I think subconsciously I really enjoy guilt, because I’m constantly doing stupid things to incur it. Like throwing away my mother-in-law’s favorite corroded plastic placemats and telling her the dog ate them. And blocking off an afternoon to make healthy muffins for classroom snack and spending it blogging instead, then making everyone late for school the next day because I had to buy cupcakes at Kroger.

Oh, yeah, and missing the deadline for registering to vote in Georgia.

I wish I had an amusing story about how it was all some hick-ass bureaucrat’s fault, but it only has to do with moving across the country and still not having a permanent address or a vaild driver’s license. In retrospect, maybe I shouldn’t have tossed my California absentee ballots when they were forwarded to us. I could have made it more of a priority and found out that I should have started the registration process more than six weeks in advance of the election, gotten a notarized affadavit signed by my in-laws that we’re occupying their house and stood in the appropriate lines at the correct state buildings with my two-year-old biting at my heels. Sadly, pettier details than my constitutional rights overwhelmed me.

So no, I will not be sporting my little sticker today. I feel really awful about it, because I know you’re disappointed that the Yenta could let such an important civic duty slide by, or you just think I’m an a-hole. But I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t admit that just because I have guilt over not casting a vote doesn’t mean I’m convinced it would have actually counted.

Bless all of you who made it to the polls today, you good citizens and your stickers; double blessings to those volunteering there; free triple lattes to all the well-meaning idiots standing on street corners wavings signs for the candidates who have promised to represent liberty, justice and fair taxes. Please, God, may my absence in this election not be the one thing that could have steered America away from its turbo-charged, handbasket-held trajectory towards hell.