WrongWrongWrong

I drove to my old hometown yesterday.  It’s a beautiful drive, complete with rolling hills, vineyards, dairy farms, across a mountaintop to views of the Shenandoah Valley, across Shenandoah River.  I always love this drive.

The destination itself is a lot more complicated.  About half a dozen of my remaining relatives in the area are over the age of 65, including my grandmother who is now 91.  My father and my aunt have bone cancer, my mother has many health problems, including now a possible recurrence of breast cancer — I drove down to see her through a biopsy.  After I dropped mom off at her biopsy, I took Dad over to another part of the hospital for a chemotherapy treatment.

It was sobering to see how many people were in the chemo waiting room.  The stress of living with cancer is compounded by the effects of the chemo, and that is compounded by the mechanics of signing in for your appointment.  First you sign in, get your restaurant-style buzzer, then you wait.  Dad and I waited about 15-20 minutes before he was called in.  He was only inside about 10 minutes (I waited in the waiting room).  When he came back out, I thought we were finished, incredibly optimistic and naive of me.  It turns out that a blood test has to be done before every chemo treatment, and you have to sit in the waiting room until this has been processed.  If the results come back favorably, you go ahead with your chemo treatment which takes about another 40 minutes.  If the patient is lucky, he’s out in an hour and a half.  If not, he could spend at least half a day, usually twice a week, sitting in that waiting room.

I find as I get older that I don’t even like sitting through things I used to enjoy, like going to the salon for a pedicure or having my hair done.  Chemo would definitely try my patience.  While we sat through Dad’s treatment, my mom miraculously appeared from a backdoor in the chemo room.  Her biopsy nurse had wheeled her from two city blocks away through the labyrinth of the hospital and she was happy to surprise Dad and me by sneaking in the backdoor.

Since my brother died about two years ago now, I have been trying to wrap my brain around death.  For a while everyone who died (famous people, even famous people I had not previously been interested in) felt a bit like my brother dying all over again.  Clearly we have reason to expect that my grandmother, my father and my aunt, and probably my mother, will all pass away sometime in the next  few years.

And then, like my brother, after the shock wears away, they will be memories.  But my children will barely remember them.  My husband never knew them in their heydays.  They will talk to me before I go to sleep at night and I will wish I could talk back.

I don’t believe in an afterlife, heaven.  If you are fortunate enough to be hopelessly intertwined with another person, the way immediate families are, you’ll be loved and remembered and pined for.  I don’t have this figured out, the whole meaning of life thing.  From what I can tell so far, it’s a lot like Dad’s chemo waiting room.

I don’t even know where to start, there’s just so much wrong with their campaign.

Rep. John Lewis suggested that McCain should calm down the campaign rhetoric,  It’s inciting a few McCain supporters to make strong comments that raise the possibility of violence against Obama.  McCain is outraged anyone would suggest that his supporters or campaign are out of line.  It’s so slimily disingenuous of him, pretending he has no clue how Lewis came to that conclusion.

Let’s assume his campaign had no such malicious intent.  He still took his good old time getting around to correcting the stray voices among the crowd, and when he finally said something, he could barely construct a sentence to remind them of the facts, he damned Obama with faint praise, he protested too little.    I agree with McCain that not everyone who supports him deserves to be lumped in with a few bad apples — but those who have not vehemently protested the ignorant bigots have taken a silent oath to join their clan.

Palin.  I was relaxing.  The polls and the electoral map lulled me into a feeling of hope that Obama will be elected on November 4.  But today I realized that even if Obama wins, in four years I will have to be annoyed by Sarah Palin again when she makes a bid for the Republican presidential nomination.  Shudder.  Someone please offer her a movie role, or some job making a ton of money.  I am absolutely certain she can be bought.  Let’s find the woman a job that will make the presidency look like small potatoes.  Maybe stay at home mom to 5 at risk children.  Forgive me.  She’s just so annoying.

Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

We just had the most wonderful vacation.  Threatened by windy weather that never became more than a Wednesday shower, we had 6 out of 7 great days at the beach, with one rainy day to be tourists and rest. There were 13 of us — 3 families of four each (four girls and two boys ages 7 to 11) and a great aunt.

We read books on the beach, played in the sand, swam in the ocean, looked for shells, looked at surfers (there was a competition down beach), hung out in the heated pool and hot tub, ate too much fabulous food and drank too much great wine.  We visited the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.  Took the ferry to Ocracoke a couple of times, once stopping at a beautiful beach there, Ocracoke Lifeguarded Beach, voted America’s #1 beach in 2007.  The kids went letterboxing.  We had dinner out, just us adults one night, and there was actually a RAINBOW on view from  the marina outside the restaurant.

Really couldn’t have asked for anything more perfect, except that it came to an end on Saturday, and now it’s Sunday and I’m unpacking, checking homework, finding laundry for the Monday morning back to school/work rush.

I would really love to find a way to live on that beach year round.

I read too much and now I’m watching too many news programs with election coverage.  And it’s really stressful, to feel so invested in the outcome of something you have no control over, just a vote thrown in a very large pot with a lot of other votes.  It’s hard to wait for November 4, and of course no guarantee we’ll know then.

Sophie says she can’t wait until the election is over because then people won’t be so mad on TV.

Bob says he sometimes feels like throwing a brick at the TV.  He had to leave in the middle of the Bill Maher show last night.  The Republican dude was obnoxious.  But it really bothers me that it’s so hard to listen to someone from the other side without becoming very angry.  Shouldn’t we just be able to disagree?  Except it feels like so many of the Republicans on TV talk shows can’t possibly really mean what they say.  That they are just saying it because maybe it will help them win.

I wonder what little genetic marker makes us liberal or conservative.  It seems so hardwired, and you can’t make yourself listen to the other side.

My mom, who stayed with my dad against all odds and her better judgment, says that you can’t have a relationship with someone who won’t work with you, won’t listen to you.  And I don’t think that the very very annoying hardline McCain/Palin supporters have any intention of working with or listening to Democrats.

For them, it’s not about addressing issues that challenge America.  It’s about burying the left so they can do as they please.

I’m going to the beach for a week starting Saturday.  I’m not going to watch any election coverage.  For at least the first day.

Half truth — is that a glass half full or half empty?  Are we optimists to cling to the shred of truth at the beginning of the bald-faced embellishment?  It’s such a waste of time and energy.  It’s so discouraging to have to explain to your 10 year old that even a war hero cannot be trusted.  My 10 year old, who from time to time announces that she would like to be president when she grows up, doesn’t fully comprehend why as sisters in GIRL POWER!! we can’t celebrate the coronation of Sarah Palin, potentially the first woman president of the United States.  So I am going to have to explain that in a moment of fuck you cynicism, exploiting a perceived weakness in the Democratic ticket, a man who might be President and his team of advisors selected a woman who is not qualified for the job.  This political game all the grown up players and media find so funny, that is filled with ironies and gotcha moments — is costing us.

This week we lost a war hero, the integrity that usually shines through in the face of a hockey mom.  Possibly we will lose the opportunity to see Barack Obama sworn in as the first African American President of the United States.

I’m tired of throwing up my hands and laughing at the ridiculous.

Come on, everyone — are we so jaded that we can’t agree it’s heartbreaking?

I was really rooting for Hillary Clinton, even though I also very much admired Barack Obama. They are both wonderful options for the country. I just felt that Barack would have time later to be prez, and Hillary’s time really had to be now or never. I wanted both of them to end up in the White House.

I knew I wouldn’t have to choose between them after the Virginia primary. And even though I was disappointed that Hillary did not win the nomination, I am thrilled and inspired by Barack Obama. He is someone I would like to have a beer with — a standard we should hold our friends to, but not enough to ask of a presidential candidate. But more than that, he is well-educated, intelligent, thoughtful, inspiring, considerate, curious, open-minded, and wise. Other than the fact that I am really pretty much an atheist, we have similar political views. (Someone in the White House who doesn’t profess some kind of Judeo-Christian faith? That’ll be the day.)

I was inspired and uplifted by the Democratic convention. But something very very scary happened the day after the convention.

McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Sarah Palin might in fact be very smart. She might have the charisma to be a great leader. But that just doesn’t matter!

She’s advocates teaching creationism in schools. Yikes! Don’t fundamentalist Christians ever worry that in some ways (without the violence, of course) they are just like the Taliban — clinging to a system from thousands of years ago, ignoring science, disdaining art, repressing women with their antichoice views, their abstinence non-education sex education?

She’s on the record as not giving one trace of a care about the environment.

She has already lied to the American people about her supposed reform record, her handling of the Bridge to Nowhere.

I’m pretty liberal. While I’m glad women are finally being considered for, are running for, high office, there’s not going to be much else Sarah and I can agree on.

Those Americans supporting McCain and Palin are giving them a passing grade on their college performances and on their lack of intellectual strength that they would never give to another professional — would you want your doctor to admit he graduated 5th from the bottom of his class, your plumber to admit that she had to keep changing colleges to finally get her degree?  But for president of the United States, that’s OK?

Which brings me to the single most disturbing thing about her entry onto the campaign scene — the reception she’s been given. I can’t bear it. I can’t bear to believe that half the country is so backwards intellectually and in their belief systems that the gloss of a few catchy social issues (born again, guns, having my baby, damn those elite educated snobs who think they’re better than us) can so totally distract them from the fact that they are so dissatisfied with the way Bush has run the last 8 years.

Sarah Palin is the intoxicating equivalent of a Friday night margarita to those who support her. They want to leave the work week behind them, ignore the war, the energy problems, the economy, all these problems, and just have a drink, dammit. The problem is — Monday always comes.

I can’t sleep knowing that Sarah Palin — and evidently, millions like her — are out there.

And I mean WAY OUT THERE.