Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by and tell us about your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper. Newcomers may notice that many who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but we welcome guests at our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well.
No, not the end of the world, but the End of the Year that Was.
What will You miss about 2016?The Internet has been full of a lot of “I hate 2016” since at least November 9th, but politics isn’t the whole world (even though it may seem like it is some times) and for all of the awful, terrible, horrible, no good things which the Year of Trump has brought to us all…
Surely there are some GOOD THINGS which happened during this year, for us to all remember in good cheer.
I’ll start us off.
1) My youngest grandchild turned 3 on November 10th. She also got pottie trained this summer, and instead of single words, she finally (FINALLY) started putting them together into sentences. Of course that meant the end of any sweet silence in our house, but the babble of a 3 year old and their endless questions (often the same question repeated 10,000 times in a row) is not so much annoying as sweet and lovable.
The peanutSo thank you, 2016, for turning our little peanut into a young girl with all the sweetness and joy our house can hold. These are memories my daughter will need to hold close to her heart and cherish once little Ella turns 13 and turns into a creature from the Black Lagoon for a few years (or centuries).
I know, I’ve lived through this four times now. My two girls and now my daughter’s two girls, since they’ve been living here with me while Mom finishes her Civil Engineering degree at Portland State University, where she will graduate this coming June, after her final classes in the Winter and Spring semesters!
2) On Wednesday, my sisters and I will sign the paperwork to finalize the sale of our childhood home. Our family life was terrible, to put it bluntly. Drugs, alcoholism, bi-polar disease, neglect and on top of all of that, neither one of them should have had any children, so they decided to have four — because my father wanted a son, and each girl was just another step on the road to a house full of estrogen.
Imagine, if you can, a house with ONE BATHROOM, four girls (all 2 years apart) in their teens and their mother, all trying to get showered and ready for the world each day. Ugh. Just the memory is horrendous!
The scars of that early life still show on various ways, but the one hurt the most was my youngest sister, a kind-hearted, generous woman who should have had a passel of children and loving devoted spouse — who instead spent all of her life, up until 2013, supporting and taking care of our mother. She moved out after high school for about a year, but our mother guilted her into coming back, and she just never escaped after that.
It’s little comfort and late, but she’ll have the money from the sale of that house of horrors to use as a down payment on a house for herself this spring. One I’ll have the joy of helping her find or build.
3) I fulfilled a lifelong dream, and ran for Office. I didn’t pick a safe School Board seat or a County Clerk office, oh no, I went for the Brass Ring right out of the gate. I ran for Congress. I lost in the primary to a local politician who had two decades of service and name recognition. But I did get nearly 5,000 votes. For someone who never ran for office before, who hadn’t been active in the local Party for a decade. Who didn’t have any staff or a support group to start out? Not bad.
It was good enough that this fall, while attending Party functions, people whom I don’t know KNEW ME and many asked if I would be running for the seat again! I learned a lot from that experience, most importantly that I should lower my expectations a bit. So I’m now campaign manager for a candidate who has a MUCH better chance than I did to win this seat in 2018. It’s a volunteer job right now, but in the fall, it’ll turn into a Communications Director PAID position on a Federal Campaign. Which means if we get a win with this candidate, I’ll have a paying career until I am ready to retire!
Love of politics is finally going to be paying off for me, in ways large and small.
Plus, in 2019, when the seat comes open, I’ll be running for Office again, for my local County Board of Councilors. Which I fully expect that I WILL win.
What are YOU all thankful for about 2016?
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THIS IS AN OPEN THREADNothing is Off the Table
But play nice!
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