Sex Music

So, Stevie is out of town and--without divulging too much (too late!)--Kevin and I took advantage of that last night. I went to pick out some music but I didn't want to "spoil the mood" by pondering too much, so I just jabbed at the CDs in a random way. My first pick was The Meat Puppets. We giggled for a second and I put it back. My second try? Slobberbone. Come ON, deities!

My third try turned up the Pixies, and that worked quite nicely.

It all reminded me of the time long ago when Kevin and I had sex like, everyday. Usually he'd pick the music and it was an Event, you know what I mean? He always picked great music, too. I specifically remember the following: Peter Gabriel's soundtrack for The Last Temptation of Christ, Beck's "Mutations" (awesome, especially "Cold Brains"), and T. Rex's "Electric Warrior." Other good ones include Ali Farke Toure and Ry Cooder's collaboration, which Diane Lane's lover played in Unfaithful, and "Exile on Main Street" by the Rolling Stones.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to throw this out there and see if anyone had any comments about good sex music. Why not? Comment anonymously if you're shy! Write down bad sex music (The Carpenters? Huey Lewis?), or really raunchy sex music. Perhaps you prefer the crafted climax of Beethoven's 9th, or the blatant play-by-play of "Slow Ride" by Foghat? Have you been jarred by the music after the games were over, as you try to cuddle to, say, the Ramones? Or keep a straight face while Barry White tells you to "take your panties off?"

Do you actually seduce your partner to records with names like "The Sounds of Seduction?"

Shelter from the Storm

My five-year anniversary is this Friday. It's fitting that it corresponds with Thanksgiving because 1. we planned it that way and 2. I'm so incredibly thankful for Kevin.

To paraphrase and slightly change an old saying, a happy marriage really is an earlier heaven. Of course, I don't believe in heaven so I'd better get it right now, and I did.

Kevin and I first went out around Easter in 1999. I cooked him dinner--chicken breasts with provolone simmered in a garlic-heavy tomato sauce. We went camping on our first date. We were linked by our position as DJs on the public radio station in Moab--the best one in the country, really--KZMU. By summer, we were all about each other. We got engaged in October, in a very typical manner for us--unceremoniously as we relaxed in bed. We agreed to be married Thanksgiving of 2000 but, after a week or so of thinking about it, decided to go for it (why wait?) and get married in 6 weeks. It just made sense, and neither of us were excited about having over a year to plan a wedding.

As it turned out, 6 weeks and less than $2,000 was all we needed to pull off a wedding weekend that included decorating a really cool little town hall that used to be the Stuntman Hall of Fame, serving Thanksgiving dinner for about 30 of our nearest and dearest, and getting hitched in a heartfelt ceremony encircled by family and community. There was no obnoxious DJ, no obnoxious dancing--just lots of beer and wine, really good food, and really good companionship.

Of course, I was pretty tired by the end of the night, and wasn't hungry for a lot of the food, because--funny thing!--I was pregnant. Three days before our wedding I took a pregnancy test at the urging of the ob-gyn nurse and lo-and-behold! Our family was thrilled. Kevin's parents thought that he would never get married, and Kevin's sister had been married for about 10 years but the only egg that got fertilized was the nesting variety. His parents were pushing 60 and had a cozy retirement on the near horizon but had no grandchildren. My mom was always up for another grandbaby to add to her growing collection, and it was my turn to contribute.

The short courtship and darn-near immediate parenthood would spell doom for some couples, but it was, and has been, more than fine for us. Five years into it, our marriage is second-nature. It's not outwardly exciting or overly romantic, but that crap doesn't matter much. Inwardly, it's a thrill. To find a lifelong companion that you truly enjoy, love, respect, trust, think is totally cool and hot, is a kind of miracle. The prospect of really knowing someone and watching them over a lifetime, of shaping and being shaped by them, is just awesome. And raising kids with someone that you think is a great parent--and watching those kids throughout the course of their lives--is really, REALLY fun.

Even when I was a fun-lovin' twenty-something, I always hoped that I would find the right guy, get married, have kids, and have a home. Well, amazingly, I'm there. And it's great.

There are dozens of songs that remind me of Kevin and only Kevin, but this one is THE one--if only I had written it myself (but thanks, John Lennon). And thank you, Kevin, for being my refuge.

In My Life

There are places I’ll remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I’ve loved them all

But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new
Though I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I’ll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more

Though I know I’ll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I’ll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more

In my life I love you more

Katie Couric Bothers Me

It's not fair, I know, but she does. I don't care for "cute" little women, with cute little smiles, who wear far too much makeup and ask pseudo-serious questions of powerful people to appease her corporate master. It's annoying.

And her book for children is annoying. Oh, it's not a bad book, but probably not too tough to write and all the really good stuff was the work of the illustrator--whom she can afford. Same with Madonna. Terry Gross is hosting her on Fresh Air today. I have no problem with Madonna's sexual antics (though I do find people who live up to their stereotypes quite boring and even, sometimes, nauseating). But it must be frustrating for all of those real authors who pour heart and soul into creating a truly timeless book for children, along the lines of "The Giving Tree" or "Charlotte's Web," to be outyoga'd by the Madonna Machine and her decent, beautifully illustrated books that fall off the damn shelves and make big international stinks.

Don't worry, gentle reader, I am not in a bad mood or sad or even somewhat annoyed. I'm having fun airing the little, inconsequential things that I find ridiculous.

I started a list not too long ago, a list for the purposes of this blog, of things that annoy me. The only thing that made it onto the list was women who go out on a winter's night dressed inappropriately for the cold. These are the women you just want to yell at--or at least look at with a disappoving parental smirk--as they walk past you, arms tightly folded, head ducked, as their bare midriffs and stockinged legs are whipped by wintry winds. Dumbasses!

During my commute, there are many things that annoy me, but they're all so cliche now. But I must say that I'm amazed at the sheer number of drivers who don't turn their headlights on as dusk settles in over the exurban mushroom houses, or when misty fog blankets the box stores.

Vegans bother me, too. Last night I watched the wretched "Trading Spouses." Really bad show. I had heard the premise and, unfortunately, I didn't get my Sex and the City DVD started before I saw that they were sending a Cajun-bred, airbrushed T-shirt wearing, fried crawly-things-eating woman to the abode of a righteous, power mad, Californian vegan. I just HAD to watch then. I may write more about this troubling concept in Why Won't You Grow? Omnimedia. However, for my purposes here, there were two very annoying things on that show. The first was the Cajun's son, or Cajun Bart Simpson with none of the charm and a REALLY awful white-trash haircut. He was annoying, but truly stupid was the vegan mom's assurance that she could somehow right 10 years of permissive parenting in a week. Ridiculous. The other was with the vegan lifestyle. If you want to be a vegan, that's great, but the vegans we were introduced to on this particular show were the world's worst kind, exhibiting the kind of overbearing righteousness usually reserved for members of the Christian Coalition. I said to my husband, "There's one thing I don't understand under vegans. I would get it if they didn't eat factory-farm eggs, but how is it cruel to eat eggs from, say, our happy little chickens?" Kevin simply said, "There are a lot of things I don't understand about vegans." If only that vegan mom had been at our house to set him straight. Opportunity...WASTED!!!

Well, this has been fun. I would encourage you, dear, dear, in-need-of-guidance-from-me reader, to write down some of the everyday things that give you pause, but that you really shouldn't stress about. If nothing else, writing about it gives you an outlet from stress, as well as helping you to maintain your blogoverse audience and beat Burb's numbers. Ha HA!

The prez needs a new pair of shoes

Golly, I don't know if I'm really allowed to air my opinions, especially when they are countered by the majority of people at a lunch table airing theirs, but what the fuck? I'm going to do it anyway. At least here, in my little blog, I will have the chance to formulate an opinion without being insulted.

The president of the USA makes quite enough money and there is no need to grant him a raise. He is currently making $400,000, to bring you up to date, after 30 years of making $200,000. Now, I don't object to periodically granting him a cost-of-living adjustment, but let's not forget that his cost-of-living is, oh, around $0.

You might, as some of my colleagues did, bring up the argument that being prez is a tough job and why should he make less than, say, a New York Yankee or Les Wexner? After all, the president shoulders enormous responsibility for 4 or 8 years and his life must be protected from the malicious intent of psychos trying to impress Hollywood royalty.

All true. But the president--unlike Derek Jeter and Les Wexner (local clothing-empire billionaire) is a public servant. His salary, pension, living quarters, transportation, etc. comes from the public sector.

Many bristle at the enormous salaries granted to those who make it to the top of the private sector--$20 million per action movie, $140 million severance packages for fleeting CEOs, $100,000 to walk down a runway. But I, for one, have no problem with this compensation because it is what the market will bear. If you don't want to be party to this, don't buy Calvin Klein or Aladdin on DVD. My only problem with it would be if this money was granted through illegal means that favor some over others, and I suspect some of it is, but there are other fires raging in my world.

I'm also quite sure that most people would agree that no one needs $30 billion (or whatever Bill Gates is worth now) to live comfortably. If we were to pay a president the same rate as a CEO, which CEO's salary do we choose? And does the president, or any human being, really need that kind of cash? Aren't there other types of compensation that come with the job?

There sure are. Unlike faceless CEOs and unsung linebackers, the president is, well, The President. The perks that come just from being president extend throughout the rest of his life. We do, after all, pay a nice pension to the prez--about $150,000 a year ($20,000 for the wives), a nice office, the start of a big library, etc. The price for everything that you do, speaking and writing in particular--go WAY up after you're prez. In a nutshell, you're set for life after just four years!

But perhaps the most coveted compensation comes in the form of immortality. Your library may look like I.M. Pei's attempt at a mobile home on stilts, but it's got your name on it, damnit. Not to mention that you go down in history as one of the very, VERY few people to hold the position of leader of the free world. You are immortalized. In a big way.

Hey--surprise! I'm a capitalist, too! If you want to go back to the market argument again, it makes absolutely no sense to raise the president's salary way out of line with all other elected officials and public servants because the current salary is what the (public) market will bear. Surely if GM cut their CEO's salary to $400,000 they would have problems, because the assumed "best and the brightest" would head straight to Ford, and GM would face a shortage of qualified applicants. Have we ever had a shortage of people who want to run for president? Will we ever? No? Then, obviously, these guys are in it for more than the money, though most of them--with Washington and Kennedy being the only exceptions--took it.

If we raised the salary, would more qualified applicants be added to the pool? Doubtful. Anyone wealthy enough to poo-poo the presidency because of the paltry $1.6 million and a free house (a pretty nice one, filled with food and servants and guards) is 1. rich enough already and 2. obviously not in it for ANY of the right reasons. Also, it's not going to pull more poor and middle class people into it because 1. $400,000 represents a significant salary increase for working stiffs like me and 2. let's face it--the pool is strictly member's only anyway (with the occasional fence-jumpers like Ralph and Ross).

So there you go. Argumente unfettere.

Greatness awaits you--if only you take the first step

WARNING: This post contains a story that many would consider pretty gross.

So I put on my red mules this morning. “My daddy hates it when I wear these red mules.” (Can you name the movie that this bastardized line comes from?) Anyway, I walk out to my car, start it, and slip off my shoes for the exhilarating drive to work.

I’m driving for a good 20 minutes when I shift my feet and feel something wet. “What the hell is that?” I say in my mind. I rub my bare feet on each other, thinking that I’m wiping some sort of car fluid off my feet, and what the hell kind of car fluid leaks out by the accelerator? I glance down at my feet and they’re BROWN!

I stepped in a fresh pile of chicken crap on the way to my car (I mean Really Fresh, and apparently the result of the chicken eating something that didn't quite agree with her), inadvertently got some on a pedal, and then smeared it all over my freshly showered feet. All at 55 mph.

As I got closer to work and started being stopped by lights, I grabbed my “Slightly-Damp-Ones” and attempted to wipe the now baked on—thanks to my car heater—poop from my feet. And the first thing that I did when I got to work was haul ass to the baff and scrub the rest off.

On my way out of the bathroom there was a slight noise indicating that something was stuck to the bottom of my shoe. (!?) Thinking it was toilet paper, I immediately wondered if there was any better way to humiliate myself today, cuz I just hadn’t had enough to that point and it was already 8 a.m. I reached down and pulled what looked like a folded fortune-cookie fortune off my sole, threw it into the trash, and began to walk out.

Then I stopped.

If it was indeed a fortune, and it was stuck to the small amount of chicken poop still on the bottom of my shoe, I just had to read it, right? So I pulled it out from among the moist towelettes. The message?

“It is very possible that
you will achieve greatness
in your lifetime.”

"Who do you have to screw to get a loan around here?"

Yes, sympathetic reader, our little story just got a little worse.

We went to the bank yesterday afternoon with completed paperwork in hand, proof of home insurance, and the full expectation that we would be granted our crappy interest-only loan this week and, thus, be rid of my scheming father forever. Alas, foiled again!

Oh, we're qualified for a loan. But, you see, our house is a log house. "Aaaawwww, cute!" you say, but you would be mistaken. Fannie Mae says that only Unabomber freaks desire log homes, and won't give an interest-only loan for log homes.

To clarify, we live in a 2-bedroom ranch. Sure, it's made out of logs (cut "square" as opposed to left in their natural round form, so they stack nicely and there's none of that ugly white chinking in between the logs) but, for some reason, it has cedar siding on the outside so you wouldn't know it was log until you came inside. It's very nice, actually. On the inside, it looks just like a regular ranch--except that it has log walls around the perimeter. The rest of the walls are drywall, either painted or covered with real pine beadboard--not that crappy 70s paneling you see in rec rooms. It's nice! I swear to GOD!!!

Anyway, it seems as if the closer we get to securing this god-damned FUCKING LOAN!!! the more log jams the banker throws up for us to navigate. He's a goddamn log-jammin' superhero. He KNEW that our house was log WEEKS ago because 1. we told him (and then had to assure him that, no, it wasn't a "cabin." Jesus!!!) and 2. the goddamn APPRAISER was at our house and should have made all of that very clear! Still, we sat in the banker's office (with crown molding and other appointments that Kevin and I paid for over the last two years. Fuckers.) and listened to him say, after I asked him what happened to our interest-only, no down payment option, that "he didn't know it was a log home." Our only option is to put at least 5% down. But we've been paying off our credit cards, remember.

So all the paperwork is done but we won't have the $10,000 we need to get the loan for another couple of months. In the meantime, we can't look for houses because we can't take on a cheap loan for a cheaper house and then buy this house in 2 months. BUT, we have been given "permission" from my dad--the landlord with none of the landlord's hassle or costs, yet all of the tax breaks--to put up a "for sale by owner" sign in OUR front yard in the hopes that someone will buy it before we have to waste money and closing costs on a loan for a house that we want to sell immediately. "Soooo, why not just buy a new house and help your dad sell "his" house to another buyer, thus avoiding the tremendous hassle and closing costs?"

Because "he already has a buyer," that's why. Us. His only daughter, the son-in-law that works for him, and one of his three grandsons that he barely sees even though he lives 1/2 hour away. Why would he cut us a break? He has done nothing but profit on this house ($30,000 in interest over two years represents significant tax benefits--even though WE are the ones paying the mortgage, the insurance, AND the taxes on the property! AND, we've OWED taxes the last few years! Thanks, Dad.). We, on the other hand, have done nothing but pay huge "rent" payments for the last two years and, even though the house increased in value, have nothing to show for it.

I'm half tempted to agree with my dad and call what we've paying "rent." Then we could give him notice that we're moving out. After all, we have no legal obligation to stay in the house (it's his on paper) and nothing but a verbal agreement that we would buy the house when we were able. Our plans changed! The house is more of an albatross to us now!

But we can't. That's what he would do.

By the way, you know how people whine when you use all caps when you're not really yelling? Well, I'm really yelling.

"Sssssssstressssss" said the snake, the sneakedy, slimedy snake

It's kind of amazing how everything seems to happen at once.

First, we find out that the $30,000 we've paid to live in our house for the last two years cannot be retreived as the vast majority of it went to interest, and the rest goes to my dad. See, the house is in my dad's name because he has the credit. The deal was that he would get us into the house, we would make all the payments, and in two years when we've established our credit we would get the house into our name and off we go! But to get the house into our name we have to BUY the house (as opposed to assuming the loan balance), which means we are no different than any other schmo who wanted to buy it with the exception that we get to buy the house at the price of dad's loan, which was $3,000 more than the asking price (to cover taxes, etc). Unfortunately for us, the house only appreciated by $3,000 over the amount of his loan and there was hardly any equity after just two years which means that we have to buy it for the cost of the appraisal which leaves us with no cash and the dark memory of a really expensive "rent" payment! To make a long story short, we have to start all over again.

Now, that's not so bad--surely we've learned from our experience and at least we are qualified to get a loan now. BUT, ours is a 2-bedroom, 1-bath house. Sure the kitchen is HUGE and we have 2 living rooms and an enormous porch, deck, a black-top drive, two nice outbuildings and 2 acres--but none of that really matters because we only have 2 bedrooms. And we want more children. And we jumped through many, many hoops to be qualified to foster and adopt.

So we made plans to put an addition on our house, something that the banker told us was a pretty sure bet. So we secured a good builder, got the building permit, and hired a guy to draw the plans. It was going to cost no more than $45,000 to add 3 bedrooms, a large bath, and an 8-foot hallway to connect it all to our existing house. Woo-hoo! Excitement ruled the day. The social worker said to call him when we broke ground and we would then become much better candidates as adoptive parents.

Then the appraisal came in and, while high for a 2-bedroom, it wasn't high enough for the bank to approve the loan for the addition. The banker told us we would be better off buying a different house with more bedrooms. Since the only loan we can get involves paying interest ONLY for at least two years (and that's because we have no more than 5% for a down payment because we spent the last two years paying off our credit cards to improve our credit rating and get out from under the iron claws of the corrupt credit card racket instead of saving for a big down payment) I decided that we would be better off in a cheaper house--preferably one with more damn bedrooms!

So now, suddenly, I'm thrust into house-hunting mode. Weird. We all love our current house and thought our plans were firm. Now, not only do we still have to get through the paperwork involved in getting the house into our name, but we now have to turn around and put it on the market, learn what it takes to sell a home without a 6%-taking real estate agent, and somehow find the time and money to make the many little improvements that vastly increase our little house's chances of getting sold.

To top it all off, there are lots of MUCH bigger and, in many cases, cheaper homes out there, but they're either in Mount Vernon--which means a two-hour round-trip commute--or in Old Towne East--which means living in a quasi-dangerous neighborhood (but up-an-coming!) right in the middle of the city. Hmmmmm.......

You know, if I really stopped to think about it, I might get pretty damned depressed. So I won't stop to think about it.

Three Little Birds

For those of you familiar with Bob Marley, you will have already figured out that I'm feeling much, much better about things. So don't worry about a thing, cuz every little thing is gonna be all right, be all right.

Oh, I'm not ready to shove sunshine up your butt, but I still have hope, I am still somewhat, tentatively, nervously optimistic. We will survive another 4 years of this monstrous administration, and it is poetic justice (as someone wrote) that they have to clean up their own mess. Kerry would have had a HARD time.

Still, I worry and worry about judicial replacements, the possiblility of another festering wound to our Constitution (in the form of the anti-gay marriage amendment--a completely fucking ridiculous and worthless, needless piece of shit legislation), of the kind of economic collapse that could ruin us all. There are problems, and I have renewed my subscription to Mother Jones to make sure that I stay abreast of it all and ACTIVELY WORK TO COUNTER IT. But I feel revved up. Sure, I've largely ignored the news this past week, but I've caught enough to know that I still want to know, that I'm still in the game.

We'll all watch what happens in the next few years with interest. I am particularly interested in whether or not we will continue to move towards a fundamentalist Christian regime--a fucking nightmare in my world.

Despite the cussing and the rush, rush fragmentation of this entry, know, concerned reader, that I am feeling much better--and much more ready to pounce.

Another undecided Ohio voter

Is there another miracle left for an underdog from Massachusetts? If we hold up BELIEVE signs, if we collectively will it into reality, will the poll workers open those precious provisional votes and find Kerry's name? God, what a story that would be.

Right now, it's probably the only story that will make me feel less hopeless and afraid. I stayed up until 2:30, watching Bush's slight lead in my home state--Ohio if you haven't figured it out--narrow ever so slightly, at one point to just under 100,000 votes, with almost 10% uncounted. Finally, I gave up my post, put a pillow over my ear, and fell half asleep. Occasionally, some good news seeped in--Kerry took Michigan. But then Dan Rather (channel 10 had the best reception) would start crunching the numbers, and my shallow dreams began to reflect my growing despair. When I awoke at 5:30, with 99% of Ohio precincts reporting, Bush was still up 51%.

At that point, all of the anxiety that has been building up so palpably for the last several months released itself. I started sobbing and just couldn't stop. Even now, I sit here on the verge of tears, wondering what happened to my tenuous grasp on hope, to my country, to the sense of decency that, deep down, I felt existed in Americans. Last night I watched Fahrenheit 911 in between the early election results. Bad move. It only confirmed what I already knew about Bush and company, and makes today's results even more unbelievable.

All 11 of the gay marriage bans passed. One border state (I apologize--I forget which one) voted to cut off all public services for illegal aliens, which includes the children that those parents are understandably trying to make a better life for. And all over the country, voters are saying that "moral values" was one of their major issues, most notably among "white moms." I just want to say, fuck them. I know it doesn't do much good, but my anger and, more accurately, disbelief that the views of a small group of fundamentalists has spread like a tumor to become the, seemingly, majority view of the people of this supposedly freedom-loving nation is sickening. Just sickening! I could make a long list of examples, of things that our government and their supporters have done and supported in the name of "moral values"--things that are completely immoral, like leaving Iraqi children dead in the streets, denying a group of people their rights as citizens based on, based on what, exactly?--but it's too much for me.

Yesterday I read a speech emailed to me by MoveOn. It was a speech given by Bill Moyers, urging Americans to remember the populist vision for America, to remedy bad government with good government, to not lose sight of the light while you still hold a candle in your hand. It made me want to run for public office--seriously. If bad government is remedied by good government, then I should run. I trust myself--I know my motives. I am honest, I want peace, I care about the poor and don't mind my tax dollars going to help them, I believe in an educated populace. I believe in democracy, and I love this country.

But after last night, I no longer believe that I would stand any kind of chance, because the majority of Americans this morning don't seem to care about real honesty, real peace, the poor, the children, or the fact that they are being duped by Machiavellian leaders and a lazy, corporate-owned media.

As I listened in a depressed, tired haze to the commercials between election coverage early this morning, I was reminded that the real battles are visible all around us--the chipper actors selling air freshener represented the corporations, the leaders of which are tickled pink about last night's seeming victory for the president and his gerrymandering party, about the people's never-failing ability to forget, about their blissful state of not having to care about shit. Ugh! I can't tell you the effect those commericals had on me! It was as if someone had died, and you know that life goes on, but it suddenly seems so raw and ugly and cold.

I actually played with the thought of just giving up on caring, on taking on the attitude of the person in Garrison Keillor's satirical song--the lifelong liberal who decides to chuck it all and be a Republican so s/he doesn't have to worry, doesn't have to care, except about her/himself.

Unfortunately, I can't quite get there.

So . . . what to do? Obviously, I'm a bit depressed now. I'm also afraid--very afraid--that this administration, with the help of a more solid Republican majority, will be able to finish what they started to finish--the environment, women, the Iraqis, the ruination of America's reputation, civil liberties, gay rights, fair trade, worker's rights, poor people, poor children, the schools, a stable international population, scientific research, human resources for AIDS and other diseases, a free media, a rational citizenry, and many more things that are important and even precious to me.

I'm also afraid that the Dark Ages have been renewed--that we are moving once again towards the disastrous consequences that occur when fundamentalist religion is allowed to reign free in government.

So do you fight on? Run for office despite the odds, as Bill Moyers urges? Or do you give up and deal with your own family and immediate community? What? What do I do?

Mr. Rockwell Goes to the Local Township House to Vote

All you city folk might have voted faster and used fancier machines--always rush! rush!, you city folk--but I had the quaintest, cutest little polling place ever devised by Man.

Down my country road, turn onto another, even narrower country road, and park on the side (mind that ditch!). Walk to the ol' white clapboard (peeling, of course) one-room schoolhouse and stand in line behind your trucker hat and white shoes neighbors for your chance to enter the faded apple green interior and vote for the sinners, flip-floppers, baby-killers, and fags, you liberal whack-o, you.

It was so quaint, so amazingly Norman Rockwell, that I was actually inspired to make a quilt. And I probably could've gotten the thing half finished in the time it took to cast said vote. It took over an hour! Unprecedented, apparently, as I overheard (you couldn't help but overhear--that place is pretty small) some old-timers saying how it never took longer than 5 minutes before. Nevertheless, it was polite and neighborly. The woman checking names didn't even ask for IDs, even in the rare instance when she didn't know someone. Her grandson just got a kidney from her daughter-in-law. It was in the paper. Her son was my dog's vet. Small town.

VOTE!