4:00 p.m.

I cannot concentrate. I have concentrated enough. I need a break. And I need to know what is happening with this country, I need to know what is happening with the voters. I need to know if we are going to have a new President, as I want more than I have wanted anything for awhile. I don't even know if I knew I wanted it this desperately.

I have an invitation to a book club I would like to join-- but I am not going to be able to go today because our freaking guidelines finally came out, and I have to stay and sit here and read them.

And to make matters worse, my memoir keeps poking its head out and looking at me, so I will be reading an article for work, and using my red pen to scribble notes in my notebook, and all I want is a couple of uninterrupted hours to work on that.

Tonight we are going to a memorial service for the woman we knew, who died on the plane crash two weeks ago. Before that, I have to pick up kids and scrape together order dinner for us because Dereck teaches until 6:00 p.m. and then we have an hour and a half to hang out, get the dog walked, supervise homework, sit, etc., until the memorial service.

After that, we have our karaoke sitter, so we can either go to karaoke and sing (ha, right!) or go find someplace warm and cheery to watch the election results with friends. I am rather inclined just to go home except that I want to be with others to yell at the screen, and sneer at the commentators. We will watch Jon Stewart, of course, but he will only be on for an hour, and if we have our election results by 10:00 p.m., I'll eat my hat.

I look like a telephone operator right now. I have headphones with a microphone attached to it in my office for this NetMeeting training I am doing, and I figured out that rather than crawling under my desk every day to unplug them and plug in my speakers, which I have to keep turned down, if I keep the headphones on, I can listen to my music at a decent volume.

I am sure everyone is laughing at me in my switchboard operator costume (think Lily Tomlin on Sesame Street), but I'm happy-- except for the times my ears start to hurt.