Home Alone

A little something I planted in our back yard when we moved here a year and a half ago

Well, I have been without a husband for almost a week now. Our spring breaks do not overlap which is pretty frustrating and as a result we are seeing very little of each other in the month of March. He has been across the country rock climbing in Joshua Tree (where we had our first date). He will return tomorrow night for one night and then he will leave again for almost a week up on the farm where he will be staying for a week long community rotation for medical school. Then of course the following week is my spring break, but at least Easter weekend we are slipping away to my favorite US city, Charleston, SC.

Gabe was sick all last week and I thought I had fended it off but then I swear, not an hour had passed since he had left for Joshua Tree last weekend until I started coughing. I didn't end up getting full blown sick but I have spent the better part of this week attached to a tissue box and a cup of tea.

As always I get to eat the things that he doesn't like, olives for example. I also get to watch a different breed of movies such as Charade with Audry Hepburn and Cary Grant, or The Story of the Weeping Camel which is in Mongolian with subtitles.

I also find myself talking to the dog a lot more and she also gets to sleep on the bed while Gabe is gone.

An unexpected piece of trouble that I have gotten myself into in my husband's absence is that I have become a Block Captain for the democratic party in our voting precinct. Needless to say I feel extremely proud of myself. I am a super duper big old Barack Obama fan and I regularly check the Barack Obama website for Obama events in our area, especially as the North Carolina primary that we thought surely wouldn't happen is in fact drawing near. On Monday as I checked the Obama events in my area, I noticed that all of the democratic party members of all the precinct's in North Carolina were organizing to meet separately to start to organize themselves for the Primary in May and to start talking about plans for November. I am not a terribly outgoing person but I decided, why not go? So I showed up at our public library on Tuesday night and immediately thought I had made some sort of mistake as a walked into a room of about 15 over 65 year olds who all had name tags, specific folders and all seemed to know each other. They all looked at me and someone asked "and who are you?" I explained I just wanted to see how I could help. I sat in on the hour long meeting as all the Block Captains for our precinct got all of their instructions for going to their neighbors and updating the voter registration information in our data base and making sure that everyone has the correct information regarding registration, early voting, voting absentee, etc.... Then, pretty far into the meeting it actually became known that my one block dead end street had actually been left off of any of the Block Captain lists, and so had the predominantly African American, low income housing complex that is behind my street. Apparently in the past my street was too much trouble because it was mostly transient renters and not home owners and the low income housing had been left off because in the past they had received a "negative response"!!! Well, I piped up at this point as did the others around me who knew which block I live on and said that I would be happy to take on my street and luckily others piped up to volunteer to take another stab at the low income housing complex. Luckily I was not the only one that felt this way, the possibly 75 year old man next to me was the first to volunteer to try to find a solution for approaching the low income housing, rightfully pointing out that we may be voting for the first African American to become president. Thank heavens! For a moment I was beginning to wonder what "democratic" planet I was on! So, I feel very very proud to have begun to find my little niche in becoming politically active and putting some action behind what I believe.

Anyhoo, I should have some fun photos in the next couple of days because I just whipped up a very adorable pair of Saartje Booties that I need to find buttons for tomorrow. Not a lot of knitting pictures lately but not for any lack of knitting. Just working away on the Tangled Yoke Cardigan from Interweave Knits, Fall 2007.