Our local hospital is not the easiest to get around in. A fair comparison would probably be the set of the movie Labyrinth. We haven’t run into David Bowie yet, but the path from the parking ramp to the labor and delivery rooms is a zigzag of white and teal hallways. Tara and I made our way to triage last night at about nine o’clock and were moved to a more permanent room when they discovered she was dilated to 5 centimeters.

In short, Tara was incredible. She breathed and willed her way through each contraction for 7 hours, not to mention those she had before we got to the hospital. At four in the morning we [read: Tara] decided that drugs were absolutely necessary and I was compelled to agree. It took quite a while to actually get an anesthetist into our room because there were also two c-sections going on elsewhere at that particular time. The drugs helped, we could sleep for a couple hours.

When we awoke a couple hours later Leah had positioned herself properly and Tara was ready for the actual labor, this time with an epidural to ease the pain. Probably nothing can prepare you for the sensory onslaught that is delivery. I won’t bother to share the details.

Leah Mikayla was born November 24, 2006 at 7:34am. She is now only a couple hours old, but she seems perfectly at home.

Election day has come and gone, popular vote has allowed all the important issues and new/returning incumbents to be decided.

I wonder now who really “won.” Is it the mourning doves? Property owners? Those who oppose taxation to fund our local zoo? While they have attained temporary victory, the real winners are not the subjects of this election, it is the deciders and even those who withheld their vote. It is true, you don’t have to vote to win. Actually, you were a winner before this whole process started as long as you don’t watch TV.

For those of us who watch television enough to see any commercials whatsoever as the election nears, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain your desire to vote for any of the candidates at all. The negativity, ‘mudslinging’, deception and everything else wear on the voting public, and ultimately hurt both major candidates. Personally, I don’t believe any political candidates should bother with television advertisements. The general populous sees the bad things you say about your competition and recognizes that you’re full of ‘it’ as well (read “it” as: “the same corruption or poor practices or whatever else”).

If there was a candidate running right now who came on TV and simply encouraged the populous to vote, and gave a quick explanation of why it’s so important (without a tirade about how bad the other options are), I’m pretty sure I would vote for that person because I’d know that they have the people’s interests in mind.

Do you disagree?

I just happened upon this very interesting interview…

Link to video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6iAaxOAHCM