The Women's March on Washington 1/21/17

Well here I am... i know I haven't written on my blog in a while.  But I'm still here.  I'm trying hard to be positive despite my fear of the unknown with our new president.  I feel like already we are going backwards.   It's scary.  But each day I'm hopeful too, because I know and have seen first hand... that many like my family and myself won't stand idly by and let things change too much in the wrong direction.  We'll be there fighting.  So on January 21st.  The day after "he" was inaugurated. A few million of right thinking individuals got to marching.  My husband's mother and aunt came all the way from NEW MEXICO to participate in the march on Washington along with my family and our nephew Patrick.   It was amazing.  There were crowds as far as the eye could see.  It was chaos but the greatest chaos I had ever witness.  It was beautiful and peaceful and everyone was so kind.  I didn't feel afraid at all.  Before the day I must admit I was worried not so much for me but because Emily was coming and I worried that there might be violence.  There wasn't.  It was a great day.  It had its hiccups but all in all we stood united for a common cause.  A cause to say to President Trump that we are still here and we aren't going anywhere.  We will be there when you try and go backwards in female reproduction rights.  We will be here when you alienate immigrants and close borders AND BUILD WALLS.  We will be fighting so that all people are treated fairly and with respect no matter what they look like, or who they love.  We will be there to fight the good fight!!! Anyway... I'll get off my soap box for the moment and tell you a little about this incredible day.  We left our house at 6am and headed to DC.  In hindsight... we should have gotten to DC at 6am because there was soooo many people there when we got there.   We felt the enormity of the crowds even before we got into DC.  Becuase the first metro station sign we saw on the highway said that, that metro station was closed because there were already too many people in line to accommodate. The second one also said that, so we ended up I believe at the third metro station which was on the outskirts of DC I believe in Maryland.  We didn't have tickets for the metro, not that we were alone in our unpreparedness, most people didn't have tickets.  The line for getting tickets was around the building and down the street.  We knew it would be a very long wait and pretty early on, I said why don't we just try and get an uber.  Unfortunately we didn't do that right away but after about an 1 hr and 1/2 in line we finally ordered an uber.  20 minutes later the uber arrived.  It was worth the wait... it was a freakin' Cadillac Escalate w/ the nicest uber driver ever named Mason.  He took this weird back roads way to get there, I swear at some point we were driving behind a warehouse, but he knew what he was doing because then all the sudden we were there, somewhere in DC and we are seeing this massive line of people just marching along the streets of DC heading towards the capital building.  We hopped out of our Luxury ride and got in to the line of walkers.  We felt a little bad cause we butted in line but no body seemed to mind.  One person even shouted out... "Now that's the way to do it!!!"  LOL! We all got a kick out of that.  We walked a few blocks up and realized we were in the heat of it and nearing the Capital building, it was really excited!! Emily was lucky in that someone in the metro line, gave her a handwritten sign that said,  "This is what democracy looks like!" She was awesome because she carried that sign almost the entire day, for a long time while singing at the top of her lungs the song, " Do you hear the people sing?" from Les Miz. Which goes in part.....

Do you hear the people sing?

Singing the songs of angry men?
It is the music of the people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Somewhere beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?

I didn't know she was going to be singing that-she just started doing it.  But it was pretty appropriate.  I don't know if anyone else minded her singing it over and over in that line but no one said anything and all seemed to be smiling around her.  She's so awesome!! I was a proud mom seeing her there.  She so wanted to come too!  It was pretty awesome.  We marched for a while with the crowds,  I wanted to be able to see the stage and we tried our best to find it.  But the lines were being re-directed and it was a bit confusing.  Later in the day we ended up catching a glimpse completely by accident...lol. (I'll get to that in a little while)  We were all marching together for a while, which was really cool.  The coolest part was all the women in their varying shades of pink pussy hats.  Pat's friend who wasn't able to come to the march herself, made one for Pat, Barb and me.  The signs were the other cool part.  Soooo many signs, some incredibly clever like the women who used Trumps own words but highlighted them in such a way to say... Women can do anything! The other one I really liked was a sign that said,  " I thought my grandmother had already marched for this!" Ofcourse there were funny ones and crude ones too, Brian and I couldn't help but laugh at the one that simply said, "Fuck Pense too"  Anyway it was a lot to take in, and we were trailing Pat, Barb and Patrick for a while, but always having our eye on them but then suddenly Brian, Emily and I got separated from Pat , Barb  and Patrick. It seemed like we looked up one minute and then the next they were gone. We looked and looked for them but couldn't find them, in the hundreds of thousands of people it was no surprise.  But it was odd because we had a clear few of them and then all the sudden poof they were gone.  I thought (because I had mentioned) seeing a building w/ stairs that they had headed over there and I said that to Brian.  We went over there and couldn't see them but Brian using my phone took a picture of the crowd.  We looked for a while more and were getting closer to Independence . But we not being too familiar with DC didn't really know that, we were simply following the crowd while looking for our group and some point Brian's phone died and we only had mine and Emily's.  We decided we should really try and reach out w/ Pat, Barb & Patrick before it gets too late.  We send a few message but cell service is hit or miss. Mostly miss and nothing was going through.  We are getting a tad worried at this point.  We see the Air and Space museum.  In hindsight we should have probably gone right but we went left around the museum.  We end up right against the museum and in a little corridor section.   It is then completely by accident we see one of the jumbo trons and can hear & see freaking Alicia Keyes!!!! We found the stage.   That was pretty cool, but we are also jammed like sardines and  realize we are right on Independence and in the thickest crowds ever! OMG I swear at times we didn't move or we moved 1/2 an inch at a time and it was a little claustrophobic feeling for sure.  Emily being shorter probably had it the worst having to look up at people backs and never really being able to see over any one like occasional we could. It was both awe inspiring and a little terrifying as well.  Just from the crowd size and feeling like you are never going to get anywhere.  We ended up having to scale small walls a few times to just find some breathing room.  Sometimes that didn't work we would realize that we ended up no where.  It was crazy for about maybe 1hr 1/2 we were just stuck and had to move at this snails pace.  We had finally gotten in contact w the rest of our group and were trying to get to where they were.  It was beginning to feel like we would never get to them but we finally got to a part where we could climb over a barricade and into a little less of a crowd.  We finally felt like we could breathe.   They told us they were at I believe 7th street at a picnic area above a metro stop.  We believed we were near 4th street at this point.  So after awhile we finally got to them.  We both shared our experiences while separated from each other.  When we realized we were both at around the same place at one point, I decided to look at the picture Brian had taken shortly after we had gotten separated and to every ones amazement found Patrick in the picture!!!! We were so close to each other but we had no idea.  The crowd was that big, it wasn't until I enlarged the picture that I saw him.  Pat had needed to sit down and stretch her back so they stopped at the steps and that is right where I thought they would be, we just never saw each other. CRAZY!  Anyway... it's around 4:30 maybe and we decided that we would get another uber and it could take us back to the car.  We got the uber fairly easily and were headed home.  We had all only eaten small snacks to this point and decided to stop at an Arby's to eat.  It was in Maryland.  We had a funny little encounter there.  We were sitting down to eat and in walk these older veterans.  We knew they were veterans because they had hats on that said it.  The one says to the other... "Damn Democrats!!!" I don't know why he said it but we just laughed.  We wanted to raise our hands and say... "Right here! and thank you for your service" but we didn't.   There were a few other Pussy hatter's also eating there too.  I'm not sure if they were just complaining about the march or the traffic or just saw a bunch of cars with Hillary Clinton signs in the parking lot but it was kind of funny when he grumpily said, "Damn Democrats!"  Damn RIGHT and we aren't going anywhere!!