Is It Over Yet?

Three guesses what my subject is tonight.

I was a good American yesterday (whatever that means). I went out and performed my civic duty. I trudged down the hill to the mondo huge apartment complex a few streets over, to my polling location at the clubhouse. (Why doesn't my apartment building have a clubhouse? We don't have an exercise room or an indoor pool...or a humongous rent like Clubhouse-having complex. Oh well. You win some, you lose some.) I punched little holes in a card that signified my voice in the future of the country. I trudged back up the hill to my apartment, fixed myself some macaroni and cheese, and settled in to watch the returns. Well, after the usual Tuesday night Buffy/Angel fix. (I watched the returns on NBC during commercial breaks; that's got to count for something.)

Somewhere around 10:45pm I called Roger Mexico to find out what the plan was for the post-election party. (He had planned to have an after-hours gathering and invite a few people over after the bars closed for a celebratory beverage. Or an opportunity to cry into our beers without shame, depending upon the outcome.) "I'm not going anywhere just yet," he replied. "It's way too close."

Too true. I hung up the phone and glued my eyeballs back to the TV screen.

At 1:00am, he called me. "Guess we're not going for that beer tonight."

"Nope, guess not." I was exhausted from watching. Not tired like I wanted to sleep, but tired like I'd run around the block a few hundred times. Bush in the lead. Gore in the lead. Bush. Gore. Bush. Gore. Whoops, jumped the gun on Florida. Pretend you didn't see that, America. I wanted off the political roller coaster. And since I'd been attempting to watch all three networks, I had no idea what the correct facts were. CBS had been reporting Nevada as a Republican casuality for hours, while the other two stations were still claiming it was too close to call.

"Too close to call." Four little words I think I could go for the rest of my life without ever hearing again.

I finally fell asleep in front of the TV around 2am, when it pretty much had been decided that our new president would be Dubya. (I think my brain made me sleep to spare me from the accompanying trauma.) Ah, sleep. There are no political parties in my dreams, no issues, no mudslinging campaigns....

But there does appear to be a ringing telephone in my dreams. Feh. Hello? Hi, Roger. What the hell time is it, anyway? 4:00? 5:00?

"They've pulled Florida again. There's like a 500 vote difference between them."

My brain was having problems comprehending this concept. 500 votes? He's talking about some local race, right? The school levy or something. Presidential races don't run this close. I mumbled something to the effect of "You're kidding. This is ludicrous," and went back to sleep.

Well, here it is, 24 hours later and we are still sans a President-elect. I've spent the entire day checking the AP newswire to find nothing but the parties still sniping at each other over possible shady dealings in the Sunshine State. I'm sure that history and civics classes all over the nation had a field day, finally having a more up to date example of the Electoral College at work than the Harrison - Cleveland election of 1888.

By now I'm sure that every other online journalist/blogger has posted their take on this whole fiasco, and while I feel excited to have participated in one of the most exciting elections ever, I just want the whole thing to be over with. I want to be able to go to bed tonight knowing whether my rights as an individual are going to be challenged over the next four years. I want to know if Tipper's going to be picking out new curtains for the Lincoln Bedroom or if that guy who dared to ask the immortal question, "Is our children learning [sic]?" will be packing his bags for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. (If the recount seems to be too much of a bother, I think Omar has a great solution to the dilemma before us.)

If the race goes to Dubya, I say we all pack our stuff into a Ken Kesey-esque school bus, head for the Great White North, and form an artists' colony. Either that or we pool our resources and stage a coup in a Central American country. Who's with me?

Arrgghh. I've got a political migraine THIS BIG and it's got Warehouse written all over it. Time to go dance and drink. I'll paint the school bus later.