Bumblebee Sweet Potato

Yes, it’s my blogiversary. Time for my annual redesign, and for my year-in-review post. Salud!

First, let’s get started with a little reminiscing about the Potato’s destructive tendencies. I have to say, he’s gotten a lot better about this in the past year (knock wood).

Then, of course, I hosted my first Carnival of Feminists.

Shortly thereafter, I wrote about my family’s need to communicate via the printed word.

I spent a bunch of time last year filled with anxiety about two things: my pending term as PTA president, and my need to get a copy of the 7th Harry Potter book without being spoiled. Parental anxiety was also the topic of this post about my dreaming fears, and this post about my waking ones..

As far as the kids went, the Bee started learning some complicated math and the Potato learned to make complicated noises. We all continued to learn together how to fight without nuclear (family) destruction. We went on a fabulous family vacation. The Bee started third grade, and had a slightly difficult period of adjustment.

This was also the year that I started using social networking sites using my real name, and having some concerns about that. I got a sneak peek of what my life will be like when the Bee hits puberty. And a hint that we might have done something right in raising her.

I was surfing around on BlogHer tonight and saw this post by Kim Pearson. I was interested in it, because for about the past year, my mom has owned two houses in Florida. While she doesn’t have a subprime mortgage, she is affected by the disastrous housing market there, and I’m not sure how much longer she will be able to hang on.

My mom and her husband bought into an over-55 community probably 3 or 4 years ago. They were buying a new home, and their plan was to sell their current house, which is quite large. All their children are grown, and they didn’t want to have to keep doing the upkeep on the yard and the pool. The new place has a community center, two golf courses, and a shared pool (or maybe two). It seems horrible to me, but hey, maybe I’ll feel differently when I’m in my 60s.

The hurricane season two years ago seriously delayed the construction of their new place. While they had originally planned to move in early 2006, because of shortages of building materials, their house wasn’t done until about June of that year. And by the time they got around to listing their current house for sale, the housing market in Florida had collapsed.

They have had exactly one offer on their house in the past eighteen months. By a couple who withdrew that offer when the wife had a stroke. They haven’t moved into their new place yet, because they’re afraid to leave the current house vacant. When they built the new place they had already paid off their current house, so they don’t have two mortgages, but they do have to pay two sets of taxes, and they’re paying upkeep on both houses.

My mom, who is the primary wage earner in their relationship, is scheduled to retire this spring. She’s turning 66 in a few weeks, and she has a physically demanding job. She just can’t do it anymore, and frankly, she shouldn’t have to. She should be getting ready to retire, so that she can visit her grandchildren, practice her hobbies, hang out with her sisters. She shouldn’t have to worry about paying for two houses.

You could say that my mom and stepfather deserve what they’re getting, because they borrowed too much. The reality, though, is that they just used faulty assumptions when they made their borrowing decision. They made that decision under the assumption that the housing boom of the late ’90s and early aughts would continue, that they would be able to easily sell their current house, and then move into their new place. They didn’t think they’d be stuck paying for two houses, certainly not for more than a year.

But don’t most of us, when we’re making a decision about a major life change, use optimistic assumptions, rather than pessimistic ones? Do any of us go into a big transition thinking, “what’s the worst possible thing that could happen, and let me make my plan as if that was 100% likely”?

We mostly don’t.

Canadians and other non-U.S. residents, feel free to ignore this post. I’m sure you must be beyond tired of reading about our presidential primaries.

I’ve had my absentee ballot sitting on my desk for a week now. (I have to vote absentee even in the primary, due to work. I was hoping that I would only have to do it in the general election this year.) And luckily, unlike my friend Comfort Addict, I live in a state where the primary may actually matter.

I’m really struggling with the decision about who to vote for.  There’s a part of me that believes that my disinterest in voting for Hillary is the result of some deeply ingrained sexism on my part. To be honest, for most of my adult life I’ve believed that the first viable woman candidate for president would be much more odious than she is. Someone along the lines of Condi Rice, for example. And you can say what you want about Hillary, but she wasn’t shopping for shoes while people drowned in New Orleans.

For this entire election cycle (and yes, it’s hard to fathom that it’s lasted this long, and there are still 9+ months to go), I’ve been overwhelmed by the fact that my favorite candidate, in this year of all years, is the white guy. The white guy who doesn’t have a prayer of winning my state’s primary, but who is close to my heart on many issues that are important to me.

It’s also surprising (to me) that I’m not more interested in Obama. On an intellectual level, I don’t really buy all that “he’s not experienced enough” crap, but I’m not sure how I really feel about that on an emotional level. It thrills me no end that an African American has a real shot at winning the primary (although that’s been tempered by my co-worker who keeps reminding me, “Jesse won South Carolina in 1984, that didn’t make him the president.”

So do I vote for Obama, because he’s got the best shot at keeping Hillary off the top of the ticket? Do I vote for Edwards, even though he can’t win? Do I vote for Hillary, because she’s got all her skeletons out of the closet already, and there’s likely no swiftboating possible?

It’s a tough one.

One thing I am sure about in this election. If Hillary is the nominee, I’m going to let the Bee make the ‘X’ on that ballot in November. Because I want her to be able to vote for the first woman to win the White House.

Do you ever just look around your home and think, “where did all this crap come from?”

No matter how much I freecycle or take to Goodwill, no matter how many cans are on the curb on trash night, it doesn’t seem to make a difference at all. And of course, the problem (?) with booktrading is that I do it to get new books, so while it does get rid of books, it also brings new ones into the house.

We live in clutter. There is clutter in every room of our house. Some days, we de-clutter one place, but there has never been a single day that our house has been clutter-free.

It’s starting to get to me.

When I first started this blog, I was telecommuting, and working at home almost every day. At this point, I have an office outside the house that I go to about three times a week. Until recently, I shared that office, but for the last two months I’ve been alone in there. And guess what? My office is full of clutter too.

I tend to do a big filing in my office once every two months, and then my office will be neat for a day or so before the papers will start to pile up again. Even then, I have file boxes all over the place, as well as boxes of old lit and binders stuffed with training materials lying around, but at least the pile of paper recedes momentarily.

At home we’re good about getting rid of the mail and the old newspaper, but we still have stacks of unread magazines and other things lying around. We’re very bad at making the kids clean up their toys when they’re done playing. We’re bad at cleaning up our own toys when we’re done playing:).

How about you? Do you need a week to get your house ready for company, or are you compulsively neat?

The Bee has been cast in the chorus of her first community theater production. Our town has a children’s theater program for kids from grades 3 to 6, so this is the first year she’s been eligible to do it. Her teacher is one of the directors, and she and her best friend the Peony auditioned together a few weeks ago.

I was a little worried about her being disappointed if she didn’t get a speaking part–especially after she was in the holiday play at school, and kept wishing one of the other kids would get sick, so she could do their part too. We had several conversations about how it was unusual for third graders to get lines, and she’s been totally fine with it.

I picked her up after rehearsal today, and she told me, “I’m glad I didn’t get a part this year and I’m just in the chorus.”

“How come sweetie?”

“Because this way, I get to just learn how to be in a play, without having to remember all those lines and stuff.  And next year, maybe I’ll get a little part, and then when I’m in fifth grade, I can get a bigger part, and then in sixth grade, I can get a really big part. But I’ll have earned it.”

This is her first major extra-curricular activity–she hasn’t yet played a sport or anything–so I was happy to know that she understood the value of just working and practicing, and not being a star right away.

Have I mentioned that my favorite show on the teevee, like ever, is ending this year? Sob! It’s not right

But, oh, it’s so good to have the new episodes.

If you haven’t seen the show, here are the first four seasons in four minutes:

And let me just say, the fact that Obama and I are united in our appreciation of Omar makes me more likely to vote for him. Yes, I realize that’s shallow. But a man (or in this case, a woman) must have a code.

I think all the presidential candidates should have to tell us who their favorite characters from The Wire are. In fact, perhaps the show should be required viewing for anyone who thinks they can easily fix this nation’s problems.

The Potato, of late, has taken to telling me how much he hates me. I know it’s a part of growing up, although not as cute a part as some other things. It’s getting a little old, I’ve got to say.

This morning, he told me he hated me about 16 times, starting with right after he climbed into my bed and asked me what kind of snack I had produced for him that day. (I started bringing up a small snack for him to start the day with, right around the time he decided to start waking up at 5:15 a.m. and demanding breakfast.)

I, sadly, had forgotten to bring a snack upstairs the night before. Sentence was pronounced.

Later, he told me again, when I asked him to go upstairs and get dressed for school.

I’m trying to hear it as, “in twenty years, I’ll love you, Mom.”

But it’s hard to hear through the hatin’

The day I knew would arrive is here.

My 4.5 year-old has bested my high score on a computer game.

I thought I had another year or two before this would occur.

It seems (knock wood) that we’ve made it through to the other side of our week of illness. I can’t begin to tell you how happy I am!

And now, to my odd question from the last post:

As my regular readers know, in 2008 I will be working on matters electoral. One of the things that I’ll be working on this year is a project to encourage seniors (as in the elderly, not those about to graduate) to vote in what are typically called “down ballot” races–i.e. state elections in a presidential election year.

You may be surprised to learn (and indeed, may not care at all) that lots of folks go to the polls and only vote in the race at the top of the ticket. That’s a common occurrence, and is not just limited to the presidential election–if a mayor is at the top of the ticket, you can bet a bunch of city council races will have fewer votes, if a governor is at the top of the ticket, the attorney general’s race will have fewer votes, etc. I should say, I speak from my experience running elections in the U.S.–I have no idea if this is a behavior that is limited to my countryfolk. Perhaps all Canadians vote in every race, diligently researching the ins and outs of the candidates for City Council, perhaps all Australians seek out and interrogate the many candidates for local government before deciding who to vote for, perhaps there are actually places in the world where dogcatcher really is an elected office.

As part of my program, I have access to an unbelievable online voter file. It’s really kind of amazing, what you can get online these days. When I first starting doing election work in the early ’90s, the search technology that existed was pretty limited. I remember one field campaign I ran where I literally spent two hours a day on the phone with the data vendor setting up the lists for the next day’s precinct walking.

We’d do things like take out all the Republican women over 50 one day, and then the next, add them back in and take out independent irregular voters from 18-35. Every search had to be created by some programmer, and if you left out one variable, you’d end up with a list of 2 voters. Or 20,000.

Targeting in campaigns has always been a fairly specific matter. You may think that the mail that you’re getting from Joe INeedUrVote is generic, but more likely than not, you’re getting that specific mail because you are in a certain age range, are a certain gender, buy certain magazines, have a specific voting history. The voting data is public information–campaigns or parties may have to buy it from your secretary of state (or whoever in your state is in charge of keeping the voter rolls), and the other stuff is commercially available.

These days, I can write my own searches, create my own criteria, and spit out a report in a matter of seconds (minutes, if it’s a statewide list). I can decide to target gun-owning, super-voting Democrats who live in a household with a Republican, women aged 40-55, men from 30-55. I can mail to non-registered African Americans who live in a precincts that have a 70% or higher Democratic Performance Index. I check a bunch of boxes, and I’m good to go.

And I can find seniors who have moved, to try to re-register them to vote. Which leads me to the question I asked the other day.

It’s hard to imagine that I might someday not care about voting anymore. Yet my experience with talking to seniors on the phone about elections over the past 16-odd years lets me know that, yes, for some people, this becomes just another annoyance–or worse. I IM’d a friend of mine the same question yesterday, and she reminded me of a phone conversation she’d had with a senior during the 2006 election where the woman said, “Everyone I know is dead. I just don’t care anymore.” (The same friend’s answer to my ‘how old will you be’ question? “33″)

Is it fair for me to push that woman to vote, one more time? At some point, should your super-voter status get you an end-of-life pass, instead of a constant stream of phone calls urging you to vote for one candidate or another?  Am I being ageist in assuming that the very old just don’t care as much as those of us still in the scrum of getting by, and raising kids, and hanging out on DailyKos, and all that other, public sphere kind of stuff?

It’s a question that I’ll struggle with this year, as I look at lists of senior high-rises and nursing homes with polling places in the lobbies, and voters over the age of 95.

Yes, we’re on Day 5 of the stomach flu here in Landistown. The last time I remember this happening, the Potato was about 15 months old, and the Bee was in kindergarten. It was just after the ‘04 election, and I was temporarily unemployed. I broke down crying in the doctor’s office after the Bee threw up in the car on the way there, and then threw up again in the waiting room.

I’m afraid that’s going to happen again today (well, not the me breaking down part–but the vomiting in the waiting room part).

The Bee woke up Monday morning feeling ill, and since I was already staying home with the Potato, I let her stay home too. She didn’t start throwing up until after landisdad got home that night (or maybe I’m misremembering that–the days are starting to run together). But she was unwell. The Potato, on the other hand, after spending the weekend huddled on the couch in a whimpering mass of boy was back to (at least close to), his normal energy level.

It’s always fun to have one sick kid and one who’s bouncing off the walls.

The Potato went back to day care yesterday, and I stayed home in the morning with the Bee. Landisdad worked from home in the afternoon, and I went to work for a few hours. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to bring home a bunch of data entry, on the chance that I’d have to work from home again today.

When I went to pick up the Potato at daycare on my way home, he had vomited again.

We’re headed to the doctor’s today–wish me luck.

On a totally unrelated note (and one that I’ll explain in my next post)–how old do you expect to be when you are no longer interested in voting for president?