The Obamians

So I went to the caucus on Thursday night and stood up for Obama. In our caucus group, it wasn't even close - The Obamians expanded over half the room (the high school cafeteria), leaving the other groups smushed into little corners, an edge by the wall. I was next to a woman recently moved to Iowa from Illinois. I told her why I supported Obama, his clear headedness, his authority and leadership, the way he thinks through issues, the way he listens, the way he inspires and motivates others. She nodded and said, "yes, I've been watching him for some time now and have observed how he has matured." Oh yeah, duh, the lady's from Illinois.

Meanwhile the precinct captains and officers counted and re-counted. "Stand up," they cried, followed by the head count in which each person sat down (most on the sticky cafeteria floor) when the officer pointed at him or her. Counts were tallied, checked against the voters registered, viability decided, groups shuffled about, then everyone stood up and counted again. Sway to the left, sway to the right, stand up, sit down, fight, fight, fight!

I used to vote in a primary - so simple. Walk down the street to someone's two-car garage, wait in a long line (maybe there were coffee and cookies available). Sign your name, grab your paper ballot and go to a booth. Come out, tear the corner off your ballot ("I've voted, have you?" to pin to your lapel), stuff the ballot into the cardboard box, go home.

But in Iowa, we caucus - we get together in big neighborhood groups, and for an hour or two, we wave fingers across the room at acquaintances, chat with people we just met, smile, yawn, move closer together to make room for more Democrats (the Republicans do it a little bit differently), and feel very American and grateful to be able to do this at all.

And now we wait and watch and hope.

Not blogging to my potential

I keep jotting down notes about topics I want to blog about, but I don't have a computer at home, so I can't blog till I get to the library, and then I can only blog when I'm not actually supposed to be working. Doesn't matter anyway, I always leave my little cryptic notes
("B-winkle"; "quack"; "bounce/window") at home.

I wonder, if I blogged more often, would my blog zoom around the internet faster and would people start finding it and reading it and leaving comments and making me feel wonderful, or awful, but at least noticed? I crave your attention!

I've read other blogs. Some were nothing I was interested in. Others were the products of people who are far more skilled as writers, or far more skilled in some particular skill, or far more knowledgeable in some specific area, than I could ever hope to be. But a lot, a lot, of blogs are just personal journals. Some are boring, some are funny, some are cute or cutesy. Some are pretty darn cool, as in No Impact Man, a journal about trying to live green, and dragging your family along with you. Lots of good information, well written, entertaining, timely, inspiring, worth your time.

In contrast, my blog, this blog, is a Whiner blog. I mean, really, who'd want to read a whiner blog? I've got nothing new or unusual or important to say. I just complain about the unfairness of life. I haven't even really written about all the really beautiful and wonderful and neat stuff about life, mostly because I'm in too much of a "life's not fair" fog to notice anything except how unfair life is. Plus the weather has been really sucky, I'm so damn tired of rain. Blah, blah, blah, Ginger.

But then, you know, I also come across other whiner blogs, and they have tons of activity going on, lots of people writing comments, I mean like dozens and dozens of comments on all of the posts, sometimes hundreds of comments. So how'd they do it? How does one attract so many people to one's whiner blog? I crave that attention! No, I should say it like this (very nasally),
"I want people to read my blog, tooooo, why isn't anyone reading my blog, huh, huh?"

You know, I'm not a social animal. I am, to use an old fashioned term, a wallflower. Put me in a party, and I back up to the wall and try to fade into the wallpaper. Unless you give me a drink, in which case I get tipsy and try to impress everyone with how funny I am when I am drunk and uninhibited. Embarrassing. On the other hand, here I have attempted to present myself in a very public forum-available, literally, to the whole world. And I write well enough, I'm not great, but I can string sentences together better than the average bear. (I've tried to read blogs that made me gnash my teeth and grumble, "go do your English homework!") And while many writers are shy, we still want our writings to be read, to be noticed, to be talked about. (Okay, so I'm not a professional writer, but I do write, have always written, it's a personal need, a desire, something that satisfies me, an avocation, if you will.) mmm - someone just engaged me in conversation and now I have lost my train of thought, bye bye choo choo.

Never mind. I will attempt to blog up to my potential from this point forward. And someday maybe I will also remember what I was going to write in this post.

Today, Labor Day, my husband and I were sitting at our table looking out over the back yard, watching our dogs play. Rocky has been barking a lot, but not overmuch, it seemed to us. He barks at everything, squirrels, birds, insects, leaves fluttering in the breeze. Usually I bring him indoors when I think he's barking too much. I don't want to annoy the neighbors. I try to be a good dog owner, a good neighbor.

But then we saw the neighbors behind us looking over our fence - it's a double fence, we built the new fence inside the old fence, so there's a "zone" between the neighbors' yards and ours and our dogs aren't allowed in the zone. Anyway, a police officer was standing with our neighbors looking into our yard. Three of our dogs were facing them, but not barking, just watching. Patrick and I wondered what was going on. "It's the dogs," he said, "they're complaining about the dogs." But they didn't seem to be looking at the dogs, I thought they were looking at the plants. "Is there a stray hemp plant growing in the yard," I wondered. (Hemp is a type of marijuana, and used to be farmed here in Iowa. It's not unusual to find it growing in yards or along roadsides.)

After a few minutes the police officer walked away and Pat went outside to the driveway, knowing the police car would pull up in front of our house. By the time I walked outside, the officer and Pat were having a conversation. "It's the dogs," Pat said, "barking too much."

The officer was very polite and chatted in a friendly fashion. "Your neighbors are trying to enjoy their holiday in their garden and your dogs have been barking all morning." He offered some options. "Thin out the dogs. Two would be plenty. Try a bark collar or put up a solid fence. Keep them quiet or I'll have to come back."

My dogs are only out in the yard when one of us is home. And we bring them inside if they get on a barking rant. We don't let them just bark constantly all day or all night. I really didn't think
Rocky was barking that much, perhaps I just wasn't paying attention.

This is what I think. If you have a problem with your neighbor, you go to your neighbor and say, "I'm sorry, but I have a problem." You give your neighbor the benefit of the doubt - you allow them to fix the problem, maybe they didn't even know there was a problem. You try to work it out together. You don't treat your neighbor like a criminal. You don't go to the police first.
When you go to the police first, it creates bad feelings.

I went in the yard with the dogs and played quietly with them for awhile. Meanwhile, over in my neighbors' yard, the neighbors who had complained about our barking dogs, their little dachshund was going, "yapyapyapyapyap!"