At a Loss due to the Win?

I've always found it easier to write during a period of angst. Come on now you psychology majors, say it with me like Carl Jung would, with an umlaut over the "a"...ah-ngst....

Well, 138 blog entries and 17 full journals later, I can officially confirm that for the past 8 years, I've been in a long, drawn out, down to my stem cells, period of ANGST....

I NEVER wrote during the Clinton years unless it was checks, love letters, birthday cards, or loan applications. On the other hand, for the past 8 years I've written like a newspaper gossip columnist covering the lives of Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston. And now it seems I have nothing of any substance to share other than the "what are you doing now" statements on Facebook.

My days since the election have been filled with work that I love SO much more knowing that I'll have a new boss as of 1/20/09. So since I only have the exasperation, I mean inspiration, of George for 55 more days, I thought I better at least jot down some thoughts/questions. Perhaps they'll become full blown blog entry topics at a later date. Like when I become depressed and inconsolable because John Lewis won't send me VIP inauguration tickets.

1. Why is there always one person within a couple who is in charge of blattodea and rodentia?

2. Why does that one person in charge use a trash bag, turned inside out (like the people who pick up their dog's poop) to remove the deceased rodentia (mouse) from the basement?

3. Is a Kroger bag, turned inside out, just as safe as one of those red hazardous material bags?

4. How is it that two of my facebook friends, who don't know each other, both posted that they made pot roasts on Sunday?

5. Aren't olfactory memories cool? I have them when I open the spice cabinet, when I'm at the Candler Park MARTA station and Edward's Baking Company is in full swing, and when I'm out in a woodsy area after a rainfall.

6. To avoid traffic on the perimeter today, I took back roads home from the dentist. How is it that I just randomly passed the new Drepung Loseling Monastery, Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies, when I'd always wondered where it was?

7. How can I have had the same routine with the same cat for over 20 years?

8. How did I get suckered into taking care of the chickens over Thanksgiving? What happened to "cluck out of luck?"

If you have the answers to any of these questions, please share them with me. In the meantime, I hope you all have a memorable thanksgiving.

A Mark on, I mean in, the "W" column...

Courtesy of The Sun


At 11:00 pm on Tuesday, November 4th I awoke to the sounds of gun shots and fireworks. That's what our neighborhood typically reserves for New Year's Eve and the 4th of July. Well it certainly was an evening worthy of the bubbly and even more so, an independence day, an American revolution, worthy of excessive and over the top celebration.

As John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, July 4th "...ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more."

I think this moment in America is just as deserving...

It's still sinking in that on 1/20/09, I'll have a new boss. A boss I can already be proud of. A boss who won't speak in malapropisms. A boss who will support the things I feel strongly about. A boss who won't make us look bad to the rest of the world. A boss who will have some very high expectations placed on him but who will be able to handle them. A boss who will inspire vs. conspire. A boss who will consider the options vs. ignore them. Obama is the boss I've been waiting for since I became a federal employee and the President I've been waiting for since Clinton.

Maya Angelou said Obama is a clear and clean wind, a breeze. ... There is some poetry in him, yes. Who could say it better than that?

Okay, enough of my sap. You get the point. at this point, I'm either preaching to the choir or rubbing it in.

What I really wanted to write about was my conversation with Mrs. Jones, our next door neighbor. Mrs. Jones is a black woman who has lived in Atlanta all of her life. She moved next door in the early 1960's, after divorcing her 1st and only husband, and proceeded to raise her 4 children as a single mother. I stopped to chat with her on Thursday afternoon as she was tending to her beloved rose bush, a shrub rose that is the centerpiece of her front yard and that was started from a cutting of a plant that belonged to her mother.

I said to her, "it's a great day in Atlanta, don't you think?" And she replied "honey, it's a great day in America." As I almost choked up at hearing that, she went on to say that she just knew this day was coming and that she didn't even watch the returns on Tuesday night. She felt it in her heart that the right man would win the Presidency and that she would just wake up Wednesday morning and confirm what she already knew to be true.

She went on to reminisce about when she was taking her practical nursing training at "the old Grady Hospital." She commented on how the black students were separated from the white students and the black patients were separated from the white patients. To support herself through school, she did "domestic work" for a woman in town. She recalled being sent to the Atlanta downtown shopping area to pick up a hat for her boss and having to state, out loud, that the hat was not for herself, but for Miss so and so (she wouldn't tell me the woman's name). In other words, she would not have been able to buy a hat for herself, it had to be for her "employer."

And God forbid if she had to use the restroom while she was shopping for her boss. The stores wouldn't let black people use their facilities, she'd have to go to the bus station or the train station down at what's now called Five Points.

I asked Mrs. Jones if she'd seen the acceptance speech and she replied that she didn't need to. She already knew that the Obama family was a sight to behold and that they would do our nation proud. She noted how she saw Barack as a role model for our young black men (and white men too) in that he wasn't a thug; he was educated, smart, eloquent, and handsome. She kept commenting on how pretty the whole family was; almost as if she saw her own family in that light but would never say it out loud (they are, by the way, quite an attractive family).

We talked for a long time about how she'd been waiting for a role model like Obama. And she closed by saying she had mentioned to her grandson that our new President was a "Real Man." She told her son's son that she hoped that all "them kids" would finally "buy belts and jack them drawers up off their butts."

Can't think of a better closing than that...

So what'd you have for dinner?

Only two days left until the election and what was I doing last night? I was at home alone trying to decide what to watch on television. Doc. B. is cat sitting at our friends’ "OTP" house (FYI, OTP stands for "outside the perimeter" and is also now known as Palin-Ville). So I was home all by myself, responsible only for me. Here’s how the evening went...

I said to myself, "what will it be?" CNN? A Fox election special with Brit Hume (to keep up with the other side)? Larry King? Hardball with Chris Matthews? 60 Minutes? No, somehow those shows just weren’t up my alley last night. It’s not like I was trying to impress anyone; it was just me and the cats… so who would have known what I watched on TV let alone that I had popcorn and red licorice for dinner?

So as I scrolled through the Dish menu, here’s what really caught my eye: Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Harold and Kumar go to White Castle, the E! True Hollywood Story of Star Jones, Sex Change Soldier on BBCA, Fun with Dick and Jane, and last but by no means least I didn’t know I was pregnant on TLC. As I was in the midst of this major decision-making process, up pops a commercial for stuffed crust Pizza Hut pizza. Normally, this wouldn’t even faze me, but after my carb-fest of a dinner, that bread stuffed with cheese was sounding really tasty for dessert. But you’ll be glad (and so am I) to know that I resisted and did not go into the light of Pizzahut.com to place an order.

Instead, I decided to hit the DVR to watch the most recent episode of Saturday Night Live. You have to give the old guy, I mean John McCain, credit with the whole QVC spoof thing he participated in. And then when he went on the "Weekend Edition" segment and explained his last ditch fallback efforts… well, that was just priceless. My personal favorites were the "Double Maverick" where he goes totally berserk and freaks everybody out and the "Sad Grandpa" where he reminds us that Obama is young, will have many chances to run for president and to take pity on McCain.

As I was L’ing OL at the TV, the robocalls continued to come in. Even at 9:15pm, the caller ID was displaying "Unavailable." I was thinking to myself, “Hmm… I’m really busy right now and also unavailable” but, having not had any human interaction in just over 4 hours, I decided to pick up the phone so that I could tell them I had already voted. But my speaking didn’t make a difference to that pre-recorded message – it just kept on playing. So I hung up, angry that those robots couldn't carry on a conversation and that they were calling so late (after all, with the time change, it was really 10:15 and it felt like it!).

I eventually finished watching TV and decided to check my e-mail one last time before hitting the sack. If the robocalls weren’t enough, I was surprised to see that I had about 10 new incoming messages. They included e-mails from Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Michelle Obama, Joe Biden, Joe Solmonese (HRC President), and Barack himself. Like the robots, I guess they too wanted to make sure that I had already voted, but didn't really want to have a conversation with me. Can you believe that every single one of those e-mails said "do not reply to this message." Thank goodness for Facebook where you can hold real conversations with people you haven't talked to in 25 years.

Well, in about 24 hours, we should know who will take over the reins in 2009. I hope the person you want to win, wins (unless that person is John McCain, Ralph Nader, Bob Barr, Cynthia McKinney or any of the other write-in candidates…).