California – reddest blue state in the union?

I have still not come down from the high of hearing “…and now, America’s next First Family…” and then seeing – bestill my fucking heart – Michelle Obama and family walk out on stage.  Or the high of getting home, turning on the TV, still super tense, Obama’s got 207 electoral votes, okay I’ll go change out of my work clothes and pee, and then I hear screaming on the tv (I keep the bathroom/bedroom part of my apartment segregated from the cats, so things are muffled through a closed door between living room and hallway), and I think, “yay, they’ve cut to a crowd who’s waiting and cheering because things are looking good, that will pump me up and relieve some of my continuing fears, help me be able to stop holding my breath for a second,” and then I get back into the living room, and it says “CNN projects Barack Obams next President” or whatever the wording was.  My gratitude to everybody I have seen put into words what I cannot, about that moment, and everything it contains.  And to my neighbors for yelling, for hearing other people make noise so I didn’t feel like a lone dork who couldn’t keep from screeching.

No thanks at all by the way to my jackass of a cat, Felix, who came up on the couch behind me as I stood screaming and jumping in front of it, and bit me on the ass.  He thinks he’s the fucking fun-police, and he can suck it.  (AKA, I called him an asshole and then *I* ended up apologizing!!!)

So I’m high today, I’m taking down a recent rant-y post or two because I am presently cured of related crankiness-es, and I get to work, and I see my boss, and she gives me a fake smile hello.  She is one of the worst fake-smilers I’ve ever seen, by the way.  But so then it hits me – I had heard earlier this morning that it was too close to call, but then on the radio right before I got to work, I heard – Proposition 8 passed in California, banning gay marriage.  My boss and her girlfriend got married this past June, in one of the most touching un-wedding-est ceremonies I’ve ever been to.  And while I overheard her being glad at the same time about the presidential result, I also overheard her talking about her wife being egged last night as they did some kind of on-the-street last minute anti-Prop-8 campaigning.  And how even with that, something as rage-inducing as that, what she overwhelmingly felt was sad.  Sad that there is so much else that needs taking care of, and now people’s energies and resources are still going to be directed at this single issue.

So California, you look familiar but I’m trying to place you…  you’re a shoe-in every time for Democratic presidential candidates, and medical marijuana’s gotten a thumbs up, and – oh wait, wait now I remember where I know you from – Proposition 187!  It’s all coming back to me now!  Of course you banned gay marriage, you sly dog! 

Yes, a couple of good results from the ballot measures – farm animal anti-cruelty law, smack down of the parental notification abortion law – but I am still, again, embarrassed about being a Californian right now.  Also, although it has no relation to me because I’m in L.A., I’m sad for folks in San Francisco who’d hoped that Prop K would get passed and help prostitutes in some ways.

Overall, though, this is still an extraordinary day, and I must say that a lot of the grief I felt around the betrayal of this country (betrayal against the whole world, including other Americans) by re-electing Bush in 2004 was healed last night.  Not because Kerry would have been the kind of revolution I’d like to see, or that Obama will necessarily be that now, but because there is, to me, a difference between the two candidates of this presidential race.  One of the most noticeable differences being the ability to motivate through hope and love, versus fear and hate.  I know those are all “just feelings” and every bit of work that’s been going on for years will and must continue today same as yesterday.  I’m just saying.  We’ve seen the “work” that comes from hate and fear for the last 8 years.  I’m claiming my right to look forward to what hope and love may spring on us in the next four.