If there was a biography about you, what would the title be?

According to my son the subtitle of this blog—GenX Mom Keeps Calm & Carries On—is not accurate. According to him, I am not calm or “chill.” He says his father’s the calm one.

I started this blog shortly after I turned 50, in the fall of 2015. The name seemed about right at the time. I wrote six posts about regular mom/life stuff in 2015-16. Then all hell broke loose. The pussy-grabbing star of “Celebrity Apprentice” won the presidential election over a highly-qualified former Secretary of State and US Senator, even though she got 2,864,974 more votes than he did. Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump in the popular vote by more than the population of the City of Chicago, which has 2.66 million people. I’ve been to Chicago. It’s huge. It’s a huge city. Hillary Clinton beat Trump by more than a Chicago. Think about it.

Clearly I was traumatized by the election of Donald J. Trump and all that followed, including learning that I had Trump supporters among my nearest and dearest.

Blogging suddenly seemed pointless. I didn’t even think about blogging regularly again until Trump was safely out of DC and Biden was sworn in.

That whole time period after the 2020 election, when the networks took forever to declare Biden the winner and Trump kept saying the election was rigged and would not concede, was SO F***ED UP. Those crazy images of “Stop the Steal” rallies in Arizona and endless, needless recounts in Georgia with Trump caught on tape telling officials to “find him 11,780 more votes” like a mafia boss. WTF. We are the United States of America. This doesn’t happen here.

And then…and THEN…two weeks before Biden’s inauguration a fucking RIOT inside the United States Capitol while Congress convened to certify Joe Biden’s electoral win—a perfunctory, procedural, ceremonial event that never caused a stir before in my entire life. And now we’ve got Senators hiding under benches and Vice Presidents being whisked away by the secret service?!?

OK, so clearly I’m not calm anymore. I may never have been. It’s sad that I’ve been like this for so much of my son’s life. He was just 15 when Trump won, and now he’s a senior in college.

I probably won’t change the name of my blog (because I’m not sure how to do it and I’d probably end up deleting the whole thing by accident), but I’ll try to find a more accurate title for my imaginary forthcoming biography. Suggestions welcomed.

Here are a few more pictures of my one and only trip to Chicago. I went with high school friends not long after we reunited for our 20th reunion. We were 40. We liked it!