My son isn't in Iraq.  For a nearly 54 year old woman I am in reasonably good health.  Hillary won in Indiana although it looks like she won't get the single digit loss I was hoping for in North Carolina - but let's be real, short of a win in NC there was little chance of HRC's taking the nomination before today's primaries and even less now; deep in my gut I've know that for a long time.  I do so admire her fight though and since residents of Obama-ville feel that their leader is destined for the presidency, I can't see how the extended primary season did anything other than toughen BO up for the general election.  No, it's more than all that, you see today I visted the new Americana shopping mall in downtown Glendale, California.

For my money any month in which real wages increased by 0.3 percent and spending increased by 0.4 percent is a month when people need to stay home and eat in but from my visit to the Americana, I would say that once again Americans are doing their patriotic best to spend the country back to prosperity.  I don't have a dog in that hunt, I'm not a Glendale business owner and many business owners say that main street Glendale was hurting and needed the shot in the consumer arm that this new complex will provide.  If this be true, I certainly hope that the Americana lives up to its press. 

Still, it's certainly not my preferred shopping experience.  You could let lose a pack of blind monkeys and they would wander all day without ever touching a single authentic bit of Americana.  The merchandise and the restaurants can be found in virtually any slightly upscale mall in any major city (or bedroom community of any major city) in America.  The clothes in the stores supposedly aimed at women my age show more cleavage and ass than I showed when I was seventeen.  I was happy to escape across the street to the old school Glendale Galleria and even happier to make my way out onto Brand Boulevard where little one of a kind clothes stores have their age inappropriate clothes in the windows and mostly non-franchise restaurants welcome guests to their outdoor tables. 

Even though I was much more comfortable meandering back home on these streets, I carried with me that odd feeling of displacement, the same feeling I have when roaming most Democratic websites these days.  The feeling that I'm an old, white woman who neither understands nor is understood by most of those with whom she comes into contact.  While I have pretty much decided that there is no way I can "not vote" this time around, I can't remember a time when I felt less enthused about voting or less hopeful about the direction in which our nation is headed. 

And so I head to a glass of apple ale, a bath and a book - turning off the TV long before the final results are in even though primary nights and election nights have always been amongst my favorite television.  Tonight I feel as though I am beginning a journey to another place - not so wrapped up in the fight but where, why and how I really do not know.