I've been waiting eons for this day to arrive, or I suppose more accurately, for this day to end.

This election cycle has dragged on and on and left me weary.

I'm not at all interested in national politics, and I have no faith in the system.

Mark is terribly interested in politics and has a lot of passion for the system.

He gets cranky and ranty about all of the hubbub around politics, when I know in my heart of hearts that the whole thing is rigged, and that nothing short of a revolution would create real change.

When I say that, Mark gets even more cranky, so over time I have learned to keep it to myself.

When we first got together he would become irate when I said I didn't vote.

That I refused to participate in the sham of our political system.

He said that I was part of the problem.

I had been fairly content to be part of the problem, for a good long time before I met him, choosing to focus my energy, smugly, on these of greater value, like social service volunteerism and working in child care, things that in my opinion really change the world for the good.

When I had a son, and when George Bush started all the war, I voted, not that it really changed anything.

I am disappointed by the Obama Care, not that it's Obama's fault, the concept was ok.

We need to run the insurance industry out of town on a rail.

We need to tar and feather it.

We need to hang 'em high, boys.

All that old western movie stuff, we need to do that.

If we could have decent health care, and decent child care, and decent maternity leave, and decent education, then I might be less cynical.

If old people and mentally ill people could count on not eating cat-food from a cardboard box under a bridge, I might give a shit.

We can't count on a god damn thing, not even an epi-pen, for an allergy, if you haven't got the dough, not even a humble college education, if you are smart, which guts me.

I have worried about the dragging on wars, and all the heaps of money they cost, and all the good that could have been done instead.

It used to keep me up at night, the worry over the draft, over war.

Now I worry that my grown up child will not be able to realize his full potential, because we have such a ratty country that doesn't value people.  That what little is left for social services, is sprinkled over the lowest of the low, and everyone else can just go to hell, or work themselves to death.

I worry about not being about not being able to support myself in my old age, which has some to do with our political situation, but my vote isn't going to change much about that, one way or another.

So I imagine Mark will be glued to the TV tonight, pacing around with a 7-UP in his hand, while I knit some do-dad in the kitchen, listening to John Prine and planning a dinner party.