Nils + Voting != Funtime

I know it's Friday, and the whole voting thing happened on Tuesday, but I've been busy and it's an entertaining story to say the least. I remembered Monday evening that we had neglected to re-register for voting when we moved into our new house. So I quickly did an online re-registration and found that we were eligible for provisional ballots- which is better than nothing. The next day while researching canidates and whatnot I noticed that my driver's license would not be accepted as a valid form of ID because, though I had updated my address with the MVD, I had not obtained a new license since I got married. So since the address on the license didn't match the address that would be on the voter register I would have to provide alternate forms of ID, which I had. Then I had the bright idea that-- since we would be having provisional ballots, and would both have to use alternate forms of ID-- my husband and I should go vote together after he got off of work. (Ahh, naïvté!)

So at 5:30 we happily set off for our polling location, as described by the Secretary of State's website. When we got there we learned that we were at the wrong place, though only a mile or so off. When we arrived at our real polling place (6pm) the line was out the door and 20 feet or so down the street. So we got in line. I held our place while my husband chased Nils around on the grass nearby. Volunteers passed out granola bars, I took one to feed Nils. When we got inside the building (6:30pm) Nils was getting restless. When we got inside the incredibly hot crowded room (7pm), Nils was full on miserable. He squirmed relentlessly while being held and would take off at top speed if we put him down. We managed to get our ballots and sit down to vote only for Nils to decide that he had had enough!

Somehow he got ahold of the granola bar we'd been feeding him and shoved the whole thing in his mouth while we weren't looking. He chewed it up then spat (most of) it out on the floor, where it looked like vomit. Then he started crying at the top of his lungs. After I managed to clean up the granola bar he had the rest of it in his hand and smeared it on my pants. While all this was going on we were passing him back and forth between us trying to fill in our ballots as quickly as possible while the other wrestled with Nils, both of us not even daring to look at the people around us lest they give us dirty looks.

I finally finished my ballot and grabbed him and fled leaving my husband to finish his ballot in reletive peace. Once we were outside on the grass Nils was happy as could be. Next time we're getting a babysitter.