Beyond Outcomes

I voted early this morning. It was just starting to storm outside. The voting room was warm. There was no line. I got my electronic voting card, and went straight to the booth. This election was like every other election in just one way: I was teary as I picked up my voting card and walked to the booth. Every year, I have to blink back tears before I get to the table where the nice lady puts the "I Voted" sticker on me. I can not look at a voting booth without thinking of the hundreds of millions of people who have lived and were never allowed any voice in the rule over them. I am part of a very small, very blessed percentage. It's still early, and I have no idea how the election will turn out, but it's unlikely that the majority will vote with me. Still, an election has meaning beyond its outcomes. Elections are an opportunity to clean up my thinking, to declare my allegiances, to put lamb's blood on my doorpost even if it looks unenlightened to a trendy majority. As long as I have the freedom to do that, I'm the luckiest girl alive! Love you all. Thanks for voting! Sally

Something Useful to Circulate on the Internet: Beware the Hair Tourniquet!

Nevermind that my purse is likely covered in social diseases, that my children could be skinned alive by Mr. Clean's Magic Eraser, or that there may be tarantulas in my bananas . . . Circulate this!

Beware the HAIR TOURNIQUET!

This medical condition occurs when a baby gets a single hair wrapped around her toe (or finger), and the toe swells up and turns a color that freaks out all mothers. Two weeks ago, this happened to my neighbor, Baby Jane.

When her parents couldn't get the hair off, they ran her up to the Insta-care. (It was Saturday.) After looking at the toe, the Dr. announced that he would need to cut the toe to get the hair out. That sounded drastic, so they decided to take Baby Jane up to Primary Children's Medical Center.

(If you've ever had a kid who needed serious, frightening, major surgery, you know that this is the medical version of Disneyland.)

Instead of the scalpel, the doctors at Primary's whipped out . . . are you ready for this? . . . a bottle of Nair® --seriously, NAIR! As in, "Who wears short shorts? . . . Nair for short shorts!" Remember that commercial from the 80s? Tammi calls this her $500 bottle of Nair. Treatment requirements: 5 minutes for hair to dissolve, 2 hours for the pediatric orthopedic surgeon to come verify that the hair is, in fact, dissolved. I thought this was important enough that I decided to post my first legitimate addition to a Wikipedia article. (I don't count the time I added to the Alfred Lord Tennyson Page: "And yet, Jonathan and David, still did not know who he was." It took a whole week for that to get deleted.) So, there you go. . . something new for the diaper bag. Get the word out!

[NOTE To the Snopes investigator who will certainly verify my story: My name is Sally Linford, and this really did happen to my real neighbor. She has 3 delightful children who play with my kids. I saw the toe myself.]