President Barack Obama

I felt bad that I was not going to watch the speech in real time. I followed the primaries and the election so diligently and watched campaign speeches on-line and was glued to the computer screen on election night. But today, we had to get back home from the lake house in time for the Boy Scout meeting and there was no time to waste. It would be there on-line to watch and savor later. There were tasks to be done in certain orders, like completing tiling in time for dust to settle to allow a last coat of varnish on the stairs before we left. So during the actual speech, I was cleaning mortar from between the tile on one bathroom in order to ready it for grout next trip, or slapping tile on the wall in the other bathroom. My husband and son were sanding the stairs or varnishing while I made a quick lunch. So I finally listened to the 19 minute speech just now, finally read the transcript, and I feel hopeful, confident, optimistic. This is a great country, founded on great concepts, and we now have a leader who will let us shine in that greatness that has been masked and stifled and suppressed for too long. We will see a brighter future for ourselves and our children and their children. This is the beginning of a return to greatness for us, the beginning of a new kind of greatness for us, born not of military might but of work and ideas and building and growing and making and fixing and thinking and talking and inventing and problem-solving and doing for and with each other. President Obama said ". . . it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor -- who have carried us up the long, rugged path toward prosperity and freedom." What a great future we are in for!