Election Diary, Another Installment

Stephanie Here and Now
5 min readOct 15, 2024
Autumn dusk, view from my desk in the sun room.

Today, I am at the little house. Here is where we plan to go to sit out the turmoil between election day and Spring. We often spend weeks at a time here in winter so it’s not foreign by any means.

The loft, where we usually live, has 13 foot ceilings and lots of exposed brick walls. During a cold winter, trying to heat the place to a level where it’s comfortable and your nose doesn’t run when you’re standing near a window, is a financial expense that is frankly, beyond our means. It can easily run into the thousands of dollars. Every time we need to turn up the thermostat, I have this vision of the two of us sitting in the middle of the living room warming our hands on a bonfire made of $20 bills. So, it’s off the the little house we go.

We actually stay in the main floor apartment of our rental house. In the earlier chapters of my life, this would have seemed like ample space for the two of us. Now, at around 1,000 square feet, it feels a bit cramped. To make the best of it, this year, I’m making some changes.

The first thing we’ll do is put tatami mats down in the sun room. We have a good Japanese futon that I’ve taken out of our guest room at the loft. We’ll try sleeping on the floor in the sun room rather than suffer through the small, dark “master” bedroom that is directly off the front yard. My husband can have that room to…

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Stephanie Here and Now

American from Canada. Writer Researcher. I'm new around here.