Power Out, But Corny On. Very On.

It's just me and the kids tonight, and I have to admit I was secretly thrilled when the power went out at about 8:00 pm. I was in the middle of putting them down for bed, and their lights were already off, so they took little notice of the outage. All three went down easy, and then I lit four fat candles and cleaned up the kitchen. At 9:00, I crawled into bed to read and write—free of my computer (it was charged, but my wireless connection was down), and the siren call of my iPhone (um, not charged). Unfortunately, five minutes later the power was back, and now here I am sucked right onto the Internet.

Oh, well. I don't feel too guilty on the writing front, though, since by some miracle I managed to write quite a bit today. It must have been the white noise created by the non-stop arguing my children were so determined to engage in. "What are they fighting about?" asked the spousal unit when he called to chat before dinner. "What AREN'T they fight about?" quipped your Nesting Ground Mistress. None of them were angry with me, however, so I steered clear of the whole thing. I prefer to let them work out their own differences whenever possible lest I risk becoming their referee for all time.

***

Yesterday was transformative. And you can just stop your eye-rolling right now; it WAS. Just imagine your Nesting Ground Mistress in a room filled with almost every conceivable type of person. Now, if you will, imagine that we didn't even notice the things that made us different because we were too busy being what Barack Obama believes we can be: Americans united by the possibility of real change.

Yes, I've taken an entire bottle of corny pills and at this stage, I don't really care who knows it. Of course, I liveblogged the whole experience over at Twitter, which I will now—gosh, how lucky are YOU?!—re-create here:

10:24 AM January 26, 2008 from web: Back at Obama HQ with my friend J. and a room full of other volunteers. And—forgive me—I'm fired up and ready to go!

10:35 AM January 26, 2008 from web: A neighbor is here, too! I've never met her before...

10:46 AM January 26, 2008 from web: Ten calls so far. Two people "leaning towards your guy."

10:54 AM January 26, 2008 from web: Someone just rang the bell! Gah—I wanted to be the first one!

11:07 AM January 26, 2008 from web: Everyone's ringing the bell but me. It must be my frog voice...

11:16 AM January 26, 2008 from web: Okay...my friend J. is about to ring the bell for the SECOND time.

11:57 AM January 26, 2008 from web: YES!!! Just rang my first bell!

12:16 PM January 26, 2008 from web: One of my tablemates just rang the bell. I do believe our table is on a roll...

12:49 PM January 26, 2008 from web: There's a ukelele musician here (he went to Obama's high school). Just a guess, but I bet there's no ukelele playing at the HRC office...

01:00 PM January 26, 2008 from web: End of my shift. Made 81 calls. This place is BOOMING: old, young, white, black, brown. It's a beautiful thing....

01:04 PM January 26, 2008 from web: OMG, the ukelele band is playing a special OBAMA song...

01:10 PM January 26, 2008 from web: This band is killin' me. Now they're playing their "team song." I wish I brought my real camera. iPhone pix to follow...

[at this point I received an e-mail from Sunny asking what all the damn bell-ringing was about]

02:20 PM January 26, 2008 from web: Wily wants to know about the bell. We're calling independents, so when we find an Obama-ite or win over an undecided, we ring the bell.

04:45 PM January 26, 2008 from web: Obama has won EVERY age group in South Carolina. Talk about unifying...

If you would like one of my corny pills, you need only ask.