Make a New Plan

You just slip out the back, Jack, Make a new plan, Stan
You don’t need to be coy, Roy, Just get yourself free
Hop on the bus, Gus You don’t need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee.  And get yourself free   

Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover – Paul Simon

Retired

Life can get surprisingly busy when you’re retired.  What sounds like an almost unlimited amount of time, soon narrows to a few short hours. In those few hours, Jenn and I need to “make a new plan, Stan” – we need to figure out when we are going to vote.

I haven’t missed an election in my life, since I first became eligible for the November election of 1974.  This is my life, a political junkie.  I drove from Granville to vote in Cincinnati when I was an undergraduate, and from Cincinnati to vote in Pataskala when I was in law school.  When I was working, I was one of the first ten in line as the polls opened at the old Pataskala Fire Station, hanging out with a cup of coffee and the “6:15-am bunch” in the cold.

More recently I’ve dodged the wait and Jenn and I vote around 10:30 am with our fellow retirees.  And we have voted absentee a couple of times.  But this year feels different; we need to vote “in person”.  And I just can’t let it all come down to a single Election Day chance.  What if the car breaks down, or one of us gets COVID, or there’s a “dog emergency”?  We need to get this done, in person, and soon.  We need to make a new plan – Stan.

Gone to the Dogs

We have a recent addition to our canine family.  There was already the “big two rescues”:  Buddy, our eight year-old shepherd/border collie mix, and Atticus, the wild man three year-old Yellow Lab.  And then we decided to foster Keelie, a skinny one year-old female, at forty-five pounds a mix of Rottweiler and something else.  The foster “failed:”  she was too good and fit in too well.  She became the “sister” Buddy and Atticus never had and the third dog I didn’t think I wanted.  I was wrong. 

But that’s not the new addition.  Now we are rehabbing two year-old Louisiana, better known as Lou.  He’s a shepherd/Dane mix and was a rescue from the parking lot of the Louisiana State University Vet Clinic that Jenn and a couple of her Lost Pet Recovery (LPR) mates drove through the night to recover. They knew he had two broken legs, but only later discovered a broken hip as well.  Thanks to LPR he’s now surgically repaired, and hanging out in Jenn’s office on the mend.  We haven’t allowed him to meet the other three yet (they can be overwhelming) but he knows they are there, and everyone desperately wants a sniff and to say “hello”.

Lou requires a lot of attention.  There are drugs for pain, and separation anxiety from abandonment.  He’s a sweet guy (“Sweet Louisiana” – has a ring to it).  He wants to play and snuggle, but he’s still fragile from all of the damage and the surgeries.  Jenn can’t go too far, and when she does I’m only a slightly above average substitute. 

The Plan 

Jenn and I want to vote together.  This is the most important vote of our lives, something we want to share – just as we shared the shock of November 2016, and will sweat out the 2020 returns in a couple of weeks.  So balancing Lou, the rest of the crew, my growing addiction to pounding out 1000 words each morning, workouts, cross country meets and all the rest of life has somehow gotten complicated.

So, Stan (whoever Stan was) here’s our new plan.

Lou’s got a vet appointment in Dublin, Ohio at 8:30 am today.  Travelling with him, it’s best to have both of us, one to drive, one to snuggle with Lou.  The rest of the gang will be happy to go back to sleep when we leave at 7:30 am.  So it’s over to Dublin and hang out while they check out Lou’s progress – then head to Newark and vote in person at the Board of Elections downtown.

American Duty

We get it done:  no worry about the mail, or disaster on Election Day.  And the vote is actually “cast” – so no worries about when it gets counted.  Our two votes matter, and timing matters too in our time when we don’t know what “shenanigans” the Trump campaign or others may pull.  Police are worrying about armed Trump supporters in the parking lots of polling places.  Everyone should be worried about attempts to hack into our electoral process.  Russia did it in 2016, there’s no reason to believe they won’t try again in 2020. There is so much that can happen to disrupt the system.  

So I’ll hang out in the truck with Lou while Jenn goes and casts her ballot, then she’ll do the same for me.  And then, no matter what else happens in the next two weeks, we have fulfilled that most important duty for Americans.  We voiced our decision.  We took a stand. And we chose our future.  We voted.

That’s the new plan, Stan.

Post Script

I started Trump World in February of 2017.  It was going to be a once a week essay to help explain how to “Resist” the Trump Administration.  It’s become a six-day a week project, often writing about the events of the day and interpreting what comes next, but sometimes telling stories of family, or school, or life.  Anyway – today’s essay is number 900:  “Who would’ve thunk it”.