My polling place got moved five miles in the extreme opposite direction from my job, so off I went at the crack of dawn to beat the crowds but I found them there already, a long line snaking out the door and down the sidewalk in the cold dark rain, in a rural precinct in the middle of nowhere. But I had the extreme pleasure of casting a vote for a friend running for county office, so that made me very happy.
Then off to the eye doctor for my annual exam, which resulted in brand-new lenses at no charge because the anti-glare coating on my lenses is crazed, which is also how I felt after my eye guy dilated my eyeballs and bombarded them with bright lights and then gave me some very important information on a handout that I can't read because my eyes haven't recovered from all the bright lights. But the good news is that it's just a tiny cataract. So far.
Now I'm at my office struggling to prep tomorrow's discussion of Toni Morrison's Sula, a novella in which many horrible things happen--a child drowns, two people are burned alive (one intentionally), and a soldier in battle keeps running after his head gets blown off--but in the whole book no phrase horrifies me more than ironing diapers. I have put cloth diapers on the bottoms of my children and grandchildren and I have washed and folded cloth diapers, but if the survival of the human race depended on my willingness to iron diapers, we'd be extinct. I know what Morrison's doing here, characterizing Nel as the neurotic neat-freak mom obsessed with maintaining order at all costs, in contrast to her free-spirited (soon-to-be-ex-) friend Sula, but still: who irons diapers? I'd poke my eyes out first.
But at least I voted before getting my eyes dilated and bombarded this morning. Otherwise I would surely have cast votes for Mr. Smudge and his running-mate Blur.
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