Bombs and an illegal kidnapping in Venezuela. Murder in Minneapolis. A President with no morality, claiming he is limited only by his morality.
We’re only nine days in, and it’s already the longest dry January ever. God, I need a drink. February never looked so good.
In Chinese astrology, the year of the Fire Horse starts on February 17, 2026. According to Google’s AI generated summary, the Fire Horse represents:
intense passion, dynamism, transformation, and powerful forward momentum, blending the Horse’s inherent traits of freedom, strength, and action with Fire’s energy for change and clarity, making it a year for bold decisions, innovation, and embracing new growth, but requiring mindful channeling to avoid chaos.
OK, transformation, freedom, change, clarity, and innovation sound good, along with embracing new growth. But the Fire Horse is also said to embody “yang,” or masculine energy.
Oh yay, just what we need. More overgrown, petulant little boys with Daddy issues and huge chips on their shoulders competing for dominance and gleefully seeking revenge. Mindful channeling? Barkeep! Make that a double!
Google’s AI says that while the Fire Horse encourages bold, passionate action, expressiveness, daring, and innovation, it also requires balance between “fiery impulsiveness” and “focused purpose.”
Right now, my focused purpose is to make it through January, crossing the days off one at a time, marking the progress of my arid slog toward February’s wet relief. And I ain’t talking about snow.
Regarding caution combined with bold action, over the past several weeks, “views” of this blog have gone through the roof, driven, it would appear, by some kind of crawler bot, possibly out of Singapore. So, Singaporean crawler bot, if you’re a prelude to a marketing pitch, hear this: I never pay anyone for views or clicks, so if that’s your goal (“look what I did for you!”) you can forget it.
But if any of all those hundreds of views represented breathing human beings who actually read some of the posts they “viewed,” um, thanks, I guess.
Look, I’m no astrology freak, but I find the attempt to make sense of cyclical seasons, eras, and epochs intriguing. I was born in the year of the pig. I’m supposed to pay attention to my health during the Fire Horse year. I’m being diligent about exercise, portion control, and healthy eating. I’ve got a long-delayed dental appointment later this month, and today I scheduled a shingles vaccine, a mammogram….and a haircut. Turns out I feel better when I make an effort to look ok. Who knew?
Finally, there’s mental health. Yesterday I forced myself to watch the video of the Minneapolis murder, as well as the New York Times stop motion analysis of it, which proves that the federal government and Trump’s flunkies are lying about what happened and are gaslighting everyone who witnessed it or has seen the video, as if we can’t believe our own eyes. It shows that the the thug who fired the shots was not “run over,” and that the victim was trying to leave. It also shows that the murderer’s accomplices refused to allow a man who said he was a doctor to provide emergency aid. When he identified himself as a physician, one goon walked toward him and said “I don’t care.” Well, at least that was the truth.
A Facebook friend posted this video from a therapist about how it’s normal to be feeling broken right now, but “you’re not broken. You’re having a visceral, healthy response to fascism.”
Every day of the Trump regime has become an exercise in rage management. Kindness, much less forgiveness, for anyone whose vote enabled this disaster is hard to dredge up.
Ms. Good was universally described as kind. Her widowed wife said that she believed “there is kindness in the world and we need to do everything we can to find it where it resides and nurture it where it needs to grow.” She “was a Christian who knew that all religions teach the same essential truth: we are here to love each other, care for each other, and keep each other safe and whole.”
I think about the shooter. Will he wake up in a cold sweat with Ms. Good’s bloodied, lifeless face staring at him? Did he think about her orphaned 6 year old son, whose father died just two years ago, or about her other two children? Can he admit to himself that he’s a coward, and a murderer? If one day he is put on trial and found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, will he seek forgiveness?
I’m not holding my breath.
Trying to shake off simultaneous paralysis and rage, and to nurture kindness in my heart, where it definitely needs to grow, I remain,
your alternately furious and forlorn,
Ridiculouswoman
It is amazing that we are here at this time when we grew up with very different assumptions of what the world was supposed to look like. And though it was never as rosy as we were led to believe, we were not looking for the underbelly of how our democratic institutions came about. But now we are alive to see it unraveled more rapidly than we thought possible. It is a daily lesson to cycle through shock, anger, despair, and sorrow to find our own centers (drinking is one way, of course🙂). It is a lot of work to act where we can, and hold our hearts open facing the brunt of this tsunami of destruction. Bonding with the millions of heartful people who are not in the headlines and believing there are millions more will one day turn the tide of the darkness around . In my lifetime? I cannot know but there are years of rebuilding to be done when the power of light is refocused in the world once again. May the Fire Horse be a part of that light.
Tganks, Judi!
Drinking? No
Protest? Yes
Chaos has been continual since January 20th/2025. People had short memories of the previous 2016-2020 administration.
But people have begun to wake up. Even a few who had voted for the current administration. And the fact that a few Republican representatives and senators have begun to step away from the circle of destruction to say NO may be the start of the undoing of the dictator and his minions.
There will indeed be a lot to undo to move forward. Hope requires action and our action should be for supporting those who do not step back from justice and freedom of speech.
The current administrations vision of the future is dark and self serving. But it is my hope that those who understand how important this moment in time is will not be afraid to counter their actions.
Thank you for your blog!!
Thanks for reading! I’ve attended two No Kings protests but couldn’t get out today for a protest about the murder in Minneapolis. But people won’t fall for the absurd, mendacious defenses offered up by the pumpkin head’s demon minions, like the video Vance released, where after Renee Good said “I’m not mad at you” and tried to leave, the murderer shot her in cold blood and called her a bitch as she lay dying, without medical aid for at least ten minutes. Perhaps when it sinks in to the Trumpalumpas, including MAGAts, that they’re being told not to trust their own eyes, they’ll finally figure out that they’ve been lied to all along.
January is the worst month to be dry! It is a depressing month that is really depressing this year. I say go dry in July! Thanks for expressing what so many of us are feeling. It is almost too much to comprehend!