apropos of anything

Y’all, I can’t seem to stop moving. There’s too much going on, and a disproportionate amount of my energy is going to dealing with teenage drama (or at least that which resembles teenage drama). Right now, the most beautiful thing ever would be a day off from my life… which I expect to get sometime around 2009.

In the meantime, three beautiful things:

1. Blankets in cold weather. I love being able to curl up under layers of warmth when it’s 20 degrees outside. Blankets may be my favorite part of winter.

2. Coming home to a clean house. SO AWESOME.

3. Noticing that while Borders has plenty of Clinton and McCain ’08 calendars in the discount bin, there’s nary an Obama calendar to be found.

I hadn’t even reached the parking deck on my way home today before I called Aisha to tell her I’d just had a horrible day. It’s shattering to realize somebody you thought knew you well and respected your abilities and professionalism doesn’t actually at all.

And then I got home and read this. And so far tonight’s episode of Ugly Betty is not amusing me so much as annoying me… so you know what that means. It’s time to find three beautiful things.

Sunflowers. I’ve been doing a lot of research on sunflowers, and the more I look at them, the more I love them. They’re so bright and big and beautiful, and they light up a room. They are the epitome of cheer, so much that it’s hard to be grumpy in their presence. A whole field full of them… why, that’s exactly the antidote when Gloomy Gus drops by for an unexpected, extended visit.

Discovering new authors. The authors you know are comfortable. You’re guaranteed good writing, or good characterization, or good brainless soapiness. The authors you don’t know are kind of like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates, so it’s always lovely and amazing to find one who is so good you can’t wait to read all of their other work. Amy Ephron got me hooked last week, and Ian McEwan is certainly doing his best as well, even if it’s only as a study in the art of good writing.

Laughing at silliness. Possibly when you are ending a conversation, you say, “Cool.” And possibly I, who am inadvertently listening (I won’t say eavesdropping because that seems so foul and nefarious, and also deliberate), hear you say, “Toodles.” And possibly you are indignant at the very idea of toodles because it offends your sensibilities, delicate, fragile things that they are. And possibly you offer to call your recent conversation partner back to prove that you didn’t say toodles, that toodling never entered your mind. Possibly all or none of these things happened but still they make me laugh, and today especially, that is beautiful.

U.S. religious freedom is being eroded, advocates say.

Perhaps I should reconsider that invitation to join the Islamic Speakers Bureau…

Tonight, as I was in Publix picking up for a few things for the week and chatting with Dan (and by extension, Micah) when suddenly something caught my attention, causing me to break off the conversation mid-sentence.

“What? What happened?” Dan asked in the tone of voice a person might use if he suspected the person on the other end of the telephone had just been, say, run over by a shopping cart and was currently lying incapacitated on the grocery store’s linoleum floor.

It took me a moment to respond. “Guess what I found at Publix!”

“…food?”

“Nabisco Chocolate Wafers!!!”

It seems my neighborhood Publix has decided to begin stocking the cookies I spent days hunting down this fall. I don’t know if it’s because the icebox cake is growing in popularity (because really, there’s not much else to make with these cookies, and if I’m going to eat a cookie out of a box (not much of a chance anymore because I am a self-declared snoob (not a typo) about cookies these days) it would not be a chocolate wafer) or because the manager who said he’d order them for me and call me when they were in (despite not taking my number or name) kept his word.

Still, it’s interesting. And funny. If only my camera hadn’t committed seppuku, I’d have a photograph for y’all.

In other news, can somebody please explain to me why I’m actually watching Cashmere Mafia?

… is who are the dumbasses who voted for Biden and Dodd in the New Hampshire primary? THEY AREN’T RUNNING ANYMORE!

As for the actual results… I don’t want to talk about it.

It’s time for A Daily Show anyway.

I can’t stop fretting. I won’t be able to stop fretting until the polls close in New Hampshire tomorrow night and we find out who takes that state. There are so many stories to read right now, stories about Clinton crying at a rally, stories about Clinton running out of money, stories about Obama taking time out of his busy campaign schedule to record a Voice of America message calling for calm in Kenya. And there are whose headlines make my stomach churn, stories I don’t click on because I’m afraid the more I read, the more hopeful I become, the harder I’ll crash if things don’t go the way I want them to tomorrow. Pundits galore are stirring up the frenzy to such a fevered pitch that I simply don’t know how I’m going to manage through the next twenty-four hours.

Dan left me a voicemail late last Thursday night, shocked that I hadn’t called him with a verbal happy dance after Obama’s decisive victory in Iowa. Of course I am thrilled about Iowa… but I did not want to celebrate too early, lest Obama suddenly let out a campaign-destroying screech heard ’round the world.

But possibly, thinking that way, being cautious about Obama’s chances for winning, is missing the point of his campaign: Hope. (Which… do you know who else said there is always hope? Aragorn! Dan, you can close the comment window now. I have put the discs away.)

The Obama campaign gives me hope for the future of our country, even if only because just a few decades ago nobody would have believed a black man with a funny name could come this far. As Obama himself said last Thursday night, “They said this day would never come.”

The more I hear him speak (picture below is not mine, but it’s from the rally in Atlanta last spring), the more I read his work, the more I want this man to be our next president. He might actually restore my faith in the integrity of the office.

There is something to be said for a man who can let his campaign rally be interrupted by anti-abortion protesters without spinning it to his advantage, or using it to advance his own abortion platform, or really saying anything other than, “Some people got organized to do that. That’s part of the American tradition we are proud of… That’s hard, too, standing in the midst of people who don’t agree with you.”

Reminds me a little of Oliver Wendell Holmes, and a little of Voltaire.

However, as much as I want it to be tomorrow already, the WGA strike is kind of sucking the joy right out of the election season. After all, what is Election 2008 without Indecision 2008? Even though Stewart and Colbert are going back to work tonight, there’s no way they can manage their usual level of election coverage all by their lonesomes.

There’s some whispering on Nikki Finke’s site about the WGA making more side deals with individual studios, a la their interim contract with with Dave Letterman’s Worldwide Pants. For the sake of our election coverage (especially considering how many people get their political news from The Daily Show — am blanking which guy said in 2004 that it was terrifying, but I’m pretty sure he was a Republican), I really hope they come to a resolution soon.

Plus, I want to see how Scrubs really ends.