Thoughts from an American Female

I thought it might be interesting to compare the resume of Robert Mueller to that of Donald Trump. Care to take a peak? (I tried to keep it objective.) Robert Swan Mueller III Donald John Trump Sr. DOB August 7, 1944 June 14, 1946 Place of Birth New York City New York City Place Raised Philadelphia New York City High School St. Paul's, New Hampshire New York Military Academy High School Sport Captain of the Soccer Team Soccer Political Affiliation Republican Party Republican Party College Princeton Fordham Wharton University of Pennsylvania Degree Bachelor's in Politics Bachelor's in Economics Graduate School New York University Degree Master's in International Relations Military Marine Corp. Deferred Military Awards Bronze Star (with valor) Purple Heart Medal Navy Commendation Medal (2) (with ...

It's weird but I feel like November has been December for three weeks. I don't know why but my body keeps telling me that it's December and it has been. In fact, Thanksgiving feels like it happened weeks ago rather than just one week ago. Maybe it's the fact that I have little kids and they are getting ready for Christmas and are filled with excitement over the prospect of Santa Claus and presents. Or maybe it's because Thanksgiving came a little earlier than usual this year. Whatever it is, it's a weird feeling. The last time something like this happened to me was in October of 2014. After the month ended, I felt like it was still October until well into February of the following year. It truly makes no sense considering time is an invented human concept. Most of our ancient ancestors and nearly all of our animal friends don't give a hoot about time down to the second. Months aren't even real, it's just a thing we do. It feels like it's be...

I know I'm not the only person feeling frustrated. I know that I'm not the minority when I fight against injustice and wrongness. I know that I have allies and because I know that, I keep on going and try to stay positive. So what causes most of my frustration? This guy: Ever since Donald Trump stumbled onto the scene, he's been a problem. He has one motivator, money. He also happens to be a racist and a misogynist. He also happens to be a serial liar and a serial cheater. Donald Trump is still living in the days when it was totally acceptable to: Use racial epithets in public Smack his secretary on the ass for a job well done Whistle at females under his employ Routinely telling females in his employ that they are "beautiful" Deny renting to minorities Assume all minorities are criminals Assume that a person has to look a certain way to be of a certain heritage Promote white men to the highest levels of authority Build a thicker glass ceil...

In June of 2015 Donald Trump announced he was running for President of the United States. It wasn't the first time he ran but it was the first time he had some serious backing by some of Americas most serious enemies. Starting here rather than before he was a potential candidate for President seems more prudent than going backwards into his awful mob-like business ways. Prudent only for the sake of blog length and time. If I were to venture back 30 plus years rather than 3, I'd have a lengthy novel. So I write this knowing that the horror that is Donald Trump started a very long time ago and the links on the chain go so deep underneath the surface that it is simply too hard to bring them all up. We begin in June 2015. Chain link 1: His announcement speech painted a picture of an America in trouble. It was as colorful as any dystopian novel and ripe with lies and hate. This is the beginning of the chain. This is the start of the Trump devout. They clung to his words, his ...

I woke up this morning with the muscles in my legs and back feeling like I ran a marathon. (I don't run). I sat up, coughed a deep horrible cough, and remembered that I have the flu. I never really understood what the flu was. I never get a flu shot, that changes now. Each morning since Wednesday of last week I woke up with a fever. The fever only went away when I took Tylenol. If I fell asleep and missed the dose the fever came back. I started to feel like I would never, ever, get better. I was scared. People die from the flu and what if I was doing it all wrong? I was taking Tamiflu, Tylenol, Mucinex, Albuterol and drinking a 28 ounce Gatorade every two hours. I was sleeping. I sat in the shower a few times. I slept some more. Then Sunday morning the cough was all that remained. I rested yesterday and that brings me to now. From the CDC: Flu can cause mild to severe illness, and at times can lead to death . Flu is different from a cold. Flu usually comes on suddenly. P...

"Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something." - Man in Black Have you ever had those days where you feel like the only lesson is the lesson above? That life is pain? I feel that way today. I'm sitting at my desk feeling self-conscious, feeling every ounce of depression I possess flowing through me. I feel alone, awkward, sad, uncertain...I feel pain. I feel loss. A close family member died rather suddenly. His fight was one he knew he wouldn't win. Cancer very rarely allows its opponent to succeed. The world lost another great man and here we are, those that loved him, in pain. Life is all about letting go, I know that. I know that this is a temporary existence but how can we reconcile that fact knowing that our time could be up any second? I don't want to live my life waiting. I want to live my life living. If there is a heaven and I get there, I want to make sure I did everything in my power to have the be...

When someone is guilty and they know it they often go on the offensive. Meaning, they will blame others for exactly what they are guilty of. This is also called deflection. We have seen this with Donald Trump so many times, not just in the last three years but, over the last thirty that he has been in the public eye. His bankruptcies, his draft dodging, his mistresses, etc. He has floated through life shielded first by his father and next by his own lawyers. He has lied, done wrong, lied about and done wrong again. Never has it caught up to him, not once. Fast-forward to now: The 1st Amendment, Freedom of the Press became secondary to a domestic terrorist yesterday when Donald Trump told Jim Acosta that he was the "enemy of the people." Donald Trump, the President of the United States, defended the pipe bomber and attacked Jim Acosta, a man doing his job. An intern was flagged to aggressively take Jim Acosta's microphone and then, true to authoritarian form, ...

Ever since I saw this quote I've been thinking about it. Craving as defined by Merriam-Webster: "A powerful desire for something." So I stopped. Thought. Realized, Buddha is right. When I'm on the train in the morning, I want to get to work. When I'm at my desk, I want to get to the train. When I'm on the train in the evening, I want to get home. ...and repeat. If I stop wanting, what happens? I actually find myself in the moment.  Yesterday, after I voted, I was heading toward the door not realizing there were signs everywhere telling me where the exit was. I didn't even realize there was another door until a policeman pointed to it and an old lady yelled at me that I was going the wrong way. I was embarrassed and felt like everyone was looking at me. Then, I thought of Buddha. If I'm living in the moment, who cares? Yeah, I messed up, things happened, but who cares? So, I put my shoulders back, held my head up high, and...

As many of you may know I am a huge fan of Audible.com. I listen to books during my commute and because of Audible I have exposed myself to books that I would have had a hard time sitting down and reading, not only because of the lack of time I have, but because of the nature of the content. I tend to like fiction over non-fiction. My latest listen is a book called Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind . It's fascinating. A few chapters back the author spoke on gender differences and various theories about why patriarchal societies throughout history far outweigh matriarchal societies. Biologists and anthropologists can't seem to come to any type of logical conclusion for this. The author floated one out that I'm going to editorialize on. He said that women are "more cooperative" than men and have seemed to not really care about conquering new lands or being motivated by wanting power. Men, on the other hand, wanted power, they wanted to fight, they wanted ...

Mythology is rich with depictions of female warriors. In Greek mythology we have Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. Her Roman counterpart is Diana. In Norse mythology there is talk of female warriors called Shield-Maidens.  For centuries these women were assumed to be the product of fantasy until last year. "New DNA evidence uncovered by researchers at Uppsala University and Stockholm University shows that there were in fact female Viking warriors. The remains of an iconic Swedish Viking Age grave now reveal that war was not an activity exclusive to males – women could be found in the higher ranks at the battlefield." ( Ancient Pages.com ) llustration by Evald Hansen based on the original plan of the grave by excavator Hjalmar Stolpe, published in 1889 The  mythical female warriors known as Shieldmaidens may have been the basis for the mythical ‘Valkyries.’  Somewhere along the line, I'm assuming after the fall of a prior Matriarchal society, men b...

The day before Halloween, 1922, in Jamaica, New York a baby was born to an African-American couple with roots in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. The young baby was named Marie Van Brittan Brown and she would grow up to invent the very first home security system. Marie worked as a nurse and her husband, Albert, was an electronics technician. As one can imagine they worked irregular hours and their lives probably closely mirrored the family dynamic of today. With two young children, and the slow response time of police to her neighborhood where crime was on the rise, she became inspired to create a device to make herself feel safer in her own home. Using four peep holes, a camera on a slider and a television, she was able to see who was on the other side of the door without fear. She also enabled the door to be unlocked via remote control. All of this took place in 1966. She and her husband were granted a patent for the system in 1969. What I enjoy the most about Marie's st...

This woman was an inventor. She created an invention that helped enable Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth. She was also a Hollywood Starlet. Her name was Hedy Lamarr. The reason I chose Hedy Lamarr as my first woman is because men simply found her too beautiful to be smart. As my grandmother used to say, "Many a tear rolls down a pretty girl's cheek" and this is part of the reason why. Beauty and brains are not mutually exclusive. In the 1940's she invented frequency hopping device that jumped around radio frequencies to avoid a third party from jamming the signal. She donated this device to the United States military to fight the Nazis. The kicker? The military didn't use it. Why not? They, like many of the men in her life, discounted her intellect because she was just too pretty. It wasn't until after World War II that the device was used and it paved the way for what all of us now take for granted.  Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler was born in Vienna on Novemb...

There's too much. All of it. It's just too much. I feel like Republicans assessed whatever the average tolerance level humans possess for bullshit before they shut down, and just decided to go full throttle. If someone is a good citizen and tries to be a good person most of them time, one slip up looks like a dinosaur ending meteor. When someone is a bucket of suck, a lifetime of mistakes and borderline criminal behavior, it's like, "What? Shit, where do I look? There's shit all over the place. I can't...I can't see normal through the shit." That's where we are. We are inside a glass box that is covered with shit and since we are inside, we can't even clean the shit off to see through to normal. I know that's a crass description but I just want one day where I can ignore the news. I want one day where I trust that our leadership will do the right thing. I can't. We elected a criminal and republicans are so disgusting that they are...

No one knows what they would have done in my shoes, or anyone else's shoes for that matter, because they weren't in my shoes. When I was 19, incredibly drunk and wanting to go home, I trusted a guy I worked with to give me a ride. I didn't expect that he would drive me back to his apartment. In fact, I don't even remember getting out of his car and into his apartment. In retrospect, should I have gone with him? No, probably not. Should I have drank in excess? No, especially not at 19. Should I have demanded he take me home as soon as I saw that his apartment clearly wasn't my home? Yeah, most likely. But that's not what happened. When I was 21, at a party, intoxicated, passing out in an upstairs bedroom should I have locked the door? Yeah. Should I have told my friends where I was going? Yeah. But I didn't. We can't "should" all over ourselves. There's nothing I can do to change what happened but I sure as hell can fight to change...

I've been sad for a number of reasons (one of which is that I learned that a close family member has terminal cancer, it's very sudden and I'm very sad about it). I also get depressed when the seasons shift anyway, it's part of my illness, but I'm also sad because of certain news stories that come out. I'm sad that time after time men in positions of power abuse their power, and then other men call the woman coming forward a liar. This is sad, and it's outrageous and it needs to stop. My son is three years old. I say things to him like, "If Charlotte is playing with a ball you want, make sure you ask permission before taking it away." Yeah, it's subtle, but he needs to learn that he can't just take what isn't his. I have to start young because not having these conversations with our boys leads to greater issues. Ignoring it by calling it "locker room talk" or saying things like, "boys will be boys" just perpetuate...

I've spoken openly about my illnesses. I have anxiety and depression and have suffered with both my entire life. I know I say "illnesses" but in truth, they are two sides of the same coin. Today, I'm having a very hard time struggling with cognitive distortion. If you don't know what cognitive distortion is, you probably have dealt with it but just don't know if by name. One example: I can't do anything right. I'm the worst. Everyone hates me. Another example: What would happen if I jumped in front of that train? These thoughts happen to all of us but I swear that my vivid imagination deliver them to me in ultra 3D and sometimes, it's too much to bear. Today, I feel like I'm being bombarded with negative thoughts and I am trying to hone in on why and can't come up with anything. In therapy, they teach you to "HALT" and think are you H-hungry, A-Angry, L-Lonely, T-Tired? Hungry? No, I ate. Angry? Yeah, but I'm alw...