Elections & Other Scary Stuff

As you can tell from the photo, Spooky loves Halloween! (With a name like that, she should. It seemed to fit - she adopted me five Octobers ago and the name just sort of stuck.) She's patient enough to indulge me in the funny collar sort of thing and you have to admit - she's cute! You can't really tell in the picture, but the points of the collar are tiny little pumpkins. Spooky doesn't care, but she doesn't care for the jingling.

Tonight is Halloween and I've had the pleasure of distributing Skittles and miniature candy bars to a host of ladybugs, tigers and at least one li'l Tony Stark. However, my vote is not available to the candidate with the cutest outfit. Although the prospect of a horde of candidates running amok in my neighborhood pleading for my vote scares me more than a rowdy crowd of teens festooning my oak trees with quilted Northern. Trick or treat, indeed!

At any rate, in four days, the United States will have a shiny new president (barring lawsuits, of course - which seem to be an integral part of modern politics. Sigh.). I'm not going to get partisan here - vote and vote thoughtfully and you'll have no problem with me. But it has been a scary season, hasn't it? Advertisements that have accused candidates of every vice short of cannibalism have dominated the airwaves for months and there's a stench of desperation in the air wafting over several campaigns on both sides of the aisle. I'm ready for the whole thing to be done. And to the naysayers who claim, "If we elect (fill in the blank), America as we know it will be over!" I say, "Nonsense." We survived Harding's incompetence; we'll make it through whatever comes next. But I'm beyond ready for the supposed grownups among us to learn how to disagree without demonizing.

A girl can hope.