If this were easy, everyone would be doing it.

"...if there's one thing I learned, it's that when our servicemen and women go to war, their families go with them. I saw how they take care of each other, heard how they fill in whenever the system fails and discovered that the trials they faced always were matched by the hope they shared that better days are still ahead." - Michelle Obama

Thank you for being strong enough to hold me up, live your dreams, and keep us safe all at the same time.  My flowers are beautiful and this morning's brief call made my birthday wonderful!  I hope the deluge of care packages adequately convey how much I love you and how proud I am to be waiting for you to come home.  I'd choose this life again and again and again to spend it with you.  See you in dreams tonight - let's meet somewhere warm!

HA-ppy voting!

Go forth and make us proud!

Change. Progress. Hope.

I imagine that the rain held off until our moods were oil coated and resistant.  The earth needed quenching but our spirits were swollen and untouchable.  They say that water and electricity don't mix; I assure you that yesterday proved old precedence wrong.  The dark skies threw torrents to the thirsty ground while supporters charged with storms of conviction held their melting posters, held determined faces, held beliefs and hope like sturdy soldiers.  Like the smell of doused streets, the murmur of Americans permeated the damp air.  Even a person with no knowledge would have known that something big was occurring.

I went ahead of my friends to secure seats at the coffee house across the street from campus, the same place I've gone a hundred times to study and hang out on perfectly average days.  The street vendors and organizations held most everyone's attention until about 5:30 pm, but by then I had already draped cardigans and umbrellas and placed Nalgenes and any other marker from my bag of tricks on vacant seats so they would look taken and I wouldn't have to straddle an entire corner of Bongo Java with rabid eyes and a snarl to repel the crowds.  It wasn't long before my old roommate and her posse arrived.  We had our seats and time to kill and coffee and Cookies for Change right outside the outdoor patio.  Several times we remarked that it felt like New Years Eve, like a countdown should be in order for the event and the potential for change and our hope for change.  The people rolled in like waves and the rain fell in waves and goosebumps came in waves.  Everything felt too big to true.

My journalist friend had a break and excused himself from the circus in which only a press badge gets you entrance.  He didn't have much time, nonetheless he took a seat and we talked about his very entertaining and informative election blog and how he had received a REAL, LIVE ticket to the Great Hoorah.  Though my account is far less official than his and I didn't have a badge of any kind, just a hot tea and dry seat, I was there and I'll tell my babies about it, and no matter what accessories or adornments I was lacking, this is history.

There eventually was a countdown because we had exhausted ourselves and built a hype in our cores after two hours of waiting and watching the police guarded streets and the feather-shaped flags of red and blue whipping occasionally in spotlights and weather.  The street booths shut-down and their sponsors found seats of their own.  The floor space filled up first and then the front patio, the stairs leading up to the patio, the sidewalk leading to the stairs, and then left and right, as far as they could stand and still have a peek at the projection screens.

Browkow began.  Our biased group of Obama supporters cheered untamed when Barack made his way across the stage, so much so that McCain's first appearance was lost in the sea of opposition.  I was jealous not to be in the actual audience of the debate until the hoots and clapping wrapped me up in something more organic and bigger than myself, communal hope and fiery passion in a coffee spot that felt as much like home as campus every did. 

In fifty years I wonder where we'll be as a country.  I wonder how these days will affect the kids I haven't even considered conceiving and how my adulthood will be molded by the rebuild of all that is crumbling.  I wonder when and how the war will end, how I'll be able to afford the utility bills this winter, the gas for my car.  I wonder what this extra degree will amount to in a job market sinking like silt, and I think of how uneasy this state of our country leaves me, yet I know without a shadow of doubt that even my worst hardship brought on by the government is so weak compared to so many.

Presidential Debate [no. 2]

Welcome to my alma mater, Belmont University.  We may be a small, private school you haven't ever heard of, but who cares?  You know us now.

The audience begins to arrive via Gray Line tour buses. 

(This is the same building where I graduated!)

One of several viewing parties.  

We are live from Bongo Java, home of the Nun Bun.

Before our mesmerized gazes is a giant screen and all around our hungry ears is the booming volume of arguing politics.  We are pretending we aren't mere yards away from the Great Hoorah, but that we are there as well.  

Even more impressive was the crowd watching the outside screen in the 60 degree, pouring rain.  They are the true rockstars of the evening, and their numbers are many, many times those of us sheltered by the coffee house.

photo credits owed to tennessean.com

Debate '08

I've tried to keep the concrete details of my small existence a secret for reasons I won't go into now. This just seems too big not to brag about, though. Part of me wishes that I was still a student, to witness the historic madness ensuing on campus - news vans and national attention, etc. There are events all over town scheduled for Tuesday's town hall debate and I feel that I will be doing myself and the wide-eyes of my future children a grave injustice if I'm not a part of something so monumental. In recent history there have only been a few elections so exciting the American people.

If you know me, it's no secret that I was born 40 years late, missing the 60's (when my soul was conceived). The Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam and critical social progressivism created a tone that I have always envied. How powerful would it have been to hang in the electricity of so much needed change? After the first and second plane struck the World Trade Center towers, life as Generation-Unmoved knew it took a swift turn for the unknown. So here we are squashing under a system of drying Social Security, a diving DOW, a sky-rocketing inflationary situation, fuel dependency, failing medical-care, a struggle for gay rights, attempts to seize my right to choose what to do with my own body, and a 7 year war that threatens more for me than world peace. I so wish that I could attend the debate. Even as an alum, the tickets were few and snatched up by everyone else who has been swept away in the importance of this election. I will however, have to make time for one or two block parties!

new shoes, old friends, and all the middle parts, too.

I don't have anything really eloquent to log tonight, just some catching up, I guess. I've been sick...with some delightful bug I was awarded for demanding kisses even when The Staff Sergeant was feeling under the weather. "I never get colds," I assured him, "only sinus infections!" Famous last words, my friends, famous last words.

It really hit me about 2 days ago and was swiftly accompanied by an indisguisable hacking cough that wore my throat raw and kept everyone awake. The peak of distress arrived last night when my boss told me to go home and the thermometer declared a low-grade fever. I don't do sick so well so I regressed, like all pitiful princesses do when germs plague their bodies, to a mental age of about 5 - the please-hold-me stage of life. Thankfully, today was my day off so I didn't need to report to anyone, anywhere and I rested and slowly moved through morning glory muffins with Republic of Tea, and tried to watch the Today show [but was thwarted by Bush's speech]. I ran some errands and started cleaning house, did some much needed laundry, and eventually met The Staff Sergeant for some quality shoe shopping [an interactive Christmas gift]. My new kicks are Asics, pink and gray ones at that. They're to hopefully make working out less painful on my feet, and less dreaded of an activity...and they are pink!

Also today, I bought my first pair of skinny jeans. I feel that they constrict my ankles, but I'm told I'll get used to it...

On a more meaningful note, I saw an old high school friend as she is in town to take care of an aunt who isn't well. We had coffee and time to catch up, and tomorrow another of my long-lost comrades from days gone by will be passing through on her way to see family. She's an army wife and we haven't seen each other since the wedding [2 years ago]. It mystifies and fascinates me to think back almost 10 years when both of these girls crossed my path, and to observe how wholly different we are from that freshman year in high school. It's good to know they're there, those bonds that survive.

With that, as my roommate urges the consumption of wine and the dryer's buzzer notes the end of another cycle, I'm finished.

Good night all.

Mr. Bush, I hate your shoes...among other things.

Not that I would have ever dated him anyway, but Crocks?! Seriously? Can we impeach him on grounds of bad shoes? There is no room for Crocks in the Presidential Branch of the United States Government. I could have told you how this would all pan out with one glance at the shoe choice.