Election day... what a day

hmm... where to start... well, we were just waking up and trying to get ourselves moving to get to the polls early-ish when the phone rang to tell us that the person from Medicare was at the group home Garvin manages for their annual inspection, so we got our butts out the door fast and went to vote... in a church... which has us a bit weirded out (we live about 10 houses away from a public elementary school, none of the local libraries seem to be polling places, only a few of the schools... umm... what was that about separation of church and state???) even though it's the same church where I had my Sweet 16 party (in fact, we voted in the same room). Just weird. I'd rather be in Philadelphia where they use pizza parlors and funeral homes as polling places (not kidding, was listening to NPR and they were talking about that).

I took some pictures, I'll upload them soon (haven't figured out how to do that yet and Garvin's headed off to bed already since he has to be at work at 6am for further Medicaide inspections). I'm hoping that by the time Liam is old enough to remember going to the polls with us, we won't be voting with punch cards anymore, so I took pictures so he knows what the backwards things looked like. Liam also got to drop my ballot into the ballot box, which was very cute, and Garvin got a picture of it. We wound up not having to wait very long, but some woman with a "vote yes on issue 1" propoganda piece of paper in her hand (for anyone reading this who doesn't know, this is a proposed amendment to the Ohio constitution to "protect marriage" by totally taking away the rights of local governments and businesses to give traditional benefits of marriage to non-married couples of whatever genders... sadly, the last time I was brave enough time to watch anything but Comedy Central, it was passing about 60-40. I am very unhappy about this, I was so looking forward to being able to tell Liam that he was born when one state finally decided that love between two people deserves special recognition of marriage regardless of whether or not they happen to have similar genitalia in common, and now this). This woman also assumed that just because I happen to be holding my 5 month old child on my lap that I'm pro-life and anti-choice, so you can guess how fun THAT conversation got. I kept it more civil than the propogandist who put a "this baby wants you to vote for W" piece of crap on my windshield while I was nursing Liam in the back of the minivan on Sunday... that one I chased down and hollered at... but she invaded my personal space and touched my property while I had mama-bear hormones coursing through my veins... and she was driving a freaking herse. Freak. Only goths and funeral directors get to drive those. Now shoo.

I'd tried to volunteer for several different organizations to drive folks to their polling places but none of them ever called me back. I mentioned it to a lady at church who I heard didn't have a car, so I wound up driving her up to vote while my mom babysat her 2 year old daughter for her. Oh, that was after we had to rescue Garvin's car from a parking lot as it kept overheating so one of the big bosses from his company came and got him to work while I picked up some radiator fluid since Garvin thought it was leaking (it wasn't leaking, the shop thinks it's a very cheap part but they need to look at it more in the morning).

I'm exhausted. I'm depressed as it looks like republicans are keeping power to keep us in war, the school levy for Cleveland schools looks to be failing, and the state is full of idiot homophobes who are willing to hurt straight, elderly, non-married couples if it means they can stick it to the gays. Very unhappy. If it turns out that all three of those are true, I will officially be in mourning for our democracy and society.