Well, there goes my self control

I can't keep it in anymore. I have to spew it somewhere and The Professor has taken to answering me with grunts and silent nods. Next thing I know he'll be stuffing his ears with cotton that I won't notice due to the fact that I haven't actually looked at his face in days. Why? Because his face doesn't reveal the latest shimmer of motion in the polls, or tell me the latest stupid thing some campaign person has said, or give me some slight glimmer of what 50.1 percent of the voters in this country might do. I wake up to the morning show on the cable news station with at least 3 people talking. I turn on NPR as soon as my body is in my car. Due to the wonders of a program called VBrick, I check in with various news sources on my PC all day. Another hour of NPR on the way home...and I arrive home just in time for the evening rounds. Obviously, someone needs to stage an intervention. Just give me a few more days. Being Another Bright Blue Dot in a Really Red State - and a state (like 48 others) that doesn't divide its electoral votes proportionally - I always have this Shadow in my head when it's time to vote. The shadow asks "Why bother?". Electoral-vote.com - my first online stop in the morning these days - tells me that the other guy is currently ahead 61%-36%. And since the popular vote means next to nothing in this country...why am I doing it? It is just a Shadow, though, and I beat The Shadow down with a stern lecture on rights, responsibilities and patriotism that I won't go into, because you would probably barf all over your computer monitor. And no one wants to see that. I'm excited this year. I'm terrified. Frustrated, too - My Guy's not perfect. But he's a damn sight better than Mr My Friends. Oh! Speaking of him...go check this out - I endorse its message 1000%. I'm also so incredibly hopeful that this time, My Side won't screw things up. And every time I dare to think those words, my heart seizes up - Oh NO! I Just jinxed the entire election with the awesome and terrifying power of thinking that the best might happen! I want Tuesday to be NOW. This very second. This election has been going on for 2 years and I'm sick of it. I want Tuesday to be 6 months from now because I'm not ready to deal with the disappointment if we lose again. I want to fast forward to Wednesday morning so that I know if it's worth staying up all night watching election returns when I have a plane to catch at 9:30 AM. I want it to be the moment that we win RIGHT NOW. I want John McCain - and most especially, Sarah Palin - to disappear. I want to never hear their names again, and I want that to happen because enough people realized that they're loony in the head and that they should be put out to pasture. A very large pasture. Not in an evil or vindictive way, but in the way that you don't allow mentally disturbed people alone unsupervised with your three month old and a butcher knife. The world needs to be sheltered from them. Ok, I have to go put on a costume and party with a bunch of ...how does my blog-friend Karen put it? Oh yeah, a bunch of "tree-hugging bleeding-heart liberal pinko commie Massachusetts Alabama Democrat{s}". So, to leave you with a happy note, I have a present for you: This video has been linked all over the internets this week - and here's a warning: Get Tissues. Many of them. You're welcome.

To Keep my brain from exploding in a rainbow of political ramblings...

Here's the obligatory post of the cats getting their annual dose of the first fire of the season. I got the camera in hand before we turned it on, and - Honestly - this was 90 seconds after the fireplace was turned on for the first time this year: What are they getting from the fumes that I'm not? Jealous? Absolutely.

Playing Chicken with the Birds

There are 3 birds outside, chasing each other and doing who-knows-what other kind of birdly activities in my bushes. All Lucius and Sultan know is this: if they combine the terrifying power of their direct, compelling and oddly supernatural stares, they will surely lure the birds through the glass and into their waiting clutches.

He'd be embarrassed, but..

I am so proud right now. Of my nephew. Watching the debate, my sis and I were on direct link via Google Chat (And, I daresay, a scary psychic link). And she told me at the beginning that my nephew, M, was watching with her. Now, M is 14. How many 14 year olds watched the debate tonight? But every now and then, my sis told me a comment that M had made. After it was over, he had a few more. More importantly - he watched the whole thing. And had opinions. Regardless of his politics, I am incredibly glad that my 14 year old nephew cares enough to watch one and a half hours of political discourse when he could be playing online, or reading one of his books, or doing one of a million other things. I know adults that don't care that much. I'm proud of him. I know he's involved in an organization at school - completely on his own, my sis wouldn't push him into something like that - and I'm so glad that he cares. That says a lot about the person he is, and the person he will become. About the kind of parents my sister and brother-in-law are. In short, I'm proud (have you gotten that fact yet? Well, I just watched a debate where they repeated things). And I've had enough to drink during the presidential grandstanding (I had to - "I have a bracelet too" - we're in a jewelry war?) to share that with the world at large. It's enough to make me think that the future won't be so bad.

The benefit to still having acne at age 30:

When you walk in the door to your house with your arms full, and a cat-who-shall-remain-nameless (LUCIUS, I WILL NEVER LET YOU GO, STOP TRYING!) makes an escape attempt through your legs, causing you to land flat on your face on the carpet at 80 mph, causing, in turn, a large rug burn right under your nose and a smaller one on your chin that actually get bloodier and more painful 36 hours after they happened ……People will assume it’s just another massive zit gone bad. Or that your husband belted you one. I guess it speaks well of The Professor that everyone assumes I’ve had a facial eruption. PS: Said not-so-unnamed cat stopped an inch outside of the door, sat down and looked at me. When I stood up, he made a beeline back in the house and went to his food bowl. I will never understand why he needs to go out so badly, when every time he makes it free from my tyranny, he immediately heads back inside. Life's about the journey, Deborah, not the destination... PPS: My arms were not full of my laptop at the time, so the only thing you need to worry about is my face, if you feel so inclined.

This is why I don't watch a whole lot of TV:

Because I have to deal with stupid commercials. We now live in a world where the response to the following is not a bewildered "that doesn't even make sense", but a laugh and "That probably could happen." Because you know, kittens on a credit card - like toothpaste in a carry-on - are obvious signs that you're a security risk. Besides the fact that this is completely counter to American ideals while calling itself "American Express", it points out just how much we've been conditioned to think like that. We all know who I blame. And now I'm going to end this rant and go read some nice historical romance to get me back to my happy place.

Big Sisters always have all the fun

And it now Appears I'm live-blogging in pictures at the end of this post. My big sis is at an Obama event today, where she'll be one of thousands that get to hear him. Living as I do in a state that has no chance of throwing any electoral votes his way, I'm going to live vicariously through her today and try not to acknowledge the fact that I'm jealous. Oh wait. I guess I just acknowledged it. Update: They closed the gates in front of her once, but then reopened them - the city was expecting 20,000 in a park that is estimated to only hold 10,000 people. A little later: Ohh! She's emailing me pictures! Here's one of the crowd: And here's one of a plane with a banner that my old eyes can't read: A few minutes later, and the crowd does the wave: Prayers are now over, dignitaries speaking...but no one came to hear any of them! Well, unless their mother is there. Hmm...no updates in 23 minutes means either A) my niece is not happy about the outing, or B) My sis is too busy listening to update me. Hmmph. Doesn't she care about my needs? Hmm...Still no Obama. I wonder if she's reading my blog on her shiny flashy techy iPhone - she sent that last update about 2 minutes after I complained about the lack of info. And finally! We have visual confirmation!

To make you all hungry

I'm working on a couple of new posts for that cooking blog of mine, one of which is the latest recipe in our Julia Child cookbook review. My sister, ever the impatient one, asked - nay demanded! - pictures. Because I am the model of perfection in younger siblings, I am obliging. She may be sorry she asked. The dish: Roast Chicken Steeped with Port Wine, Cream and Mushrooms (from "Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1") served with Mushroom and Thyme Risotto Step One: Roast a chicken. Here's the bird, in all of it's shrink-wrapped glory: Here's the bird, halfway through roasting, in the oven, mostly dead: Here's the roasted bird, assuredly dead and thoroughly cooked, on my new pretty platter: Step Two: Start the risotto. Here's the rice in one of the first baths of chicken broth: Here's the chicken broth of which I am especially proud, since I just made a fresh batch this week: And now, because I am thrifty, I chopped up the mushroom stems and slowly...ohhh..sooo...sllloowwly...sauteed them in a little buttery thyme and white wine: Here's the rice towards the second half of the process, with a shot of the merrily simmering broth. Ahh, you two really are the perfect couple! Step Three: Time to pour the first glass of wine and start putting it all together. First of all, it's time to start those port-y mushrooms for the bird! Ok, I missed the shot of the port-y mushrooms doing their thing in the half-and-half. So now we're on to the Pièce de résistance - flaming the hacked-apart bird in cognac: Oh god, you see way too much of my dirty counters there. In case you're scared, that's The Professor's hairy arm doing the flaming honors. Flaming honors? He's gonna love that one. Then we add the porty-creamy-mushrooms to the pan: And then - thank Julia - we dine on one porty, creamy, mushroomy, slighly-cognacy roasted chicken! In all modesty, this is one of the best roast birds I have ever put together. The mushrooms were awesome, the chicken was tender...maybe Julia knew what she was doing?

Communication. It's the Key.

The Professor, looking at the calendar: So in the last 6 weeks of the year, I have your birthday, our anniversary and Christmas. Me: Yep. It's a good time of year to be me. TP: So what do you want me to buy you? Me: Surprise me! I love surprises! TP: Okkkaayyy....{thinks for another minute}. What should I surprise you with?

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving...

I've read this blog post about 3 times today. The interesting part, to me, starts at about the 4th paragraph:

Over the next 100,000 years, the odds of humanity surviving are probably 50 percent, though species that evolve from us could last longer. The odds of us surviving the next hundred million years are roughly nil. Earth itself will become inhospitable for human life within the next 250 million years, certainly by the time the continents come back together into Pangea Ultima, and it will be inhospitable for all life within the next billion years.

And once again, I'm brought back to how incredibly apropos Monty Python is in yet another moment of life:

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding In all of the directions it can whizz As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know, Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is. So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure, How amazingly unlikely is your birth, And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space, 'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.