NaBloFailO, MORE OBAMA, etc.

SarahThe told me with no small amount of gravity last week that she was moving me from her "occasional reads" section to her "daily reads" section under the impression that I would be participating in NaBloPoMo with her (which was my idea!) and would therefore go from some schmuck who posts, you know, sometimes, to a dedicated blogger willing to share the minutiae of my daily life with the people who stuck around in spite of the sporadic posting of my non-November life.

As one may have guessed from my marathon of NOT BLOGGING from Friday right through Monday, yep, I'm out of the NaBloPoMo fun. I didn't even put up a NaBloPoMo badge. Mostly because I couldn't figure out how to do it (so stop e-mailing me with technical blog questions! I don't know anything! It's all the husband!), but partly because FAIL. It was inevitable.

But I did get more in the habit of blogging than I was before, so I guess those few days when I deluded myself were good for something. (And Sarah! Look at her go. I even got a post on Sunday dedicated to me, her failure of a new best friend. She still loves me anyway. Our love is here to stay.)

My mother informed me on Sunday that my lack of election-night wrap-up was appalling, so I am going to take this opportunity to wrap it up in a wordier way than I could offer last Wednesday.

AnthonyMC sent me the Onion video about wandering, dazed Obama supporters who don't know what to do with themselves now that the election is over. And, yeah, I'll admit it, that's me too. The reason I couldn't even write about it last week was that the victory was incredible, and then...? I told my mom that I didn't even realize the extreme weight I'd been carrying around for so long until it was gone, but when it was gone, it wasn't as if I were lighter. It was more like, whoa, that was really heavy. Am exhausted. Bye.

On election night, we went to the Obama Dallas watch party and hung out there for a second, but they wanted us to listen to, like, congresspeople and crap, and I seriously COULD NOT TAKE MY EYES OFF CNN. There's even a picture of it. Chad tried to take a picture of the group, and you can see that I'm smiling, but not because of the camera to the left of my face. Rather, because of what was happening on CNN in front of my face.

So we left the bar and retreated to the comfort of my own home where there was no one else fighting for my attention, just me and that electoral college map. And Ryan and Chad and Ellie. And then we found out about Virginia, which is the state I'd been waiting all night to hear about. Somehow, in the end, it became more important than Florida or Pennsylvania or Ohio. And even though all of those had already gone to Obama, when Virginia went too, we knew this was big. And then, right at 10 p.m. CST, just about ten minutes after we found out about Virginia, CNN projected Obama the winner.

And there was no yelling or screaming or jumping or cheering. There was silence. I blinked and looked at the screen. And I simply didn't believe it. I thought CNN was jumping the gun, even though I knew better, knew that since 2000 no one really says something as extreme as "BARACK OBAMA WILL BE THE 44TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES" without backing their facts up.

But. Just to make sure, we switched to FOX News. I said, surely they wouldn't project him the winner if he weren't. For some bizarre reason, they'd had McCain at four more electoral votes than CNN had him at all night. But as soon as we switched, sure enough, we saw that it wasn't just a projection. It was very, very real. It was true. It had happened. Obama had won.

We waited around for another hour and a half to watch Obama speak. And immediately I was concerned about his safety. "Do you think that's bulletproof glass, there?" I asked Ry about the twin towers of glass on either side of the podium. "Do you think they've got extra Secret Service men on him now that he's won?" "Do you think they have metal detectors set up there at Grant Park?" "Do you think they swept the entire park for weapons? The surrounding buildings? HOW IS HE SAFE THERE?!"

I was in the fifth grade when the thirtieth anniversary of JFK's assassination occurred. I spent months studying the Warren Commission report, watching JFK on television, watching A Woman Named Jackie on television, reading A Woman Named Jackie myself, which, at that time, was the biggest book I'd ever read, reading old newspapers from the time of Kennedy's administration, studying maps of downtown Dallas. I was fascinated with the assassination. I was fascinated with the conspiracy. But, most of all, I was fascinated with how grieved the entire country was after it happened, how a few shots from a rifle changed America forever. I didn't get it. But now I do. And I hope to God that I never understand it fully.

But my favorite memory of this whole very momentous historical event, maybe the most momentous historical event I will ever witness in my lifetime, comes from Chad. The next morning when I was drinking coffee and watching CNN just to make sure I hadn't dreamt it all the previous night, he walked into the living room, shook his head, and said, "I hope we made the right choice."

We did. I know we did. And I can't wait for Obama to prove it.