Astute Observation...

Today. 
We vote. 

Did you hear that?

Let me tell you my story. A story where voting plays a MINOR role.

Even knowing I was going to Vote today, I'm am at the very beginning of NaNoWriMo, where the words add up. It's rather fun in a crazy sort of way. So I stayed up until 3am writing and today, the big kids had all their school work lined up for them, and they did it. 

On their own!!!

Without being asked!!!!

So I wrote. I let the little's play and I wrote. It was the best morning we've had in a long while...even if I was bleary-eyed. Always in the back of my mind is the fact that TODAY!! WE VOTE!!!


Somewhere in the morning, I decide that Mini-Me, who is now twelve, can stay with the kids and I'll take Bubbles with me to the polls. She is often a thorn in Mini-me's side, a bane to her very existence. So she gets her shoes at the first mention of leaving ... and nags me until we leave. 

She's excited to be leaving the house. Proving, I suppose, that I don't take her places very much.


She is the one, though, that threw herself to the ground... and ... well... It's all here. 

So there's a reason why I'm reluctant to take her places. At the church, she bounces among the elderly looking for the colored tiles in the floor. She bips and bops around looking at all things. I get my ballot and find a table on the FAR side of the room. A table with CHAIRS. 

Genius, no?


Marginally, it turned out.


She wanted to see under the tables. There was gum.


She wanted to see the other chairs at the other tables. The chairs that looked exactly like the ones we were using. 


She wanted to have a snack. She saw food on the counter.


A man put water in a water bottle at the sink. She wanted to wash her hands.


She wanted to look out the windows. 


She wanted to put her "I Voted" sticker on the ballot. NO! I wanted a valid ballot. Back away with the sticker. 


She bipped to the volunteer and returned their official voting pen and watched as I fed my ballot into the machine. We were number 336 in our district. 


Then we left. She wanted to throw away the paper from her sticker.


She declared that it was the best kind of day.


She danced in the parking lot and sang a song that she made up as she spun around in a circle. 


She kept up a constant chatter about stuff I can't recall. 


She noticed the house across the street.


She enjoyed that she got to sit in J-man's designated seat in the van.


She gleefully let me buckle her in.


I climb behind the wheel and she's HAPPY. Life is good. And she hasn't stopped talking.


We turn on Jason Mraz (I do not condone his politics...but Iike his music) and we sing the first notes of "Geek in the Pink" ...


"Hey, mom! Do you want to know what's funny?"


What???



"A joke."