The Let Down. And Tidbits

It's been an interesting week. I think many of the people I know are going through election let down. There was such a ramping up of the anxiety in the days and weeks before the election. And it was a lovely (less than) 24 hours of pure joy.

But we all know there is much hard work ahead. It's daunting.

That said, it's rather a relief to let go of some of the election countdown stress. No more checking FiveThirtyEight and HuffingtonPost and other liberal leaning news sites every 30 minutes seconds. No more anxiously waiting for 8PM and Keith Olberman and for 9PM and Rachel Maddow (only regular waiting). No more slightly panicked scans of Canadian real estate sites.

Time to consider whether to go to the inauguration. I've reserved a couple couches at a friend's house, but the tickets available through my congressman are all spoken for. Hmm. Given the inauguration is the day after MLK Day, I am sure there will be many amazing events in the days before the actual swearing in. So we would be going down (along will millions of others, I'm sure) to just experience the atmosphere. Hmmm. And more hmmmm.

It was so different when I went to Bill Clinton's first inauguration in 1992 - but that was before, long before, 9/11. It just so happened that it was a few days before a college friend was getting married in central Virginia that I was going to anyway. My friend with the couches had a relative (husband - now ex - of her husband's cousin) who worked in an office overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue. After a quick stop at my friend's doctor's office, where she had a rod removed from her foot post surgery (I kid you not), we were among the throngs of people on the mall while the 42nd president was sworn in. No ticket needed. Maya Angelou read a poem (....Good morning!"). We trudged (my friend limped) to try to get into the relative's building before the Secret Service sealed and secured the area - we'd had to get security clearances to be in the building weeks earlier - and watched the parade from the window. Again, no ticket needed.

Hmm...to go...or not to go....hmmmm.

In other bits...

There was a test of the emergency warning system in our town yesterday afternoon. There's a nuclear power plant not too far away, so they do this regularly. The town also announces well in advance so no one freaks out and thinks it's for real. C still has issues with alarms of any kind. Yesterday was no exception. Except now he has a little sister to try to help him hide it. It's S that he's trying to help, he says. S who is scared. I let him know that anxiety as such was perfectly understandable, but he assured me that, absolutely, it was not him who had the anxiety. Not at all, he said. Okay, I said. I let it go. I didn't try to push. When the alarm actually did go, it was barely audible. S laid on the couch, watching PBS with hardly a notice. C was up in his room, in the dark, pacing. Three minutes later it was over, and everything was fine.

My sweet, brave boy.

There was more thing I wanted to say. Lost it. Gone. Oh well.

Oh, there is this, (though it's not what was lost):

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