Back to reality

It's both good and bad being back to real life. I definitely miss the energy and excitement of volunteering. It was wonderful to have something in your life that inspires you and to be surrounded by people who are equally inspired. On the other hand it has also been nice to get back to all the regular day to day stuff I let slip. Since the election I finally managed to switch my closet from summer to winter, take the dog to the groomer, get a hair cut, manicure and a pedicure! Friday K and I drove down to Delaware where we had fun wine and beer shopping. Did I just confess to a crime in writing? Best of all I made plans to see friends and got to spend Sunday with my D. Saturday evening we spontaneously got together with some close friends; one of those relaxing evenings that happens all to infrequently. We hung out, ordered pizza and laughed a lot. It seems no matter how long you know people they still have great 'stupid things I did when I was young' stories. No one seems to tire of telling , or hearing those stores. I've hung out with my parents friends and they can keep me falling off my chair with stories of their misspent youth. ( You know who you are J & H) A good night. Sunday I had french toast with my D and we went off to Harry Potter day at the U of P museum. The museum is packed and if you're a harry potter fan it's the best. Wandering through the Egypt exhibit I ran into Hagrid, there were dementors in the bathroom, and I definitely saw Mad eye moody on the grand staircase. Quiddach practice was on the front lawn and the mirror where you see your hears true desire was down the hall from Diaogon alley. I saw my D, but they may have been because she was standing next to me! Afterwards we went to see the house she plans to live in next year. Great house;I loved it. In answer to Moms question, was it as much a dump as your college the house , the answer is a resounding yes. Total flash back to my senior house, also a century old falling down mess. I am sure I recognized several of the sofas as well as the beer can in the corner. Ah, the good old days. Coming up; a bar mitzvah ( not mine, thank goodness) Thanksgiving and winter break. Reality is not that bad.

obama ( of course)

Wow, I'm still pretty dazed. Tuesday, I went to vote at 7am when the polls opened. I waited in line about 35 minutes but it was pretty pleasant. I think I saw half my neighborhood coming and going. People seemed in a pretty good mood, and no one complained about the wait. There were several babies and little kids, and even a St Bernard. (Must of been one of those newly registered voters). By 7:45 I was standing at my desk at the obama staging area. It is in the local Union hall , a very large, two story building with lots of offices and space. I've been working out of the very large main room which is actually divided into two separate areas. I got to do the same job I've been doing for about two weeks now and with the same woman; a great volunteer from New York who has been living down here for 2 weeks. We like working together and have a great system going. Totally smooth with no mistakes- not easy when things get crazy. Some guy came over to the table to start asking a zillion questions about what we were doing and tried to tell us to change stuff. We tried being polite but finally resorted to throwing him out. After that I told her we should refer to ourselves as the mean girls popular table and only let the 'cool kids' sit with us!
The volunteers never stopped coming; young people from Manhattan, union guys from the painters, carpenters and engineers union, families with kids in strollers, and tons of people who showed up on their own and were happy to be matched up with a total stranger to go knock on doors.
At 6:30 we stopped sending people door to door and instead sent them to every polling place in Upper Dublin and Ambler to help people out who were waiting on lines. Within 15 minutes most were back to report that there were no lines as almost everyone in Montgomery county had already voted!
So we got to put on the TV they set up for us and were all together when at 8:00 CNN projected Pennsylvania for Obama. Everyone was screaming, hugging and crying. It was an amazing moment. Our fearless leader ran around yelling it was all worth it! Hopefully he is now catching up on several months of missed sleep.
I am eternally thankful to Donna who allowed me to be a real part of this wonderful time in history. She worked so hard and never lost her cool no matter what was going on. Love her! It felt amazing to be able , in some very small way, to ut such a great man into the white house. Most of all it feels wonderful to think that I will be leaving my children a better world and a brighter future.
After Pa was called I went over to the neighbors to watch the rest of the returns. It was lovely to be able to celebrate with my husband and friends. Determined not to be a total mess the next day I went to bed after they called Ohio. So much for good intentions. At 11, when CNN called it for Obama my daughter started texting me and then my cousin from Oregon called! Poor guy; he wanted to share his excitement and all he got was a completely incoherent response. But since I was awake I wound up staying up to 12:20 to hear McCain's concession speech- very gracious- and the incedibly moving acceptance speech by Obama. Call me shallow but how amazing were those coordinated outfits with Michele and the girls. I think I may be almost as excited to see her as first lady and those girls grow up in the white house as I am to see him as President. I said almost! I was glad I stayed up to hear him , thought I didn't feel that way at work the next morning!
The whole thing is really moving and I love the way so many members of my family were a part of this historic moment. Both my kids were at the original rally way back at Independence Hall, my Mom made phone calls in Florida and at 1 in the morning my daughter found herself spontaneously swept along with a cheering huge crowd down to city hall.
Now the only problem- what will I blog about?

volunteering

Sorry it's been so long between posts. Though I'm not sure who I'm apologizing to; it's not like there are 100s of readers out there breathlessly waiting for my next post.
xoxo, you know you love me.( inside joke for any female under the age of 25).

But I have a good reason; any spare time I have I've been at the Obama campaign volunteering. I really love being there, it's so exciting and moving. I never feel tired or worn out when I am there but the minute I get home all the adrenalin stops and I just want to crawl into bed.

I'm not fond of the word patriot. I find it only gets used by conservatives to disparage people who disagree with them. But I am in complete awe of the people I meet at the Obama office who come in and work 7 days a week, 9am to 9pm. They are true patriots; sacrificing their personal lives to try and make the country a better place. Volunteers have been coming in from up and down the east coast; New York, Maryland, Washington, Boston. And not just young people. but tons of people in their 50s , 60s and older who pile into a car with some friends and come down to Pennsylvania to lend a hand for a few hours or a few days. One of the women I work with is from Long island and has been living in a generous strangers house for 2 weeks to help out.
A great shout out to my Mom who made phone calls today and brought home a yard sign for her front lawn. GO Mom!

Pod & Kissinger

OK - so I know that economy sucks so why was Pod- a not inexpensive restaurant- packed on a Wednesday evening at 5:30. Is Penn wildly overpaying it's employees or was everyone there going to see Kissinger like I was?
My D kindly invited me to a symposium on how the future president would handle/effect international relations. Isn't she the greatest?
Lots of introductions by Penn president Amy Gutman, who either has wonderful hair or the worlds best blow dry, Mayor nutter, etc but the main discussion participants were Henry Kissinger and Robert Rubin , Secy of the Treasury under Bill Clinton. It was moderated by Frank Sesno, formerly of CNN. The 3 of them just sat on chairs in front of the audience and talked.
First I was surprised how thrilled I was to see Kissinger in person; kind of like that rush when you spot a famous person in a restaurant. I've watched him on TV for so many years and his voice, mannerisms, physical appearance was exactly the same. Best of all was how wonderful it was to see three incredibly intelligent and informed men sit around talking with nothing to prove. None of them are running for office and are all so accomplished that they are way beyond the point where they worry what people think of them. Of course they were insightful and fascinating bu they were also witty,funny, irrelevant and flippant. I felt like I was listening in on a great dinner conversation.
No matter how you feel about the effect he has had on our nations foreign policy Kissinger is definitely the linguistic master.
A few of the best lines...

It is essential for the new President to prioritize but unfortunately in Washington the urgent often drives out the important.

We need to start a conversation with the world's leaders in which we come not with the solution but with the question.
When asked if we should be negotiating with Iran he said that diplomacy isn't theology; someone doesn't have to be morally fit to be in the same negotiating room as us.
They both agreed that the world's opinion of us can not be fixed unless our financial state is in order and most hopefully agreed that tremendous problems = tremendous opportunities.
All in all, a fascinating evening.

While I've always been obsessed with politics I never actually volunteered for a campaign before this one. Even thought I can only go for a few hours a week it's still very exciting and very interesting to see it all from the 'inside'.
Things I've learned:
1. There never seems to be enough buttons, lawn signs or bumper stickers to meet the demand. Although there's always "an order due in any day now" it never seems to be enough. I guess this demand is a good thing unless your the person who has to say no to the person insisting they need 30 buttons.
2. The rise in polls causes as much, or more, agita than joy for the folks in charge of the local offices. They fear, and rightly so, that volunteers and voters can get complacent and feel that they don't have to bother to vote. In this election where people could easily be lying to pollsters for all kinds of ugly reasons and in a must win state like Pa this could be a disaster.
3. Although it feels great to be doing even the little I am to help it's amazing to see how much time and energy people are willing to give. The paid staff works 7 days a week, a million hours a day and lives on whatever food people are kind enough to drop off. I was amazed by the numbers of people who drive 2 -3 hours down from other states to make phone calls and canvas. Each weekend we get a ton of New Yorkers who feel that Pa needs their help more than New York.
4. The people at McCain rallies really are angry. One of the staff went to the rally at Montco last week to hand out Obama literature and just to watch. He said he was curious if the 'angry mob' reports on TV were over stated. He said the anger directed personally at him was scary. People screamed at him to get a job, told him he was against the troops and really did shout out horrible things about Obama. He said he had never seen such a large crowd of incredibly angry people. I think it's great for people to be enthusiastic for their candidate ( even if it's not mine) but to direct such hatred toward the other guy ( or his staffer) is frightening. I think these people are angry about the economy and perhaps not living in a world where America is admired as a force of good. The McCain camp , intentionally or not, has directed that anger toward Obama as a person. While John Lewis may have been out of line calling McCain a racist the anger at these rallies reminds me of the way the white supremacists take the anger people feel about being out of work or in hard times and very effectively direct it against blacks and Jews.

working for your husband

Bad things about working for your husband



1. the pay sucks

2. he wants to spend all weekend talking about work related stuff

3. you can't complain to your co-workers about what a jerk your boss is

4. you can't call in sick when your just feeling lazy

5. it's impossible to quit



Good things about working for your husband



1. It saves the office a lot of money

2. you always have stuff to talk about

3. your boss can't complain when you talk to your (his) kids at work

4. your boss doesn't complain when you really are sick

5. it's impossible to get fired

worry

Well, I survived the holidays so that's one less worry on my plate. Everyone came and went on time, old clothes pulled out of the closet once a year still fit, the food was great (no credit to me-that's all my Mom), and we all made the services of our choice. We were lucky enough to get to hear Rabbi Marx on kol nidre. He was great, of course, and his sermon topic, fittingly enough , was on Worry. So perfect for my family, a dedicated group of worriers. All about finding the happy medium between worrying about all the wrong things and not worrying about anything at all. Of course easier to say than do but still a message most of us can't hear too many times. My favorite line; a parent is only as happy as their unhappiest child. Wow, that hit home. Most of my worries focus on my kids, even though there's little that those worries can change. It can be hard to relax or be happy if something is not working in their loves. Sometime, I feel guilty or weird that I'm so emotionally tied up with them. It's great to hear a line like that and know that so many other people feel the same way. Obsessive parents of the world, unite!

teachers

I have the greatest respect and admiration for teachers and consider them highly undervalued and under paid. Still , now and then I just want to beat one to a pulp. My S finally motivates himself to study and study his math until he masters it. He walks into and out of the test feeling confident. When we get it back we discover , that yes, he did learn the subject and got almost all of the answers correct. However, the evil, should be retired, math teacher lowers his grade two full grades because he didn't show his work! No wait, he did show his work, just not as much as she wanted him to. Does this women have any concept of how hard it is to 1) get a teenage boy to care about his work and 2)to then do something concrete and effective about it? Nice way to send him the message that trying is useless because I'll just find a way to screw you over anyway. So now, I have to e mail her (done), then when she refuses to do anything about it yell, cry and plead my way through the school administration. All of which will probably amount to nothing. I am already frustrated and I haven't even started the ordeal yet. It is so unfair to this kid. While he may bring some (lots?) of stuff on him all by himself in this case he did the right thing and is getting no positive reinforcement. Ugh!

collection update

Remember those collection idiots? Finally tracked down the credit card company they claimed gave them the debt info. After being transferred 8 times and leaving various messages I reach a live human being. The credit card woman assured me that that card was closed over a year ago and that I didn't owe a thing on it. No shit. The nice woman said she would call over there and straighten them all out. Cool. 45 minutes later guess who calls? Collections morons again. So I now have to dive back into voice mail hell. Ugh! Am I too old to run away to Europe and live off my waitressing tips?

Rosh H

OK, Rosh Hashanah was great. My D came home from college with 5 girlfriends . It was so much fun to spend dinner with such intelligent, interesting, funny women. I really like her friends and the fact that they are all so different from each other really makes a great evening. I hated having to get up from the conversation to serve and clean. Of course the credit all goes to my Mom who refuses to consider take in and makes the kugel, matza balls, brisket all from scratch. She is quite unhappy that no one else in the family ( translation: me) knows how to do any of this. For some reason she does not believe in her own immortality. We all blissfully ignore this notion confident that she will be here forever ensuring we are all well fed.

concerts

Last night I went to the Weezer concert. I love Weezer and they did not disappoint at all. They were amazing and played almost everything I wanted to hear. Still the whole night was definitely an odd experience. It was the first time I was at the same concert as one of my kids , excluding when they were of the age that they could only go with me. Running into my son in the aisles and lobby in between sets was both very fun and very weird. I'm sure he felt the same way ( at least about the weird part) . Now I haven't been to a concert in quite a long time. The last one was a move on.org fundraiser with REM and springsteen. At that concert lots, if not most, of the people were my age or close to it. Not so at Weezer. 99% were between 15 and 22 which I am not. Walking into the very crowded, smoky place was an odd sensation- like walking into the wrong party . If you've ever gone to one of those huge banquet halls and wandered into the wrong wedding or bar mitzvah you know what I mean. It all seems familiar and yet you know you just don't belong. Luckily no one pointed or laughed or attempted to humiliate us in anyway. Perhaps Weezer fans are polite or maybe just too stoned to notice us.

Some things haven't changed about concerts. Everyone still stands for much too much time forcing you to choose between aching legs or not seeing anything. Standing in front of me is the tallest person in the world. Standing behind me is a kid so far gone he keeps calling out for songs they have already played. What's new is the effect of phone technology. At least half the people spend the entire concert holding up their phones to filming video and snap pictures. The other half spend the concert texting everyone they know. Of course I thought this was annoying but pretty soon I was madly texting my son as well. So all in all, a great night.

do you know?

Just the other day a friend from college sent me an e mail. In one of those it's a small world scenarios her husband was talking to an artist he reps. She asked him if he knew her entertainment lawyer since he went to the same college as his wife. While this line of questioning rarely leads to anything in this case the lawyer was definitely some one I knew. He lived one floor below me freshman year, dated my best friend off and on for 4 years and was one of my roommates senior year in the worlds best and most insane house. In other words someone I saw almost every day for 4 straight years and then not once in the last 20.

Now college seems as real to me, and in some ways more real than things that happened last week or last year. I always assumed this was some weirdness on my part and that for most people the minor day to day of college has faded into ancient history. When my friend asked him if he wanted her to say hi, not only did he but he made a joke about how next time he gets the corner room. For some reason that one comment felt really great. Perhaps I'm not as strange as I thought?

holiday

So the holidays are rapidly coming on. I realize this is a religious holiday but g-d seems to be the last thing we ever focus on at this time. Right now we're consumed with the following:
1. what time do we have to close the office to be home in time for dinner.
2. how many people is my daughter bringing home for dinner?
3. how much soup and brisket do we really need?
4. how do we answer #3 without knowing the answer to #2?

As we get closer the major focus will switch to how early we have to arrive at services to get a seat? This will be the consuming topic of dinner. At least we don't have to worry about ugly political fights. There hasn't been a republican at holiday dinner since Roosevelt.

collections

Worlds lamest collection agency. Earlier today a collection agency ( or so they said) left "an urgent" message on the home machine. While I usually ignore anyone and everyone who calls I was curious. To the best of my knowledge we don't actually owe anyone any money. This is not because we're so wonderfully rich but because we ripped up all of our credit cards a year ago and now pay for everything with cash or debit. So no debt. When I called back all I got was an answering machine. I left my name and number. About an hour later a computer called me back! I pushed #1 to talk to a person and was disconnected. I suspect these are the same geniuses behind the housing crisis and the financial mess on Wall Street. Lots of bluster but not too much thought to minor details or major ones...

volunteering for Obama

I've been fairly depressed lately with the thought that Obama may not win the election. I know it's still many weeks away and the debates will matter alot but... I don't mind people who have strong feelings on one issue or another and feel he doesn't reflect their feelings but mostly it seems to be the race -not that anyone would admit it- or how cute and perky she is. I mean do you really want some one so uninformed running our country?

So hoping to feel better I went down to the local Obama office to volunteer. After a few hours I felt several new feelings. One; total guilt over any and all meanness I have ever expressed to pollsters, telemarketers and anyone on the other end of my phone line. Sorry. I wasn't bothered just by someone being a republican; one of my favorite calls was a 92 year old lady who said," my goodness darling, do you have the wrong house", then wished me good luck. The other feeling; hopefulness. In the few hours I was there so many people of all different ages came in asking to volunteer, give money, or get a lawn sign or button. There's still hope! I'll definitely be back.