Good morning friends! I hope you are keeping safe.

The last two weeks have been, um, “interesting” here in the US.

• Election Night, November 3 – No matter how many times we were warned that Election Night would turn into “Election Week” and that a “Red Mirage” was likely, I spend Election Night fighting not to lose my composure. For any readers outside of the US, Trump has spent the entire year denigrating voting by mail. Many Democrats opted to vote by mail during the pandemic, so the majority of absentee ballots were in Biden’s favor. However, a lot of states count their Election Day votes first, which is why Trump had the lead until the absentee ballots were counted. And yet, I STILL feel horrified when results are favoring Trump. Why is it this close? IT SHOULDN’T BE THIS CLOSE. I go to bed at 2 am, bolstered that Biden is potentially going to flip Arizona. FiveThiryEight said Biden still has an 88% chance of winning if he flips Arizona.
• November 4 – November 6 – Constantly refresh Washington Post, New York Times, and FiveThirtyEight. Immediately give up on North Carolina. Maybe Pennsylvania? Arizona might be flipped? Georgia might be flipped? WE WON MICHIGAN AND WISCONSIN? Become intimately familiar with counties for states I don’t even live in after watching John King zoom in on them over and over. I have family in Pennsylvania, and after hearing CNN discuss Bucks County, I remember why it sounds so familiar.

• November 7 – BIDEN AND HARRIS WIN. CRY TEARS OF JOY. CRY WHEN KAMALA MAKES HER ACCEPTANCE SPEECH. Spend a lot of time “gleefreshing” and watching videos of people dancing in the streets in celebration. Paris ringing their church bells to celebrate? Chills.
• November 8 – WHAT IS THIS BOUNDLESS OPTIMISM AND JOY THAT I AM FEELING? My Italian teacher tentatively asks me about the election over our Zoom Lesson. “Sei contenta o no?” (“Are you happy or no?”) “SONO MOLTO CONTENTA!” I say, throwing my hands in the air. She immediately starts cheering and tells me that Italy is happy with the news as well.
• November 9 – The Pfizer vaccine is looking really good? Might get Emergency Use Authorization by the end of the year? THIS IS INCREDIBLE. What would make this day even better is if Trump concedes and Emily Murphy signs off on the transition process! I CAN ACCOMPLISH SO MANY THINGS WITH THIS OPTIMISM. Share many memes about Four Seasons Landscaping. When future generations will wonder why we could never get the pandemic under control, we have the Four Seasons Landscaping debacle as the simplest explanation.
• November 10 – Trump still isn’t conceding and Mike Pompeo is saying there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump Administration? WHAT KIND OF LIVING NIGHTMARE IS THIS?
• November 11 – Time to read up on state electoral votes, the certification process, and the odds of whether faithless electors will vote for Trump instead of Biden in Michigan. THANKS GUYS. Learning civics in this level of detail wasn’t really on my list of goals for the year. Also relevant – AM I WITNESSING A COUP IN REAL TIME?
• November 12 – Just more reading about the electoral certification process and fighting my rising despair! So educational!
• November 13 – The New York Times, along with other reputable outlets, think the chances of state legislatures picking electors to vote for Trump are low, so I relax a little. But in the meantime, I get to read how this president is threatening to keep the entire state of New York from the Pfizer vaccine because he’s an insufferable child, and how COVID is now pretty much uncontrollable in our country. COOL COOL COOL.

I’m not going to pretend I haven’t been extremely privileged throughout this entire experience, because I have. I am safe, my loved ones are safe, I have a job during a pandemic. If Trump had been elected a second term, his shitty, horrendous policies probably would not have had much of an effect on me, a middle-class white woman (which is why you vote for the rights of others when you have that privilege, right? Or that’s the idea, at least).

I told Husband last night that this winter is going to be dark, but there’s light at the end of the tunnel – a new administration who actually acknowledges science and facts. There will be at least one vaccine, maybe more. But I’m tired. I haven’t seen my family and friends in nearly a year, and since we’re so far away, there’s no safe way of traveling to see them without potentially exposing them to harm. I’m grateful to have a job, but work is definitely stressful at the moment. And that’s just my desk job – I can’t even fathom what health care workers are dealing with. I see nothing on TV about remembering how they’re heroes. Have we all forgotten what they have been enduring this entire year, because our country gave up on fighting a pandemic?

I know the entire country is tired of the pandemic, which is why cases are spiking so badly. But we’re so, so close – if we can just hold on until the vaccine gets distributed, until the Biden/Harris administration takes action, then I think we’ll be okay. We just have to continue trudging through some really dark times first.

I hope you all are safe and well ❤