eric135

Only in America

 

There has been a lot of discussion about the history we have made with the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States. I sensed the history being made as I watched the announcement. It's the sort of stuff that simply had to happen in America, to Americans.

Change really can happen. I remembered when I first heard about Barack Obama. I remember as I clicked my tongue at the ridiculous prospect of a black guy named Barack Hussein Obama running for president. I snickered and sneered when a CNN- Headline News anchor accidentally called him Obama Bin Laden.

I've come a long way. I'm convinced we've chosen the best candidate, but after the last 60 days, I'm convinced he's the best candidate who happens to be black, not because he is black. An old gray-haired lady reminded me that the opposite of "Arab" is not "decent family man." A Governor from Alaska proved that it can't just be any woman, it has to be the right person.

I even learned a lot from John McCain. As I listened to one of his last speeches in Colorado, I had to wonder, "Where the hell has this guy -- this John McCain -- been for the past 60 days?" It just seemed that his best speeches were given on the last day of the campaign. That's the McCain that should have run for president. He's a good man, a patriotic American. We should have seen more of that.

Well, I'm back to work tonight. I've watched 12 hours of political television. Now, it's back to wiping butts.

But I feel exhilarated.

I feel like I've just watched the Eagle land in the lunar Sea of Tranquility;

I've just listened to John F. Kennedy's Inaugural address in 1961;

I've watched the first lauch of Columbia in 1981; and

I've watched as Rosa Parks decided enough was enough, and took a seat at the front of the bus.

Truly, only in America...

One fat piece of hell...

I've been reading this hilarious blog, supposedly written by two octogenarians.  They plan to vote for Barack Obama, and want you to do so also. Here's a tasty bit:

If I hear that McCain is a Maverick one more time I just might throw myself to the floor and break a hip.  A maverick is an independent individual who doesn’t go along with a group or party.  If John McCain’s a maverick I am one of those cheerleaders on the sidelines of Harold’s beloved Dallas Cowboys.  Nobody seems to dispute that the Republican party led by George W. Bush got us into this mess but what everybody seems to forget is that Sarah Palin and John McCain are Republicans.  Look, when the Religious Right came knocking at the door of the RNC Membership Round-Up, someone should have turned out the porch lights and told everyone inside to be quiet until they went away… the same thing I do when those nice looking boys on bicycles with bibles come to my door.  But the Republicans opened that door, invited them in and now they have to live with that decision.

The whole blog is like that.

It reminded me that my job as a nurse on a med/surg/tele floor doesn't expose me to a representative selection of this age group.

I am reminded of a recent phone conversation with my (septuagenarian) mother. She was relating a very scary day when she "couldn't get up out of bed" due to a sudden onset of pain in her back and leg. Then I asked her what she had been doing the 24 hours prior to the pain. "Your father and I had been ballroom-dancing for a few hours -- on a carpetted floor."

I mean well hell, no wonder she hurt. I told her, "Ma, you can't just decide to spend a few hours dancing, on top of all the hours of gardening and taking care of a huge house and a coy pond the size of a bus and not have pain... you're gonna have to take it easy sometimes."

We should be so active. Hell, we get winded when we get our mail, and we drive bags of trash to the trash compactor about 1/3 block away.

I went to our annual benefits fair a few days ago. There were representatives from LA Fitness and Pure Fitness, and they were doing caliper tests and calculating BMI's on the passers-by. Hilariously (and somewhat inexplicably), they were set up right next to the table where the cafeteria staff set up a hot dog stand (this is at 8am btw). I remember hobbling past the fitness center tables (I had hurt my foot somehow and was thus limping like Quasimoto). I was carrying a tote bag filled with all the pens and clips and goodies (but I was carrying it like Tinky Winky carrys his Magic Bag) and now I'm clutching a hot dog smothered with mustard and relish.

Wisely, they didn't offer to calulate my BMI.

One of the skinny anorexic bitches made a move to call me over, when her co-worker lightly touched her elbow and gave the skinny one that "just let this one go by" look. I wasn't hurt or mad, I gotta admit, after 12 hours of work and then a 90 minute meeting, I looked like one fat piece of Hell at that point.