Given the recent events of the nation and working like everyone else to sustain health insurance, retirement plans and social security through my corporate desk job - all jokes now - I have been glued non-stop to my television and computer, drowning myself in an overload of information. I know I should stop. My ulcer tells me I should stop. My bulging, red, irritated eyes tell me I should stop. The churning in my guts tells me I should stop. For as sure as I sit here breathing, there is a stroke waiting for me in the not-to-distant future if I keep up this pace. So I pause because stopping is for quitters. And I’m not quitter. Even if it kills me. Because death is for quitters.

And nothing says “make my stroke a heart attack, please” like a company town hall meeting to discuss the future of your paycheck in the midst of what can only be described as financial Armageddon. Ours wasn’t as bad as what most companies are going through right now. To that, all I can say is I’ve been there and feel your pain. I’ve been an adult through one recession. To make matters worse, I was a married and happily expecting adult with one day left before giving birth when I was handed my pink slip. I do not like to swear and am only prone to such an unholy episode if I am angry or can find no other way to prove my point (all terrible excuses, I know), but to say I was scared shitless is an understatement. I’d never been in such a situation and am still trying to recover from it financially. No one could tell me I’d be living through it again almost seven years later. Thankfully, I am not with child this time and I haven’t been given any pink colored papers yet. But the knocked up part is the only thing I can control about that equation.

In light of recent events, most blogs I frequent are all talking about either the election or the bail out. Most specifically, Dooce has brought up an interesting two-part post that has nothing to do with the bail out but a lot to do with charity, homelessness and the lost art of good samaritanship (yes, I made up that word). It got me thinking about how close we, as Americans - not just middle class, not just Democrat, not just Republican - are to being homeless. Almost daily, I take the highway from my job to my mother’s house where Mooter is waiting on me after a hard day of first grade. And, almost daily, I am met by a disheveled, dirty, tattered, bearded old man standing at the bottom of the exit ramp holding a sign asking for money to feed him, a veteran. If his story is true - and I am prone to believe anyone’s story because that’s got to be some hustle standing out in sun, rain, wind and snow and you not need it, for whatever reason - it breaks my heart. Here is the man who gave a better part of his young adult life fighting for a country’s freedom who throws him away like the trash he sleeps in. I am using poetic license here, but you catch my meaning. He’s still a man. There’s a life there. Yet, lately, I can’t help but wonder how close we all are to sharing a piece of that exit ramp with him.

The latest turn in the election hasn’t helped ease my intestinal tract either. The tension, hate and racially motivated vile coming from the left has me so nervous that the very Joe six packs Palin referenced are going to take their mullets, their 4×4’s, their inbreeding and their stupidity, pick up a gun and go Obama huntin’. This election… boy. This election has me so in arms. I have never prayed so hard for something to be over since that one time I was tricked into riding the double looped roller coaster with a family friend when I was a kid, and cried for my mother the entire time while the so-called friend laughed on (heartless wench). I can’t take the waiting. Waiting for the results. Waiting for Bush to leave. Waiting for someone, anyone, to shoot and possibly kill Obama because of McCain and his passive aggressive campaigning.

We as Americans need change. We hunger for it. But not all are on board, and some aren’t just prone to business as usual, they’re prone to ignorance as usual. Hatred as usual. Maybe we deserve what’s happening to us. We would never admit it and, had I any readers, they’d probably use such a comment to revolt against me. And still, it’s true. We’ve lived under Pharoah’s rule for eight years. We have a Moses. He’s here with his staff and his burning bush and we’re at the Red Sea. Are we going to drown with Pharoah’s army and stand with the man at the exit ramp? Or are we going to walk through that parted Red Sea and prepare ourselves for the years ahead in the wilderness of trying to sort this all out and save our country?