Woe and Suffering

I didn’t mean to take a whole week off from posting, but having caught a wretched and exhausting cold, lost three whole posts to cats walking across keyboards, and becoming buried under piles and piles of laundry, I finally lost the will to try. However, having deposited the kids all over town for a few hours and hunkered down under a thick furry blanket with lemsip in hand, I thought I would venture back into cyber space. Plus, for the first time in four years, the tree in our front yard has turned golden yellow instead of brown, and against the gray pelting rain, it glows, giving me some small courage.
Nevertheless, courage or no, today is rightly rains, and I hope it is because God himself is thoroughly fed up with the Republican party, as, indeed, we all should be. I had hoped they would hold on, even by the thinnest of threads, to the House and Senate, but now that they have lost on all fronts, I hope they buckle under and do the work they should have done in the first place.
In an effort to do my own civic, motherly duty, I plunked E down yesterday and read her two stories, one on the Puritans, one on Ben Franklin, and had her color a picture of a flag. And I explained that I and her Father would be going later to vote. She wailed with woe, “I will miss you! Will you be gone many days?”
“Ack, no” I said, “It will only take a few minutes if there is no line.”
“Will it hurt?”
“Not at all,” I said, “until maybe later, like tomorrow. Let’s fold laundry.”
Later, having recovered, she announced, “Tomorrow, I will be Princess E and everyone will call me Princess E.”
“Oh really,” I said.
“No” she changed her mind, “ I will be Queen E and I will wear a crown.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but you will be doing school.”
“I will wear a crown and a dress.”
“Fine,” I said.