Fragile and Strong

It's been a difficult past few days. Saturday, which started out so bright and beautifully as you'll see below, ended up being a hard and frustrating and emotion-filled for the three oldest people in our house. As I told James that night after we went out to dinner for comfort food nachos and margaritas, I just feel so fragile. I feel fragile and sad and like I'm failing and I want an extra margarita and to get a little drunk and go to bed early. Except I made a decision many years ago that I don't get drunk anymore, so I had decaf green tea instead and snuggled in with Iron Gold and read until 1 a.m. while James slept beside me. That's comfort too.

It was a really difficult day.

Sunday dawned anew. I went to early morning yoga. We went on a family walk. Landon had his best buddy/partner over to work on their History Fair project for about 6 hours. They did an awesome job and we just found out they scored a 100 and moved on to the official school competition. I took the girls to see The Greatest Showman. While it obviously glossed over enormous aspects of PT Barnum's life, personality, and business model, we LOVED the movie. It was joyful and fun and exactly what we needed for 2 hours of pure escapism.

Cora felt strongly that tiaras were required; I was also wearing one

We'd been listening to the soundtrack all week, so it was so fun to finally understand what the songs were about and now we love them EVEN MORE. It is the only music that has played in our house since Sunday; Landon is pretty sure he now knows the whole plot (his assumptions and guesses have been cracking us up), though I think James might miss the Christmas music. But just watch this video. It's so wonderful. Hugh Jackman is such a delight.

So that was lovely. Except also on Sunday I woke up with a sore throat, but decided to ignore it through the day as it continued to get worse and worse. I ignored it more on Monday morning as I went in to work to find out what happens to us during a government shut down. A 90-minute meeting later and I realized I was no longer swallowing except under extreme duress. It was like swallowing liquid fire every time and I was content to just let spit pool in my mouth until my gag reflex forced me to take action. I canceled a highly-anticipated lunch I was supposed to eat with a partner I used to work for at V&E and instead headed to urgent care where I was diagnosed with Strep. Because OF COURSE. I get strep at least once a year, and we are in a new year.

Last night was quite bad and I felt very very terrible. James got home from swimming, took a look at me and said I should go lie down. He handled 100% of everything, coming to check on me on the couch, looked at my throat and jumped back exclaiming, "it's like raw hamburger back there!" It made me snort laugh and that hurt like fire and that was pretty much the highlight of the evening. Thanks to heavy drugs I got a good night's sleep until 2 a.m. when I woke up drenched in sweat- I guess my fever broke? I somehow managed to get James's swim bag and steal his towel he had packed for morning practice and stick it on top of my wet sheet and go back to sleep. I have no memory of this, and I'm sure he was surprised to find his towel missing at the pool this morning while also preferring that to me waking him up at 2.

But today is a little better. I stayed home, but the steroid shot and antibiotics are doing what they need to do. I can now swallow without visibly wincing in pain. I'm think I'm operating at about 80% mental capacity. Tomorrow should be even better, I hope. The government is back open and I have a lot of work to do that requires thinking and manual dexterity because of the typing I have to do while also thinking.

But before I close, let's go back to Saturday morning when I took the kids to the Women's March in Fort Worth. It was bright and beautiful and peaceful and powerful. It's hard to capture in words, and even the pictures don't do it justice- it's just such an amazing feeling to be surrounded by people who are WITH you. They are FOR something you are for and they are excited to be there, excited to see you here, excited this whole thing exists. In a time of daily frustration, national humiliation, and/or general horror for whatever is happening in the White House, it's just a positive, happy event.

James was super bummed to miss it, but he had to teach his first set of Saturday lessons at a new people he's leasing in addition to the other new pool he's using during the week. Another instructor of his will teach on future Saturdays, but this was the first one and he needed to be there, so it as just me and the party pack. I realized about 30 seconds in that we should have held on to that old umbrella stroller just a little while longer because Cora, while happy to be there in an abstract sense, also was not happy to be there in a very literal sense.

Luckily, the whims of the toddler were with us, and she did a 180 the other direction a few minutes after trying to yank my leg out of any group pictures and embraced the general mood of the morning and the sign I'd made her.

I ADORE this picture

Super Claire was THRILLED to be in attendance and loved our coordinating signs.

Landon loved reading everyone else's signs out loud and explaining them as needed to Claire. Cora still wasn't sure why we didn't have a stroller like so many other better prepared people, but we did manage a full marching family picture!

The best part, besides seeing 5,000 Fort Worthians gather for the event, was running in to so many people we knew! One because I love feeling like we're part of the community here. We moved here without knowing a single person in all of Fort Worth. Not one. Our kids weren't in public school yet, we don't go to church, we didn't have any community at all. And yet, over 6 years of community involvement, school involvement, sports involvement, barre teaching, small business ownership, and lots of yoga attending, I rarely go anywhere without seeing someone I know. It is the warmest, most wonderful thing after several years of feeling very alone.

But more specifically, it was awesome to see who was with us! A family of swim school clients recognized the kids and ran over to say hi. A barre student I taught at an old studio waved from across the crowd. SEC colleagues, yoga instructors I know and love, neighbors, parents and classmates from the kids school... it was so awesome and purely accidental to have crossed paths in a crowd of 5,0000.

I loved very much being there with the kids. For Landon to see all the men there with their messages and support. For the girls to see all the people there just marching in support of Women. The energy was amazing and I loved that they'll have this memory. They'll read about the Donald Trump presidency one day and I want them to know their dad and I were not okay with it. Any of it. And we voted against it, donated to help those most harmed by it, and generally made our opposition known. This isn't about politics- they'll figure out what they think on actual political issues later, it's morality. It's right and wrong and the presidency and what it should stand for.

And I'm just really glad we were there, together, to soak it in on a gorgeous morning with a few thousand new friends.

My little girl and me, marching together.

It's a happy memory for me and I'm holding on to it with both hands.