2024 Life Logs, Day 309: Election Day 2024
Date: Tuesday, November 5, 2024
Weather: Glorious Fall Day: High Temp 65, Low 58 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth, MA
What a roller coaster ride today was, and still is, for me. I will start at the very beginning, at one minute after the stroke of midnight. I stayed up to watch Kamala give her final campaign speech on the steps of Philadelphia’s Art Museum. The City of Brotherly Love was the perfect place to end her campaign as the speech was all about how we can go forward together as a country. She was introduced by Oprah, and as she left the stage, hand in hand with the second gentleman, Lady Gaga was singing “On the Edge of Glory.” The speech was uplifting and left me feeling so very optimistic. Then I took Shadow out for his last pee break before we went to bed. We walked out to the end of the driveway as we do every night, but all of a sudden, I felt like I was being watched. Shadow obviously didn’t have the same feeling as he was just happily smelling the leaves on the ground. I looked out toward the street and there I saw my stalker. I had on a headlamp so the coyote’s eyes that were staring at me and my Shadow looked like huge glowing devil eyes and they were only a few feet away. Shadow still didn’t notice, so I started walking backwards toward the house so I could keep my eye on our little friend. He watched us as we got further and further away and then finally, s/he walked away. Whew. Now the adrenaline was really running high but the over-the-top feeling of optimism had gone away.
After a good night’s sleep, Shadow and I headed out for a walk through downtown Falmouth. It was so warm that even the vest I had on was too much. The sun was shining brightly and everything was glistening. There was a little wind that kept the leaves dancing before us as we walked. As we walked by the entrance to Town Hall, I waved at the sign holders for Harris-Walz and Dylan Fernandez, a local running for state senate. Keeping the Harris-Walz signs in the ground at that location has been challenging during the last couple of weeks of early voting. My friend Judy Fenwick had to take on the job of babysitting the signs at night by taking them home with her nd coming back in the morning to put them in the ground again. If she didn’t, someone was removing them and either throwing them in the ornamental grass or just taking them away. Whichever, they were gone and replaced with Republican signs. But today they were there, and I was feeling optimistic again. But then, I drove by other precincts in town and found that at my precinct and the one in East Falmouth, there were no Harris-Walz signs, only Trump signs. That feeling of optimism started slipping away again.
I spent the afternoon doing some yard work and some packing for my upcoming trip to North Carolina, trying to put the election out of my mind for a few hours. I picked Ollie up after school and dropped him at home with the promise that I would be back before 5 pm to take him to this sax lesson. I went home to spend time outdoors with Shadow, did a little more yard work, and declared it time to end the day’s activities and get on with the evening. Heather and Jed were off to Dedham to attend the FHS soccer game. I dropped Ollie at his sax lesson and went to visit friend Karen Baranowski for a bit. Then after the sax lesson, Ollie and I headed downtown to have a sushi dinner at Bluefins Sushi and Saki Bar. That was definitely a high point in the day. When we got home, we watched the last quarter of the soccer game on NFHS Network which streams Live and On Demand high school sports. Sadly, Falmouth lost so it is the end of the soccer season. I watched election returns until Heather and Jed got home and am now home doing the same. But this is just too nerve wracking, so I think I am going to go to bed and get up in the morning to see how things are going. It is looking too close for comfort, so I am going to hope for an overnight miracle.
