Still at a loss for words

This morning, I found myself thinking about what I would do if my return flight next week is cancelled, meaning if all flights including domestic ones are grounded. Which is a ridiculous thing to imagine happening, but the last ten days have been so ridiculous, to use the kindest word I can, that who knows what will happen in the next ten days?

(For the record, if it happened and looked like being short term, I would just wait it out with my mother. If it turned into a long-term problem, I could rent a car and drive back. It would be at least three days of driving, and heaven knows how much ibuprofen I would go through, but it's possible, anyway. Still, I can't believe all this craziness has happened, and that I was seriously googling how long the drive would take.)

If you saw my post from Sunday night, you know that I was, at that time, unable to articulate much about attending the protest in Boston. Honestly, I continue to struggle with it.

In the first place, I'm really not a rally/march/protest person, and here I am, again. I mean, before this month, I think the last rally I went to was in college, and I don't even remember exactly what we were protesting. Now, though, along with the cries of, "This is what America looks like," I found myself thinking, "Hey hey, ho ho, budget cuts have got to go."

Second, in this particular instance, I struggled to feel as engaged with the event as with the Women's March. I think this was mostly because I couldn't hear the people speaking*, so basically I was reading peoples' signs, and listening to and participating in chants, but not feeling actual accomplishment in the way I did the week before. There are photos taken from above, and I'm glad I was one of the tiny dots, but, mmm. I don't know.
*This event was a lot more last-minute, of course, since it was in reaction to the sudden ban, so I don't believe they had speakers, like the sound-boosting kind. You know, speakers to boost the volume of the speakers?

I also eventually got severe crowd-o-phobia; the crowd was gradually compressing closer and closer, people moving through and holes opening and closing up, and one woman who came along stopped and stood next to me, and she Just Kept Bumping My Arm, and when I realized that I was fantasizing about viciously elbowing her in return, I turned around and made my way back to the land of Enough Air To Breathe. Better. Still so crazy, but better.

So, I'm kind of up in the air. Am I sorry I went? No. But I was left feeling very jangled, more than I had anticipated. Tired and on edge and emotional.

When I got home, I thought the NHL All-Star game would be a great distraction, but it turned out that the arena in LA blared their m-effing air horn twice for every goal that was scored, and while I don't normally like that kind of thing even when it means the Bruins have scored, for a game where I don't care who scores, and where many many many goals are scored (at one point, for instance, 3 in 19 seconds; even my experienced mute-button finger couldn't keep up), the noise of it had me just about in tears, and I had to turn it off.

And yes, I was in a state of nerves at the time, but first, listen to it, then multiply by 36; and second, read what the Globe said the next day:

So, me, but not just me. I felt somewhat better Monday, and today, kind of, but it's snowing now, which never helps my mood. And thus, the growls.

This is not my country. What are they doing to my country?