three kids under the age of six). I worked hard  in school (despite the prevalent idea that English degrees are easy) and I didn’t have much support; almost all of my homework was done while the kids were napping or after they went to bed. Kendell chose to have a career in the tech industry, which generally does OK. We have our house because we chose to jump into a mortgage a year after we were married, when I was only 21 and a 30-year anything seemed entirely overwhelming.

But I could make that choice to work on my education because I had grants and some money saved. Also because I had parents who taught me for my entire life that I should go to college. Kendell can have a tech career because we happen to live where there are plenty of tech companies. We could get a mortgage because housing was affordable then.

Some of it is work and choices, but some of it is just luck. Some of it is just how it worked out.

So that conversation? It was a nudge. A nudge to remember and to see: my life is pretty damn good. I don’t write that in a bragging way as I know how much of it really is just luck. I’m not hungry. I have a home and a family and a job. I have time and space to do the things I love.

Thank you, Universe, for the nudge to see. You are right. I am blessed.

(While I wrote this, I was reminded of a memory: sitting at the kitchen table in the house I grew up in, on a Saturday morning while Becky and I ate pancakes, and she was telling me about her dream. She went on and on and ON until I couldn't take it anymore and went to my room to get away from her. Clearly I wasn't a nice big sister, but that's not the point. The point is that this post might read like someone going on and on and ON about their stupid dreams, so feel free to go to your room to get away from it. Metaphorically. Love you Beck!)

One of my reoccurring dreams: I’m in a tiny, dirty old house and I have to climb to the top of the steep stairs without a railing, go into a room, go into that room’s closet, and find the hidden door. Behind the door is another tiny staircase—I have to lie on my belly and scoot up—that leads to a dark attic with a low ceiling. So low I have to lie on my back. As I am making this journey I know I am moving toward some unspeakable horror, but a compulsion propels me toward it. The horror is not the fear of falling or even the claustrophobia. It is something much worse, but my dream never lets me see it. I wake up, every time, before whatever bad thing that is going to happen happens.

After this dream—which always happens in the middle of the night, it’s not one I wake up from in the morning—I wake up with my heart still pounding and my legs burning with adrenaline and my hands shaking. The terror of whatever happens next is a very specific feeling, slimy and dark, with a smell like a rotting onion. It is a fear that feels attached to my childhood self, so part of it is to do with not understanding what is happening. What might happen.

What did happen?

I think I know the origin at least of the dream house. It’s a little house that was down the street from the house I grew up in. I have a very vague memory of a friend living there for a little while, six months maybe, and of going there once or twice. It was an old house, the kind with wood frames on the windows and a tiny kitchen, and an attic with a low, sloping ceiling. When I try to push for more memories—who was this friend? Why did she move so quickly? What kinds of games did we play?—there is nothing else. The memory just…drops of, like a cliff ledge in a cave, right into a darkness that has something in it.

Last night I dreamed another reoccurring dream that also deals with houses. I used to have a version of this dream a lot when all of the kids were still at home. Its details vary, but it goes like this: I am somewhere in my house when I find a door that leads to a room I had forgotten existed. The room is framed in, with unpainted sheet rock, and it’s full of various things, dressers I remember from my childhood, stacks of photos no one ever took, that yellow and grey floral mini skirt I loved in tenth grade. Those little treasure boxes my dentist used to give us to put your tooth in for the tooth fairy to find, each one full of baby teeth (or sometimes adult teeth, bloody molars with long, intact roots). Broken jewelry, broken mirrors, broken chairs.  But I don’t care about what’s in the room—I mean, I do care, I am overjoyed to find all these things I thought I had lost—mostly I am thrilled that I found the room. Because once we clean it out, someone can move there, and we’ll all have enough space, and everyone can spread out and not annoy each other so much.

I haven’t had that dream at all since Nathan left for the army.

Clearly, the origin of this dream was my anxiety that I wasn’t giving my kids what they needed, and my worry that my baggage was preventing that giving. And I also think it was a literal (as literal as dreams can get) illustration of how badly I wanted more space for everyone.

In last night’s variation, the room I found was off of my kitchen. I had to find a ladder to get to it, and climb on top of the cupboards, but then it opened up. It was still full of old things (most noticeably a jewelry box where at last I found my grandma’s ugly ring) but as I examined it I said out loud: This can be my space! There were windows and high ceilings—it was full of light—and even a half bath, and little cubbies where I could put books and fabric and paper, and a perfect box window for my writing desk, and if I opened one of the windows I could touch the high branches of my sycamore tree. I immediately started cleaning out the junk, skipping through my perfect space.

When I woke up I was filled with happiness.

And yes, I know exactly the origins of this dream, too. It speaks to our frustration right now, which is wanting to move but being unable to find the perfect combination of the right house in the right place. But more deeply, it is about my frustration with Kendell working from home. I am never alone and it is so not good for me. I need solitude and silence. I need the absolution of an empty house, because if no one is home I don’t feel guilty for indulging in my hobbies. I need the absence of anyone needing anything from me. (If that is selfish…I don’t know what else to do but to claim my selfishness. I need solitude. It is a part of who I am. I love my people and I love taking care of them, but I also need to take care of myself.) And it is also about guilt, because if I went to work full time, we could afford the house and the location we want, so in essence it feels like it is my fault that we are still in this house. My dream just giving me a room lets me have what I need (space away from everyone else) without much cost. (Just paint and carpet!)

This morning I lay in bed, thinking about those dreams. How they connect—houses and the spaces inside them—and how they don’t. How memory and objects overlap and entwine. How crazy but also understandable our psyches can be. How my mind just wants to keep on trying to figure out what’s next, what’s right, what happened, how to flee or fix. I don’t often bring an actual solution out of a dream (but I am working on a poem with the words “malina kittikitina” which I did bring out of dream language), and this dream of my perfect space is the same. I am still in this imperfect house, still frustrated with my lack of breathing space and light, still unsure of what step to take next. But that happiness that seeped out of my dream—that happiness. Like the terror from the dark house, it was very specific. It was a happiness that built upon an idea that finding what I need was a possibility, was a thing The Universe wanted to give me, was a thing I could have, too.

I wish that happiness could be found here on earth and not just in dreams.

If you are pure of heart, a priest’s absolution means nothing, and neither does general opinion. If you know your heart is good and guiltless, you can grant yourself absolution. I believe the Virgin would say it so. If you fear the father, she has always said, turn to the mother.

I discovered the book The Kingdom of Little Wounds by Susann Cokal while looking at upcoming new releases. She has a new novel, Mermaid Moon, but the reference to her previous book—“A fairy tale about syphilis”—grabbed my attention. I mean…if that’s not a perfectly Amy book I don’t know what is.

Set in 16^th century Scandinavia, the story follows Ava, who is sent to court as a seamstress to the queen after having some misadventures with a Protestant. It is also the story of Midi Sorti, an African slave with a mangled tongue; she can’t talk but can write, thanks to the teachings of Arthur Grammatics, the court historian. We also follow the trials of Queen Isabel, whose children are all ill; the disease is mysterious, an affliction from the Lunedine family line. (Really it is congenital syphilis.)

I’m not going to lie: This is a dark, dark story. It is a young adult novel—a Printz Honor—but I would recommend it only to older teens. It is dark in the sense of Game of Thrones darkness, a comparison I hesitate to make (because it is not exactly true) but can’t avoid, as one of the characters, the scheming Nicholas Bullen, is very similar to Littlefinger. There is rape and Nicholas’s collection of “angels,” women who he has power over in some way or other and who he uses as spies in his quest for power. And the very awful dreadfulness of life at the beginning of the Renaissance comes into full color, the superstition and the magical thinking, the unrelenting power that kings held to do whatever they wanted, the misunderstanding of the world, disease, the universe. And of course, misogyny.

It’s dark.

And, despite that initial blurb, I don’t really feel like this is a fairy tale. I suppose it has elements of fairy tales—the endangered princesses, the castle like a dragon, the royalty in beautiful dresses. A few mentions of mermaids and trolls under bridges, but there are no real interactions with fairytale folks or beings. The fairy-tale feel comes in through Ava’s stories, which are fairy tales, and the beliefs the people hold as truths; the only magic is in how they think. Instead, this reads like historical fiction.

Incredibly researched and lush historical fiction.

One of my favorite tropes was Ava’s connection with fairy tales. She tells them to the other seamstresses, and then, when she is demoted, she tells them to the princesses. But she also sees the world, in one sense, as a fairy tale, which helps her to cope with the difficult things she experiences. When she is able to turn, for example, her abuse at Nicolas’s hands into a story, it is less traumatizing. “I still hunger for the beautiful part of the story,” she realizes, even when she is in the ugly and dirty parts, “the part with the wedding or the wealth or the lover un-beasted, the family restored, before the trials and sadness that follow into another story..I still, even now, I still think I might earn these things, if I complete a few more trials correctly.”

While I don’t think this book is for everyone, I loved it. I did take a long time to finish it, because of that darkness. I am definitely not a reader of light and fluffy, but I also can’t tolerate dark and twisty for as long as I used to. So I dipped in and out. It took me three weeks to finish this, but I am glad I invested the time to be immersed in such a world—and to be able to resurface in my world, with antibiotics instead of mercury.

Dear America:

You break my heart.

Since 2016, I confess: even though we’re all supposed to “go high” and to try to see both sides and to understand that different people have different ideas about what makes a good leader and to listen to everyone’s voice because everyone’s voices deserve to be heard—I know and believe that. But deep down (and probably not so deep down, especially in my private conversations) I have held contempt for trump voters.

I confess: I do not understand how anyone can think he is good for the country. I am still astounded that a reality-show conman is the president of the United States. I still feel like I am living in the wrong chapter of a choose-your-own-adventure story. Honestly, I find it disgusting that people can believe a person who makes fun of disabled people and thinks that white supremacists are upstanding citizens and denies science and destroys butterfly habitat for a pointless wall (and thinks that building walls is a solution) and doesn’t have time for books, who stands in front of the country every single day to lie about everything he can, even inane issues he doesn’t need to lie about—it disgusts me that people think this is OK.

I’ve tried to keep my small, judgmental thoughts to myself. But, you know? The other smallminded people don’t mind sharing their opinions.

“trump’s my man!” the mom of one of Kaleb’s friends told me shortly after the election. “He’s getting all those lazy unwed moms off welfare.” (This was a short-lived friendship.)

“That man is doing great things for our economy,” many, many men have mansplained to me on Facebook.

“At least he’s preserving our religious freedom,” more than one church member has said.

“Nah, he’s right,” a friend astounded me by saying. “All the hype over the environment is just fear mongering.”

Library patrons, church members, neighbors, friends, strangers at Costco…it isn’t my imagination. People—actual adults—think he is OK. They aren’t even embarrassed to think he’s just fine, while I’m over here struggling with shame that I think they are morons. And trying to convince myself that if I could see both sides I could somehow heal the rift, at least between people in my actual life.

Maybe it’s time to realize that there isn’t much I can do. Republicans are going to republican. They’re going to continue thinking that voting suppression is fantastic and that taking away women’s rights is a great idea and that destroying the ACA is just fine because, after all, it was pushed through by a black man. I can wave my arms and write my blog posts and raise my eyebrows in disbelief but none of that is going to stop them from being who they are.

And until recently, I held on to the belief that this is a Republican issue. That small-mindedness and the overwhelming desire to look backward for an image of how our country should be (“make America great again” really means “make America white again”; it means going back to that 50s ideal when wives in pearls and dresses scurried around at home making sure dinner was ready for their husbands when they walked in the door, when Black people knew their place, when gays stayed properly in their closet and, of course, when all the Mexicans were still in Mexico) belongs squarely on the red side of politics.

But the Democratic primary is making me think otherwise.

It’s making me think that maybe my sister Suzette was right. “It’s not just Republicans who are slime balls,” she’s reminded me more than once. “It’s all politicians.”

Except…I’m not really heartbroken by politicians.

I’m heartbroken because of voters.

I’m devastated that once again, our choices will come down to old white men.

OLD.

WHITE.

MEN.

I’m so tired of old white men ruling the world. Definitely the current president—I’ve been tired of his type of new-money trashiness and stupid wealth for all of my adult life. But all the senators too, blocking bills and putting narrow-minded judges into courts. Governors like Utah’s stroking the back of the dominant religion and selling our state to oil and property developers. Even the mayor of my little town is an old white man, one who swirls his finger around in his retirement funds and redecorates his office.

But over and over and over and OVER, we just keep voting for old white men.

And of course, the old white men are just going to keep showing up and consuming everything and ruling the world. Why?

Because America elects them.

“Hilary couldn’t beat trump,” someone told me yesterday, “so people won’t vote for a woman because they don’t think a woman can beat him.”

Is this true? Even though Elizabeth and Amy and Kamala aren’t Hilary?

Biden isn’t Obama.

Bernie isn’t Roosevelt.

But Biden says “I’m an Obama Democrat” and we all line up to vote for him?

Obama bailed out the banks. Clinton was a sexual slime ball. The Bushes got us into unnecessary wars.

The litany of trump’s mistakes and failures is legion.

Over and over, old white men—and, OK, at least Obama was black—have done damage to our country.

And yet over and over, we just keep electing them.

America: isn’t it time for something different?

Can’t it be, at last, the time when we can look forward? When we can grow up and let go of our prejudices and narrowmindedness?

If not now, when?

When?

“Did you vote for Elizabeth Warren just because she’s a woman?”

That is the question I asked myself yesterday, over and over. Partly, no. I voted for her because she took on Bloomberg in the debates. And because she had actual plans. And because her health—physical and mental—seems much stronger than Bernie’s and Biden’s. Partly, yes. My first choice already dropped out, so I went with my second choice. I know enough of feminism to understand that this is what people hate about feminism; they think that it’s about prioritizing women over men. If you also have studied feminism, you know that at its core it is about equality, and we have to call it feminism because it is women—not men—who have to fight for every scrap of power.

I voted for Elizabeth Warren because Bernie terrifies me and because Biden can’t remember the position he’s running for or the, you know, the “thing” (ie the Declaration of Independence). And because Bloomberg is terrifying in an entirely different way. And because while I disagree with her stance on health care, I agree with almost all of her other plans, and because I think she would stand a better chance at helping to heal America’s divisions (Bernie certainly will not do this; Biden might but only if he can remember what he’s doing).

And, yes: I also voted for her because she’s a woman.

And it breaks my heart, America, that you can’t do the same.

Sincerely:

Amy

Trying to be more proactive with my goals this year, I’m breaking things down by the month instead of thinking bigger. My word this year is “commit” and while I am not 100% there yet (nor will I probably ever be), I’m feeling good about my progress. I am much more apt to work on my goals if I put them out into the world, so I’m going to attempt to do this each month, either on Instagram (I am @amylsorensen) or here: review the previous month’s work and list the current month’s goals.

February Goals:

1. Exercise for 30 minutes every day. I didn’t accomplish this, mostly because of a strained hamstring I didn’t want to aggravate. But, I did exercise MUCH more in February than January. Almost 50 miles, two hikes (it’s been muddy here and Kendell can’t deal with mud), and seven ballet barre classes. I’m OK with not making the goal exactly because it still helped me to move more.
2. Push ups and planks every day. Yeah…totally tanked on this one. I think I managed it for three or four days, and then random days here and there.
3. Work on a writing project every Monday, something that is not my blog. Another miss. I am realizing that when I am deep into the quilting process, I put everything else on hold. (Even stuff like laundry and fixing dinner.) However, I did have some ideas that I put down on paper, and besides, see #4.
4. Blog twice a week—posts that aren't book reviews. I wrote nine blog posts this month, one of which was a book review, so YES. I accomplished this goal! My favorite post was the one about raisin bread and while it is perhaps too personal, this post about my continuously developing relationship with my faith was cathartic and helped me to understand myself better. I feel like picking up a blogging habit again will contribute to my writing progress as well, even if no one reads my posts, because I am remembering how satisfying it is to spend an hour crafting something with words.
5. Make my January family stories scrapbook layout and one other one from last year. Remember that all-encompassing thing I do with quilting? Yeah…my February quilt is pretty much the only crafting I did this month. BUT. I did get the photos printed for January 2020 and December 2019 for the family stories album, and I have the journaling formatted and ready to print. Plus I gathered up a bunch of photos I had already printed for other 2019 family pages and got them organized into the correct months. So, not fully completed, but progress!
   

   I also managed to buy a few new supplies! These papers don't go with these photos but they are all new.

March Goals:

EXERCISE: 10 ballet barre classes and run 50 miles. I’ll take whatever hiking I can get but it’s so dependent on weather right now I don’t want to set any goals. PUSH UPS AND PLANKS! I know those are so good for me. Also, continue working on my year-long flexibility goals, which are getting my splits back and perfecting dancer pose.

WRITING: Continue blogging twice a week. Finish four poems and polish my pie-crust essay.

QUILTING: Finish the last straggly bits of quilting projects: the octagon flower blocks and bind Jake’s quilt. At the end of the month, sit down and figure out the process to follow for the quilt I want to make for Kaleb. I have the pattern, but the process and fabric requirements are for fat quarters and I’m making it out of yardage and scraps, so I need to create a process. (I’m not going to do this until the end of the month so as to give myself a few more chances at finding any other fabrics I need to include—the main fabric is sharks, and the accent fabric is white with wavy aqua stripes, so I’m just looking for bits of aqua or navy or ocean-themed (but not cutesy) to finish out the collecting phase.

SCRAPBOOKING: Make some layouts! I am going to focus on the family stories layouts but I also have pictures printed for some other layouts I’m excited to make. Also put together my 50 Hikes album—all of the photos are printed and the journaling is written, just need to put it all together. (This won’t really be a scrapbook, per se. A few little embellishments but it’s mostly just photos and journaling in a 6x8 album. I meant to finish this for Christmas for Kendell’s gift. Then for our anniversary. Guess I’ll just give it to him as a “happy Wednesday!” gift!)

READING: I’m almost done with the two novels I’ve been meandering through. Then I’ll start The Dark Tower series.

What are you working on these days?