voting

I don’t know how we got it so wrong.

On Tuesday things seemed full of hope and promise. I was enthusiastic and upbeat. We were about to elect our first female president in America. Finally, we could erase that smug and self-satisfied look off of Trump’s face. Instead I went to bed with just a glimmer of hope that the numbers could be wrong.

I woke up in a fog, feeling like someone had died. I woke up to the news that Donald Trump had enough electoral votes to put him in office. What so many of us viewed as a terrible joke was our new reality.

Karen, of The Unassuming Hiker said this:

Today we woke up to the realization that the following things are true:

Bullies win

Racism is alive and well in America

Women don’t matter

Black lives don’t matter

There is no global warming (or science for that matter)

The more outrageous you are, the better chance you have that the 24 hour news media will give you full coverage and help you get elected.

And, the Donald was correct when he said “I could shoot someone on 5th Ave and still get elected.”

He won by promising to make “your” life better! The only life he is concerned with is his own.

You can read the rest of her post here.

All the “positive” spin says don’t give up hope. We have to work even harder. Stand up and protect those who have so much to lose. The list is long: Latinos, Muslims, members of the LGBTQ community, the disabled, the disenfranchised and women who make up over half of the population.

Maybe I’m not doing enough. I vote. I volunteer. I show up, stand up, give money, support causes, sign petitions but when I rolled out of bed this morning, our president-elect is the same guy we all saw on the Access Hollywood hot mic clip.

My 16-year-old son volunteered election night at the Registrar of Voters. He came home at midnight, sad and disappointed and vowed to wear black to school the following day. He left for school Wednesday morning dressed in black from head to toe. My older son, away at college, assured me he would be okay, but that he is “just not reading the news anymore.”

I need to grieve, regroup, and figure out my own “what now?” I hardly know where to start.

At long last, election day is here.

It’s been a long, contentious, embarrassing campaign. The stakes are incredibly high. But today, with my head held high, I will cast my vote for Hillary Clinton.

Our garage is a polling place once again. A line formed shortly before 7:00 and we’ve had a steady stream of voters ever since. It’s 8:20 am as I write this. Our polls close at 8:00 pm, and since we live in California, we are one of the last states to vote other than Hawaii.

garage-on-election-day-november-2016-001

Our garage, ready for voters

According to Google Maps, I have to travel 1 foot to my polling place. :-)

I’ve been a bundle of nerves for days, but today I feel a sense of calm. We all get one vote and all votes count. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

These signs represent the diversity in our community

I wish my mom were alive to see it. She was a staunch defender of women’s rights and supported early candidates such as Shirley Chisholm. Mom died in 2008, a few weeks after we elected Barack Obama, but she’d slipped into dementia at that stage of her life so she never knew.

Shirley Chisholm said:

The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, “It’s a girl.

and…

Tremendous amounts of talent are lost to our society just because that talent wears a skirt.

and..

You don’t make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.

She was a remarkable woman, ahead of her time.

Here are a few posts from fellow bloggers that I think you’ll enjoy.

America Votes! by Stacy P. Fischer of Visual Venturing

Loving Hands and Nasty Women by KerryCan of Love Those Hands at Home

And to tickle your funny bone, assuming you share my sense of humor, here are several clips from Randy Rainbow:10 Times Randy Rainbow Slayed the Election. His beautiful voice and dead-on parodies have helped keep me sane.

Finally, why women are wearing white on election day.