Eat Drink Sleep Obama

Last night I fell asleep watching an Obama podcast on my laptop that I’d downloaded from iTunes. It was one where his sister talked about him. In the next two he spoke about his mother, about fatherhood and then there’s “Dinner with Barack” where he has dinner with four grassroots donors. I watched that one and the one about his experience so far as a father this morning. They’re both really good. You feel like he’s somebody you’d love to know, to sit down and have a casual chat with. He’s warm, candid (although safely so) and accessible.

Today is Saturday and although I would rather have stayed in bed all day I had to get out to the Union Square to do some food shopping. I picked up tickets for Quantum Solace this Sunday in Chelsea and then strolled across town to the Farmer’s Market. Slowly the wet rainy day was beginning to subside. The high winds were rolling the dark clouds back to reveal the bright sunshine. I was so happy suddenly to have a nice day to walk in. It was hard getting out bed when I looked out the window at that gray sky. I bought some falafel at the place on 17th street and decided I wanted to sit down at Barnes and Nobles with a stack of magazines for a while. So once I hit the Farmers Market and secured my Ronny Brook yogurt drinks (my crack juice) for the week, I went across the street to B&N, grabbed an US weekly with Barack and his family on the cover and a People with Barack on the cover, an Elle, an Essence (Will and Jada but I never got to it), an Entertainment Weekly (Robert Downey Jr. is on the cover. I kind of love him) and what looked like a new photo essay of Clint Eastwood, “A Life in Pictures.” I adore Eastwood, even if he did tell Spike to shut his face.

I sat on the upper level where they have the chairs set up for author events and where you can almost always guarantee there will someplace to sit. I ate my falafel and read about Obama and his family, what his girls are like, what they want to change when the move in the white house, what they will do to make sure the girls lives remain relatively normal. I looked at pictures of Obama spending time with his daughters, some I’ve already seen dozens of times. I had that feeling inside that I once had when I was a girl on Christmas Eve. I was so excited I got sick and had to go lie down. It’s just that no matter what’s going on with me, this phenomenon this amazing thing that is about to take place, this unfathomably joyous occasion is always going to be able to put a smile on my face. At any point in time in the next few months to come I will be able to pull a magazine off of the shelf in a bookstore or in a newsstand and read about a family in the White House that I would be honored to hang out with any day of the week! That’s craaaazy! And I love it.