The Day After

What a perfect day to start this blog...the day after the Election. I am a somewhat typical, working American mom, and I've been wanting to blog for a while. I know from reading other blogs that a blog needs to have focus, not just random pontificating about things, recitations of meals, and other nonsense. Additionally, I feel like a lot of the Mom-blogs out there don't really speak to me. Soo.....I've decided this blog will chart my daily life experiences - expenses, exhaustion levels, moods, etc to see how things change when President Obama takes over.

Now, I should say up front I am a devoted Democrat, and have been my entire life. I spent the '90's working on various Democratic campaigns (both national and state), and I served in the second Clinton administration. However, I had some crises in my personal life that coincided with the year 2000, and George Bush's stolen election (or maybe it wasn't a coincidence) which resulted in my withdrawing from political involvement, aside from a little campaigning around Election Day. I spent several years getting myself back together, and then I got married, moved to rural Massachusetts, and started having babies - so my life is very different today.

This election cycle, I supported Hillary early on, because I wanted to see a woman in the White House, and because of my long devotion to Bill Clinton. I did not dislike Barack Obama; I just liked Hillary more. When she lost the nomination , I shifted my support to Obama.
I did not, however, have much emotion towards him until he held an event in August in Unity, NH. I watched that event on TV with my bi-racial children (twins, age 3), and at one point one of them pointed at the TV and said, "Look! Barack Obama is brown like Daddy!". At that point, chills came over me and I realized the magnitude of this candidacy, and what it represented not just for my own family, but for our country, both its past legacy and its future, and our standing in the world. I realized how important it was that Barack Obama be elected, and that my children's awareness have him as a figure in it.

However, I work almost full-time in the evenings, and am with the twins all day, so was not able to campaign much. I did, however, believe in my heart in Obama, and do as much as I could, from having conversations at work to persuade people to vote for him, and doing visibility and working the polls with my girls on election day. I cried yesterday when I voted, and again during the acceptance speech, and then again this morning when I let the girls watch the acceptance speech online (they were only interested in the Obama family's new puppy, but hey....baby steps).

Anyway, now that CHANGE is upon us, I think it will be interesting to actually LOOK at the circumstances of my life, and see if it improves as we transition. I really hope it does, because I want my experiences to support the Democratic platform, but I am going to do my best to accurately report my experiences. I guess the best way to do this is to do a weekly tally on hours worked, money earned & spent, and then other experiences as they happen (health care issues, heating costs, and so on). My work schedule shifts week to week, but I almost always work weekends so I'll make Sunday night my weekly tally night, and then blog throughout the week as things happen. I have no idea if anyone will even read this!