Up to my ears and fed up with politics

I like covering politics. I like writing about politics.

But at this stage of the game, I've had it.

I've become over-saturated with campaign flyers in my mailbox, attack ads on my television, and campaign banners ads on every single web page I visit.

I know I'm not alone.

Good friends recently posted a Facebook notice:

"If you call us and we ignore you, don't be offended. We're just assuming you're a) a politician, b) a political survey of some sort or c) a telemarketer. Your chances will be better after next Tuesday."

Politicians are a desperate lot. They are desperate for you and me to like them. That desperation grows during the course of an election year, then crescendos in the last few days before voting day.

Tuesday is voting day and the crescendo is deafening. You can't hear the issues for the noise about character right now.

The desperation they show for you to like them is often characterized by efforts for you to dislike the other candidate.

I shouldn't be -- I've been around politics long enough -- but I'm surprised just how vile campaigns can get. And I'm not limiting that comment to one party or another. Democrats, Republicans, Tea Partyers, Tea Baggers, Coffee Filters ... they're all guilt of being politically vile at this point in an election.

And it's made worse, frankly, by the U.S. Supreme Court decision of late last year that says anyone with a wheelbarrow full of money can spend as much as they wish on anonymous attack ads.

It's one thing to be attacked by your opponent. It's quite another to be attacked by some of these organizations about whom you know nothing because they don't have to file anything about themselves with anyone.

Revere America. Crossroads. Commission on Hope, Growth and Opportunity.

Who are these people? You don't know who is standing in the shadows, who the wizards are behind the curtains of these organizations.

It'll end on Wednesday. It'll be safe to go to the mailbox again, turn on the TV again, cruise the web again.

But it'll be shortlived.

The 2012 race for president will crank up soon enough.

You think it was bad this time around? You ain't seen nothing yet. Wait until you see, hear and read the vitriol coming in the next round.

The heat is on, and I get the urge for going

I turned on the heat in the house this week.

It got to be 50 degrees in the house, I figured it was time.

Had I had an office to go to, I might have been able to delay the inevitable. But I'm a stay-at-home freelancer now so not delaying the inevitable was inevitable.

As a rule, I try to delay touching the thermostat as long as possible for two reasons:

One, the heating season here in northern New England is terribly long, about seven months from sometime in October to sometime in April. That's a long time to be paying heating bills;

Second, the physical act of turning on the heat means that pre-winter has arrived.

But here's the worst part: I may have turned the heat on a little earlier this year than I did last year.

In fact, with every year I age here in the sub-tundra the earlier I have to heat the house. I think there's an axiom that I may be able to quantify: For every year I ago, I turn the heat on five days earlier come October.

I don't know what it is about growing older that makes us less able -- mentally as well as physically -- to deal with cold. Is our blood thinner? Is our mental toughness softening?

I'm a person who through his life has looked forward to winter. I look forward to the skiing and the college hockey season. Any New Englander will tell you there's a rhythm to the seasons that gives our lives a changing landscape of not only of how things look but how they feel and smell.

For example, a McIntosh apple fresh from a tree in the fall is far superior to the McIntosh you buy in a store in July. It's a taste of the season.

But every year there's a greater battle for me to mentally prepare for the cold, snow and ice.

It's at this time of year that I thumb through my songbook of music I've collected over the year to play the Joni Mitchell song -- popularized by Tom Rush -- "Urge for Going":

I awoke today and found the frost perched on the town;

It hovered in a frozen sky and it gobbled summer down;

When the sun turns traitor cold;

And all the trees are shivering in a naked row;

I get the Urge for Going but I never seem to go.

I remember seeing a sign on Route 1 in southern Maine several years back. It was the dead of winter. The sign on the closed shop simply said: "Winter well."

Those of us who have the urge for going but never seem to go can hope for no less.

Deciding what makes me feel worse

Crap.

That's what I've felt like for the last several days.

I'm pretty sure it's a cold. But I'm not sure whether it's developed into bronchitis.

I haven't been to the doctor, and that's one of the issues that's compounding the fact that I feel like crap.

I feel like health care is treating me like crap.

Yes, I have health care coverage and thank God for it. But it's not very good, with a pretty high deductible, which means I have to pay for doctor's visits and tests and what-not until I reach my deductible.

And that's a problem when there isn't a whole lot of extra money floating around the checking account.

It means that I and lots of other Americans are making decisions about getting medical care based on whether we can afford the out-of-pocket expense.

I also recognize that health care is expensive and one reason why it's expensive is unnecessary visits to doctors and specialists. So I also think that maybe I shouldn't go see the doctor because I'd be contributing to the big waste of time and money.

There's just something wrong. For a country with such advanced health care, why is it's delivery cumbersome and expensive? I'm a Baby Boomer who, despite hopes to the contrary, is getting older.

All in all, I'm healthy. But that may not always be so. Am I going to be forced to make decisions about health care based on how much money I've got in my checking account?

So maybe the cold is just a cold, and it'll run its course and it'll go away. I'm medicating with tea and honey, chicken soup and Theraflu.

But I don't like the fact that both the cold and health care make me feel so lousy.

Loaded for the dump

I'm not a dump person.

That was obvious the other day when I went to get my bulky waste coupon from the town that would allow me to bring some of our junk to the dump.

As I filled out the paperwork, the clerk in the public works office asked for the license plate of the vehicle I'd be using to haul my load of bulk waste. I looked outside and read the license plate off my Hyundai sedan.

She also looked outside and said, "That little car?"

I stammered: "It has a big trunk."

When you've spent much of your adult life in the suburbs, the town dump is a whole new experience. I'm thinking of the city mouse/country mouse story ... more precisely suburban mouse/country mouse.

In the suburbs, as a suburban mouse, you generally don't have to get up close and personal with your trash. You put it at the curb and it disappears. If you're cleaning out a basement or a garage, the same rules apply: Get it to the curb and it becomes someone else's problem. It's why we pay the taxes that we do.

Granted, as a country mouse I get my household trash and recyclables to the end of the driveway each Monday and it gets taken away.

But the garage and basement clean-outs are another matter. We have in my community a big trash pick-up each spring. If you can get that old couch to the end of the driveway it'll get picked up.

But if you can't wait for the annual big trash day, then you've got to go to the dump ... or landfill ... or recycling center ... or whatever name it goes by.

My impression from the rules posted on my town's public works website was that I needed a resident sticker to get into the dump, a coupon for some of the big trash items, and a special coupon for certain specialty items, such as the broken dehumidifier because it contained freon. The resident sticker is free. The coupon is $10. The special coupon is $10. So much for taxes.

I didn't think I'd need a dump truck to impress the public works clerk.

But I went home and loaded up a variety of busted fans, a rusted and broken grill, a hopelessly bent snow shovel (we do indeed have severe winters in New Hampshire on occasion), said dehumidifier, and an assortment of other cast-offs.

Indeed the trunk was spacious enough for the fans, dehumidifier and other stuff. So was the back seat, which I had to cover with a tarp to protect it from the rusted and broken grill that I managed to get squeeze in along with the broken snow shovel and other items.

My Hyundai was a little out of place in the line-up of vehicles depositing trash at the designated spots for metal, electronics, wood, paper, etc., etc. There were an assortment of vans and SUVs and, of course, pick-ups.

I managed. Certainly a pick-up would have been the easier solution. But I'm not ready to be a country mouse just yet.