At least she didn't call me Oriental

That man over there? That's the perfect physical expression of how I'm feeling on the inside. It is Election Day. The run up to this (all the anticipation, the outrage, doubt) has been debilitating, driving me to the point of emotional exhaustion. It also happens to be my two-year anniversary with DH. First, what I feel regarding Obama victory is not jubilation, but simple relief that I do not have to resent my fellow voters for another four years. Second, tweaking estimation models at Shawshank is not how I imagined spending this night. I did not tell DH how much it would have meant if he had remembered. But I wished he would have thought to set aside his plans when he realized that he (1) forgot and (2) doublebooked. At the very least, I would have thought that my happiness trumped the other thing for this measly instance. On top of that, I had a row with a crazy lady on the platform at Penn Station.
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Chiik v. Crazy Lady:
11:30 p.m. I sit down on the platform, placing a bag of timothy hay and rabbit litter on the seat next to me. A sour-looking woman hobbles over, eyes my packages and starts screaming:

-Move it! Move your things!
-Okay, just calm down. I didn't know you had to sit there. You don't have to be rude.
-What you don't see me standing here? So you move extra slow? What you don't see black people?
-Who said anything about that? There are a bunch of empty seats available next to me on this bench...
-What I can't sit here???
-I moved my stuff didn't I? You're sitting there now. Who's hurting you? Why are you getting mad?
-I'm not mad. You don't want me to sit here. Pretend you don't see me. You just move real slow. -So what? I move slow. Can you please shut up? No one cares about your problems.
-Moving too slow...
-Will you just shut up? Shut up.
-[to a passer-by] Do you hear that? Asians. Asian people are rude. Got no manners.
-Yeah. Well old people are dumb.

The E-train roared into the station, drowning out her (no doubt) witty riposte. How much do you want to bet she said I was a slow mover? She didn't follow me on the train. And once we were safely two or three stops away, I stopped pretending that nothing was the matter and broke down in tears. Were it any normal day, I suppose I would have been able to handle it. But I was alone, forgotten in a stuffy office, left to fend for myself on what should have been an anniversary.

This night was supposed to be the triumph of reason over racial hatred. And here was some woman who believed herself the successor of Rosa Parks--without provocation picking a fight with an emotionally fragile Chinese American in an empty subway platform.

Conscientious stupidity indeed.