Nov

9

Starting to exhale

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My last post was written with no guess whatsoever how the election would go down and as it stands now I got the result I was hoping for but pretty much via the worst possible circumstances. I wish it had been a landslide or at least devoid of the fly-ridden pile of bullshit that had been predicted but still came as a deeply unwelcome surprise, but at least we have an outcome, and as each day goes by I am allowing myself to feel more relief and hope and belief that the outcome will stick.

Plus, we will always have Four Seasons Total Landscaping. (Who, naturally, is now selling merch.)

If I were the inspiring sort here’s where I would turn my attention to some uplifting-yet-stern commentary about how the fight isn’t over and we must all work harder than ever to hnnnggggggggghhghgh I can’t even type that without fighting the urge to pass out nose-first into the keyboard.

I don’t know about you but I am wiped. I love watching all the clips of people celebrating in the streets, honking and shouting and gleeful, but I feel like that poor blobfish that’s been rocketed to the surface and is just a droopy mess of WTF. Like … I’m gonna need a minute.

It’s been a hard four years and this moment is a mixed one, our divided house is not exactly sharing sentiments about the election or even a shared reality about how it happened. That’s been the worst part of all this, really — the way reality has splintered, making it impossible to make inroads because without a mutual agreement on what is true, how can any real progress be made?

Well. I wish many things were not the way they were, but *weary Michelle Obama voice* it is what it is. Maybe now, finally, we can all begin to start picking up the pieces, and find our ways back to some common ground.

Nov

2

Fingers crossed

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As I type this, tomorrow is Election Day. Maybe when you read this we will know who the next president will be, or maybe we’ll be in some sort of godawful vote-tallying holding pattern, or maybe you won’t be able to read this at all because civilization as we know it will have collapsed entirely and we’ll all be reduced to communicating via smoke signal from the burning rubble of what’s left of our cities?

I mailed in my vote a while ago, which has always been my voting experience, either by virtue of living in Oregon or voting via absentee ballot. This year probably would have been the one year I would have preferred to vote in person, if that were an option, but I did verify online that my ballot had been received, which sadly is displayed via a no-nonsense database query and not a jaunty checkbox next to giant block letters in the Mandalorian typeface: I HAVE SPOKEN.

This household’s presidential votes canceled each other out, which is all I suppose I will say about this particular personal aspect of this election period and the preceding four years, except: shit has been hard, shit may get harder.

Deep breaths and hope. I hope our country is given the chance tomorrow to begin a healing process. I hope we can get through the day without violence. I hope we have a definitive answer one way or another. And I hope like hell we get this dangerous, ignorant, lying piece of trash out of the White House, and out of our lives.