November 19, 2008 | Filed under: Boys Are Dumb, Is She Still Talking?
Well, here we are again. You get paragraph snippets instead of nice, well-thought-out posts, because there just aren’t enough hours in the day for me to do this blogging thing properly. But, hey, at least I’m only a few weeks behind here, as opposed to the six years behind I am at work. Which, ha, is funny because I’ve only worked there a year! HA! (Kill me now.)
Oh yeah, the election
New Hampshire went well and all our candidates won and we kicked ass in my traditionally-very-Republican county, so it was a win all around. Again this year, I was moderately happy on Election Night, but nothing overly emotional, which is fine by me. And then I spent part of the plane ride home crying.
(Did I not tell you this story from Indiana 2006? I was probably too busy then, too. Anyway — I’d picked out music for the candidate to use at the victory party, a long looping of “Take Us Out” (go listen to it on iTunes, I can’t link to it from here) from the Rudy soundtrack. It was perfect. The day after the election, I got on a plane back to California, exhausted, and spent most of the flight asleep. Slept through beverage/snack service, slept through announcements about the in-flight entertainment, slept through most of the movie. I woke up, put my glasses on and in a few seconds, recognized that the movie being shown was Rudy, rather than some much newer release. Having seen it so many times, I knew we were near the climax of the movie, the last game of the season. I popped my headphones in the armrest and lo and behold, that exact track started playing not 10 seconds later. And I lost it. The end.)
This time around, the emotion was driven largely by what electing Barack Obama means for this country. I am proud of US. All of us.
Yes, it’s historic that we’ve elected a non-white leader. But even bigger than that, we’ve chosen optimism for the future over the old way of doing things. I cannot tell you how many people were truly excited about his candidacy. This wasn’t 2004. People didn’t vote for him because he’s not George W. Bush, they voted for him because he is who he is. And, more impressively, people got involved in the political process because they were drawn to him and his vision.
One woman I volunteered with — someone my mom’s age — came up from Boston. She’d never done anything political before, other than voting, but back in the primaries she said to herself, if Barack Obama is the nominee, I’m taking a week off of work and volunteering somewhere. And she did. Yes, this was a campaign that involved a lot of young people — they always are — but his message resonated with those who are a little older and a little wiser and who are crafting a future that they want their kids and their grandkids to experience. A future that’s better than what we’ve had for the last decade.
Another volunteer told us about the cashier at Wal-Mart who commented on his Obama-Biden button, days before the election. “I’m not really supposed to talk about this stuff here,” the cashier said, “but I want you to know I support him. I’d love to be involved, but I can’t — I have to work — but I just think he’s going to do good things. He can really help people like me.”
Yes, he can. Together, we all can.
Bleeding heart, of a less liberal variety
There’s no good segue into this, so I’ll just say it: a couple of weeks ago, in the midst of all my traveling, my dad had heart surgery. A triple bypass, to be exact.
The good news is, the surgery was the result of diagnostic tests, not a massive heart attack. The bad news is, uh, it’s still major heart surgery. After racking up a bunch of points toward that Daughter of the Year award through annoyingly frequent heartfelt long-distance phone calls (meanwhile, my sister spent a week at the hospital and at home and EVEN MY BROTHER was around for the surgery and two recovery days) I finally figured out that, hey, maybe I should go home, even if I can’t be there for the exact day of the surgery. So I am. (Mother: Well, you don’t HAVE to… Me: Of course not. In our family, we don’t NEED anything. But I’m coming anyway.)
It’s like a hobby, only not as fun
I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time lately furniture shopping, both online an in real, actual furniture stores, all of which are conveniently located 20 to 100 miles outside of DC. (You think I’m kidding.) After six months of living here and not having made any real progress on the living room and kitchen areas of the house, I figured it was time to get moving. Part of that is also because I knew I didn’t want the happy lime green and and yellow and white stripey-ness that was summer furniture this year, so I had to wait for that stuff to get off the sales floor.
As time- (and gas-) consuming as furniture shopping is though, it’s been much more rewarding now that I finally stumbled upon my theme. (It came to me in New Hampshire, of all places.) Bascially, I want my living room to be like fall. The walls are painted green and there will be golds and pumpkin oranges and rich, chocolatey browns and it will make you feel like oatmeal raisin cookies and hot apple cider. Eventually, there will be furniture. And pictures for you, of course.
Retreat! RETREAT!
Him: Maybe it’s tough for people in their early thirties to understand this sort of thing… *meaningful glance in my direction*
Me: Did you just assert that I’m in my early thirties?!? That’s got to be worse than anything I said this weekend.
Note: I’d said some pretty stupid things over the weekend, including getting upset about something that really, really shouldn’t be a big deal. I even realized at the time that it shouldn’t be a big deal, but it was still gnawing at me, so I said something ugly. At the end of the day Sunday when I went to take my pill, I realized why I was making a bigger deal out of this than was warranted. I’m thinking I should just add a recurring appointment to my Outlook calendar for five days a month: “Dear Self, Do you suspect that you’re over-reacting about something, but just can’t shake it? Are you generally frustrated and can’t figure out why, so you blame everyone else? ALLOW ME TO EXPLAIN.”
Posted by Daily Tragedies @ 12:43 pm | Make a Comment
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Hey, I hope that your dad is recovering well. Give him my best. Let me know if you are still coming home for Christmas. I will be in town for a long weekend. You should see how big Olivia is! Can’t wait to see how your living room turns out. Love the theme and color scheme.
November 19th, 2008 at 5:57 pmEvery month it takes me a few days to figure out why everybody around me is being so unbelievably irritating. Oh. Wait. No. It’s just me being extra irritated. Got it.
November 19th, 2008 at 10:42 pmSo glad to hear your dad is all right. I’m sure he was so happy to see you.
Your living room sounds like it will be beautiful. I will seriously be coming to see it in person as soon as the economy improves (ha!) and maybe while I’m visiting said beautiful living room we can drink in some culture and even more wine.
I know, promises, promises…
November 19th, 2008 at 11:28 pm