Today I began by reading how to escape from quicksand. I think these kinds of articles are really important to begin the day with if you have anxiety. First of all, it doesn’t matter that you may never encounter quicksand. The important thing is that you know how to escape it. Now you can laugh. I find myself reading all of these articles in the morning. Yesterday I read how to save yourself from drowning by removing your pants and making them into a lifejacket. I do recall doing this when I was in Red Cross life-saving at about age 14. I loved Red Cross life saving classes as I thought they might carryover into my normal life, my every day life because there were so many things I needed to save myself from. I was like an Encyclopedia Brittanica of disasters. I was saving myself from bad shit. Now I’m so happy because people mention one thing or another like what the hell do you do when you’re attic has rats in it or bats or insects and of course, I know the answer from years of studying how to prevent things like this from endangering me. They’re very few people in the world like me that contain all this knowledge of disaster, preparedness, and what kind of tools you need from it. For example: years ago, I read about this tool that you could keep in your car that would break your window from the inside in case you drove off a bridge into a body of water. I sent one to my son who is the only other person who likes this kind of thing. I found out years later that we both still had ours in the car in case this happened. This is somehow reassuring to me and makes me feel like I’m not completely bonkers, but I find having information to prevent disaster or at least handle disaster is a really good thing.

At this point now, I have no idea how we are going to handle the disaster if Donald Trump becomes president. I have no idea what we will do with JD Vance who hates everything and everyone that isn’t exactly white bread straight, hard-working gun carrying survivor kind of person. if you take one of those on their own, it’s just fine but if you add them all up together and face the kind of world we could face it’s not a good thing. Even though over the years, I have supported the Democratic Party and will continue to do so, at this point, I don’t know how we came to this point. The only thing I do know is that I really love Kamala Harris’s choice of vice president. I think that he is an extraordinary human being and tonight I feel hopeful that may be that ticket has a chance. I sure hope so because I haven’t found a disaster story that will teach me how to deal with the world with Trump as president.