This morning as we walked out to the car, I realized I had forgotten to get gas, and the tank was empty.  Then when we got out to the car, the windshield was icy and I couldn't find the scraper.  Plus, my heater core had to be bypassed in July because it was making my car fill up with antifreeze smell and overheat.  So now I don't have a heater or the ability to defrost my windshield.  I'm driving my family to the Starbucks from the gas station, so Jamie can buy a New York times and distract the baby from my departure for work, and now I'm running late, and I can't see through my the front window of my car. When I got to the parking garage, the machine wouldn't take my card, and I went to get cash, and returned to see somebody else be able to use the machine, so I tried again.  Still no luck, and now I see that I didn't have to go walk through the cold to get cash, because I already had $10 in my wallet, and plus the parking garage doesn't take cash.  So, unable to feel my fingers, I drive to a different parking place, pay my $10 and go to work to discover that my computer can't find any of the printers, my email, or any of the documents I need.  It just kept going, to.  I ended my day by leaving the breastmilk I pumped today sitting on the counter at work and getting off the freeway at the wrong exit on the way home.   How did I do either of those things?  Today, I was mostly irritated.  

But Jamie was going to get the paper because today is a day unlike any other before it.  The United States of America last night proved that it had the capacity to judge a person not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character.  Barack Obama has truly given the disenfranchised people in this country and around the world HOPE.  This country can find its president among a group that was once enslaved.  Change for the better is possible.  Driving to work, glaring out of my foggy, smeary windshield, I listened to the radio with tears in my eyes.  Last night, I was in bed with the baby when they called it for Obama.  Hearing snippets of the accpetance speech this morning, and of people's reactions, I realized that it was true.  As they said on the radio, this is aperson they will name schools and streets after.  This is a big fucking deal.  Ramona, and all of her generation, will grow up taking it for granted that the president of the US can be black.  That's the change we need. 

Today was a good, important day that will go down in history.  But for those of us living it, it was also just another day.