window of opportunity

I haven't blogged much because it seems like a lot of work to get photos downloaded onto my smartphone, then go over to the laptop to download them, and then back to my smartphone if I want to seize the window of opportunity to leave my actual balcony window open (with the screen door shut, of course) and sit out here, pink flannel nightgown to match the magnolia blossoms along one tree in a still mostly gray background of other tree branches - and bright yellow forsythia, and a little shy like green on a some trees in the background of a yard across the street.  The tree outside our bedroom window in the morning shows the first angles of reddish buds if I look closely, but most of all the birds are squalling and tweeting their conversation.  My cat hears it too, and lies rolling on the rug just inside the screen door, biting his toy fish, one of the few toys he has left that has the idea level of flimsiness because I haven't darned it too much. 

It's the kind of day when I ask myself why I don't start every day like this, not being able to relate, at this moment, to the fact that just yesterday morning I felt the need for gloves as I walked outside.  I'm also luxuriating in my flannel peppermint-striped Granny gown because from the balcony I can't be seen, and the birds actually mostly drown out the traffic (which occasionally includes heavy municipal trucks since our block is a conduit to the borough hall and downtown businesses district). 

I don't have many adventures these days, and I only occasionally mind.  There are times I'd like to get out, driving an hour or so into the mountains or taking the train into the city and emerging from Penn station to find skyscrapers swirling all around me as I try to connect with Central Park or the New York Public library or anywhere that people might be speaking up to Trump.

I did say I wanted to chroniclenthe times in which I find myself living.  Yesterday was a little bit pivotal here at home because Jamesie said he was getting worried about the tariffs and what they would mean fi his job security. I had been telling him since Trump got reelected (after the 2020 election I had hoped he was never going to be back in the White House!) that he would begin disappearing people off of American streets, which he now has, especially with that woman at Tufts University who was taken by masked people into an unmarked vehicle and, I think, is now being held somewhere in Louisiana - all because she wrote an op-ed in her University newspaper expressing support for Palestine but not urging any violence.   As a Jew I have all the more obligation to acknowledge that it's happening.  So Saturday I'll go, with it without my husband, to one of the 50501 demonstrations either in Sussex County (which has great pastoral beauty but is supposed to be very conservative) or into Glen Ridge, which, I think, is through the usual tangle of traffic on NJ-17 and probably NJ-04 here Bergen County.

(Break to top off my coffee cup. I hope I'll still be able to get through a cup of coffee when soy milk and chocolate protein powder become unavailable, holding out because I'll have to, as millions do when there is scarcity. I hope then the support of solidarity, whether close by or in spirit, will sustain my physical energy).