Obama's Day 4 and How I'm Feeling

Tuesday's inaugural events were just as uplifting as they promised to be. Never mind that I snagged a ticket for an honest-to-God SEAT, of all things, at 2 the morning of, what I loved best was looking not ahead of me (Obama was 2 inches tall from my vantage point) but looking behind at the shimmering sea (and I really do mean a sea) of people standing in the sunlight with flags that stretched as far as the eye would allow, from the Capitol to the Washington Monument. I also loved that it was a day without cynicism. Beautiful people with really white teeth from L.A., (including Sheryl Crowe, whom I met but failed to alert that Julia wants to adopt her) were asking to have their pictures snapped with cell phones alongside overweight men from Greece and Upper Eastsiders wearing "W New York" baseball caps. 

It was also a day without irony. When Obama mentioned patriotism as one of our country's bedrock values in his inaugural speech, it's the first time I'd heard the word in seven years without some internal eye-rolling. How luxurious, I thought, to be able to feel patriotic without all the fear and ideology that has loaded it down for so long.

On Day 4 of his presidency, Obama is busy being tough with terrorists and tough-minded about the economy. On Day 4, I am busy too, but, as you might expect, my sights are set closer to home. What to do, I wondered, upon coming downstairs to fix breakfast and finding that Mavis had pooped all over the rug pad (the rug was already removed due to same last Friday)? What to do about my own economics (no money in checking account) and my own weighty issues (ate too much on inauguration day and realized today why the pedi-cab driver was peddling so slow). In short, I'm feeling overweight and overdrawn. 

It's bad when in answer to your six-year-old son's begging to go out for a fancy sushi dinner you say that it's too expensive and he offers to chip in the $20 his grandparents gave him for Christmas.

(Sam has, incidentally, hypothetically spent that $20 four times already: once on the game Apples to Apples Jr.; once on taking his mother to the movie Hotel for Dogs (with popcorn); once on a portion of a video game for him and his little sister that he vows they won't play until they're both 20; and once in the form of a donation to help prevent polar bears from becoming extinct).

It's a hard lesson to learn that you can only spend the money once.