The Big Event

Jennifer's high school graduation is on Saturday. Why do we put ourselves through so much stress and work to proclaim that we are officially done with school? When usually in the case of home schoolers there's so much to read yet that you end up doing continuing school for some time after you graduate? It doesn't seem like my graduation was this stressful! Maybe I'm just tired and I have a faulty memory.
The day after Jen's graduation she and I are escaping for a little vacation. We are really just house-sitting- but we will be alone and we are planning on relaxing and getting some projects done. I am hoping I can convince Jen to share a half-gallon of vanilla ice cream and a batch of chocolate sauce with me. She is so reluctant to eat any type of sugar, but I think sugar is essential to any vacation.

My four hours at the primary

So yes, I was at the County Courthouse for four hours yesterday helping at the voting booths. My job was to hand people their correct ballot in its (ugly brown) plastic sleeve, and take it from them when they were done and then carefully slide the ballot out of the sleeve into the ballot box without looking. There was a lot of emphasis on the “WITHOUT LOOKING” part! We were NOT supposed to see what boxes were checked on any ballot. So it wasn't a big job or hard work at all, but I did learn a little bit about the voting process. There are a lot of rules! It was required that six people be there to help- there were four nice Grandma ladies and the precinct supervisor, who was a county employee. She mostly handed out the “I Voted!” stickers. We were in charge of eight precincts. I think we had somewhere around 700 ballots provided, and only 276 ballots were used. There was only one green vote all day, which is no surprise since we live in an agricultural county where the farmers think nothing of polluting the universe through hog barn waste and crop chemicals. There were no Nebraska party votes, and maybe a few less Non-partisan votes than Democratic votes. The majority of votes were Republican. Nebraska is a pretty Republican State.

I think people should be able to choose what ballot they want, whatever party they may officially belong to, and the smaller parties should be added to to the Dem. and Rep. Ballots, instead of being separate. There was hardly anyone to vote for on the smaller ballots because fewer people were running under those parties.

None of the ladies working with me knew why NE had a Democratic caucus besides being able to vote yesterday. It doesn't make sense to me why would they caucus and vote both?

After the polls closed at 8pm, we counted all the leftover ballots and only we were only one off. I left before the ladies figured out what happened to that one.

Four hours got to be a little long when there weren't many people coming in to vote, but I am glad I went. For one thing, it's good to get your name out as someone involved in politics. That way people know to contact you when they need help and then you can influence the political scene for the better, in little ways at least.

And on the way home, I stopped to see the sunset.

Voting day

Tomorrow is voting day in Nebraska, finally, and I will be working at the polls for about four hours. This is my first time doing this, so I'm not sure if I'll have much to do or not. Everyone else working in our whole precinct at the various voting places are elderly women, except for a few high schoolers who don't have a choice about helping or not, but they're glad to get out of class for a while. It should be a good learning experience.

Borg Obama

From Gary Bauer's report last night:

"Obama went for months with a bizarre explanation of why he wouldn’t wear a flag lapel pin. There is the bizarre photo of Senators Obama and Clinton, along with Gov. Bill Richardson during the playing of the National Anthem. Richardson and Clinton have their hands over their hearts, while Obama is standing there looking ambivalent. There is Obama’s now infamous statement in San Francisco dismissing the values of most Americans who, in the candidate’s own words, “cling” to faith and guns out of bitterness. And there is this comment Obama made to the Chicago Reader in 1995, as his political career was taking off:

“In America, we have this strong bias toward individual action. You know, we idolize the John Wayne hero who comes in to correct things with both guns blazing. But individual actions, individual dreams, are not sufficient. We must unite in collective action, build collective institutions and organizations.”"

As a Star Trek fan, that last sentence really stands out to me. I don't know about you, but I don't want to be assimilated into a collective.

"I am Obama! Resistance is futile!"

A country necessity- the mudroom

Today the temperature was 75 F, and so I cleaned out our mudroom. Everyone who lives in the country ought to know what a mudroom is. It's the place where you supposedly keep everyone's muddy boots, instead of putting them on the newly mopped kitchen floor. That's where you keep all the odds and ends of gardening, empty boxes, extra garbage and bottles and cans to be recycled. But mostly, it's full to the brim of coats, hat scarves, mittens, and jackets. And today I packed them all away. I may regret it, because it's supposed to freeze again this weekend. We'll just have to go without! Because I packed them all away and they are NOT coming back down. In our case, the mudroom also holds the wood bin so we don't have to keep running outside all winter long to get wood to keep us warm. That would be worse than having to use an outhouse instead of having indoor plumbing! Besides all that, we have a small oven in our mudroom so we don't heat up the house during the summer, since we don't have AC either.

Someone is coming to look at our business tonight. It would be wonderful if our business would sell before our house... Last Sunday we went to look at houses in a really nice neighborhood on the outskirts of Omaha. If we have to live in town, I would want to live in a neighborhood like that one. There was more space than usual. We are still hoping to build our own house in the end, though.

Good or Bad?

Late last night we heard that two close friends of ours were in a bad car accident when two young people didn't stop at a stop sign at a blind intersection on a country road. The mother is is critical condition with head injuries(She's at UNMC in Omaha), and the daughter is reportedly not physically hurt. We are keeping aware of the situation and Mom and Dad will visit them soon, depending on how serious Mrs. P's condition is as the day goes on. I know this sounds like a sad and terrible happening, but what does Romans 8:28 say? We know that God causes all things to work together for good, to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. And I hope and pray that He might use this "accident" to bless this family with spiritual growth, especially Mrs. P, and use them to be witnesses to others.

I have always been a careful driver, even though I don't always stop at country intersections during the winter and spring when the corn isn't blocking the view. Now I will be even more careful. There have been so many young people killed driving on country roads in our community, just from driving too fast on gravel roads or going through stop signs.

Tomorrow will be better...

Finally school is over for the day and the boys are playing outside! They did get on my nerves today. Boys are naturally fidgety and noisy, and they had more trouble than usual concentrating on schoolwork today. While they cleaned up after lunch I cut up an old dress that had stretched out elastic and re-made it into a skirt. Now I am looking up recipes on google for lentil casserole so I can go make dinner.

This morning I read a book called "Tomorrow Will Be Better" by Zdena Kapral. It is a very moving and well written story about the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. Reading books like this one is how you can really learn about history!