Take Me Home.... and Vote!

I had the most fantastic start to my morning driving our neighborhood carpool to Wednesday breakfast at Einstein's Bagels. After packing six teenage boys, four of whom over six feet tall, into an Acura MDX without legroom in the third row (sorry, C and R!), I cautiously drove out of the neighborhood as William plugged his playlist into the stereo. He started off with John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads" and the boys belted out the chorus as we headed out of Willow Creek through the early morning darkness. They followed it up with Men at Work and Toto's ubiquitous "Africa," during which time I was sorely tempted to whip out my phone and start recording. Safety won out, and I am just grateful for the memory.

It's a time to hold onto merriment and gratitude wherever we find it. The barrage of negative campaign ads makes it impossible to watch TV, listen to the radio, or open my email. My well-informed seventeen-year-old wanders around the house rumbling darkly about how the Earth will not be salvageable by the time she turns thirty, and just this morning I heard about suspicious packages (bombs?, white powder?) turning up at the homes of the Obamas, the Clintons, George Soros and the offices of CNN. Hmmm. I wonder where someone is getting the idea to incite violence at the homes of Democrats and news organizations?

But we rational (well, mostly), moral adults have the responsibility to hope and to clean up our messes. We don't have the luxury of despair or negative thinking. Now is the time to vote, write letters to the editor, encourage and help friends, and re-imagine our future. A little bit of off-key singing and some humor go a long way to assist. For example, this statement "Do you suffer from electile dysfunction? Voting could be the cure for what ails you."

I don't know if I have"electile dysfunction," but voting was a big upper, regardless. Rob and I both completed our ballots and sent them out, and we're apparently part of a record-breaking advance voter turnout. Let's break the bank, people, and make those election officials work overtime counting our ballots. It's time to turn the tide definitively, and show our young people that we can still get things done. In a few years they will be old enough to help us out, and that is the most encouraging thought imaginable.