Recession is the new black, skinned knees are the new blue

We sit in groups around tables around kitchens around televisions sound muted, men in tight pants against a background of vibrant green, men in blue suits, hovering over slow cookers simmering inexpensive but delicious things. We keep our voices down, to coat the panic, to toe the line of nonchalance, we'll be alright, we'll be alright, we tell one another, nobody is going to let anybody starve, we will all keep our houses, we will keep our roofs and our blankets and ramen if it gets that bad, pray that it doesn't, we'll make it through.

We hush involuntarily, drink too much, accidentally kiss the ones we should not, mire a little in guilt, mire a little in exhilaration, move forward, keep moving forward.

Survive a layoff, feel an avalanche of sympathy for those who fell before the axe, and a surge of relief that it wasn't your skin, not this time, not yet.

Where did this world come from, because it isn't mine. Or it is mine, it's my inheritance after all these years of a recklessly bejeweled search for wealth, where everyone was entitled to exorbitant handbags, where there was a long stretch of time when I only bought matching sets of frilly french lingerie. It's true. Right along with the shoes and handbags and really expensive hair. I am keeping my hair, fuck you, you can pry it from my cold ramen noodle hands.

I keep wondering why none of the talking heads remember the cyclical nature of history, we are on the precipice of decline, it happens every three hundred years or so, accept when the cycle is accelerated: see Europe wars I and II.

With that comes art, and literature, and all of the beautiful things that break our hearts and keep us human. That is a trite answer for something that greater minds have puzzled over.

Still. Still. Here comes the unknown. We've pitched all of our expectations at unexpected President. There is hope, there is always hope, that magical, elliptical silvertine thread, it's the quiet that underscores those hushed conversations, it's starlight and moonlight and in the pinking of daybreak, it's the cold hard practicality of weighing eggs against milk and beef against lentils. And also this, some of us are going to weather this and learn some hard lessons that will serve us well, some of us are going to lose everything, some of us already have.

I have begun to count my blessings every minute of every day and I am determined to pay it forward, where I cannot account for cold hard dollars I will pay forward in small acts of kindness and good neighborly-ness. I'll tell you this, these days, more than ever, in a really long time, I wish, I wish I had somebody to nestle into. Just a pair of warm arms, that is all.

In local news, I fell up some stairs at a super bowl party took off a good seven layers of epidermis and nominally won the chili cook-off. Since then my left knee is threatening to go septic and I was laid out by sinus infection. I am missing something, it itches miserably like a phantom limb, I could probably pinpoint it if I chose to.

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five years. I have been doing this intermittently and sometimes with ferocity for five years now.
Congratulations my dearest alter Emma B., you got gumption girl.