7:00 - Edgy
woke up a bit edgy. Why? might be because I wanted this to be a landslide. It's too close for my comfort.
Edgy to the First Power -
Couldn't find my HuntingtonDogBeach.com hat - the one that's innocuous enough to wear to the polls. (I had already called my daughter in Hollywood yesterday informing her that voters cannot wear hats, shirts, etc. to the polls - She'd look so cute, though, in that Obama shirt I got her). Couldn't find my hat, so I ended up with a plain hat to cover the gray hair I didn't have time to color. My husband Mike throws on a wrinkled shirt and wrinkled pants. (He'll go to work after we vote). Surely you shouldn't wear a wrinkled shirt and pants to the voting place, let alone to work! I nag and he irons his pants. I should have done that, I think, but isn't working all day on my business day after day more important than ironing? My thoughts are off of the election because now he's a bit crabby 'cuz he is capitulating to my wishes for him to be presentable. Or, I wonder, is it because in his heart of hearts he'd like a traditional wife who actually washes clothes and irons and isn't working on our company's web site while he is at work doing line-by-line tedious software coding?
I throw an egg into the microwave for him and slap the on some toast to making a healthier, albeit, less appealing version of an egg McMuffin. My tennis shoes are outside the RV, and of course it rained, so I have to wear these stupid "real" shoes which means I really should put on pantyhose since the women poll workers are all from Newport Beach. It happens to be where our RV is parked for 6 months at a shot, and I always feel like a Lake Trout who plunked itself in the exotic Pacific Ocean. Mike eats his egg sandwich and pours coffee for us.
Edgy to the Second Power
The TV is on this morning. I never put it on at this time usually - only NPR 'cuz Mike is such a visual person that he'd stand and watch it every day and be late for work. But this morning is special. My edginess and agitation increases, though, because the Today Show or whatever show it is that has Diane Sawyer scanning the audience standing on the NY street where that show is taped. A large group with McCain signs is cheerfully shouting. There is an equally large group with Obama signs, but the McCain people are louder. Drats. I'm worried.
8:00 - Edgy to the Third Power
My husband and I both look for Scooter's leash, find it, grab our coffees and are out the door. We let Scooter water a little of the landscaping at our RV park. (It will take too long to try to steer him away from it on this morning when we want to move fast.) We jump into the car; it's only a block to the polling place at the Senior Citizen apartment complex next to our RV park, but we're in a hurry because Mike has to get to work. (They have given him an hour to vote today).
Edgy to the Fourth Power
I suspected we'd be pulled from the list because of our address. After all we stay in an RV park, and it's the only address we have. Even though we voted there twice in the past two years, we're not on the list. I called yesterday to kpcc radio station (our NPR affiliate) and found out that RV-ers like us are considered the same way as are homeless people and we only need to put down a physical location of where we are to vote. I feel more homeless than ever today.
Past Edgy into Embarrassed and Borderline Angry
The woman who is trying to help is loud, and I'm embarrassed to say we stay at the RV Park even though most of the people who stay there have huge $200,000 RVs. How would she know we have a 5th wheel and don't even have a truck, but I still feel embarrassed that she's exposing our situation to the elite of Newport Beach. I'm glad I have on that attractive Safari type shirt I bought 5 years ago on sale at Macy's or someplace. Are people watching? Who gives a damn? Well, I do. Damn. So she loudly states that we have to fill out a provisional ballot. I feel like people think we're trying to cheat or something. Who cares? (I want to type "Who the hell cares" right now, but I'm worried that you'll think I'm crass and I'll lose credibility. Gads, I'm messed up.) So, we're filling out the provisional form and now I'm worried that my driver's license won't match this RV park's license. What is a person to do in this situation? We have no address. Period.
A portly older man is worried about his ballot also. (He must be doing a provisional as well). He asks about the check marks he's made. Does he have to fill-in the box? Yes. Why? he asks. The woman explain that it needs to be scanned that way. Now she has me wondering if we need to do it in #2 pencil like the old SAT tests and I ask about that. Now he wonders. My husband hears us from the booth and says "No" it doesn't matter. They scan the ink. I think to myself that my husband is smarter than all these people. Why aren't we better off like they are?
8:30 - Full Scale Angry
Embarrassment is still hanging around me as I go into the booth. It feels stupid that after 40 some years of voting, I'm writing my ballot by hand. It's because of our RV situation. Don't get me wrong. I know I'm living in paradise, but we're so stinkin' broke.
My anger is soothed as I fill in the rectangle for Obama. Yay! But as I continue, it feels as if the emotions of the morning have nevertheless tainted it for me.
I go to the propositions and can't remember what I heard all week when I listened to Larry Mantle on the local NPR. I also had downloaded all the propositions from the League of Women Voters site web site and thought I'd be ready to simply mark my votes quickly. Still, I want to read them as they appear on the ballot once again, but the white haired poll-worker brigade outside is talking so loud as they answer the damn Newport Beach voter questions, that I can't think! Are these people just so used to having their own way about everything in the frickin' world that they can't speak in a tone that doesn't push them right into another person's mind? The classism is getting to me. Are they knowingly rude or just plain so full of themselves that they don't see how rude they are? A voting place should be a quiet place. It should be like a frickin' church for heaven's sake. Geez. I'm getting angrier and angrier. And I wanted this day to be special. Damn! I think behind it all is the worry that Barack Obama won't win.
I continue with my ballot, softly vocalizing some of the propositional text to myself so I'm sure I voting correctly. In my native Minnesota there is very little of this propositional thing going on, so while I have voted in California for two years, I still feel the heaviness of the obligation and want to get it right.
I finish my ballot, fold it up in it's provisional envelope. The poll worker puts it in the slot of the box for the hand written ballots. My husband reminds me to take an "I Voted" sticker and we're off.
Tear Dam Bursts
So the pent-up emotion of the whole voting thing bursts forth in the car, and I tell my husband though whinny tears how homeless I feel. I tell him I love staying in this paradise of Newport Beach, but I can't understand how it is that he, who is so smart, and I, who am not stupid, haven't been able to achieve what all these people around us have achieved.
I decide part of our problem is because we have high standards in our behavior and always have. We do morally ethical things that probably hurt us financially - stuff like our refusal to advertise on the kid's page of our web site. We wouldn't want the learning games we created for kids to lead them to dangerous places on the web. And it's the other stuff we do. I start listing things I can think of to Mike. "Like,we tip generously," I say to Mike. He continues on this line and he talks about the guy at work who says he'll leave a measly dollar if he gets perfect service. We agree that that whole kind of mentality is why that guy has money and we don't - that and having spouses who left us. Divorce is the big one even 20 years down the line.
8:45 - Starbucks in Newport Beach - I'm trying to feel cheerful - I usually am when we're driving down the PCH. Mike takes this way because he wants to get the free coffee at Starbucks. (I don't like to take anything free, but I know that's just stupid. I'm not in the mood for coffee or going in to face more people for some reason. The lines are long at the first Starbucks - the one near Balboa Island so we head south. We've never been in the second one near Corona del Mar and didn't know there's parking underground. Mike parks and walks up to Starbucks. I stay in the car with Scooter. But Scooter's anxious to get out, and I think it's because he's not finished with his morning routine, so we get out. He barks at a beautiful black poodle and the woman looks at us with a disapproving glance, so I try to sound sweet and sophisticated and wealthy. ( I really, really have to get a handle on the class warfare going on inside of me.) Scooter and I walk up the ramp and around the sidewalk to Starbucks where Mike is coming out with his coffee. I tell him I changed my mind and ask for some cash (I never carry cash) to get a biscotti. ( I really don't want the biscotti, but just can't accept the free coffee without buying something. It was my mother's way passed on to me).
I'm inside Starbucks, still with the chip from the polling place refusing to fall off shoulder. The woman in front of me is a svelte 50, and well-decked out in her expensive, but significantly understated running outfit. She's talking to a charming younger man saying something about how her friend will foolishly vote for Obama thinking he will magically fix everything. The chip is now a brick, and I want to shun these two in front of me. I try to pretend to myself that the draft of a book that I recently submitted to publishers is already published and these two in front of me don't know that behind them is a marvelous author. (I put that in my brain so that permeate through my body and show in my stature). A woman older than the first, maybe even my age but in much better shape than I am, comes up to her apparent friend. She has a British accent, and I wonder if she's more open-minded than her friend, being European and all. (Oiy! the stereotypes I cling to).
I get the coffee and a biscotti and leave a dollar in the tip jar as well. (Some decked out wealthy dude is behind me and I don't want him to think I'm trailer trash which essentially I am given my situation and all. (My counselor would hate me to sound so victimized.)
That smiley grounded guy who had been talking to jogger queen is ahead of me as he pours half- and-half into his cup. He takes a long time, oblivious to anyone behind him, and I think again about the arrogance of wealth. My husband is standing outside with Scooter and I sign to him in Sign Language. (My husband doesn't know what I'm saying and I know he doesn't know, but I do it to gain some sort of one-up-man-ship with this crowd. It's stupid I know, but I feel like I need to have something they don't have - and sign language is all I've got. No one sees me anyway, the guy in front of me is still pouring his cream into his coffee and looking down. He's actually a cheerful, kindly sort and tries to engage me in a voting conversation saying something about the lines at the polls not being long. I say something inane about how they should have been longer, but only I know what he means.
9:00 - Turning it Around
So the coffee and the biscotti are doing their work taking the edge off. I offer Mike my biscotti and he takes a bite. I know he's just thinking of me by not taking more, and tell him, "No, take it all." I start to feel like crass Katy is disappearing and the nicer person is emerging. I tell Mike I know all of this "victimization" I feel has been because I feel inferior. But what if I really AM inferior? I posit. And I start singing that line from that old Melanie song... "When you're analyst tries to tell you that you really ARE inferior." We laugh and decide that he could use that line with the guy at work who talks about not tipping. Something like, "No, don't worry about not tipping, you really ARE inferior," or something like that. We'll have to think that out later. I ask Mike to reach back and get me my Obama hat from the back shelf of the car and I put it on. I feel better. We head for Mike's work.
9:30 - Back Home to Work and Await the Results
I drop Mike off. We kiss and I admonish him to NOT talk politics to all his Republican co-workers. (I don't want him to lose his job in this economic downturn). He reminds me that I have my Obama hat on. (I think he wants to tell me that I don't want to lose my Republican friends back at the RV resort.) On the way home, I turn on NPR on the radio, then Pacifica radio and I'm disappointed that there are no projections. Drats.
My daughter calls from Santa Monica. She's in line at the voting poll. It's fun to talk to her when she's in line. She tells me about a weird experience she has having. Earlier in the morning, she had been thinking of a person she seldom sees and then all of the suddent, out of the blue, she turned in front of her on her way into the polling place. Lucky things have been happening to her lately, and I tell her to buy a lottery ticket and pick the numbers because she's obviously on some wave length. We both only partially believe that, but still...
My daughter phone is starting to die as I'm getting ready to read her the League's position on the propositions. (She's from Minnesota as well and not used to the proposition proposition). I tell her I think I'm going to blog about today and, as usual, she supports my crazy idea. (I'm so glad I have a daughter like her!) Her phone dies in the middle of our conversation and I start the blog.
10:30 -
I try to find out how to get AdSense on this blog, I've done it before and am frustrated that I can't figure it out. Oh, well.
I turn on NPR, no updates. I turn on CNN, a newsman is interviewing Joe the Plumber. Joe is trying to explain that even though he doesn't make $250,000, in the future, when he does, he doesn't want the government to take it away. TAKE IT AWAY! Why in the hell, doesn't the newscaster talk about that comment. He brushes up against it. No one EVER talks about the exponentially of wealth and how THAT is the reason tax is progressive. Joe the Plumber trips himself up by saying something about how if he worked hard enough (as if others who don't make money don't work hard enough) or is LUCKY enough to make that much... Well, EXACTLY. If you reap the benefits of a free society - the benefits that capitalism affords you. Oh, I'm sick of trying to explain it. It's so frickin' cheap. People are so frickin' cheap. I just don't understand it. I pray to heaven that if I make $250,000 I will gladly give more. Or does something just happen to a person when that money thing kicks in.
2:20 FINALLY - Projections
I stopped typing - finally caught up - and turned on CNN. Wolff Blizer is just about to give some projections. It's 5:20 on the East Coast, so here we go. After I hear these numbers, I'll go to pay the rent for our RV space. We'll have little after that, but if this election goes well, I'll be happy and not worried about our bank account.
Yikes, the Republicans are saying Obama is "too radical, too risky". Are they frickin' crazy? For heaven's sakes, are people so stupid? Barack Obama is not Nader or Kucinich. Oiy! Drives me nuts! Oh Lord, now there's some prayer inspiration commercial. What the?
Virginia - problems - had rain - people used optical scan machines and their wet clothing dropped onto the ballots - 1000 people in line in someplace in Virginia, but no major problems.
So many commercials - better go pay the rent first - ooh, ooh, wait - new voters going toward Obama. Hope floats!
3:30 Tension Mounts Wore my Obama hat walking around the bay to the office to pay the rent on our RV space. Lots of my very dear friends and neighbors are Republican based on what they have told me and based my observation of people's responses when I wear my hat - i.e. There is no response, and in some cases my neighbor's initial smiles when they see me fade into oblivion as they say "Hi" and pass. It's almost as if they view us Democrats as immoral; I really sense that.
So back in the RV, CNN is talking about the polls closing in six states. They are about to make a projection - Vermont will carry Obama, McCain will carry Kentucky. Neither are surprises. Georgia, Indiana, S. Carolina, and Virginia are battleground states and CNN is waiting until the real numbers come in. Indiana and Virginia haven't gone Democratic since LBJ.
Back to filling two orders for my company - have to get that done before picking up Mike.
5:00 - Picking Up Mike
Finished the orders to be shipped for my little company, and I'm off to pick up Mike at work. Returns have started to come in and quickly it's looking like things are turning in Senator Obama's favor. I grab my Bruce Springsteen CD on the way out, the one with "Born in America." I want to blast it in the car if Senator Obama wins. I have a need to show Republicans who view those who think differently than they do as unpatriotic that we are ever as much noble as they think they themselves are. If Senator Obama does win, it will feel as if my views have been vindicated.
So my mood is shifting, finally! I call Mike and ask him to google "Orange County Democrats" to see if there's a party. There is a party at a restaurant in Newport Beach - Sutre I think is the name of the restaurant. We've never been there, but go to the movies in the triangle where it's located.
I tell Mike we need to pick up some flags. I consider myself a citizen of the world and never fly flags, but tonight, I want to fly flags. We walk into the CVS store; they have no flags. We go into a hardware store. My feet are hurting from the shoes I put on to match my top. They do have flags and I buy 3 small ones.
We arrive at the restaurant and people are there with clipboards. I hope we're allowed in. We sign our names and receive little paper tickets. There's a table with plastic top hats and a bag with red, white and blue leis and confetti. I convince Mike we need to buy the party pack. As we walk into the restaurant/bar the ceiling is covered in red, white and blue balloons. Mike puts on his hat and we move to a place in front of the big screen TV behind a row of people already there.
The results are coming in and the room becomes jubulant. I'm standing next to a black woman we met on the elevator. She's charming and says the man next to David Gergon on CNN is a friend of hers from Texas. She has her MBA and works in Orange County for a biomedical corporation. We have an affinity to each other, not because of the night, but because we would have anyway.
We listen to McCain's concession speech. The crowd is respectful. It seems to take a long time for Senator Obama to arrive. He finally does and the noise in the room is deafening. Senator Obama speaks and I let the tears come as they want. The woman next to me has feelings deeper than tears. I want more of the speech. I want to hear words that promise we are heading for a new path away from military solutions, but I know Senator Obama has to be moderate and I hope it's only for now.
When the speech is over, we drive home. I put the Bruce Springsteen CD in the player and ask Mike to turn up the volume and roll down the windows as we drive into our RV park in Orange County. My dear friends, Republicans all, will forgive me this night's indulgence. We park the car in front of our 5th wheel as we do every night and I put each of the three flags I bought into one of three potted plants I have; my neighbors will see them first thing in the morning. We go inside and watch a little of the remaining commentary and hoopla on TV and then go to bed.
It's been a very good day. Tomorrow I'll take off the Obama bumper sticker; I remember how I felt the day after President Bush was elected - twice. There's no need to gloat. We're all in this together, but tonight I'm proud of the choice that my side made.
