Damn we can’t catch a break this week, y’all. First it was the crazy white man who murdered Asian women because he “had a bad day,” then today I woke up to storms knocking the trees outside, and an Amber Alert wherein an Uber Eats delivery driver was working at 2 am, had her baby with her asleep in her carseat in the back, and her car was stolen while she ran the food up to the door. The baby was nowhere to be found for 10 damn hours which is 10 hours longer than a baby should be, lost, away from her mother. A mother who is literally trying to make ends meet by delivering food in the middle of a stormy night. And the kicker, the kid that stole her car was a baby himself. A 14-year-old! A. Fourteen. Year. Old.

Sigh.

It’s tough this week. It’s tough for a lot of reasons, but these two in particular.

The baby is okay, y’all. She’s safe. She was found 10 hours later on a woman’s front porch. The woman didn’t know. She heard a knock on her door and answered it and there was a passerby standing there to tell her that they saw a car stop, drop the baby in her yard, and drive away. She recognized the baby from Amber Alert, thank goodness, and she was taken to the hospital and reunited with her mom.

I imagine the 14-year-old’s own mom had a hand in this. I’m sure the 14-year-old had no idea there was a sleeping baby in the back of an Uber Eats car, and probably freaked out. Rightfully so. I hope he learned a lesson here. And I hope other kids thinking about trying to make a quick buck or go for a joyride will think twice now. All we can do is hope.

I woke up today with a little hope, but it was quickly sucked out of me after reading the news and it’s been hard to get back.

We went to Mercedes-Benz Stadium and got vaccinated today. That was good. That gave me hope for about an hour. But the whole time Jackson and I were grabbing our phone for news alerts. He got the Amber Alert too, and for awhile this morning he sat silent after asking me who would take a baby. When we found out it was a kid he could be in school with we were even more shocked. The whole day was just, bleh. Just bleh.

Jackson ran upstairs tonight to tell me they found the baby and we were incredibly relieved and we hugged each other. Damn it, y’all. Just damn it.

The murder of the Asian women isn’t so easily resolved. Today we found out that the Sheriff who spoke at the news conference yesterday. The one who blamed the white, male terrorist’s actions on “a bad day” peddled racist shirts earlier this year. It’s all around us. Especially here in the South. There are honestly people saying that racism had nothing to do with it. Honey, learn how racism works. How it infects. How it spreads. Then get back to me. The very fact that this maniac fetishized these women, assumed they were sex workers, the very basics of this whole thing, rests on racism.

Ahhhhhh!

Okay, well I’m a sad sack tonight, obviously. My heart hurts for so many people. People I know, people I don’t know. People in my community and not in my community.

Stay safe and sane, y’all.

M.