Election Year

Truth be told I was hoping to be able to vote this year. This was such a fantastic election, and I would have loved to have been a part of history. Several weeks ago I took and passed my citizenship test, but only just received the date of which I will say my oath and be officially sworn in. Afterwhich I will be a naturalized citizen of the United States - fair and square; it has cost me hundreds and hundreds of dollars, time and stress. And in four years, I'll be able to vote for my first time ever... oh, and I'll also be over 30.

To compensate, we're running our own mini-election here at home. The position at stake: Sunday night's dinner. Each family member has nominated a fruit, vegetable, main dish and dessert. (We even had a couple of duplicates.) The tension in our home has risen as each person, supporting "candidates", begins campaigning. Posters, speeches, even bribes have ensued. And hurt feelings too. We'll see how this goes, as we may have some sad losers. Suddenly, even though beef stroganof has always been a family favourite, the boys are adament that it is inherantly evil and horribly tasting, while Miss J fights frantically to convince them of the benefits of electing this main dish. Thankfully my parents will be here to add a few more votes. I saw this idea, very much elaborated, in some parenting magazine in a doctor's office. If it goes well, it may become a new November tradition.

Speaking of election year and November traditions, we seem to have a nasty one in our house. Four years ago, our hot water heater was leaking and apparently had completely deteriorated the drywall of two of the walls in our home so that they were collapsing. Days before hosting a household of people for Thanksgiving, I had maintenance come in and tear down, dry out, and rebuild the walls. A horrible time. Four years later... on Tuesday we were running a small load of wash when a few gallons of water started leaking out of our utility closet. We called maintenance (yeah for not owning our own house yet) and they decided something was clogged and brought in the snake. We went to the park and returned to a find a note requiring us to NOT use our washer and CONTACT the office IMMEDIATELY. I picked up to call right when maintenance returned to my door to share the dreaded news. They had broken a pipe. Now they are going to have to jackhammer up all of my floor and basically we have to leave our house for at least three days while they work. At least this year I'm NOT hosting Thanksgiving. And thankfully we have wonderful friends who are letting us camp out and have an "adventure" as we're calling it. Originally the work was to begin yesterday (my parents arrive for a few days today), but thankfully we won't be kicked out of our home until early Monday morning. The plan is that we can sleep back in our own beds Wednesday night. Time will tell.

Well I best go and make a cute poster suggesting you all vote for lasagna. Actually, I'm thinking stickers may go over well here.