Repudiation Day

Stressed today.


I tell myself I'm not election stressed, but it's a lie. I live in a world of instant answers, and not having instant answers about election results is stressful.  I don't want exit poll stuff, I want real results, so...wait. And stress.


In the meantime, here is some stuff about the election.

• My kid voted in her very first presidential election today. I remember mine. I remember walking into a polling place wearing a "vote" pin (didn't have a candidate name, just said "vote") and I got stopped for a moment by a poll worker. The year was Nineteen-eighty-jeezuz-was-it-that-long-ago and it was somewhat uneventful after Pin-gate.
• As you may have heard, there is a woman on the ticket this year. (REALLY!) This does not mean much to me and I realize that the fact that it's not that important to me is the significant thing, here. It's perfectly normal, in my head, that a woman can (and in this case, *should*) be elected President. It's not an anomaly. It's just a person stepping up to accept the challenge of the day. Women have been doing this forever, we just finally got to the part where men stopped poo-poo-ing us enough to get to a good place. Nothing to get excited about! Just a thing.
• Then I went on the internet and it was all, "OMG I'm weeping about this!" while reading other people's stories. An unexpectedly emotional day.
• Then I realized that my kid, in her first presidential election, got to vote for the first woman at the top of the ticket. And I was proud of her and of us.
• Then, true to form, my kid sent me a Snapchat with an "I voted" sticker on her forehead and a caption that read "Trump 2016!!" Not to worry--she followed that up with a "just kidding, guys" snap. She does know how to mess with me. Did I ever tell you about the time she cracked the joke about selling sex on the street corner when she was 11 or 12 years old? Or the time she wanted me to take a pic of her chugging from a wine bottle and sent it to grandma? I think she was maybe 13, then. I love that record-scratch sense of humor of hers. She's brutal, in a good way.
• Hey, Hey, USA, what the hell took us so long? (since we're talking) Other countries have had plenty of women in positions of power, for, like, ever.
• This election has shown me many things about my country that I do not like. For example, people who happen to be complete fuck-heads are feeling pretty OK about themselves right now. I can't tell you how many times during the last month I have uttered the words, "Fuck these people..." in reference to those who threaten (excuse me...I mean "joke about") violence toward the other side. Because Fuck. Those. People.
• Just a qualifier about that last bullet point: I've been around these effing guys my entire life. I grew up in a place where any kind of intellectualism was thought of as a bit of a weakness. This disease has spread across the country and there has been a steady crescendo of the "My stupid is just as good as your smart" bullshit for the last several years. You know what? It isn't. It fucking isn't. Smart is smart, and stupid is stupid. One is good and one is bad. They are not the same or even close. They are not equal. Also? Fuck. Those. People.
• I decided that the word of the day would be "Repudiation." Smart people, you're good. Stupid people, ask a smart person to explain it to you.
• Every time we do this election thing I feel like it's kids running rampant and making a huge mess and then grown-ups show up to enforce calm. Think about this year....you had a ton of people say that Trump would win just based on the size of political rallies. This is logic a KID would formulate in their head. They have such a limited concept of human beings that they think anyone who doesn't behave the same way they do can't be real. I just want to say, "Thank you, grown ups!" Thank you for showing up and keeping our shit together.
• Favorite over-heard joke so far today? "Tomorrow's headline will read 'Orange Crushed'." Here's hoping. Thanks Lance Gould!
• Second favorite thing: Fuck-head Farage (Nigel, to his friends, if he had any) asks "Will today be Brexit day in the USA?" and the internet reminds him we brexited 250 years ago.
• The stickers on Susan B. Anthony's headstone...another unexpectedly emotional thing, for me. The line of people waiting to pose for pictures by her grave? You can't help but feel something when you see that. No, she was not without fault. She wanted women to vote but didn't consider women of color worthy of that right--suffragettes of color had it tougher. I'm not one to forget those things. I'm glad to live in a time where I can get both the emotion of the day and an important history lesson at the same time. We get a little better every day.

So...How Are We Feeling Tonight, America?

This is an "as of around 5PM Sunday before election day" map showing how things might go on Tuesday according to 538.

Not particularly bright and sunny for either candidate.


One thing we know for sure? This map will change.


Another thing we know for sure? This country has been changed, and we probably won't have another "civil" election for at least a generation.  I'll probably be long dead before one side stops being a bunch of shit-birds.


A friend of mine, one of the rare friends with whom I don't mind talking politics, asked me for a prediction. "Who's gonna win this thing?"


As we talked, it occurred to us both that we've all lost. I don't say that to sound like one of those, "both candidates are bad" people. I don't believe both candidates are bad. I believe that a Clinton presidency would be like the Obama presidency: Not nearly as exciting as their opponents make them out to be. Kind of boring, in fact. Boring like...people going to work. Government office style boring.


I'm a big fan of boring when it comes to the presidency of this country. Bring on the boring. Not much fun for the comedy writers, of course, but far better for the rest of us.


Even if it turns out we have 8 years of "boring," we're still not going to have a great 8 years. The shit-birds will still be shit-birds, emboldened by the escalation of ridiculousness that has proceeded these final hours.


They'll get their shit all over everything.


We're all covered in it already.


On Tuesday, I'll be lifting a glass. It might be in disgust. It won't likely be in celebration. Even a win for the person who *should* win just means more whining from the ones who didn't. They'll get louder and louder and we'll all have to put up with their pouting and stamping of feet. No one will enjoy this. No one.


The PR angle of politics used to be fun for me. I was pretty good at predicting an outcome based on how people were talking, what words they were using, and how people reacted. We're not much fun to look at these days. Oh, I still have my preference, and I still think one side is better than the other, but the other side is not so predictable any more--they keep moving the goalpost to new areas of awful.


So...how are we feeling tonight? Ready for it to be over, but sick with the knowledge that it won't be, for years.

Four for the Price of None

November is NaBloPoMo, which I understand to mean as the month I get to feel guilty for not writing a blog every day, while simultaneously making jokes about head, because NaBloPoMo, amirite?

Yes, I'm 12.

Today is November 4th, so I owe 4.

Here they are.

And trust me, they are just as entertaining all on the same page as they would be if I had posted them individually.  

I don't know if that's a good thing.

Blog 1: Not For All The Tea In Edina

Does that tea store at the mall ONLY hire the hyper-active dudes that are SUPER psyched about tea?

What's the recruitment like for that place? DO YOU LOVE TEA AND SUPER-AGGRESSIVE SALES TACTICS? THEN COME JOIN OUR TEAM!!!

Imagine being trained to be the hallway guy at Tea Store (You know I'm talking about you, Teavana, right? You must know...). What things must that trainer say to the young recruit to make them successful...?

IF THEY MOVE, YOU MOVE! WATCH THEIR EYES! WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING AT? ASK THEM IF THEY WANT TO BUY IT! I DON'T CARE IF IT'S NOT FOR SALE! ASK! MAKE SURE THEY TRY AT LEAST 5 SAMPLES BEFORE THEY GET AWAY! JESUS CHRIST MAN, DON'T LET THEM LEAVE!

After 52 hours of verbal lashing, the formerly mild-mannered tea sucking hippy transforms into Mr. You Will Buy Something, raring to pounce on the next person wandering past.

I, being a glutton for punishment, went there on purpose, and $40 later walked out with a little bag of Ruby Spiced Cider tea, feeling violated.

But then I went home and drank the stuff and forgot the pain--kind of like you forget the pain of childbirth when they put that baby in your arms.

Now...it is worth nothing that after the baby, I did forget the actual *pain* part, but I was not so baby-zenned that I forgot to tell my doctor to make it so that birthing thing CAN NEVER FUCKING HAPPEN AGAIN--I DON'T CARE WHAT BODY PART YOU HAVE TO REMOVE.

If I was only half as smart as a tea drinker as I am as a mother, I'd suck up the shipping costs and order online.

It's either that or get a job at Teavana and learn their secret ways of persuasion. 

Actually, I'd just do it for the discount because $40, man? You're killing me! No wonder I felt violated...

Blog 2: Oh To Be Young And Stupid Again!

I started at a new job and I am the youngest person on the team.

For those of you not aware, I'm 108 (read: 50) years old, and I'm virtually never the youngest person in any gathering, these days.

Part Two of this equation is the fact that I work from home and my team mates also work from home and we've never seen each other in person.

I'm not sure if it's because I have a certain sound to my voice on the phone or if they're just mean, but I'm getting the impression that my team mates think I'm stupid.

Just to clarify...I'm not stupid. I'm frustratingly intelligent, to the point it causes me social awkwardness. My whole day is an ongoing "solve this problem, solve this problem, solve this problem," dialogue in my head, whether I want it to be, or not. I'm virtually incapable of relaxing. It's why I used to drink so damn much--just to shut it off. I'm also a bit of an empath, so I'm really tuned in to things...like, tone, for example.

And yet...these people act like the simplest task is going to be monumentally challenging for me. They speak to me slowly, in a manner I find condescending. 

Yes, it's probably more my interpretation than their intent. People talking to me like I'm stupid is my #2 Pet Peeve right behind people who waste my time, but as it turns out, people who talk to me like I'm stupid are also wasting my time while they condescend, so maybe they should be #1.

Recently, somebody that I know fairly well (outside of work) made a comment about how they were "too smart" to vote for the Democrat. They were excited about Mr. Trump and believed in their heart of hearts that Mrs. Clinton has had people killed to cover up her criminal activity, and blah, blah, blah, conspiracy theory times 20, that woman just can't be trusted. That same person surmised that I must be voting for Hillary and therefore must be a total moron. I made no mention of who I was voting for, they just went off because I didn't join in with their tirade against her.

Somehow I managed to keep a straight face and say nothing, even though I had never been face to face with anyone making such insanely ridiculous declarations. These are the same type of folks who decide that nobody is voting for Hillary and every piece of evidence to the contrary is faked, etc. It's an alternate reality to the one I'm living where people openly talk about her without sneering. There is nothing you can really say, you just...move on.

My job, right now, feels like a milder version of that moment. I'm trying not to freak out. I'm new. I keep telling myself to just shut up and take the money and maybe my comparative youth will mean I'll still be here after they're gone and I'll enjoy some kind of last laugh scenarios.

Here's hoping.

Blog #3: Related

Hey, they can't all be amazing.

Blog #4: Stress Relief

Once upon a time, I had a knitting blog. I posted pictures of things I knit and I made mild-mannered jokes that were appropriate to the knitting crowd.

Then I discovered that the knitting crowd was a lot more fun than I thought and I wrote about other stuff.

Then I put knitting (the hobby) on a back burner for a while.  

Too much sitting. 

Yes, that's a thing! I'm trying to lose weight, here! I've got 20 more pounds to go! I can't SIT!

But wow...the election and the job and just...fucking everything, y'all.

I take a long walk (5-ish miles) just about every day and that does help, and I think about other things and I don't watch the news. I'm coping, but knitting is zen. It's a problem to solve (See Blog #2) and it's soft and fuzzy and you end up with a useful thing.

That's what my brain needs right now. Knitting.

So I bought some yarn today. 

The giant kind.

The instant gratification kind, where you don't have to do a billion stitches for it to become a a thing...you can do, like, a a few thousand. 

I"m gonna make a thing--a pair of things, actually, and I'll have them done in time to watch the world burn on Tuesday. 

It'll be OK. I'll be knitting instead of worrying.

Feel free to do the same.