could it be? July 10, 2008

He’s Back? John Edwards is suddenly in contention again for the VP spot

OMG…this is just what I need to get truly excited about the election again.

week end wrap-up May 16, 2008

This week I have:

• Almost hurt an old lady at CVS on purpose. I had ONE THING to purchase, and I was in line at the photo center, the only register open. There was an older lady standing at the front registers (which were closed) writing something in her checkbook. As the line at the photo center got longer and longer, the cashier called for backup and another register was opened. You know the old lady hightailed it over and got to the new register at the same time I did. I figured I should be nice (even though…hello, pregnant!). But then she slowed back down to molasses speed and took forever emptying her (full) cart, finding her ExtraCare card, and writing a check. Four customers got through the line at the photo center while I stood there. I could literally feel the hormones surging through my body and I wanted to scream, cry, and then throw her cart across the store. It was an uncharacteristic display of willpower. OY!
• Passed my glucose tolerance test. I took Monday off to do the test (realizing once I got there that they were open on Saturday…) and meant to call the doctor on Wednesday for my results. My OB practice has a “no news is good news policy” but I just wanted to check. I was busy at work and forgot, and around 12:15 I had a voicemail on my cell phone from one of the nurses doing a “follow-up…give me a call back after 1:00.” So I spent the next 45 minutes thinking I had gestational diabetes and was drinking my last Coke until August. But when I called, the nurse said I had done great with the glucose, but was slightly anemic and needed to take some additional iron supplements. Compared with the possibility of diabetes…no problem.
• Overdrafted our checking account by $700. When I tried to transfer our economic stimulus money into our ING account, I pulled it from the wrong bank. We have been so busy this week, I didn’t notice it until a day too late, when all of my electronic bill payments went through and our checking account was a nasty mess of red numbers. Train spent most of Wednesday night (until 1am, actually) making multiple ATM withdrawals from Wachovia and then depositing the money into Bank of America. Even then we kept miscalculating the fees and outstanding checks so it still really wasn’t enough. I called BoA on Thursday and the customer service rep nicely refunded the $125 in overdraft fees, and I made another deposit Thursday afternoon thinking we would be in the clear. But a single debit hit the account in between that time, causing another $35 fee, so that when Hector cashed his check yesterday (see below), we were $15 short. Ay yi yi. Another $10 in overdraft fees. I’m not even going to look at that account for a few days until all of that settles down. But what a holy mess. I’m blaming it on the Bush administration.
• Finally hung curtains in Sherman’s room. I wanted something very specific and I had to have them pieced together because I know nothing about sewing, but I love them. Am decorating genius.

This week we have:

• Bought a car! After Sunday’s attempt at the Honda dealership, Train took another look around Craigslist and asked me what I thought about a Ford Expedition. I know you are thinking we are out of our minds, with $4 gas and all, but remember: the vehicle we’re getting rid of is an F-150, so it’s not that different. He had found a couple in the area that looked really nice. We fell in love with a green Eddie Bauer edition, but when I called the dealer Monday night the salesman was 90% sure it had already been sold. I found another 2005 Eddie Bauer (blue) at a dealership closer to us, and Train went to look at it Tuesday during lunch. Of course the salesman said, “Take it with you and try it out!” and so he did. We ended up driving that Expedition down to another dealer Tuesday afternoon to look at a second (older) one. It took over an hour in traffic to get to the second dealer, and the car was not in as good condition, so we stopped for drive-thru and went back to the original dealer, which took over and hour and a half. By the time we got to the dealer it was after 7pm and we still had carfax and other issues to work out, not to mention price. I eventually left Train there and got Sherman home, bathed, and in bed by 8:30pm. Not too shabby, but not an evening I want to repeat soon. That night we ended up using the DVD system that we swore we’d try not to use, and it was a LIFESAVER. I’m in love with this car. It’s so much roomier than a Pilot.
• Replaced our basement door and bathroom faucets. Hector and Train have replaced all of the other exterior doors in the house, and this was the last one to do. They put in a solid steel door and a storm door on the outside. And not a moment too soon, because we had some torrential rains and we had had problems with water getting in under the old door. As for the faucets, the upstairs bathroom double-handle faucets squeaked something awful, and the guest bathroom is right outside the nursery and that always set my teeth on edge. Now we have single handle, silent faucets, and you don’t have to always choose between “hot” or “cold”. Heaven.




• Paid $450 for the 30,000 mile tune up on the CR-V. Ouch.
• Gotten our man room projector back. We have a “den” in the basement and instead of a TV, we have a ceiling-mounted projector and movie-style screen (thanks to Luff). A while ago, it started messing up so we replaced the lamp and Train cleaned out the inside of the projector. Of course that wasn’t the problem, and things went downhill fast, to the point that the colors were so screwed up you couldn’t even watch it. We decided to send it off for service, and $800 later, it came back today. We have hardly spent any time in the man room since the projector’s been gone (even though there is an actual television in there). It’s looking great and better than new. Let’s hope it holds out.
• Drafted a Craigslist ad to sell the truck. I hope we can get it up there soon but we have got to clean it out first. We are determined to get enough money (within Blue book range) to pay off the CR-V and have some left over, possibly for a trailer.

I’m sure you’ve seen that John Edwards has endorsed Barack Obama. He says he’s not interested in Vice President (and cagey about Attorney General), but you have to admit they look damn good together. It’s a shame, because I think Edwards on the ticket would help Obama immensely. But I understand that he’s been there, done that.

my boyfriend’s back April 19, 2008

http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?videoId=166019

sorry I can’t embed it!

sigh. January 31, 2008

Thanks everyone for emailing about John Edwards’ drop from the presidential election. Unfortunately the first person to notify me was my Republican friend at work who gets Fox News updates by email. Fox News. The injustice.

I’m disgusted that now he’s being praised for raising the issue of poverty in America, elevating the discussion during the primary process, being the “grown up” candidate. Now. Now when he’s not in the running. Not when it actually counted, when he couldn’t even get a mention because it was a “two-way race” for the Democratic nomination, because the powers that be were threatened by his “populist” message.

I think what bothers me the most is that he said he was “in it until the Convention”. Now, I am realistic, and I knew that if things didn’t start to improve on the primary front, staying in the race until August would be a foolish move and a massive waste of money. But to drop out even before Super Tuesday…it just doesn’t seem right. It feels like there is another piece of the puzzle. Maybe, maybe not, we’ll probably never know. The obvious question is if Elizabeth’s health had taken a turn for the worse, and when faced with that, pursuing the nomination seemed futile. I think we all hope that that is not the case and that Elizabeth is doing well.

A thought of consolation is that he might be, once again, the nominee’s running mate. I guess I always thought “been there, done that” and it didn’t turn out well so I didn’t think Edwards would do something like that. But maybe he will, and maybe that is the reason for the early out. He is, after all, still very young. And Janet comforted me with the thought of John Edwards, Attorney General.

But it is still in protest that I’m removing the John Edwards 2008 badge from my site. I feel like I’ve been abandoned because I haven’t had to make the choice between Clinton and Obama (and technically, I don’t have to make it because I’ve already voted for Edwards via absentee ballot) because my candidate was obviously the better choice. (CityMama says it much better than I do.)

John McCain is not the devil incarnate as some potential Republican nominees are, and again I hope I don’t regret saying it, but if he happens to win the election it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. Edwards’ campaign warned over and over that he was the only Democratic candidate who could beat McCain, according to the polls.

However, for the sake of my own relevance, I will definitely be supporting Hillary, not only because she is a woman (and we all know that women can do anything better than men) but because I respect her and her experience and her toughness and no, Bill Clinton back in the White House wouldn’t be the worst thing ever either. I saw Obama speak last February at the DNC Winter Meeting and he did not inspire me. I continue to find him flat and aloof, but if he were to be nominated I would vote for him.

But thanks for trying again, John…

“Bad politicians are sent to Washington by good people who don’t vote.” January 9, 2008

quote by William E. Simon 

Well, I am beyond thrilled for Hillary Clinton and John McCain. You know how I feel about Hillary. I was pleasantly surprised before bed last night (which was…yes…around 8:30pm) to see that she had an early lead. I’m glad she was able to win and it wasn’t a total runaway for Obama like it seemed to be early in the day. Otherwise I was afraid he would steamroll through the rest of the primaries. Now it is still an even keel, hopefully. I really think John Edwards has a shot in the upcoming contests and I am interested to see how he does against Obama in South Carolina. Edwards is from the South (specifically, he was born in South Carolina) and he has a lot of union support, which to me is more of a northern thing.

Newsweek had a few potential explanations for her “turnaround win” - the most interesting to me (because it seemed to correlate to a lot of your responses to my post yesterday) is the “Reese Witherspoon effect“:

Once Obama won Iowa, he was the certified cool and enormously popular kid in school. But as in any high-school election, the studious girls who show up to vote might harbor a few resentments about the boys. It’s like the movie “Election,” where Reese Witherspoon’s character, Tracy Flick, is an ambitious and too-perfect high school senior who has the election stolen from her after she was expected to win against a cool if inexperienced jock. By the end of the movie, she ends up on top.

You can’t underestimate female indignation. I think a lot of us were outraged that she was made to look like a fool, and at Obama’s (justified) glee over his win. Another Newsweek theory is that after all of the downplaying of Clinton’s role as First Lady, a lot of working (inside- and outside-of-the-home) women related to their own contributions to their family being “under-appreciated”.

In a workplace context, Obama may have reminded women of under-qualified hotshots who come along and get the big job with less experience because they’re cooler and have more rapport with the boss and are, after all, men. They rallied to one of their own, just as the Clinton campaign hoped all along.

Anyway, her win makes me proud to be a woman today, and I can see that excitement spreading as she gets closer to the White House (and assuming a woman’s rightful place in it!).

As for John McCain, and I hope I don’t regret saying this, but he’s the one Republican candidate that won’t send me screaming to Canada. I am a little disappointed in some of his flip-flopping and pandering in the past year as he got ready for the primaries, and extremely disillusioned in his continued support for the war (which is a major reason he is doing well now, because the troop surge is “working”). I would prefer the “maverick” of the 2000 elections. But overall, I think that he will do what is right, even if it is unpopular. It’s hard to believe he’s 71. 70 must be the new 50. I hope so, anyway, my dad’s only a few years younger than McCain.

A lot of you said that you don’t really follow politics other than what you read here. I find that hard to believe - since it’s all you read about or see on the news (is that just because I’m in Washington?) - but I see what you mean. That’s fine with me as long as you vote how I tell you to. I won’t pretend to be like my friend Princess, who - while a die-hard Republican and Fox News Channel fan - watches a variety of news channels like CNN and MSNBC, so that she can be “fair and balanced“. But voting is a right for all of us as citizens, and if you’re going to vote, I do think you should be informed, even if at the very least you vote for John Edwards because I like him, and you like me.

It’s actually quite simple, in my mind, to determine who to vote for. Everyone has a few end-of-the-road, non-negotiable issues which she feels are the most important for the direction of our country. It could be education, the environment, the war in Iraq, reproductive rights and sex education, capital punishment, dependence on foreign oil, equal rights, immigration, foreign policy, poverty. You simply need to decide which issues are most important to you (because, let’s face it, they are all important) and find out which candidates share your views. From there you just need to figure out which one gives you the warm fuzzies as far as sticking to his or her promises and tactics once they are elected.

Lately a lot of you have humored me, via Gmail chat, to take the quiz at glassbooth (which I heard about from Julia) to see which candidate most mirrors your values. It’s interesting that a lot of you came up with your number one candidate as Dennis Kucinich. Unfortunately, I don’t think he has a chance in hell of getting nominated, so you may want to start looking at your second and third choices, you crazy wacked out liberals. (FYI, he also won the Democracy For America pulse poll in November, so you’re certainly not alone!) 

If you take the quiz, I’d love to hear your results, either in the comments or via email.

One thing that has helped me to form my venomous completely fact-based righteous opinions views on the non-Edwards candidates has been the profiles done by Newsweek on each of their personal and political histories. Of course, Newsweek is the political gospel and could never be guilty of mistakes or bias (har har har). So for what it’s worth, if you’re interested in some quick background info on the mystery candidate of your choice, I have compiled them for you. I’d be interested to hear if you learn anything that surprises you.

John Edwards - The Road Warrior (December 24, 2007)
Mike Huckabee - A Pastor’s True Calling (December 17, 2007)
Rudy Giuliani - Growing Up Giuliani (December 3, 2007)
Mitt Romney - Mitt’s Mission (October 8, 2007)
Hillary Clinton - How She Would Govern (September 17, 2007)
Fred Thompson - Grin and Bear It (September 10, 2007)
Barack Obama - Across the Divide (July 16, 2007)

and just for fun…Michael Bloomberg - The Revolutionary (November 12, 2007)

I expect next week to be John McCain’s turn.

never say never January 4, 2008

When I was pregnant with Sherman, who was born in April, I made a lot of hard-and-fast proclamations about pregnancy. I wouldn’t tolerate being pregnant more than a week past my due date. I could never breastfeed, or use cloth diapers. I did not want Train anywhere below my belly button during labor. I refused to give birth on April Fools Day. I would under no circumstances use a bedpan in the hospital. I would wear a fake wedding ring if my fingers got too swollen to wear mine.

Some of these I followed (breastfeeding, cloth diapers, fake rings). Some of them, by pure luck, I was able to follow (bedpan, avoiding April Fools Day). A few of them got thrown in my face with a vengence (Sherman was 9 days late, and Train had to hold a leg while I pushed).

But my number one rule was that I could never be pregnant in the summer. I was so hot during the third trimester (January/February/March) that I couldn’t imagine being in a sweltering Washington summer. I was born in June and I remembered my mom’s horror stories and how the only saving grace was that I was born at the beginning of the summer. When I attended Seagrass Girl’s bridal shower in March, one of the other bridesmaids hugged me and then said, “WOW you are warm! I can feel the heat coming off of you!” I was constantly sweaty.

So it goes without saying that our next baby is due August 1, 2008, right?

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And speaking of babies (as in, “I’d like to have his“), yay for John Edwards for coming in second in Iowa. On to New Hampshire!

it’s that time again! November 28, 2007

Last week I was updating my About Me page, trying to distill my John Edwards love into easy-to-understand snippets, when I came across the story (which I included on the page) of attending the Winter DNC Meeting here in D.C. in February. Monday night John called to invite me to the Fall Meeting, which is being held in Northern Virginia on Friday. Unfortunately, I can’t attend, but I know those of you who are near a television will be watching on C-SPAN.