In Common with Humans

Wow. Just…wow.

We’ve made history, folks. This is absolutely staggering. The United States of America has elected a black President. He swept Massachusetts–a state which I am ashamed to say does not have a great record for race relations, although we currently have a black Governor, Governor Patrick. (I voted for him, too.)

I’m not happy and proud–I’m awed, awed and humbled, that I could see something like this happen, and be a part of it. (Thank you to my 25 voters in Pennsylvania! 🙂 I voted for Obama in the primaries, too.) Like kradical says: I grew up with the Cold War and lived to see diplomatic relations opened with China, the Berlin Wall come down, and Soviet-U.S. collaboration in space. I’ve seen the world change in ways that conventional wisdom cynically predicted could never happen. But this is something special.

Tomorrow I will celebrate. If anyone would like to come by for hot spiced apple cider and rum, let me know!

McCain gave a very graceful concession speech. I did my workout to it. *g* I’m waiting now to hear Obama.

Oh, and as far as our ballot questions went, we didn’t repeal the state income tax, we’re banning greyhound racing, and we’re decriminalizing marijuana–and overwhelmingly approving a non-binding referendum in favor of allowing medical marijuana. Yeesh, what a bunch of liberals! *g*

Get your virtual sticker here

If I’ve been quiet lately, it’s partly because I’ve been very busy, and partly because, aside from that, I’ve been more or less holding my breath. I still am. No matter what the polls and pundits say, I hardly even dare to hope. After two stolen elections and eight years of a catastrophic reign of evil, I don’t dare to hope that the Bad Guys won’t win again.

I’ve always been a responsible citizen (part of recent busy-ness was Fall Town Meeting here in Pepperell, and what a story that is!), but I am now an official volunteer for Obama, and that’s something new for me. I made 25 cold calls to Pennsylvania to get out the vote. If I had less on my plate, I’d do more.

I didn’t have to wait in any lines to vote today, aside from having to wait for one or two people when I checked in and out. It looked like there had already been a good turnout, at 12:30 p.m., from the number of names checked off on the voting lists. But we’ve got some hot local contests here and three doozy ballot questions (abolish the state income tax and decriminalize marijuana, on the same ballot!).

So now, I’m just…waiting. I need to make some catch-up LJ posts. This weekend is IBPA/IPNE Publishing University and I’m finishing up the Program Book for that. I just need to keep breathing…

Happy Birthday, halloween49!

Happy Halloween!

(This is a jack o’lantern carved from a turnip, which I made a couple of years ago)

Happy Birthday, norda!

I spotted this sign as I made one last circuit of the exhibitors’ hall at the New England Library Association conference this afternoon. (The exhibitors were publishers, distributors, and services of interest to libraries.) The gentleman posing says he’s “Joe’s agent.” 🙂

This is one of those stories for which I desperately wish I’d gotten a photo, because you’re probably not going to believe it.

I had to get the leaves raked, or at least start them. The trees aren’t quite bare yet, but they’re nearly there. Last year I thought I could put off the raking until November and then it snowed early and I never got it done at all. Besides, it’s so much easier to rake them while they’re still dry and fluffy.

how many leaves I had to rake

That’s how I feel at the moment, anyway!

When I got the cord of wood last week, I told Mr. Thibeault that I wanted a second cord, but I’d have to call him after I got back from Albacon and had gotten the first one stacked. I stacked the wood on Monday, but I’ve had so much to catch up with, I hadn’t gotten around to calling Mr. Thibeault. Knowing how hard it was to find firewood until recently, I was hoping he hadn’t sold out, and I was going to call him today. I needed to go find his phone numbers and so on, and I wasn’t sure I could reach him until after sunset because he’s out in the woods working.

Just a short time ago the phone rang. I was hand-grating beets and potato to make vegetarian red flannel hash (hey, it’s something different) and my hands were all messy, but I answered the phone. It was Mr. Thibeault. He had some wood all loaded and wondered if I still wanted it. Plus, he’d give me the same discount if I paid cash (which I did last week). When I enthusiastically said yes, he said he’d be here in twenty minutes!

Wow, that was easy! I went scuttling down to the bank to cash a check (an advantage to living in a small town, everything is down the street), and within ten minutes, the wood was here. I’m all set with the second cord, and I didn’t even have to find the phone number! He also complimented me on my nice stack of wood. 🙂

Of course, I just scorched my red flannel hash because I was typing this journal entry, so clearly there are limits to being in sync. *wry smile* Good thing I like food that’s a little burned!

Today I ran a full system scan on my main computer, in Safe Mode, and then uninstalled and re-installed Norton Anti-Virus 2009, which so far seems to have resolved the problem I was having. That took several hours, during which I couldn’t get computer work done. I also went over to Kimball’s Fruit Farm and stocked up on some fruit and vegetables for the winter. I picked two large tote bags brim-full of apples. I walked down to the pumpkin field (quite a ways) and found a large pumpkin just standing there waiting for me, and carried it back on my shoulder. I also bought some butternut squash, one sugar pumpkin (for eating), three gourds (for decoration) and a couple of heirloom tomatoes. Kimball’s specializes in heirloom varieties of tomatoes, and I’m saving the seeds of several kinds to try planting on my own. I’m very supportive of preserving heirloom breeds and varieties of livestock and food crops.

pictures under cut for bandwidth

A query by sphynxcatvp reminded me that I haven’t posted anything about this on LJ yet. I’ve had a lot of other things going on. But I am now an addict in recovery. I’ve completely given up refined sugar and chocolate. No cheating, either–no artificial or substitute sweeteners. They only encourage the psychological craving. I bake with honey or molasses, although I try to minimize the amount I use–this is for bread, not cookies or desserts. I added sugar and chocolate to my banned list (along with transfats, corn syrup, refined wheat and refined rice) on September 28th. Today is my 18th day of total sucriety.

I’ve tried giving up chocolate (but not sugar per se) before, and I fell off the wagon after a couple of months. I am a hopeless addict. I’ve been able to cut back on chocolate but not stop altogether, and when things got stressful, my chocolate intake skyrocketed. The absolutist, “zero tolerance” method is the only thing that works with addictions.

I made this decision because my body chemistry is changing, and I was gaining weight despite the fact that I’m ratcheting up the workouts as much as I can now, and trying to cut back on food. My meals are smaller and my workouts are harder, but my weight–fat weight, not lean–was still creeping up. Menopause changes all the rules. Diabetes also runs on both sides of my family. It was time to ditch the sugar.

I’ve been doing fairly well so far–no cravings, no temptations, although I did have one dream about eating sweets, and awakened with a sinking sense of having screwed up until I realized I’d only dreamed it. I used to have those dreams when I did long fasts, too. But one effect caught me by surprise.

When I was much younger, I was prone to fairly severe depressions. For many years now, I have not been troubled by these, although I certainly had other emotional moods around stressful circumstances in my life. But last week, I started to feel very depressed–so down that I was on the verge of tears from time to time. This went on for several days while I prepped for Albacon, and I couldn’t get psyched for the convention at all. I had this awful sense of looming dread. I attributed it to the political and economic news, and I’m sure that had something to do with my mood, because I think just about everyone is being affected by what’s going on. But this seemed to be more than that.

It didn’t click until I was on the way to Albacon. I went cold turkey on sugar and chocolate, when I had been eating rather a lot of it. I’d been off them for ten days and counting. No sucrose…no theobromine…fewer carbs in general…my serotonin levels were bottoming out. I’d realized that one of the major reasons I eat at all isn’t because I’m interested in food, it’s because I want to boost the serotonin in my brain. If there was something like an epi-pen that would allow me to get an instant “serotonin fix,” I probably wouldn’t eat for days.

Once I figured that out, I felt a bit better, because realizing the cause gave me a sense of perspective. But I’ll be interested to see how this goes, and how different I feel after two months, and six months. I think my body chemistry is going to change a lot.