Talk About Tuesday

 

In Which I've Been Awake Too Long

I'm not a daytime person, really. I've always skewed towards the nocturnal end of things and it's only gotten worse as I've aged, so waking up at 8AM today was... embarrassingly difficult. Part of that was how deliciously warm my thick, fluffy red blanket is, to be fair. It was 39℉ (3.9℃) when I got up, and I dressed for the weather in my thick black jeans and thickest sweatshirt. I chugged a quick cup of my morning mocha (or "gruel" as my boyfriend nicknamed it) and my mom and I headed out to do our civic duty.

Voting day is a shockingly easy affair where I live. If you haven't registered to vote yet (you only have to do it once after you're 18 - just re-register every time you move), you can bring a bill and your driver's license or state ID (they're only about five bucks and ship to you fast) and they'll sign you up right at the polls. If you have already registered, like my mother and I have, you just get into your line and wait your turn. Our wait was about five minutes, so that was pretty great. I'd have to say the only drawbacks are that the polling place is A) not the most accessible (there are stairs, though there are handicap elevators/entrances, the building is from before the ADA, so that doesn't help much...) and B) There's almost no parking. It was designed with a much smaller town in mind, after all!

They had COVID procedures in place - socially distanced lines, masks available at the door, hand sanitizer everywhere, and the poll booths were set up a good 6 feet apart from one another. The ballots were printed at about 14-16 font for the most part, and I could read everything even through my fogged-up glasses! After we filled out our ballots, we dropped them in the appropriate boxes and were immediately mobbed by the usual gaggle of Signature-Seekers. The petitions this year were pretty good, from what I recall - urge the govt to come up with a Universal Healthcare plan, encourage better utility competition with a public option, and an election fairness petition to remove the loophole that allows international and interstate funds to be used in local elections (which is apparently illegal at the national level but you could've fooled me...).

I'll confess I made the grabby-hands motion towards the Universal Healthcare and Public Utility Option petitions. Might have had a savage grin as I signed the one against dark funding as well...

Regardless, that took up maybe 15 minutes total of my morning. Then we went to the laundromat and threw in some huge sleeping bags we can't wash at home. That took about 20 minutes. We took the lumpy old things home to dry on the line. I'm super happy we could do that because Sunday was miserable.

That's right, sadly our Halloween up here was practically a bust. We had torrential rains on Saturday night, and when we woke up on Sunday morning, our basement was flooded. To be fair, pretty much everyone we knew ended up with a flooded basement, but if there's one thing you don't wanna see when you peek down into the cellar, it's a blue bucket bobbing along two inches above the floor.

We got lucky. Other people had a foot of flooding.

Even my poor guy got soggy - there was at least an inch in the basement there, too.

Fortunately, aside from a few grocery items and some already-deceased UPS's in my basement, not a ton was ruined. Some cardboard, some birdseed. Even more fortunately, nothing irreplaceable has been harmed. No one was hurt, the floodwaters have utterly vanished (unless you're walking around my yard in boots, then you'll have the mud around your ankles...) and the coast is once more at peace.

Until next weekend, of course >:( we're getting more rain.

I'm done with rain. I'd rather wake up to 39 inches of snow than three inches of rain (which is what we woke up to on Halloween).

Oh, and just in case you thought Halloween wasn't sad enough with everyone getting flooded? We got exactly one trick-or-treater here. Our next door neighbor.

On the plus side, I have more fun-size M&Ms than I know what to do with. Maybe some fun cookies are in my future...

I have some art commissions to work on, too!

And I've got a few crochet projects!

And my mom's mom wants me to make some doilies!

It looks like I'm going to be super busy with creative stuff, but don't worry, I'm also still writing.

Looks like I'm going to be participating in No-Burnout November (which I'm taking as a dare, it seems...)

Oh, and for lunch today I made some Nongshim K-Army Stew, which is very very spicy and available at Wal-Mart. I threw in a slice of American cheese for fun and it completely dissolved into the unbearably hot, delightfully spicy broth, coating the noodles in cheesy goodness.

Taken Seconds After Adding The Cheese

I think that'll about do it for me for today. My eyes are burning slightly and I've been working on my writing all afternoon, though I'm not convinced much of it's any good. My folks are recovering from colds, I've got hella allergies that might be segueing into the cold they've got, and I just want a nap lol.

Go Enjoy Something!

FC