Elizabeth’s Journal

A Trying Week

The last few days have been quite trying, I must admit. I was most disappointed by the election results—even more so by *why* people apparently voted for Bush than by the fact that he won. If it were a true disagreement over policy, the role of government in society, etc., that would be one thing—but according to the polls, most people didn’t think he was doing that great a job on just about everything, but they voted for him in spite of that because they think he shares their “traditional moral values”. That I completely fail to understand. Have they no brain? No critical thinking skills? I could respect a clear argument that simply relied on values that differed from mine, but this is an abdication of responsibility.

Wednesday morning I went to see Jessica, Eamon, and Jack (her nephew), as usual. Eamon was in a most awful mood—teething, we discovered later—and it rubbed off on me a bit. The day did not improve much from there due to other things. However, coincidentally or not, Kayleigh did learn to blow wonderful raspberries that day and has continued practicing at length since then.

Last Sunday and today were nice as they began with a 3-mile walk around Town Lake. Jonathan is racking up miles towards his marathon, which he needs to complete by the end of February.

This evening I went out to get a backless booster car seat for Jonathan so that we can move him to the back bench while Joy & Brian are here to save them having to crawl back there (it’s not that easy). Babies ‘R’ Us didn’t have it, although they did sell it on their web site, so I had to go to Target. While there, someone STOLE my wallet out of the shopping cart. NOT the way I wished to end my weekend. As soon as I got home I called to cancel my cards—the last one I called, Discover, had 3 charges on it already. Dale called to make the police report for me, and then I called the first place where the person had charged things (a game store on North Lamar). I spoke with the person who handled the transaction, and he said he remembered the woman well and that he’d had a bad feeling about it; he was worried about losing his job since he didn’t do a couple of things he was supposed to do. One of those things was ask for a driver’s license when someone presents a credit card—it would have taken care of this as the woman using my card is black! My shiny white face staring up from the driver’s license would have put a stop to her little spree. At least I’m not liable for any of it. But now when I wanted to do nothing tomorrow but go to the grocery store (Joy and Brian arrive in the late afternoon), I’m going to have to go get a new driver’s license, a temporary debit card, and also deal with a restaurant that initally charged us for another table’s bill and then, even though the waiter took my credit card so that he could credit the mistake—nothing got credited back to our account! Oh, the incompetency that abounds in the world today.

In an attempt to finish on a nice note, Jonathan, Kayleigh, and I had a wonderful time yesterday at the Austin Celtic Festival down on Town Lake. (I would put a hyperlink to the site, but I can’t because the batteries in my mouse have run out and I’m having to do everything right now via keyboard navigation; adding links is just too much.) We went down there b/c Jessica & Eamon were there, and we stayed a couple of hours after they headed out. The last thing we did was listen to a fantastic trio—Jonathan was dancing about, and even Kayleigh was excited—she was on me in the sling, squealing at Jonathan and biffing me with her arms, nearly in time with the music. We had fun!