Life According to Steph: time change

1. I have issues with the time change in the spring, but I have been killing it in the mornings this week because Bruce gets up at 5:00, which he thinks is 6:00. Full dark by 5:15 pm is hard to bear though. Why do we still do this?

2. Gather 'round, children, and let me tell you a story of a first world problem: last week I got an email saying Amazon Fresh is no longer delivering to my area after 11/30. I've tried other grocery delivery services, and I will go back to one of them and also try Fresh Direct, but what I loved most about Amazon Fresh was the ability to schedule a delivery I did not have to attend. So I could wake up to groceries on my doorstep at 7 am or come home to them waiting for me at 7 pm. Damn you, grocery delivery world. If you told me in 1998 that I'd be bitching and picky about grocery delivery in 2017, I would've laughed at you.

3. What are you reading? Show Us Your Books is Tuesday! I started three books this week and discarded them all because I only want to read the books I'm getting from the library Friday (The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine and Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark T. Sullivan) and the ones coming from Book of the Month Club (Bonfire by Krysten Ritter and Turtles All the Way Down by John Green). Impatience kills. I did settle on The Seven Rules of Elvira Carr on my kindle for now.

4. I crafted shit last night. Who am I? I consider myself both not interested in crafts and not creative. But the craft was painting a freaking CERAMIC CHRISTMAS TREE of the kind that I am obsessed with. I think this is like number nine or 10 in my collection? I will count this year. It was a good, fun, funny Wednesday night with girlfriends. Thanks for letting me crash your event Lauren, Jill, Dot, & fam! And thanks to Dot for securing the tickets.

5. Sad news for Philly fans this week. We claimed you as our own Roy Halladay.

6. Eat 10 dicks, guy who referred to himself as Virginia's "chief homophobe." I needed this Election Day. The resistance is real. Lots of wins were historic: Andrea Jenkins is the first openly transgender black woman elected to City Council in a major U.S. city - you go, Minneapolis; also in MN St. Paul elected its first black mayor; NJ elected its first female black lieutenant gov; Charlotte, NC elected its first female black mayor; Framingham, MA elected its first mayor since becoming a city, and that mayor is a black female; Manchester, NH elected its first woman mayor in the city's 266 year history; Erie, PA has the distinction of electing the first openly transgender person in the state to its school board; Hoboken, NJ elected the first Sikh mayor; Elizabeth Guzman and Hala Ayala defeated incumbents to become the first two latinas elected to the VA House of Delegates; a refugee who arrived from Liberia 23 years ago is Helena, MT's first black mayor; Seattle elected its first lesbian mayor - and the first woman mayor in 92 years; Kathy Tran, a Vietnamese refugee, became the first Asian-American woman in VA's House; Lancaster, PA, has its first latina member of city council; Philly elected an extremely progressive anti-mass incarceration DA in Larry Krasner...on and on. I am thrilled to see more women, more black and brown people, and more LGBTQIA people in offices. I want diverse people of all backgrounds at our tables. Rooms full of older white men do not fulfill that desire. Look at the photos below of the before and after of the VA house seats flipping. The difference is incredible. Women are stepping up to lead and I applaud them. Especially the black women who have been stepping up for years in communities with no acknowledgment. A staggering 91% of black women voted for Northam to take the VA Gov seat. Thank you, ladies, for not voting against your own interests. You lead, I will follow. Trust black women.

7. I have a hair appointment tonight, and seriously not a moment too soon. The grays are nuts. Probably because of things like MFD not going through his paper hoarding boxes or things like the most recent slide into authoritarianism list or things like...

8. Another mass shooting, barely any coverage since the shooter was white. White people! Stop blaming black and brown people for ruining this country. We're doing it. We are content with doing nothing? We don't even want to TRY a study on gun violence? Did people recognize that thoughts and prayers are not a fucking solution to the cycle of every two months/mass shooting so they just stopped mentioning it at all?