Well, that happened.

What now? After days, weeks, months of endless vitriol, mendacity, long speeches, parades and violent protests, it happened.

After a painfully long wait, Saturday night rolled around as I was doing the supper dishes, and there they were — this incredibly lucky old guy and this gorgeous, brilliant half-black, half-Indian woman in white — on stage in Wilmington, Delaware.

The night was full of the sound of honking horns, waving flags and blue light sticks, culminating in a spectacular fireworks display. As my grandmother would say, “Ain’t it grand?”

So what are we going to do now?

I’ll tell you what I’m going to do now. I’m going to go to the laundry room and take the clothes out of the dryer.

Then, after I make breakfast, I’m going to clean both bathrooms, because this is Sunday, and cleaning the bathrooms is what I do on Sunday.

No matter who won the election, the bathrooms have to be cleaned. Thank you, COVID. I’m the new cleaning lady.

Before I take the cleaning stuff upstairs, I pause to see what President-elect Joe Biden is doing this Sunday morning. He’s in church with Dr. Jill, taking communion. His defeated opponent is playing golf.

What is it about politicians and golf? Lincoln played horseshoes. How did he work out?

Yes, history is being made as I scrub the toilet bowl, but nobody from the DNC or the RNC is coming to my house to do that, not even Joe Biden.

I guess I’m sounding blasé about this historic turn of events in my America. That’s ridiculous. I’m an Irish Catholic Democrat, as was my father and ancestors back into the ancient fog of peat smoke.

Am I not proud that Kamala Harris has made history as the first woman of color to become the vice president of the United States? Of course I am.

I share my life with three powerful, college-educated, liberal women who voted for her. But if I don’t get supper on the table, one of them is going to be mad at me.

While I was putting the meatloaf into the oven, a friend called and asked if I were especially proud that Joe is the second Irish Catholic to be elected to the highest office in the land.

You bet. But it’s nice to know that Joe is the FIRST Irish Catholic to be elected to that office (on his third try) with a clean moral hall pass.

Rudy W. Giuliani has been on his knees scouring the gutters for dirty clues and has come up with just dirty knees.

From Democrats to Republicans, we’ve had it with bad boys sitting behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office.

It’s been a long, long walk to the White House for Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., beloved son of Catherine Eugenia Finnegan, before that cold January morning when he stands on the steps of the nation’s capitol with his hand on the Bible.

Somebody tell me, how does this tub get so dirty?

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer. 

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