For once I am reveling in the all-primary-all the time news coverage. It felt very very good to watch the returns last night and feel like I had a teeny tiny part in it. Here are some stats from my county, provided by my local Obama organization:
"Durham County went 75.1% for Obama, 23.5% for Clinton--the biggest Obama
margin anywhere in North Carolina.
And only two counties in North Carolina had total voter turnout of more
than 50% (which is incredible for a primary): Durham and Tyrrell."

Yesterday, poll day, I got up early and took my daughter and a dozen doughnuts to the canvassing headquarters. Because I had a stroller and no car, I was assigned the turf within walking distance, a very poor, very rundown neighborhood. Because I didn't have a partner, I was assigned Wins0me, a 60-ish woman from Jamaica, a nursing care assistant and a super serious heavy duty Christian. I chose not to air my own (non)beliefs to her face and nodded along with her Praise Gods. We knocked on doors of the most busted down dingy duplexes. About 3 of the 150 houses had doorbells or a pleasant porch. Most had pitbulls that scared the ever-loving crap out of me. We smiled and said Hello to a gang of boys on the corner in some very nice jeans and a neighbor told us later they were the local Bloods. Oh. A neighborhood organizer approached me at one point and, talking directly to me, reinforced my vague unease - that I keep trying to talk out here, puzzle out here, forgive me, but talking about race in polite company is complicated and here I just write what I want - that it was useless me being there, a white woman in a button down shirt. That people would just tell me what I wanted to hear so I would move on and leave them alone. But, I felt like saying, if we agree the people here are uncomfortable with me and I respect that and stay away, good god how do things ever get better? This is the quandry I find myself in over and over here in NC. Then I had a very baffling conversation with a young woman in tight jeans and a shirt reading "Like I Care" who said she supported my candidate but would be voting for Clinton so that my candidate wouldn't be assassinated and many of her friends felt the same way. What??? I asserted that security would do it's job and she should vote for who she believed would do the best job. But I didn't convince her. And who am I to tell her this country could/would protect a black leader. It was a strange day.
I could hear the victory celebration and bands from downtown last night but I couldn't go because the baby is teething so hard right now. Teething is a ridiculous and unfair biological necessity, I now believe. She whimpers for hours every afternoon/evening for maybe 2 weeks now, despite Tylenol, despite teething tablets, frozen washclothes, teething rings. It makes her not want to eat and then she cries because she is hungry. It gives her diarrhea and diaper rash and a fever. I called the nurse advice line yesterday in final desperation but they said we just had to get through this. It could be months, they said. This seems impossible right now.
The same jerk who designed teething designed squirrels, I now believe. I have stepped up the offensive to keep them off the feeder - don't care if they're near, underneath or even scoping out the feeder. But the moment they try to leap up on it and shake all the seed out - that's when the Super Soaker comes in. Jeannette suggested this tactic to me and I, the anti-gun queen, plunked down my $4.99 for the Max D 3000 Super Soaker watergun as soon as I could. I've been testing it out this morning and do I think it will work long-term? No but it almost doesn't matter because it's just satisfying barreling out your backdoor water ablazing and chasing the cheeky squirrel up the tree. It makes me feel better, I guess. In a frightening way.
I got the watergun at Target and while I try to avoid extraneous purchase there, it is so hard. The new Cynthia Rowley Whim outdoor collection spoke to me loudly and insistently. I finally succumbed and bought one glitter ball - about the size of a bocce ball, filled with water and fine gold glitter. It's pretty hypnotizing and utterly useless. I am weak.
The deep and the shallow, I'm all about the deep and the shallow.