Fall has alway been my favorite season. It's been slow coming to the Western Valleys of Oregon this year. I guess since we didn't really have a Spring, the Universe allowed us a rather protracted summer.

But it's here now! I have photographic proof:

Hello, World...?

Studying my "Feedjit" gadget lately, I've noticed I've been getting visits, through Blogger.com, from all kinds of weird hairball foreign countries.

What gives? Am I on some Blogger International Hit List or something? Has anyone else experienced this phenomenon?

Hail to the Chief

Last night, for about twenty amazing minutes, I got to be in the same room (okay...it was an auditorium. A very BIG room, but a room nonetheless) with the President of the United States.

After standing on the sidewalk for three hours (I SO wore the wrong shoes) then sitting in an ugly auditorium for two more hours, and having to endure a rather childish political pep rally, that man walked out on the stage.

I'm not saying it was worth all the peripheral bullshit to get a glimpse of an obviously tired president who was sniffling from a cold and guzzling water in order to try to retain an audible voice for the duration of his speech. And we were really far away (mostly watched him on the Big Screen.) :(

But I realized I am still very proud that he is President of the United States. I'm proud that I voted for him. I'm proud that he speaks FOR me, and TO me as if I were a rational adult.

I'm proud of what he has achieved so far, in the face of ridiculous opposition. And I'm proud that he hasn't lost heart, and that he's just going to keep on plugging. He has set his sights on accomplishing as much as he possibly can while he holds the highest office in the land. I'm proud that I was in that crowd, among those five thousand people who showed him a degree of excitement, admiration and support that, I'll wager, he doesn't encounter too often these days.

Barack Obama has my greatest respect and loyalty.

Hail to the Chief!

Cross-posted from Women On.

Now Begins the Task…

I should have known, when I almost pulled the plug on my marriage, that something else was really the problem. Yes…there is a plug that definitely needs to be pulled. But it is not my marriage that is going to get the royal flush.

After a perfectly ghastly spring and summer, I have come to the realization that I cannot do this anymore. Partially because it is, in the famous words of someone very close to me, "not what I signed up for."

I was not supposed to be doing this by myself after four years. We had anticipated that the husband's job would be going away within a year…eighteen months at the outside. And that we would then be doing this together. At least that is what I understood was the plan. Fifty-one months later, I am still wearing every hat, juggling every plate, using fingers and toes I don't have to try to hold this thing together.

I am not a person I know anymore. I am not a person I LIKE anymore. I'm not a person ANYONE likes anymore, for that matter. Which, I'm afraid, is part of the reason the husband has retracted his interest in becoming a full and equally functioning partner. Kind of a "chicken/egg" situation, actually. I can't seem to make it clear to him that the reason I am what I am right now is that I am totally overwhelmed, and if he DID come on as we had planned, things would most likely change. For the better. Be that as it may, he's not buying it. And, in the end, I've discovered I am not equal—was never equal—to the task of running this business by myself.

Truth be told, I don't know what task I am equal to anymore.

It seemed I was better off—at least, I wasn't making a public ass of myself—when I was angst-filled, semi-employed, bored and at loose ends, with only my keyboard and the anonymous ether to vent on..or at…or whatever. THAT life—and that oddly comforting little community into which I fell, quite by accident—is gone as well. I won't have that to fall back into. Probably a good thing…I don't know.

But I think…I think what I'd really like to do when all this is over is just go crawl under a rock. And stay there. For some unspecified amount of time. Until I feel human again. If that ever happens.

Now begins the task of disassembling all that I thought I had built in the past four years.

Which shouldn't be too hard, since it has mostly fallen down around my head already.

I'm not sure I'm ready for another crash and burn. But life isn't always about what one is ready for, is it?