focusing on the issues

1) Apparently if you register via mail, a copy of a residential lease is not valid proof of residency. Why the way I registered changes the validity of my lease, I am not sure, but I am no longer sure I can prove my Milwaukee residency. All of our bills come to the house in my roommate's name. My driver's license is the one I got in high school, with my parents' Green Bay address on it. I do have a photo id from the school where I teach, and apparently that should work, though I am not sure how my UW-Washington County Faculty id is going to prove my residency. My other opinion is to bring a witness willing to vouch for me to the polls.

I had my UW-WC id in my purse, as well as the copy of my lease, in case I read the website wrong.

2) I hate driving on the ribbon highway (the overpasses and underpasses and bypasses) that all the major highways in Milwaukee knot into right around downtown. I also hate driving in tunnels. Both of these things leave me thinking about collapses and scary accidents that end in action movie sequences: cars raining from the sky, bursting into flames, being crushed by giant robots. Well, not the last, but certainly the rest.

However, on Friday afternoon, I braved both of these things as I followed the MapQuest directions towards my destination. What choice did I really have, since I didn't realize I would come across these fears of mine until I was already passed the last exit and had nowhere to escape to. Now, my Jetta (Stella) and I have an agreement: she doesn't cause me to suddenly jerk into oncoming traffic by blowing a tire or an engine, and I don't slam her into things. It works pretty well for us.

And really, I'm a good driver. My time in Milwaukee has turned me into one of those who can always find a space big enough to sneak into when I need to switch lanes, but unlike some of my fellow residents, I know where my turn signal is. So my anxiety comes solely from the idea that when I am on a ribbon highway or in a tunnel, there are a lot of things that other drivers can do that are going to break mine and Stella's agreement, if only because there is no place to go if something were to go wrong.

Nothing did. I made it over the ribbon highway, through the tunnel onto 6th Ave. But the anxiety didn't go away.

3) I don't spend a lot (any) time in downtown Milwaukee. But I knew the street name--Wells--and the address--200--of the building I was looking for. Finding the municiple building shouldn't be too hard, I assumed. I mean, if they want people to vote early, they'll make the building easy to find.

Wrong. First I couldn't find the right block and ended up in the 800s. So I turned around, or tried but it was a one way going the wrong way. Then I got turned around. My lucky break came when I realized that there were a lot of people headed towards one specific building. I was on the wrong block, but the flow of pedestrian traffic all seemed to be headed in one direction. So I followed it. I had nothing to lose: I was already feeling lost and in the way, as I do when I need to drive slowly on city streets, even if there aren't any cars around me. And there it was. The municple building.

4) But where to park? My wallet was completely empty, as I had yet to be paid for the month of October. I would have risked the ticket (as long as I could find a place where I wouldn't get towed), but after facing my two biggest driving fears, searching for the building for fifteen minutes and parking for twenty, I let go of my dreams of voting early. I went home.

Which is really just fine because Friday night on the news I heard that lines were two hours long, and I had not had a book with me.