What a strange week (Elections and going viral for the first time)

Today I had the horrible realization that it is already November 14th. Like HOW? This month is going much to fast. 

So let's recap before time slips away even more. The week of November 3-9th was weird. Everyday was like another strange adventure. 

It kicked off on Monday with my internet not working at work. 

But actually before that I had a really good thing happen. I met with my dermatologist after I dropped all the kids off at school. This was a follow up to see how well the cremes he'd prescribed me had helped with my vitiligo. They hadn't helped at all - which is what we'd expected. But we had to try them so that my insurance would then approve the medicine which would work - Opzelura. 

So basically the appointment was like, "Oh darn, those other medicines didn't work. Let me write you a prescription for Opzelura."

Then I went to work and the day went sideways. I felt like I couldn't get anything done. Especially since my internet wasn't working on my computer. It worked for everyone else. The mail hadn't come so I decided to just leave and come back later after my boss had a chance to look at my computer. So I left and took care of some errands and some things at home. I went back around 11:30. The mail had come and the internet was sort of better for me. (My boss had patched me into another wifi network.) But things were still slow, so I ended up going back home and working from there. 

I'd had big hopes for getting really on top of things before I took the day off for the election the next day, but I was lucky to get the bare minimum done. 

That afternoon I hung out on the couch and Derrick shared his Halloween candy with me. He loves to secretly give me sour candies and watch my reactions. The funniest one was a very nice watermelon candy that had hot PEPPER in the middle. It was some sort of mexican candy. I was like, "Why would anyone do that?"

Veronica had theatre that evening. Daylight Saving Time had ended on Sunday so now it gets dark earlier. It was almost dark when she got out of theatre. I didn't like that. I feel like I fall apart every night when the sun goes down. It take me like an hour to get used to it. 

I spent a little bit of time packing my bag for the next day. I packed snacks, a book, and the instructions for what I needed to do. 

I wrote out a little checklist for myself of reminders of what to do. At the end of the day I was going to have to count the ballots and then do a little bit of math to make sure the number of blank ballots we started with matched the number of blank ballots + printed ballots. I was really nervous about this step. So my instructions to myself said:

Fill out Ballot Accounting Form (Cry) 

On Tuesday I got up around 5:30 and took a shower. I ate breakfast and then drove over to my precinct. This was my fourth election. I've worked the last three elections at my voting precinct location. It's for Twin Falls 7 and 9 and is held at the Valley Christian Church on the corner of Heyburn and Maurice streets. 

I was there at 7:00 AM and went inside the little social hall area. The church custodian, Bob, had already unlocked the doors and set up some tables and chairs. He gave me his phone number so I could call him if I needed anything. 

The other members of my team showed up around this time. I was the youngest of the group, but I was the Chief Judge. I'd been a little nervous about being in charge of 60 year old women. I was worried that they would have their own ideas for how the day should go. But they were all great. 

Their names were Claudia, Mary Kay, and Denise. 

Claudia had the most experience. She worked for the county as kind of a floating employee. She helped in the treasures' office during Tax Season, another office when they were busy, and the clerks office during elections. She'd been helping with Early Voting for the past few weeks. She could do all the jobs, but on this day she was the Receiving Clerk. She stood by the ballot box and instructed people on how to put the ballot into the box. In Idaho the voters names need to be announced. So she would ask, "What is your name."  And then say something like, "Valerie Illguth has voted."

Mary Kay had worked as the receiving clerk in the 2024 election. This was her first time doing Poll Book. She was very nervous about all the steps to print ballots, but after doing a few she felt much more comfortable with the process. 

Denise had worked for Jerome County in 2024. So she knew what she was doing. She told me the Chief Judge at her location had been terrible so she never wanted to work for Jerome County again. 

We also had Vonnie as our Registrar. Vonnie has been the Registrar at this location for years. I worked with her as a Registrar in 2022. I felt so weird being her Chief Judge only 3 years later. But I think it really helped that I knew her. In 2022 and in 2024 she'd kind of butted heads with the Chief Judges. But we didn't have that issue because I wasn't new to her. 

Here's the one picture I took the whole day. This outside the door leading into the church. 

Everyone worked together to set up our equipment. I had the ballot box, 2 printers, the voting booths, and a big bag of supplies in the back of my van. A county employee came and dropped off our Cradle point (the secure internet thingy) and the electronic poll books. 

Before we put the ballot paper into the printers I counted how many blank ballots we had. They were in packages of 50 and 100. We had a total of 600 ballots. We opened the package of 50 ballots first because we didn't expect that many voters. 

The ballot box had been sealed with zip ties with numbers on them. I had to break those seals to get the ballot paper out of the ballot box. I had more zip ties to seal it back up, but I couldn't do that yet. 

At 8:00 I announced "The polls are now open."  Shortly after that our first voter arrived. The poll book workers got him checked in. After he'd marked his ballot I showed him that the ballot box was empty. Then I could seal it with the zip ties. And then he could put his ballot in the slot. 

After that things were kind of boring. We had a steady trickle of voters, but never more than 3 in the building at the same time. 

We passed the time with talking. I think Claudia and Denise knew each other already. Over the course of the early conversation I think all the ladies figured out who they knew in common and realized they'd all gone to High School at Twin Falls High School around the same time. 

I'd brought the book "Into Thin Air" with me to read. I'd read another book that had described it as a really good example of narrative non-fiction and so I wanted to read it. It's by Jon Krakauer. I've read a few of his other books, but this one quickly became my favorite. I think it was because he was part of the story. The book is about people who climbed Everest in 1996. A storm came in and killed many of the hikers. Jon had been there to write a story for Outside Magazine and ended up on the mountain as the events unfolded. It was a fascinating read and really helped pass the time. 

Things were moving pretty slowly in the real world. Vonnie actually ended up going home around noon because she wasn't feeling well. So Claudia would move over act as Registrar if any one wanted to register to vote. 

And what was I doing?  Well sometimes it felt like not a whole lot. My job was to basically supervise. And that felt really weird. But as the day went on I was like, "Oh I do know what I'm doing."  If someone had a question I could (usually) answer it. And there were a few times I had to make executive decisions. Like when someone came into vote with a MAGA hat on. Technically, clothing for a political candidate or party isn't allowed in the polling location. But last year we were instructed not to make a big deal out of it. We were told to just get them to vote as quickly as possible and have them leave. If we called people out on their hats it would probably create a bigger scene than if we just got them through quickly. So that's what I did this year. I just let the man vote and after he left I explained my reasoning to my team. 

I also filled in for the poll book workers and the receiving clerk when they took breaks. 

At one point there were some kids being a little loud in the kitchen next to the room we were in. It was around time for me to eat so I went to take a break and eat and see if I could get the kids to be quieter. 

Well turns out I knew the kids. So I probably made them louder as we talked. They were kids of a lady named Janice who we've hung out with at our friend Candice's 4th of July Parties. They also do theatre. Their mom teaches a home school music class at that church on Tuesdays so that's what they were doing there. 

I'm trying to think of other exciting things . . . . Into Thin Air was really exciting. The voting not so much. 

Still the time moved pretty quickly. Brandon had taken care of getting all the kids to school and he took care of picking them all up too. He texted to see if I needed anything. I asked him to bring me chapstick when he brough me dinner. He ended up bringing it when he went to pick up the twins. We were only a block away from the high school. In fact, I'd told the girls to just come walk over if they wanted. 

Around 6:00 Brandon brought me spaghetti and broccoli. He brought all the kids so they could see him vote. When they were all little I took them with me to vote, but none of them remembered that. So I was like, "Come see it today, you won't be disruptive."

There were only two city council races on the ballot so that's one reason things were so slow. It just wasn't a big election. 

But I was happy about that because I was still really nervous about the ballot math at the end. 

I'd warned my team that things would really slow down after dark. Even last year when it was a Presidential Election we never had a huge group of people after about 6:30. And yes, things really slowed down after 6:30. 

We kind of started cleaning up things around 7:30. At 8:00 I announced that the poles were closed. I cut open the zip ties on the ballot box and we counted the ballots. There were 167. That's how many our computers said there should be - so that was half the battle. 

Then I filled out the Ballot Accounting Form and it wasn't as hard as I'd worried it would be. WHEW. There was no need for crying. 

We put the voted on ballots into the box along with all the unused ballot paper. Then I sealed it up again. This time I used red zip ties. There were forms where I wrote the seal numbers so they could be checked by the county employees when I returned them. 

We got everything else cleaned up and put back into my van. I thanked everyone for their hard work. The day had been great. Mary Kay said that she was always willing to work whatever precinct I was in charge of. That meant a lot.

I was also feeling pretty good about how everything had gone. I decided that I'll be just fine being a Chief Judge at a bigger election. 

I drove everything back to County West. County West used to be the hospital years ago. It's where the treasurer, assessor, clerk, DMV, and a few other offices are. Many of the other county office are downtown on the same block as the historic county courthouse. But this complex is on the west side of Twin Falls so it's called County West.

Because County West used to be a hospital it actually has a really nice drop off/pickup area where the emergency vehicle entrance was. (At least that's what I assume.) There's kind of a round about right in front of the door. I got in line behind other vehicles and waited my turn. When it was my turn county employees unloaded everything from my car. I had a lot more than I started with because I also had Vonnie's Registrar stuff. One of the election clerks took the ballot box and read off the seal numbers. I signed something and then I was done!

I was back home before 9:00. That was kind of amazing. I'd expected to be stressing over ballot math until 9:00. The kids weren't even in bed yet. 

I went to bed, but I was so hopped up on election energy (and caffeine from the Celsius drink I'd finished at 2:00) I couldn't fall asleep yet. So I stayed up reading Into Thin Air for another hour and a half. I started and finished the book all in one day. It was so good! I actually loved it so much that I wanted to read it again right away so now I'm reading it to Brandon. 

It all caught up to me on Wednesday. I was so tired. I had my scripture study group. It was good, but I found myself spacing out a few times. 

I'd planned to go into work that afternoon, but there really wasn't time. Veronica had therapy at 1:00 and that was a really awkward time. So I just worked from home for like 45 minutes. 

Charlotte wanted me to do a Marco Polo for Brandon's family so they could see her chickens. Then she was able to hold Billy the Rooster and that was a big deal so she wanted a picture. 

This girl loves her animals so much. 

I spent a lot of the afternoon/evening putting the finishing touches on a blog post for the Exponent. I had a lot of ideas swirling around, but the idea that materialized the most was my feelings about Dallin H Oaks becoming the president of the church and the first talk he'd given. I didn't think it was that ground breaking of a post, but it's what I'd been thinking about and I wanted to get it written down. 

I messaged my bloggy friend Abby to help me with the title. Abby runs the Facebook and Instagram pages for Exponent so she has a good sense for these things. My working title had been "I don't want my daughters taking life advise from President Oaks." But as the post came together I realized that something along the lines of "President Oaks, Please stop telling my daughters to get married young" was more descriptive of what I was saying. Abby responded that the second option was better and to take out the please. 

Then she told me that she strongly suggested putting a picture of President Oaks at the pulpit as the main image. She told me that somehow pictures of old men encouraged people to click on and read our feminist blog content. I was like, "Okay."  And found an image. 

I wasn't really expecting anyone to read this little blog post. It was just my thoughts that I'd finally been able to gather after a month. Honestly, I didn't think the post was that incredible. I liked it, and I was willing to post it, but I didn't think it would have much of a reach. I expected it to have a handful of comments on the actual blog and then maybe 20 likes and 2 comments when it was shared on Facebook. 

Little did I know how much Abby's advice to use that picture of President Oaks would impact things. 

The post went live at 7:00 AM on Thursday. At first things were pretty quiet. But within a few hours the post started to get a lot of traction on Facebook. 

So many comments started coming in. And most of them were pretty hostile. It was very apparent that no one was reading the actual post. I'm not even sure most people were reading the three paragraph blurb that Abby had included with the post. Most people were reacting to the title of "President Oaks, Stop Telling My Daughters to Get Married Young."

So many men felt the need to comment. A few women chimed in as well. The majority of the comments fell into a few different camps. 

1. I misunderstood President Oaks and he never said such a thing. 

2. President Oaks is right and women should get married young. 

3. I was a complete apostate because I dared question the prophet whose every word was what God wanted him to say.  

For the most part I was able to laugh off the comments. I texted Brandon and told him to look at the comments. Brandon LOVES reading unhinged comments. He loves to go down rabbit holes reading comments sections. So this was basically the best gift I could ever give him. 

But it was sometimes hard to read another comment saying I might was well just leave the church if I didn't want to listen to God's prophet. I was like, "I'm actually hanging on by my fingernails here. Why am I still in this church?"

There were also comments from people who agreed with me. Those were really nice to read. They helped me remember that I wasn't crazy for noticing the pattern of what President Oaks had been preaching.  

And there were many, many, many likes.

The likes and comments poured in all day. Abby kept updating me with the stats from the back end. That night at 7:00 she sent me screen shots showing that the post had 68,208 views. That was 38.7 times more than our typical views. 95% of the people viewing it were from non-followers of the page. (Which explained a lot of the hostile comments. For some people this was their first time ever seeing content from the Exponent.)

The post was wild for a few days on Facebook before finally settling down. As of right now it has 876 reactions. 612 of those are likes and 225 are loves. It has 523 comments. FIVE HUNDRED AND TWENTY THREE!!! I thought it would have two! And it has been shared 79 times. Abby says the views are at 76825.

Later it went up on Instagram. The instagram algorithm functions differently - so the post didn't go crazy wild. Instead a lot of really thoughtful people left beautiful comments. After feeling like I was getting pummeled on Facebook Instagram was like a lovely group hug. 

And on the blog itself it got 33 comments. (Technically it got 35 comments. But we deleted the two where someone said that I would have been willing to murder Jesus because I was willing to speak against his prophet. Those comments went to far.)

I'm still a little in shock that THIS post went viral. Like I'm proud of it, but it's not my best work. There are at least 5 other posts that I wish had been read by more people. I joked in an email to the other bloggers, "I keep thinking "why couldn't this have happened with my post about Abinidi interpreting Isaiah? I researched and studied so much for that post.""

Later I joked with Abby, "Now if only my upcoming series on the 12 minor prophets could have this kind of reach. But I don't think enough men will be triggered by those blog posts."

Also I'd planned to share this post to my Facebook page. But that was back when I thought like 3 people would read it. After it started going viral I was like, "NOPE this is not going on my page."  It was hard enough having the post picked apart by people I didn't know. I didn't have the emotional bandwidth to have my friends commenting on it. 

Maybe later I'll share it - along with samples of the unhinged comments that were lobbed at me. But for now I'm keeping it quite. So if you've read about it here, well congratulations. You are one of the few who know that I something I wrote went viral. 

In other Thursday news it was actually my 6 year anniversary of working for Aspen Grove Family Therapy. I planned to do a Facebook post about it anyway, but when things went nuts with the Exponent post I put up a post about my work anniversary. I needed people commenting on something that was real and not a headline they were misinterpreting. 

Work was much better than it had been on Monday. My internet worked, and I was able to dig out from being gone all Tuesday and most of Wednesday. But I really really really need to remind myself next year that the three weeks between going to Boise for the IPUL board meeting and working the election are just CRAZY.

That night I worked on a birthday present for Jori. She loves collecting shells and has boxes and boxes of them. I asked her for some that she didn't mind if they were glued and she gave me some from her trip to San Diego this year. I was playing around with how to lay them out in a shadow box. This was not the final design, but it was fun.  

On Friday I went grocery shopping and then went to work. Then I went to DI and found a dress for an upcoming 4th Wall Night. 

That night we all watched the movie "V for Vendetta."  It was the first time the kids ever saw it. There were some intense parts, but they really liked it. I was like, "When this movie came out everything felt like fiction. But now it feels a little too real in spots."

On Saturday our main goal was to make progress on the stair rail that will replace the wall we tore out on New Years Eve. Yes, I am fully aware of how long this project has taken us. 

Brandon, Lydia, and I went to Lowes and picked out wood. That's always the most boring part for me, but Brandon loves it. Then we came home and he set up a work station. 

Brandon had bought a new blade for his table saw. It was something like a "finish blade."  He said it cut wood like it was butter. He was so happy with it. 

Meanwhile I was working on painting the balusters. Brandon and I had picked out the colors and had the paint mixed back in July. But we hadn't made it this far on the kitchen project. I set up a painting area in the garage. 

And started painting. 

Brandon's main goal was to cover up the spot where the wall used to be. It was kind of tricky because the tile wasn't the same size across the whole area. The simplest thing to do was to put some cheap wood on top of the spots that didn't have tile and then lay a nice board over all of the patchwork. 

Here it is from another angle. 

Here he is putting in more of the filler wood. He also took to posts and attatched them to the floor joists down below. He'd put larger posts over these secure posts. 

I was still painting. My process took FOREVER. I only had one little roller brush so I had to thoroughly wash it out between ever color. I finished the first coat in something like two and a half hours. 

Here's Brandon with the patch work almost complete. 

I started on the second coat. This is supposed to show how much difference there is between the first and second coat. But I think it's a little deceptive because that second coat is still wet so it's much darker. 

And here's where Brandon made it by the end of the night. He had the nice board installed and was fitting the two posts (that he built). 

Charlotte had been playing with Legos most of the day. She made a barn. 

She loves the little arches over all the stall doors. 

Brandon switched gears from wood working to baking. He started making a gluten free cake for Jori's birthday. Her birthday would be in the next week, but she has a lot of birthday trauma so she doesn't like to celebrate on her actual birthday. 

I invited her over for dinner on Sunday since I knew she didn't want to celebrate on her real birthday. She and Tim and in the middle of some major kitchen updates so she really appreciated not having to figure out a meal. 

While Brandon was working on her cake I was gluing down the shells on her present. This is the final design I choose. 

On Sunday morning I worked on Exponent Guest Post stuff. A lady had submitted her own reaction to President Oaks talk. I got it scheduled and gave her a heads up that it was probably going to have big reaction on Facebook. (I was right, it went up on Facebook this morning and so far has 199 reactions and 288 comments.)

We went to church, but it felt like we were in some sort of parallel dimension for a while. 

We got there about 30 minutes early. (I'm really committed to getting a full bench and that means we have to be there early.) The whole choir area was full of teenagers practicing a song. At first I thought they were from our ward, but I didn't recognize any of them. I assumed they were from the 1st ward, but I wasn't sure the first ward had that many youth. 

As they were finishing up more and more people started showing up and sitting in the pews. But I didn't recognize many of the people. It seemed like they were there for a baby blessing or something, but I couldn't think of any new babies in the ward aside from the one that was blessed a few weeks ago. 

The speakers started sitting on the stand. I knew two of them, but the youth speaker was a girl I have never seen. 

I was like, "Are we in the right ward? Did we come at the wrong time? Or the wrong year? Or the wrong dimension?"

Then a single lady in the ward who usually attends with just her son showed up with like 9 college age girls. I was like, "Who are these girls?"  Thankfully she actually provided some explination to what was going on. All the girls who were with her were her daughters roommates or something. So that solved that.  

She also recognized one of the people from the group of strangers. She told me and the lady sitting behind me, "Oh that's my friend I go to the temple with. Her daughter and her husband live in our ward and they just had a baby. The baby is being blessed today."

I was like, "OHHHHHHHHH"  And then I realized that I'd actually met that daughter AND I'd made friends with her on Facebook. So yeah, I really should have realized it was the baby blessing for her baby that day. 

But the weirdness wasn't over yet. Just as the bishopbric member was welcoming everyone to church I looked to the pew on my left and saw Derrick's best friend Max. I waved and whispered "Hey Max!"  He had the biggest smile. He's cousins or something with the mom of the baby.

Derrick didn't know Max was there yet because he was sitting with the deacons. He was pretty surprised to walk by Max as he passed the sacrament. As luck would have it Derrick passed both the bread and water to Max. 

When Derrick sat back down with me we beckoned Max over to sit with us, but he was too shy to leave his family. 

Oh and the youth speaker was a girl who joined the church like a year ago. 

So in the end everything made sense, but wow it was weird there for a while. 

I skipped out on Relief Society because they were studying the Oaks talk and I'd said and heard everything I needed to about that talk for a while. 

When I got home I realized that the odometer had gone over 296000 miles. We'd put on 1000 miles in a month. 

Brandon finished frosting Jori's cake. She'd requested a German Chocolate cake. He'd done such a good job. This was like 1000X better than his last gluten free cake attempt. 

We had taco salad for dinner. Jori, Tim, and their kids loved it. Then we sat around and talked until we'd digested enough to have cake. Brandon had bought sparkler candles for the cake. Jori thought they were so funny. 

Jori and Tim helped me finalize the order the balusters should be in when we put them up on the stair rail. 

We talked some more and then they all went home around 8:00. 

Veronica got out her string bass. I'd recently gone through my binder of things I'd saved from Jr High and I discovered I'd saved several copies of my old bass music. (At least I really hope these are copies. I can't image that I save the real sheet music.)

I went and got those out and played them. Arlington Sketches was especially special to play. This was THE song in 7th grade. It was so fun to learn and I was so good at it. So it was fun to play it again. I was surprised that the muscle memory was actually still in my fingers. As I played the music I was like, "Oh I still remember how to do this fingering."  I would need a little practice to play it well - but I still remembered it. 

And that gets us through Sunday night. 

I'm happy to say the next week was less strange. But I'll tell you all about that in my next post. 

Thanks for reading.