This post might be more suited for Swing State, but since the venerable (and much more knowledgeable) Matt has taken over, I figure I'll leave the podium to him. But I have to tell you, I'm just a wee bit freaked out by what's going on in this country right now.

As many of you know, I'm freaked out easily, and by a lot of things-- bees, for one. Really freaked out by bees. And clowns. And the continued success of TV's Two and a Half Men. The price of gas-- Ashley in particular may remember one memorable phone conversation in which I completely melted down when gas hit $2 a gallon after Katrina ("What will we do? How will we get anywhere? We'll have to buy horses! Fucking horses!"). The threat of nuclear war-- thanks, 3rd grade gifted teacher who thought nine-year-olds could handle a viewing of The Day After!

Right now, for instance, I'm coming out of a fear-session based on the impending end of the world, thanks to my brush with the Mayans on my honeymoon last year, and heading into a full-blown panic over the possibility of an impending depression.

Let me just say this right now, for the record-- I don't fully understand what's going on with all this buying-out and subsidizing the government is doing. And I don't recommend that you try to explain it to me-- Ben has already done so, and I kind of glazed over and started thinking about what sorts of fabrics I had around the house that I could fashion into smocks if we were to go bankrupt. All I know is, I feel like we're about two steps away from being forced onto the dusty road with our collective retarded brothers, sleeping in barns and accidentally killing baby bunnies as we search desperately for food and work.

I guess I was just not mentally prepared for this as a kid-- I was led to believe that one day, I could ride around my house on a miniature train, like Ricky Shroeder in Silver Spoons. Which would be awesome, but is looking less and less feasible as I groan over my latest 401k statement. (Perhaps there's some sort of miniature transport train system fund I should be looking into). Now, instead of light-hearted comedies about rich children, TV keeps bombarding me with these scary commercials about how everyone should really, really buy a house-- please, please, PLEASE buy a house, the commercial says, or Realtors will have to start eating each other, and soon we'll all live in mud huts like the Slestaks from The Time Machine.

My biggest worry-- alert, by the way, because this is where I get dorkily patriotic-- is that America is declining at such a rapid rate that soon we won't be... well, what we once were. And I'm afraid we won't even notice it, because we'll be too busy watching the premiere of Dancing With the Stars.

Because I kind of feel like as a country, we just don't really care anymore-- I mean, we care about Heidi and Spencer, which is all fine and good if you like caring about attractive people who are famous for no reason. But I don't know, doesn't it seem like we should be doing something? I don't know what, because I'm not exactly the most visionary when it comes to change-- keep in mind that I wore my hair in a scary, poofed-out style for 21 years just because I was too lazy to figure out how to use gel in my hair. But something?

Powerless

Check it out-- Ben and I are two of the hundreds of thousands without power in Ohio! We knew we were in for it when we saw six guys out in the middle of the street cutting up a felled tree on our way home Sunday night.

"Do those guys work for the city or something?" Megan asked from the back seat.

"No, they're just, like, regular guys," I told her. "They're vigilantes."

"Really, really helpful vigilantes," she agreed.

Upon pulling into our freakishly darkened driveway, our neighbor Frank came running out with a lantern for us, simultaneously being helpful and rubbing in our face that he has a generator and we don't. And now, two nights later, Frank's generator continues to taunt us by allowing Frank to keep a full-on spotlight on the front of his house, which I basically use as ambient light to pee by (and then not flush the toilet, because our water pump is also electric).

I'm at work right now (obviously), and sort of dreading finding out if I'm spending night three with no power-- if I am, then I need to work out a way to make distilled water jug baths more pleasant. Because this shit is not pleasant.

And this article casts the ominous shadow of the fact that this might not be resolved until the weekend, which I find wholly unacceptable. I am, in fact, a huge proponent of power outages-- I pretty much love any event that causes your evening to not go the way you thought it was going to, like a forced adventure-- but I've kind of had enough adventure right now, and want a frozen pizza dinner, which I can eat while watching Intervention under a 100 watt bulb.

Before and After: Septic Edition

Our beautiful backyard before septic tank installation:


Our somewhat less beautiful backyard after septic tank installation:


Doesn't this seem like a lot-- a lot-- of devastation just so two people can take a shit that's up to code with the Geauga County health department?

So now Ben and I are trying to rake this mess out so we can spread grass seed before winter-- to be fair, this shot is obviously from before the project was fully complete, but there's still a lot of raking to be done. And it's not fun, cozy, "whee, I'm raking leaves so I can jump in them while wearing a cozy knit sweater!" raking. It's backbreaking Grapes of Wrath raking.

But still, nothing is without its upside. For instance:

1. We were able to use every dollar that the previous owners escrowed us for this illustrious project, thus ensuring that they would not get one cent of their bitterly complained over money back.

2. This project was chiefly overseen by an Amish guy, which allowed me to engage in one of my favorite pastimes, which happens to be gawking at the Amish.

3. Once we get the grass seed down and the hay spread, it will be technically impossible to rake when the leaves fall!

4. All this raking is making me buff and sexy, albeit in more of a female bodybuilder way than an Anna Kournikova way.

So thanks for the escrow money, former owners! Please take comfort in the fact that although your $17,000 is now firmly buried in our backyard, we can now crap without fear of reprisal from the local government.