Day of Departure 4AM.

Here it is Friday morning, the day of departure. The kids have missed most of the week of school because it has been well below 0 degrees. In fact my computer says -20 right now. That is with out wind chill. That is bad because they had missed days the week before because of snow and their semester tests were put off because of this and then now their Iowa Skills Tests will be moved back to next week and they will be gone. I don't want to be irresponsible having them miss school. If this were not history in the making, I would not be going. I have been feeling really bad about it, and going over it in my head everyday this week. My kids are great students and I am sure that they will make it all up. They are just students that always get perfect attendance, so I am kinda freaking out about it!

I am up at 4Am, not by choice, but because I have a horrible headache. Luckily my hubby is a early riser so we have had a chance to talk. He drives truck and is gone most of the week, he just got home yesterday night.

I asked the kids to write up "What Obama's Inauguration Means to Me" papers to read on the "Make It Plain" radio show on Sirius Radio, Sirius Left Channel 146 at 5EST on Monday the 19th. (Had to get a plug in there for us!). I read my daughters she is just not quite as taken with Obama as my son is. She is a lot less emotional than my son and myself. She is very analytical. Not that this part of history is lost on her, but she just doesn't convey it much in her words. My son will be writing it while on the road as he is my procrastinator.

I visited the Facebook site for the Make It Plain show, I missed a lot of the conversation last night because I was trying to get things done. It seems that the "conflict" "war" or what ever you want to call it in Palestine/Israel has been the topic of discussion for many. I wish I would have heard the discussion. My opinions have been all over the place with this issue, I will not go into it here right now.

I am excited today and my headache is begining to pass. I have been having this discussion with myself for many weeks. I want to be unconditionally happy that Obama is our president, I want to jump up and down and tell the world that I helped and I always knew he would win. But I can't. I have learned enough through the great people I have met that have been in this arena for a long time.

We have to look at Obama as he is. He is a politician, he is a politician, he is a politician. He has been and will always be. He is being introduced to the national securtity reports, the sins of the past and the troubles of the future and he is going to have to make some decisions and when you sit in a politicians suit, no matter how high you are in post, you have to make political decisions with information that the general public does not have. Listening to people jump all over him for the choices he has made so far has made me upset. I am guessing it is because I do not know enough about the people he is picking to judge. To my brian, he has not had the chance to do anything wrong yet so why jump on him. I want to hold him accountable when he actually starts making decsions.

I should tell the story of how the trip to DC came about. It is a good one, worthy of telling because it involved many people I have never even met.

I started out thinking for sure after all the work I did for the campaign that I would be a shoe in for tickets. But as I found out I had to put my name on a list like every one else( my next lesson in politics-unless you give large sums of money- your name is not on the top of anyones list). Thank God for people that know who to call. My good friend Connie Hvitved put our names on lists at Sen. Tom Harkin and Rep. Latham's lists. I got an email two weeks later after I had given up all hope of going, from Lathams office that I had won 3 tickets. Connie offered her daughters place to stay in Bethesda. Well, this was all well and good. My problem then was that my vehicle was in no shape to make the trip and due to many horrible things that happened to us in the recent weeks we could not afford plane tickets. So I put out a message to everyone I knew for frequent flyer miles. After two weeks I realized that I don't know anyone that makes trips to europe on a regular basis! The airlines wanted 60,000 miles for each ticket and there was no one in my immediate life that had that kind of miles especially on one airline, I did not want us all flying on different planes.

I gave up on going and resolved to myself that watching it at our local party would be better and warmer.

One night I got an idea. I had spent many many nights on the Barack Obama web site and knew that people asked for frequent flyer miles to get people to palces to help out with the GOTV and primary. I put up a post for that or for help monataraly that I could pay back. I did not know at the time there was a troll on the site and he jumped on me like crazy and made me so upset. It took a lot for me to put the request on the blog and to have this person affirm my inner feelings that somehow it was too much for me to ask only made my stomach turn. I did not go back for a couple of days, but then recieved email from Mary T. She turned out to be my cheerleader and several people sent me checks, enough to suppliment what I had saved so that I could buy train tickets.
Hooray! we were going on the train. Then the bad news. I get an email that they had over sold the train and my tickets would not be coming. My car started acting up and smelling funny. I decided to give up. We are not going! We are not supposed to go! My husband came through for me. He talked to the bank and we could trade in our car for a new vehicle with 4 wheel drive and pay the same as we were now for our old vehicle! Yet another miracle! We traded it in and we got the money back from the debunked train tickets and we are on our way.

I will never forget the people who donated to our cause. Just to get us to DC. It is incredable to me that there are people out there that are willing to help someone that they only know through a blog. I dont think of myself as anything but someone that tried my best to help Obama get in office. To get this help has at times made me cry and smile. These people will never know how much it meant and means to me and my kids.

Even though this is a long blog, it is a shortened version of the whole story.

More later...