Good Night and Good Luck Edition

"A man is a very small thing, and the night is very large and full of wonders."

--Lord Dunsany

To all my fellow travelers in this election, I thank you. It's been a crazy wild ride, full of the strange, the enraging, the absurd and the wonderful. But one of the most encouraging things I've gotten is the sense that there are so many of us out here, invested in the process, watching, evaluating, and getting involved. In my only medium-long life, I have never seen the kind of energy and enthusiasm that I saw surrounding this election, and it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside to think of all of us, for a few weeks, all of one mind.

How will we get back to our lives? The Wall Street Journal today noted, "The end of the most-followed presidential campaign in recent years will leave many Americans feeling lost, even if their candidate won. The 2008 race provided drama and suspense to a nation hooked on reality television, mystery novels and Hollywood epics.... Seldom in American history has a presidential campaign offered such compelling narratives: The rise and fall of former first lady Sen. Hillary Clinton. The come-from-behind primary performance of war-hero Sen. John McCain. The emergence of Barack Obama, the biracial Harvard Law star raised by a single mother. The moose-slaying Sarah Palin, who proudly embraced her unwed pregnant teenager. The father, Sen. Joe Biden, who raised his young sons alone following the death of his wife and daughter in a car accident. On the morning after the election, however, it's as if "The Sopranos," "American Idol" and "Desperate Housewives" all ended on the same night."

Well, for those who have been, like myself, utterly addicted to the circus and joined at the fingers to your computer/Blackberry/iPhone for lo, these many weeks, I offer a few discoveries that I've made in the last few hours, and which may or may not help you with the transition back to "civilian" life. Firstly, food, bizarrely, can often be consumed slowly and at a "table" --doing so actually does not taste any worse than consuming it hurriedly with one hand on the sandwich and the other on the keyboard. Who knew? I also discovered that hugging your significant other will not "refresh the poll numbers" and petting the cat does not "zoom in on battleground states." Both however, are extremely satisfying.

I have also discovered that it's best to cut back on your newsite surfing slowly. Don't try to cut out all the sites at once. Start by checking HuffPo only once an hour. Eliminate the news blogs-- FirstRead, Caucus, The Note, The Page, The Plank, RawStory, Democratic Underground, Political Browser, Daily Dish, Daily Kos, Politico, Wonkette--one by one, until you sense that the urge to "keep going and going" has abated. You can remove the shortcuts to FiveThirtyEight.com, Pollster.com and RealClearPolitics.com from your iPhones and bookmarks. You may continue to check the NY Times for updates on the Obama Transition team. That's merely being an "informed citizen." But one thing I hope we all keep, is the sense that we are invested in the process of running this country.

Seriously though, folks, I'll miss these daily rants, (I'm going to have to check into my own special twelve-step program to de-bloggerize) although I think my long-suffering husband will be grateful not to find me maniacally pounding away on the keyboard every hour of the day, and he'll be happy not to have to quietly back out of the room upon finding me muttering angry epithets to myself or snarling at the TV screen. But I don't say good-bye, because, well, most of you know you'll see and hear from me again, some of you tomorrow! Hah! But I do want to say again, thank you to all of you for forwarding on your delicious tidbits, for sending me all your emails of support and for sharing your time with me. The thought that we could all stand here in the epicenter of an historic moment, with tornadoes whipping around us, feeling storm-tossed and blown, angry and yet encouraged, outraged and yet still empowered--knowing that there were others out there hanging on for dear life with us in the wide world, well, you just can't beat that. That gives me hope.

We've come so far, and sometimes I feel crushed by the fact that there's so much left to do. But at least now we know that we're not alone --now the real work begins. I, for one, can't wait.

Thanks for reading, everyone, and in the words of Edward R. Murrow, "Good night, and good luck."

ME:)

I think I'll go for a walk outside now,
the summer sun's callin my name
(I hear ya now)
I just can't stay inside all day,
I gotta get out get me some of those rays.
Everybody's smilin'
--Sunshine day
Everybody's laughin'
--Sunshine day
Everybody seems so happy today...
It's a sunshine day