View from the North 40: Patience is virtually non-existent at this point

Welcome to Friday, the 136th day of November, 2020, a mere 227 days after Tuesday’s 2020 election, and — as I write this in the wee hours of the morning — we are still waiting and waiting and waiting for election results.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful that the election officials are taking their jobs seriously, and they have my utmost respect for their diligence, but none of that gives me even one ounce, an inkling or a smidge more patience than I already don’t have — especially for waiting.

Patience is not part of my genetic code and I was not successfully taught it as a skill while I was still in my formative years. I was busy learning such things as potty training, the ABCs or reading, gun safety, multiplication tables and how to swear like a sailor.

My dad’s lesson in patience, because he is an innately patient person with little understanding of the all-consuming power of angst, explained that to be patient, one must simply not be impatient. My mother, whose wealth of patience was worth a handful of tarnished pennies, taught me to shut up and be still — or else.

Their combined wisdom gave me an emotional tool on the advancement level of using a log to move large objects rather than, say, something with wheels and a modern axle. I was either making precarious progress forward rolling on the log, or I was at a dead halt, readjusting the log from back to the front, lifting the large burden back onto log and putting my shoulders to it to roll everything forward for another jag of the trip.

Success in the art of patience was hard to gauge under the circumstances.

Out of self-preservation, I developed a more advanced and refined tool kit for patience. Now it’s like several logs in unison — as if I had imagined a wood log form of roller conveyor. Sure, it’s not so much a vehicle with wheels and an axle and, I don’t know, maybe its own engine, but you can get a rhythm going, and it doesn’t require as much brute force effort to keep up the progress. I can live with it.

So, yes, for the last 352 days since Tuesday’s election, I have refrained from yelling things like “You learned how to count in first grade — haven’t you learned to do it faster yet?!” or “Ohmigawd, did they replace all the ballot counters with three-toed sloths?”

No, I have instead alternated between 1) playing around on the internet so that I am conveniently positioned to hit refresh on the election results map every two minutes. (Did you know that it’s really hard to find the number of eligible voters in the U.S.? The best I could do with my limited attention span was to find that our population of people 18 and older is 255.2 million.)

2) I would shut the computer off and go outside to work. Or 3) I find myself halted mid-motion somewhere, just existing in the moment — shutting up and being still.

At some point Thursday, I realized I was stopped outside my bathroom door , staring at a cobweb on the ceiling, with my belt only half reconnected. My firs conscious thought for who knows how long was that I should do an internet search for spiders that live indoors in winter. Of course, when I got to my computer I hit refresh and found out that Arizona had added more than 10,000 votes to their totals. Of course, the world had to stop until I had completed some rudimentary math to recalculate the point spread between presidential candidates.

I was eating some toast before work this morning because it was too dark to go outside to work, when I realized that I could no longer remember the USDA allowances for foreign matter in wheat flour — which is really important information should you need a shocking conversation starter during an awkward pause at the next social gathering you get to attend.

And, oh hey, since I was at the computer, 59 days after my last check-in, I hit refresh on the election map and updated my personal poll-tracking spreadsheet, really quick-like. I mean, really quick because I still had time to sigh several times at the incomplete election map then tap my pen rapidly against the desk while cussing like a voter before finding the wheat flour data on USDA.gov.

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(In case you ever need to know, USDA’s average wheat flour allowance of insect filth is fewer than 75 insect fragments per 50 grams of flour, and average allowable rodent filth is fewer than one rodent hair per 50 grams. But this is not to be confused with the USDA wheat allowance of less than 9mg of rodent excreta pellets (aka poop) and/or pellet fragments per kilogram of whole grains. I know, you’ll thank me at your next party, so you’re welcome right now at [email protected].)