A look at my antiquated WordPress dashboard leads the weekly recap (and gives a sneak peek of several future Dazzlers). This was a week where my body forced me to not just slow down, but completely stop, as a non-COVID flu-like thing ravaged me for a full seven days. My body tends to do that every few years, as I’m not prone to sickness like this (I can count two bouts of COVID since 2020 and maybe one flu in all that time). Luckily, most of the weekly posts were written before I was out of commission – have a gander at that nonsense and let’s start 2026 the right way this week.

A new tea cup proved a good friend during times of sickness.

For the love of lunacy.

My 3 AM vice. What’s yours?

“Even when I feel like shit, they still love me.“

A seemingly-unadorned bundt.

“You don’t have to ask us to forget what you just said. It’s the damn default.”

Look who’s killing the white women.

Abstract obscura.

How do you eat an English muffin?

I am Woodstock, hear me chirp.

Smells like Madonna.

The lost art of cursive.

In sickness and in mess.

The age-old battle: who’s hotter, David Beckham or Ben Cohen?

Saturday night right.

The road to the Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy begins with this spotlight on Ilia Malinin.

Our country is a cartoon, and I say that with hard love.

A wonderful winter read.

Dazzlers of the Day included Ari Seth Cohen and Alysa Liu.

We’ve seen it with our own eyes.

Over and over again.

White men killing innocent people.

And everybody else getting the blame.

Don’t look away now.

This is us.

Whoa, this has been a week.

From physical illness to the emotional sickness that the current state of our country has brought to anyone with a brain and a heart, this year has already proven to be a doozy. Personally, I’m going to have to unplug from everything, and everyone, at some point, because it’s all too much. That sucks to say, but it’s ok to say, and ok to do from time to time. Making it through the work day and exercising the requirements of adulthood will constitute just about all I can handle – the rest is going to have be about escapism and distance from the reality around us.

Andy and I don’t have any children of our own, and that’s always been our deliberate choice. While I’ve wondered about it at times, I’m not sorry about it, especially when considering the world we would be leaving them. The United States is in a death spiral, especially on the world stage, and I don’t think we’ll see a time when we will be like we once were. I feel lucky to have been around when we were respected. When we were beloved. When we were celebrated.

Tonight, I feel exhaustion at caring this much about a country that is now ruled by people who clearly have issues with a person like me – and so I lean into time with Andy. I shut the door to a world unwelcoming to difference. I cut myself off from people who go along with it because they either choose not to know anything, or choose to ignore it.

Inside our home, there is warmth and love and kindness and acceptance. Comfort and safety and light. It will get us through this night, it will get us through this winter, and it will get us through this world.

In the midst of whatever flu-type thing I’ve had this past week, the cellar sofa is a mess of pillows and blankets and discarded robes. One moment I would be chilled – shaking and shivering and piling on a robe and blankets and cranking the fireplace – and the next I would be overheating and sweating like I was back in menopause. Oh how the jokes come when you’re sick and nothing seems funny.

The one happy note in all the sadness and frustration of being sick has been Andy’s help in making our home a comfort and a haven. We had to let our Christmas tree go after what had been a banner year for beauty, and he put the room back together, vacuuming more pine needles than any previous year that either of us could remember. More importantly, he’s been kind enough to make up the bed before I get back into it at night – there’s something so much more comfortable about a bed that’s been made and turned down for bedtime than one that is left undone form the morning. I know there is no scientific basis for this, it’s all in my head, and that doesn’t make it less moving.

Lucy’s great.

Snoopy’s a trip.

But it is Woodstock who is my favorite.

(Do note that his puffer is not basic black.)

Our winter of obscura moves slowly forward, though it may not feel like it. We are somewhere near the saddest day of the year, but not wanting to dwell or get stuck in such muck, I’m not going to look it up to determine certainty. This is not the winter for that. We live in the haze; we honor the abstract. This post, and its accompanying visuals, will attest to that.

A wave crashing its sudsy body across the shore.

A ghost gradually assuming plasma form.

A microcosmic take on the edges of a crepe, more torn and fringed than our naked eye could ever make out.

Or the mesmerizing motions of a car wash.

Life is beauty, and beauty’s where you find it.

Outside, I watch a blue jay and a squirrel make their way through the winter. The squirrel has greater difficulty in getting across the yard – all that snow and ice – while the blue jay just flits and flies above the wintry wreckage. There is beauty there too. In the winter…

I saw the video, so if you are hearing anything other than the fact that an ICE officer shot a US citizen in the face as she was trying to drive away from them you need to seek the video out to see for yourself. She’s dead now, so the immutable fact remains that ICE has killed an innocent American citizen who was only using her 1st Amendment rights.

This is all on Trump.

This is all on the GOP.

This is all on anyone who voted for him, or chose not to vote against him.

This is all on everyone who refuses to say anything beyond this point.

In many ways, we are all complicit, but some much more than others, and I’m not going to be silent about it. When history records this disgusting period of American government, my voice will be, and has been, consistently against this current administration and what they are doing. Where is your voice? What will you tell your children? What will your actions show them?