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The most critical issues facing the new Obama administration are our food supply, our ailing health care system and our unhealthy dependence on foreign oil. While they may seem unrelated, the issues are inextricably intertwined.

On Nov. 4, I had my own self-imposed media blackout. I turned off the TV and closed the web browser.

Like taking the college admission exam or studying for the bar, all the preparation, work, sweat, toil and tears had come down to just one day.

I haven’t slept in weeks. I’ve been pacing and fretting and hand-wringing, and worrying. Have I done enough? I took a crowbar, pried open my wallet, and donated $1041.77 to the campaign. I put a bumper sticker (okay, a removable magnet) on my car – the first thing I’ve put on a car since transparent window college stickers went out of style in 1991. Despite all this, only one question fills my mind day and night: Will Sen. Barack Obama be elected President of the United States?

I was a chatty kid. Once I started talking as a toddler, I never stopped. Ask my mother. Better yet, ask my husband. If I’m quiet for more than a minute or two, he takes my pulse, literally. He believes I’ll stop talking when I’m dead.

Mrs. Filippi, my first grade Catholic schoolteacher , had two long tables of students – the good kids and the bad kids. The good kids were smart, performed well on tests, and were cited for good behavior, like keeping quiet. The bad kids did not conform to these standards. They could not behave and did not get it. School, I got.

My seventh grade science teacher was a philosopher. Maybe he was merely clairvoyant.

One day I was daydreaming in class when Mr. Golder called on me. I was, back then, a “B minus” girl – one of those kids who never paid attention, but could squeak by on a test with an 83. I had no idea what was going on before he called on me. I did not have my hand up.

When you’ve been in a relationship as long as we have, your day-to-day conversation takes on a certain shorthand. One or two words invoke a common memory. A shared look can make you laugh.

When you’ve been in an interracial relationship as long as we have, some of those collective memories are of the most unpleasant and awkward situations. For us, those situations usually concern race. And, admittedly, I’m guilty of using them as a snapshot of a certain person.

I have started and stopped this essay dozens of times because I am having a very difficult time articulating my problem with Joe Biden.

A couple of weekends ago, I was in Brooklyn visiting my grandmother, listening to her life stories of Jim Crow Mississippi and wartime New York City, and kicking myself for not taping them or writing them down, when the news flashed across the bottom of the television screen on CBS at about one in the morning Eastern time: Sen. Barack Obama had picked Joe Biden as his running mate.

My car is a middle-aged seven. While repairs don’t yet exceed my former car payments, the costs are creeping up. A thousand here for tires and brakes, several hundred times four to fix failing window motors . . .

Yes, I’m ready for a new car.

I remember my first time.

It was in 1990, and William Weld was running to become the first Republican governor of Massachusetts in 15 years.

“Are you together?”

It's the one question I am asked more than any other, especially in retail settings. Even more than, “Do you want paper or plastic?”