Patchen Tree Farm Family photo semi-success!

A preamble seems necessary here. Why? Because these photos involve a fringe-y skull poncho, and if you're 1/18th as excited about this thing as I am, we need to discuss it.

Step One: Do Not Own Dogs.

The sudden arrival of hundreds of tiny black specks in my bed should have been a sign that there was something amiss. And yet each morning for the past week I have straightened our sheets and fluffed our pillows while brushing these hundreds of tiny black specks off of our bed and onto the floor, become passingly annoyed at Kendrick for having gotten into bed with dirty feet (or dirty something)...and then forgotten about the whole thing until the next morning, when I have once again found myself brushing hundreds of tiny black specks off of our bed and onto the floor.

This story is going exactly where you think it is, so if you want to stop reading now please be my guest.

Supergirl on a Sunday morning.

This weekend was rough. I'm aware that the general consensus is "we took a few days off to be upset; now it's time to toughen up and get moving," and I agree with that sentiment for the most part (at least the "toughen up and get moving" part), but these past couple of days weren't any easier than the ones that came before it. Graffiti ("TRUMP!") popped up on my quiet little street for the first time since I've lived here. This happened. I drove my children to the park on Sunday afternoon, and a few minutes before we got there my son asked to hear a new song, so I decided to play Hallelujah for him - in retrospect, an absolutely catastrophic song choice, and one that resulted in me having to try to explain to my children why sometimes songs make us cry.

But something else happened this weekend, and it meant so much to me that despite the fact that I'm aware that only very close relatives (might) consider a five-year-old's piano recital Must-See TV, I'm going to post it here anyway. You guys have been with me since the day this kid was born, and...I don't know, I just wanted to share this with you. It's a pretty beautiful thing, watching children turn into the people they will be in the future.

See that, way out there? That's the future. And it's still female.

I'm not sure how to move on from what happened on Tuesday. As a person, I'm not sure of the best way to apply myself to this "fighting back" thing we're all talking about. I'm not even sure how to sleep again. As a writer, I have no idea how to return to my regular schedule of cute shoes and funny parenting stories, or how to sit down today and start moving through to a to-do list that includes such imperatives as "start compiling holiday gift guide," and "post flat-lay to IG."

When you awaken to find yourself in a strange and terrifying new world, how do you just stand up and start walking again? I wish I knew. But I'm pretty sure that the answer is "you just do, because you have to." And because doing nothing is never an option, and is even less of one now.