A few days after the election, my brother texted me. While we hadn’t yet spoken, I had posted about canceling our Thanksgiving plans and had a feeling the ripples would start hitting shore. While the text was far from perfect, he hit upon some of the basic ways anyone who voted for Trump can care for the people in their lives reeling from this election.

There are twenty-one days until the 2024 election. Looking at the last seven days of our lives, four of them contained crying. Wait. Make that five.

Previously, whenever we moved to a new state, switching our driver’s license was way down on the list; somewhere between locating a dry cleaner and buying new address labels. However this is an election year. And yes, I know I now live in the bluest state in the nation, but as we all painfully learned in 2016, to assume is to make an ass out of the Office of the President and me, so you can be damned sure I’m voting in this one.

“Oh! Do you guys watch that show,” NY child psychiatrist said.

“Watch it? She has it memorized,” I laughed pointing at Jen.

“You’re so cool,” squealed the doctor.

And this was the moment the evening turned from Strangers in a Cooking Class to Generational Social Experiment of Americans in a Foreign Country.

Our life in Southern California was lived in a spectacular bubble. Every day we woke up the sun was shining. Waves peeled along miles of pristine beaches, lined with stately homes positioned to view pods of dolphins and gasp worthy sunsets.

For the second time in two weeks, I have accidentally super glued my fingers. The first was in trying to glue the handle back onto my rice cooker after the cord wrapped around my leg, dragging it off of the counter, causing it to smash on the floor.

I’m one of those people who finds a loose thread on my favorite shirt, the kind that dangles so seductively and yet threatens to destroy the item that I love, and I pull it. Maybe not all the way but definitely until the garment is irreparably damaged. This is exactly what I did with my own mental health the weekend they reversed Roe vs. Wade.