Things I Did This Weekend, 3/16/2025 Edition

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  • Transferred my Google Workspace accounts from Squarespace back to Google.
    • This was something they forced on us when Google sold its domain business to Squarespace, but I don’t really care for them, so after migrating all of my domain names to Cloudflare earlier this year, I finally found it was surprisingly easy to move them back to Google. Follow these instructions because Google’s are confusing, but you basically cancel them through Squarespace and then they’ll revert to Google, where you have like a week to setup new billing directly through them. It took me about five minutes for two accounts!
  • Fixed an issue where one of my WordPress installs wouldn’t send out emails anymore.
    • Apparently it’s common now for people to use an external SMTP plugin to send out notification emails from WP, whereas I was used to it always just using the PHP mail() function by default. I guess when I moved said site to an updated VM last year, the function was disabled and I didn’t notice until months later. Anywho, I really didn’t want to spend any money on something so simple, but the above plugin has a free version that should be sufficient for now and I was able to apply for a free/trial account through Mailgun for a limited number of emails sent per month, which should be fine … so yay!
  • I fought COVID and am hopefully winning!
    • Spent Tuesday night in the hospital after probably catching it at Legoland over the weekend, but thankfully they sent me home on steroids the next day and I’m already feeling much better.
  • Got our taxes filed.
    • Hard to get excited about that one, but – check.
  • Oh yeah, and I started a new game of Crystalis, too!
    • I love this old NES game from 1990 for very nostalgic reasons, though it has some friction points now that are a little frustrating. The grinding seems excessive because bosses are level capped, meaning if you attempt them below their level, you just can’t damage them no matter how good you play! That and apparently playing on the RetroPie, somehow my select button got keyed to reset the game if I accidentally hit it on certain screens, so I definitely need to look into that because I literally had to redo the poison swamp outside of oak like four times because I would finish it and try to heal, only to be faced with the title screen unexpectedly! Ugh, but still fun…

Visiting the Legoland Hotel!

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As I mentioned last time, we were planning a short, little vacation to Legoland for some homeschooling fun followed by a night in the iconic hotel that towers over the entrance to the park. I wasn’t really sure what to expect of the hotel because the price seemed a bit high for what I figured was a mid-level stay, although admittedly I’ve only paid for theme park hotels a couple of times in the recent years after we joined Disney Vacation Club around the time that the kids were born, so I don’t really have a good gauge of what pricing should be for this type of hotel anyways…

A quick look at Disney’s current moderate pricing falls pretty close to the $375 that we paid for the one night’s stay, which did get us out of paying $35 for parking at the park that day, so that was a nice surprise!

Anyways, on to the fun stuff because overall, we all had a really fun time at this hotel!!!

There are pits of bricks everywhere for the kids to play, including in the lobby when Mom & Dad are trying to check-in! Also nearby is a giant castle/pirate ship structure for them to play around, which we found also served as a stage for a little “character show” before bedtime that evening…

We also soon learned that the elevators play disco music, complete with the flashing lights and everything, as they’re moving, so there’s that!

Of course, the real treat was inside of the rooms because I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Lego structures weren’t limited to downstairs in the lobby, but our room itself had a number of them glued to the walls and even some larger, 1-foot creations on shelves and whatnot around the room. We chose to stay in an Adventure-themed room, which put all of the decor around themes like Egypt and Indiana Jones – kind of a neat touch because the kids just studied Egypt and the pyramids in school.

While we were getting settled and taking a load off after a fun, but tiring day in the park even with my electric scooter, the kids’ own explorations led them to find a scavenger hunt that had been left for them! Pretty simple, but they had to answer three questions – each of which gave them a number – which ended up being the combination to a lockbox in the room that held a Collectible Minifigure and a juice box for all three of them, so I thought it was cool to see that they made sure to account for the number of kids in the room and not just throwing a default number of prizes in the box when they cleaned!

I think the only negative point I can give the Legoland Hotel, unfortunately, is for the food because A) although we planned on dining at the buffet restaurant (Bricks) that night to give the kids some variety, apparently it was closed for low attendance, which isn’t really fair when there are only two places to eat to begin with, and B) the place we did eat (Skyline Lounge) was kind of lackluster, which is fine for kids who only eat chicken fingers anyways, but especially after a long day where I only got a generic burger for lunch, I enjoy being able to eat something a notch up for dinner and even grab a nice dessert to take back to the room for after the kids are in bed.

The menu at the Skyline was really just meh to me, like I had to stare at it for a while before I finally settled on some pasta special that was kind of like a bolognese with a couple of meats in it. It was fine, but nothing to get excited about, which frankly is important to me when I know I’ll be dropping over a hundred bucks on the meal … especially when even lunch had been surprisingly expensive compared to fast food outside of the park, too!

And sure, we haven’t spent a lot of time in theme parks lately, but these are kind of a big part of the reason why because they are getting rapidly more expensive so at least if we drop that kind of money, we want to feel like we’re getting our money’s worth!

  • Park Tickets – We got a great deal because it was an educational day, so that was nice!
  • Disability Scooter – My scooter literally cost me twice as much as I paid for my admission ticket, so that’s a big hit if you need one every day.
  • Food – Both in and out of the park, expensive and forgettable.
  • Hotel – Seemed a bit high, but incredibly enjoyable audience and I’ll budget for it to come back again!

As an additional frustrating side note, the gift shop in the hotel was incredibly small, which meant no bedtime snacks unless we raided the vending machines … and I did with Christopher and David’s help, although at $2.50 a pop and even more for drinks, I don’t even want to know how much I spent on vending machines that night! Admittedly, if there was a candy/dessert store nearby like we often frequented at Disney, the damages would’ve been equally high, so there’s that.

The next morning, we tried Bricks again for breakfast, which was advertised originally as a breakfast buffet but instead was served on platters family style. The service seemed kind of slow, knowing that we needed to checkout soon, and although the selection was decent, my wife’s tea was cold and came without a serving spoon, which was almost as annoying as the wobbly leg that we had to contend with on our table the entire meal.

It probably helped that breakfast was included and only cost us for the tip, but the kids devoured the french toast sticks and bacon, and I had a bit of everything that they left behind, so it definitely faired better than the night before. Would I have preferred something custom-made like a nice buttermilk pancake platter or my personal favorite, Egg’s Benedict? YES! They had an upcharge option for a few kinds of omelets, but by that point we really just wanted to eat and get on with our day.

Once we had cleaned up all of the sets that everyone had started building from the night before, we checked out and just let the kids play around the lobby castle for a while so that we could decompress. Two of them eventually found the little “theater” that was playing episodes of Lego Dreamzzz, so they enjoyed laying in the beanbags watched that for a while until we wandered outside to play mini-golf.

I can’t really fault Legoland for the mini-golf – their course was small, but fine, and had more Lego models spread throughout the course – but the kids were antsy and didn’t want to play a real game, so eventually we just let them play ahead and tried to enjoy a few holes to ourselves before cutting the game early.

Patience is not a virtue for elementary schoolers, so after a quick walk along their pretty nice boardwalk on the lake, we headed out and called it a trip.

It wasn’t a long vacation, but it got the family out of the house overnight which is something we’ve sorely been missing since I started dialysis last year. All of the kids already want to go back, both to try out the pirate hotel as well as the other themes in the main one, and I can’t disagree that it’s always a nice escape after a theme park day to not have to head right home afterwards when you can extend the magic a little longer, even if it did result in spending an incredible amount on Lego sets for the five of us!

Except for the food, I’d give it an 8 out of 10 overall, and we’ll definitely be back again. 😉

Yet Another Dialysis Update…

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So where did I leave off???

I guess I’ve been doing hemodialysis for a little over two months now, which seems like a drop in the bucket for some folks who’ve been going through these motions for years and years. I try to say that it’s not that bad because I’m surrounded with so many examples of people who have it worse. Granted, a lot of them are older than me, but every treatment day I see people in wheelchairs and people struggling just to remain conscious during their sessions, freezing under piles of blankets whereas I sweat like crazy and spend my four-hour stretches working or writing or just entertaining myself on my phone…

…yet I can’t deny that it’s affecting me, too.

After my sessions I’m pretty tired. Sometimes I make it until bedtime and can pass the time playing video games or watching something with the kids, and sometimes I tap out early.

My off days are typically pretty good, except that I get winded so damn easily now – literally bending down to pickup clothes for laundry or putting away dishes will require breaks in order to finish the job! From what I can tell, this is mostly due to my ginormous kidneys limiting the amount that my lungs can expand in my body, which is a really weird problem to have, knowing that at this point no amount of exercise can help to improve it.

Hell, I don’t even really know how overweight I am anymore because so much of my gut is taken up by kidneys!

On that front, I’m still sort of hoping that they’ll take the bad ones out at the same time they’re putting my transplant in, but it’s really up to the surgeons and apparently they prefer not to if they can help it, so we’ll see what happens there.

In other news, I spent a week in the hospital recently because somehow I managed to get sepsis. We’re still not really sure how/where it came from because they took a few cultures that all came back negative, but they removed my old PD catheter as a precaution while I was there and gave me a ton of IV antibiotics, so I’m mostly feeling better from that angle now.

Going through it, I honestly didn’t realize how dangerous sepsis can be – particularly for somebody like me with kidney issues … apparently between that and being on dialysis already, we were really lucky to catch it as early as we did. Left on my own, I thought it was just a bad cold or something because it kind of came out of nowhere – I was working on Friday afternoon and suddenly started getting chills and feeling lightheaded, so I went to lay down for a bit. I tried to get up a few times on Saturday, but would make it like 20 minutes on the couch before heading back to bed.

Sara said that I also seemed to be staring off into space or having trouble sounding coherent, so late that night we finally went to the ER where they ran a ton of tests, gave me dialysis because I had been too sick to go for my session that day, and then ultimately admitted me to a room for the next six days.

I started feeling “better” maybe 2 – 3 days in, but they kept me for tests and surgery for a few more.

That was maybe two weeks ago, and I’m done with my antibiotics, though I’ve read that sepsis can take a while to fully go away. I mostly feel better, but again, I’m starting to acknowledge how my better has definitely receded from even where it was a month or two ago. Case in point – we’re taking the kids to Legoland on Thursday with our homeschooling group and for my first time ever, I’m renting a scooter to help me get around the park.

I’m not super happy about it, but knowing how a trip to the grocery store can put me out of breath, I’d rather be safe than sprawled out somewhere in the middle of Mini-Land, sending everyone into a panic instead of being able to enjoy their day. I don’t really plan on going on any rides anyways, but watching them is half the fun at this point and it’s been so long since we’ve been that I know they’re all extra excited to go again!

Admittedly a lot of my life right now is hurry up and wait because I’m hoping to do my transplant sometime in May, so in the meantime weeks go by three dialysis sessions at a time and I’m just doing my best to have a few other things to show for it before we take on that new challenge that will no doubt dominate my life for at least a few months to follow.

The other night I was talking to the kids about everything. I try to be as honest with them as I can about my disease without letting it get too scary, but we were talking about whether they’re going to get it, too, and Matthew asked if he had to have surgery, “Could I tell the doctor to make the cut small in his belly because he doesn’t like cuts?” and it was so hard to fight back the tears and try to reassure him that hopefully they won’t have to deal with it at all … but that right now they’re still way to young to have any idea whether it will present itself or not.

It didn’t really present itself to me until my mid-30s and for a few years it was just high blood pressure warnings, then the last couple of years it went crazy and here we are. It’s not something that kids should even have to think about, yet they’re already seeing me doing dialysis each week and know that they don’t want to go through that themselves. I think deep down in their own ways, they sort of get how dangerous it all is, which pains me because kids at that age should be able to think that their parents are invincible.

The best I can do is keep my head up and let them watch me beat this thing to give them back some of the hope that having a disabled father has robbed them of, which is no easy task. But nobody ever said parenting was easy, anyways…

One Month of Hemodialysis Down…

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To follow up on my last post that I made just before Christmas, I did end up getting that new catheter only two days prior to Santa’s arrival, and actually immediately followed up with my first session at the dialysis clinic to put my new tube straight to my heart to use!

It was scary, although the day went by so fast I didn’t have a whole lot of time to be scared.

…except when I was laying conscious in the operating room because they didn’t put me under like I thought they would…

…and the four hours I had to listen to beeping the entire time, most of which was other people’s dialysis machines peeping although some was definitely mine, too…

Needless to say, I’ve learned a lot about hemodialysis over the last handful of weeks, things like how problematic clotting can be and not necessarily just in me, but also inside the machine itself; understanding low blood pressure, which happens as a result of removing fluid but being someone with traditionally high blood pressure, hasn’t been something that I’ve really had to think about; and of course, figuring out and knowing my limits with treatment.

This last one was never really a problem with PD dialysis, and honestly hemo overall went pretty good for my first several weeks. I would often feel tired after treatments, but better the next day and in general my energy levels have been worlds different, which has been a great improvement!

My last two sessions, on the other hand, were a bit challenging because each one saw my blood pressure dropping dangerously low – the first time, I felt dizzy and saw rings in my vision until we stopped and they gave me some oxygen; the second time, I felt even dizzier and apparently I blacked out for a minute, and as I was recovering, at one point I was slurring my words … which was incredibly weird because I knew it was happening but couldn’t do anything to stop it…

The clinic staff was really good and immediately jumped into action, between stopping the machine from pulling my fluid and even giving me some back, putting me on oxygen and encouraging me to drink water, and checking in with me every couple of minutes to verify whether I felt like my symptoms were getting better or worse. They wouldn’t let me leave until my blood pressure had normalized and my symptoms had subsided, and encouraged me to call my wife to talk to on the ride home because I’ve been driving myself recently.

Those two sessions were definitely a reminder of how serious this is, considering that the worst I ever felt with PD was a general degradation of my treatments not filtering out as much as they should.

I guess it makes sense because while the machine can be more effective, there’s also additional risk from the process, too. I can only hope that it won’t drag on too long, as I’m only one doctor’s appointment away from my next surgery now, and hopefully once I recover from that, it’ll be time for my kidney transplant.

If it doesn’t work out that way, we might switch to me doing hemo at home, which has a long learning curve but is supposed to be a little bit gentler than doing it at the clinic. So we’ll see.

In the meantime, I’m tolerating it the best that I can. I’m surrounded by people who are older and clearly suffering more than I am, so I’m grateful to still have my wits about me for the most part during my treatments. I’ve even been able to use the dedicated 12 hours a week to make some new creative progress, so that’s helped my mood a bit! Oddly enough, I’ve also felt my depression kicking up more around unrelated things that I don’t want to elaborate on here, so that’s a new challenge but I’m doing my best to push through it.

There’s a lot more to say, including the impact my dialysis has had on the kids which is eye-opening, but maybe I’ll get into that more at a later date.

For now, tomorrow’s session begins week #5 and we’re going to cut down the volume so as to hopefully not make me pass out! Every day is an adventure, but it certainly beats the alternative…

What Do You Need 5 Gigabit For, Anyways???

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“Tech stuff, bragging rights – mostly the second one…”

That’s what I told the Frontier tech when he left earlier this afternoon after upgrading my 2 Gbps Internet service up to 5 Gbps – admittedly a completely unnecessary residential speed even with five people all streaming different things at the same time!

Still, it’s cool, and my ISP had a Black Friday promotion that made it cheaper than the price I’ve been paying for 2-Gig ($99/mo for a year), so I had to jump on that. All of the 10-gig Ubiquiti gear in my closet pretty much demanded it.

Speed Test from my laptop (MacBook Air – M3 chip / 10 Gbps via Thunderbolt dock)
Speed Test from router (Unifi Dream Machine Pro / 10 Gbps uplink)

I do find it kind of amusing that I’ve officially hit the sweet spot where speed tests have a hard time maxing out the line speed, and even the same with hardware – I tried downloading a test file from Usenet to the cache SSDs in my NAS and it got up to 350 MBps (2.8 Gbps) before throttling down much lower, though that could’ve been an availability issue with the file I chose. Most movies and TV shows these days average around 190 MBps (1.5 Gbps) for me, so it’s not super likely that I’ll see vastly improved speeds in my day to day use…

…but that won’t stop me from making some tweaks to see how close we can get to that 625 MBps max anyways!

It might have to wait until I can build a new server with NVMe M.2 drives and whatnot, but in the meantime, my recently upgraded laptop that I haven’t written about yet can now support 5-gig (technically my last one could do 2.5 Gbps with an adapter), the servers are all wired for 10-gig, and an upgrade for our wifi is only a stone’s throw away, so we’re using it even if it’s wonderfully excessive here at the tail end of 2024.

Who knows what the future will hold?!

After living on gigabit for about two years and 2-gig for 2.5 years, it wouldn’t surprise me to see it creep up to 10-gig in the next 2 – 3 years. The official cap for Frontier right now is 7-gig (at almost 3x the cost, it’s just too expensive right now … but a few years ago they wanted the same for 300 Mbps, so…), and several other ISPs across the country are offering between 8 and 10-gig, with one (Ziply Fiber) offering an impressive 50-gig plan for only $900 a month!

I can’t imagine trying to justify that one to the wife, but in time those prices will come down, too.

The future is awesome like that – at least in terms of fiber Internet prices…

A New Catheter for Christmas…

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So not to be a downer, but the last few months of dialysis haven’t been going great.

We have a measure called Kt/V that is used to determine how effective my dialysis is going, and unfortunately the last few times I’ve failed mine. This has resulted in tweaking my prescription (e.g. the amount of dialysis that I do), however we’ve hit some roadblocks and I’m not able to make any more changes until after a surgery that I’m currently working on for January…

…so instead, Monday morning I get to do another surgery to install a separate catheter to enable me to switch to hemodialysis in the interim.

Which is something that I’ve honestly been fearing for quite a while because I hate needles and blood and the whole process of taking the blood out of my body, cleaning it, and putting it back just creeps me out something fierce!

Yet I’m trying to look at it as a means to an end because I’m going to have to temporarily do it for a month after my January surgery anyways while I heal, so really it’s only a couple of extra weeks and then after that, I should be able to go back to peritoneal dialysis unless I have a living donor and we can do my transplant. Which is a whole separate ball of anxiety with the concern about possibly removing my old and gigantic kidneys at the same time, even though that’s really the end goal of this all.

This week has felt like a lot with appointments just about every day – Thursday I had three in a row! – yet it could pale in comparison to next year if I end up with one surgery after another plus the months of follow-up that come with a full-blown kidney transplant. Still, it’ll be worth it in the end to have some semblance of a life back again – I’ve really missed things like swimming with the kids and being able to do things in general without them leaving me winded and exhausted entirely too early.

Seriously, I get winded just taking out the garbage right now because my lungs have limited room to work thanks to how big my kidneys have gotten, so something’s going to have to give if they expect to stuff another kidney inside of me!

Admittedly it’s been a rough couple of months, especially during Christmastime because I love this time of year and want to do as much holiday stuff as possible. Our decorations this year were pretty much limited to a wreath on the door and an inflatable in the front yard, and even that had me dizzy to the point of having to sit down while I was staking it down. I did take Christopher and David to look at lights in Lakeland the other day, which was a lot of walking but probably good exercise for me! Other things like baking cookies and visiting theme parks, I’ll have to forego this year because I simply don’t have the energy for them, so I’m trying to make my peace with that and tell myself that next year will be different…

To that effect, I’ve also started thinking about how I want my life to change after transplant – namely being more active and taking better care of myself through diet and exercise. It’s hard knowing that somebody is getting up at 4:30am to go to the gym to try and be an organ donor for me without saying that I need to do better myself to make all of that sacrifice worthwhile! And part of me misses it as a good stress reliever, too, so that would be a nice change. It’s not like I’ll be able to do much for a while anyways because especially if they do a full nephrectomy (remove both kidneys), that’s a BIG abdominal cut that’s going to take months to heal, but looking ahead to the future is a big part of it, too.

So that’s where I’m at as of now. I’ve done PD for nearly twelve months and at its best, I felt probably 90% and managed to get quite a bit done. Unfortunately, that was back around April – June and it’s been downhill since summertime, so I can’t say that it’s not time for a change. Which is scary, but dying of kidney failure is even scarier, so I’ll suck it up and push through the best I can.

Like I told the social worker with the transplant clinic the other day when she asked me during my interview why I wanted a kidney transplant, I still have a lot of life that I want to live, and I want to see my kids grow up and spend time traveling and exploring with my wife, because I’m nowhere near ready to die yet.

And missing out on all of that is way scarier than any needle or sign of blood with ever be.

A Bucket List for 2024

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Every so often I like to put together a list like this – my first one was back in 2001, then in 2015, and now here we are in 2024!

I’m 44 years old now. More than twice my age when I wrote that first list, and not so surprisingly in hindsight, a lot has changed over the years! I can’t say that I care about writing for The Simpsons or my own sitcom anymore, or even going on a Disney cruise as opposed to any of the other lines. And as much as part of boat life still intrigues me, I’ve seen enough YouTube videos of guys bumbling around engine rooms to think that maybe having a friend who has a boat might be a bit more relaxing than actually owning one myself…

I’d argue that some of the goals from nine years ago still apply, and I’ve even finished a handful of them since then – my Lego Minifig collection is kind of ridiculous these days, to the point where I don’t know where I’m going to display them if we ever move! My server rack has also grown as big as it probably will under this roof, which is good enough for now. A few years ago, we discovered the miracle of solar heating for our pool, which has truly been a game changer, and I’ve spent a surprising amount of time playing video games this year alongside my kids, which is super cool!

Nonetheless, I thought it would be fun to throw out another list here tonight and a decade or so from now, we can look back again and see how things played out…

Career

  • Be very, very close to early retirement!
  • Pay my mortgage exclusively with money earned from writing.

Travel

  • Explore some of the castles around Europe.
  • Introduce the kids to cruising, and assuming nobody falls overboard, take them frequently!
  • Be able to afford a lifestyle that gets our family out of the house on a regular basis.

Health

  • Get a new kidney and don’t squander it.
  • Incorporate regular exercise into my life.
  • …the same with meditation…
  • …and also eating healthier.
  • Go easier on myself when things don’t go as planned.

Parenting

  • Be a part of their homeschooling journey and teach them as more than just a passerby.
  • Help each of them to do something really hard.
  • Always be seeking out new opportunities for quality time to spend with each of them and with the entire family all together.

Other

  • Learn how to cook a really good steak.
  • Build our forever home.
  • Build an arcade with the kids in said home.
  • Do things that are unexpected and push my own boundaries – not for the sake of other people, but for myself.

Next stop – 2035! I’ll be in my fifties, Christopher will be done with school and the twins on the cusp of graduation, and with a little luck, maybe early retirement will actually be in reach!

…or maybe I’ll have already been retired for a decade – who knows?!

Finding the Positive in 2024…

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I spent a little time reflecting on the past year with Sara over the weekend and although from many angles it’s been rough, it’s nice to see that it hasn’t been all bad…

  • I had to do got to do dialysis to keep me alive this year.
  • I’ve taken more time to actively watch the kids’ homeschooling lessons, which is something I couldn’t do if they went to public school or I didn’t work from home.
  • Matthew finally got potty trained!!!
  • Saw each of the boys really starting to mature in ways that both inspire me and I’m not entirely ready to face!
  • Went on some cool field trips to the aquarium and some crazy art and science museums.
  • Saw my first concert in maybe 20 years with my wife – (Heart and Cheap Trick).
  • Watched Deadpool & Wolverine in the theater, which was pretty badass!
  • Avoided getting peritonitis, which is one of the biggest threats for people doing peritoneal dialysis like I am.
  • Endured the wrath of two hurricanes unscathed.
  • Played a lot of video games, including romhacks like Final Fantasy IV: Ultima and Final Fantasy IV: Free Enterprise.
  • Navigated the dialysis roller coaster as best as I could.
  • Tried to spend some good, quality time with each individual member of my family.

And just offhand, a few things I’d like to try to do more of next year…

  • More time looking inward, less time stressing about things that I can’t control.
  • Take the kids snorkeling in the Gulf, even if it’s just off the beach.
  • Less doom-scrolling!!!
  • Find a way to incorporate movement/exercise into my life again.
  • Get a kidney transplant … if the stars happen to align!

So, Now What???

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He won.

Donald Trump – a man convicted of 34 felonies, accused of sexual assault 26 times, a “billionaire” with six bankruptcies, twice divorced, and twice impeached … once for working with the Russians to interfere with an election, an another for leading an insurrection to overthrow an election – that guy is going to be our president for the next four years. Again.

This time there was no funny business, despite Trump insisting on fraud right up until he started winning, after which it immediately went poof and the election was free and fair once more!

And there was no gloating or violent uprising afterwards … except for guys taunting women with “Your Body, My Choice” on social media and threatening execution for anyone deemed traitors for daring to oppose President Trump. You know, normal jokes about rape and murder that sane, rational voters make everyday…

That’s America for ya.

A common comment that we like to throw out at times like this is, “That’s not really us. America isn’t like that.” yet as I watched this campaign unfold and even when the MAGA movement first started almost a decade ago now, as his number of supporters rose enough to beat who I would honestly regard as two of the most qualified candidates to ever run for the presidency (YES – Hillary and Kamala), the hard truth of the matter as we stare down 74 million votes versus her 70 million is this – whether we like it or not, the MAGA movement does represent America in the majority today.

We’re a country that elected the biggest asshole possible to the most powerful office, and he was put there by a legion of asshole supporters who favored empty promises and deceit, hatred and bigotry and a divided populace to our first black woman president.

So is every last person who voted for Trump an asshole?

Well, there are certainly varying degrees of assholes, and I say this knowing that for example, a lot of his supporters are willing to overlook the awful things that come out of his mouth because they believe he’ll draw a hard line on abortion … which is weird to me alone to put forth so much care and concern for the unborn, but not give a damn about the actual living people who he denigrates every day, but I digress.

Does it make someone an asshole because they’re more concerned about the economy and keeping their family fed than they are about whether gay people can get married or transgender people can use their bathrooms of choice?

If it doesn’t make them an asshole, at the very least it makes them limited by their narrow perspective on life for not having the compassion to consider the basic rights of people who differ from themselves.

That’s always been my thing – of all the issues that I care about, human rights is by far at the very top of my list because I feel that here in America, the land of the free, if we’re not treating everyone fairly and equally, then none of the other issues even matter. It’s not freedom and justice for some, nor does the Statue of Liberty welcome those who have their shit together and have something to offer us and are willing and able to follow a lengthy, 18-24 month processing period.

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

So yeah, even though it’s not going to be my name on the chopping block, it scares me that our new president will be striding into office in January with one of his first initiatives being “the largest deportation plan in history.” And not simply because I like to eat and I know that most of the farm work and animal processing in our country is done by … illegal aliens!

Or that he plans on sticking it to China and the rest of the world by introducing tariffs to everything, which will ultimately increase prices for Americans because that’s how tariffs work! I mean, does anyone on his staff even have Google?! Because I looked that up in like five seconds…

Oh yeah, and there’s also the guy who he wants as the head of Health and Human Services who is anti-vaccine or at the very least, vaccine-confused. He also had a parasitic worm eating his brain and apparently dumped a dead bear in the middle of Central Park like ten years ago???

I mean, at this point I suppose we should just hope that Trump doesn’t give a cabinet position to Kid Rock, but anything is possible at this point. “I like that ba-tib-awa song. Very catchy.”

So the real question is, how do the 70 million people who didn’t vote for absolute chaos survive the next four years until hopefully we’re still allowed to vote again and can maybe try somebody else?

I’ve heard a lot of answers to this over the last couple of days – everything from embracing creativity and trying to be productive to taking a step back and focusing on self-care to even just keeping your head down and bracing for the worst. I feel like in this position where all three branches of government will be red in the near future, resistance almost seems … futile at this point? Maybe this is time to regroup and let the Republicans have their way to see if the results of their actions can sway their minds…

…which definitely feels like a position of extreme privilege, but until we start seeing them actually acting out their horrendous political promises, the ideas are still just that – promises.

And if there’s one comforting thought that I can muster at this hour, it’s that looking back at Trump’s first presidency, his biggest initiatives actually ended up failing miserably…

  • “Build that wall, and make Mexico pay for it!” – He actually built about 40 miles of new wall, and repaired existing fencing for another 400 miles. The total border is roughly 2,000 miles long. Mexico did not pay for it.
  • “Repeal and replace Obamacare!” – He made some adjustments, but certainly never repealed it altogether.
  • “We’re going to bring back manufacturing to America!” – He gave state incentives to A/C maker Carrier to prevent jobs going to Mexico, only for them to still outsource some and then send even more to China.
  • Kill funding for sanctuary cities. – NOPE
  • Gut the Dept. of Education. – NADA
  • Eliminate gun-free zones at schools and military bases. – NO.
  • Eliminate the federal debt in eight years. – LOL … he actually increased it by 33%, or $6.7 trillion
  • (here’s more if you feel like reading Trump’s greatest hits and misses)

Of course, he’s still going to do some stuff and with both Congress and the courts on his side, Trump will no doubt do some serious damage. That said, I would argue that his supporters will likely do more damage in that while we’ll read about Trump’s latest idiot moves in the news every day, it’s his fanbase with their stupid, red hats and loud MAGA banners that we’ll encounter on a daily basis when we’re shopping at the store or driving around town.

Learning how to co-exist with individuals who have declared beliefs that are the polar opposite of our own is going to be the real challenge, considering that when you sit down with people on either side, there’s a good chance that one or both of them are going to be Trump supporters. And maybe they’re not the loud and crazy type who will get into a shouting match with you, but knowing that they’re against a woman’s right to choose what she does with her own body or simply apathetic to crude remarks about race and gender and sexuality is just as discomforting.

It’s hard sitting next to Granny, knowing that when she’s with her knitting buddies, they freely throw the n-word around or learning that the manager you work for thinks that foreign people should go back where they came from. Before it was easy enough to co-exist in denial, hoping the best for any random strangers that you pass in your day, but there’s no denying that 74 million of our fellow Americans voted to put HIM back in the White House, despite everything that he’s done that’s the antithesis of what our country stands for.

I don’t know the answer, but I’ll keep typing until I figure something out – at least for myself.

To anyone reading this, I hope that you can find something to provide comfort or solace during these challenging times when our very core values are the vocal minority. Try not to lose faith in humanity even when the numbers are stacked against us, and continue to spread kindness even when the person opposite you is shouting, “Fuck your feelings!”

Take the trouble to stop and think of the other person’s feelings, his viewpoints, his desires and needs. Think more of what the other fellow wants, and how he must feel.
– Maxwell Maltz

Election 2024

Posted on by Scott / 0 Comment

I’m nervous about the outcome of today, and yet I’m also kind of tired of it all.

Donald Trump is an absolute psychopath and has given us so many reasons that he doesn’t deserve to be a leader in any stretch of the imagination, and yet tens of millions of people around our country are voting for him anyways. Some because “they like his politics” and are willing to overlook his character, and let’s be honest … some because they like his character, in that having an asshole as President of the United States kind of solidifies their right to be assholes, too.

Character is a big part of what’s decided my vote in the last few elections, but it’s never been as bad as this. Remember this scene back in 2008 when John McCain took the mike away from one of his supporters and corrected her after she claimed that Barack Obama was a Muslim???

It’s hard to imagine a Republican candidate since then actually sticking up for his opponent, particular when in Trump’s case he’s the one slinging vitriol and hatred and literally stirring his people up to riot in the event that he loses.

He was an embarrassment eight years ago the first time that he ran and won, and now I would argue that he’s even more dangerous because he knows that he can get away with just about anything. That joke about “Shooting someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not losing any votes…” takes on new meaning when the former president has actually talked about retribution against his enemies … because don’t forget that we’re all Americans here, so the idea that the president considers some citizens to be his enemies is even more frightening than last time when he called the free press the enemy of the people.

The man is just exhausting and I need him to go back to hosting a reality TV show where he can pump his ego all he wants and it doesn’t really matter. We’re never going to get away from this divided country that we find ourselves in if the Chief Divider is willing to let his biggest supporters lead us into another civil war, as if that would really solve anything, anyways.

Few people realize that not either of the World Wars, but America’s Civil War was in fact the bloodiest war that Americans have ever taken part in.

More Americans died fighting each other than they did in all of the other wars combined.

We don’t need another civil war.

We need to work through our differences and find compromises on both sides of the table, and start treating each other as equals again instead of the enemy that’s trying to kill babies and overrun our nation with illegal immigrants.

Today I voted for Kamala Harris, not only because her character is one that I would actually introduce my kids to or allow them to listen to her speak without worry about what they’re going to hear, but also because I’m beyond ready to leave the Trump drama behind us and try to move forward as a nation – as divided as we are, even without that nutjob at the helm.

And it’s scary because I have little doubt that this week is going to end in violence if the results have Trump losing like they did last time. January 6th is an ugly scar on our history and it probably won’t be the last, but if anything, that’s all the more reason why he doesn’t deserve to win.

If you were to play any game with somebody and before you even started, the other guy said, “I’m so good at this game. The only way you could ever beat me is if you cheat!” … you wouldn’t play the game with him, would you?! It doesn’t take a psychic to read how that’s going to play out, either with him gloating over his inevitable win or him calling you a cheater in poor sportsmanship if he loses.

The whole notion of a peaceful transition of power was already taken off the table with Trump’s last presidency between, well, his insurrection, and him refusing like a baby to attend President Biden’s inauguration to formally hand over the office. Anyone who doesn’t think a second term will be equally or more chaotic is either fooling themselves or just wants to watch the world burn.

Let’s hope there are still enough of us who don’t to try and turn this thing around.