You know what would make being an adult much easier?

Not having to spell the word Albuquerque.

That was one of my first thoughts today. A friend from college is moving there, and all I could think was “How the fuck do I spell that?” I was lost in that little thought just long enough to forget the world has turned into a giant dumpster fire. I have been finding it harder to summon the motivation to do much of anything. I read the news, look at Facebook, and suddenly want to hide under the mountain of laundry in the living room for the next couple of years until this all blows over. Thanks NPR, for reminding me that everything sucks. I am solidly rooting for the viruses and antibiotic-resistant bacteria now.

Getting into fisticuffs with people on Facebook makes me feel good for a short period of time, but then I realize that they are all surrounded by an impenetrable wall of dumb. They cannot be saved. I look at my children and worry about their futures. I worry about how I am going to explain all this to them when they are reading about it in school. How President MangoFuhrer came to be? How we let the country turn into a laughingstock? How we have decided that people who don’t look like us are immediately the enemy? I get anxiety thinking of them reading about this time in their textbooks.

My husband and I have talked about things we can do. Actual acts of kindness we can participate in. Just writing a status on Facebook is not going to help, but acts of kindness might. We have talked about taking in refugee children while they wait to see their parents futures. We have discussed building a bomb shelter in the backyard to keep us safe when President Tangerine Shitgibbon pisses off the wrong person, and there is a motherfuckin’ comeuppance. I wonder how many children we can save in our underground bunker?

Mister Rogers once said, “Look for the helpers.” I keep looking. I see them. Helping refugees. Feeding children. Organizing marches. This gives me hope that if the chapters in my children’s future textbooks paint this time in pure darkness, I can tell them of the helpers and how they let their light shine.