In which I become the invisible woman

There's an election in NSW soon. Elections are always a touchy subject for me. Not because I detest smear campaign and scare campaign ads, but because I suddenly become invisible.

I'm not married. I don't have children. Therefore, it would appear that I don't count to the politicians.

During an election campaign, everything suddenly becomes about "helping the families". Now I don't begrudge for a second those with families out there - I totally agree that families should be on the priority list for governments, but it would be nice if singles and those without children were also acknowledged. We also pay our taxes, we contribute to society as well... so it would be nice if the major parties thought to include us.

Now with that said, I have to admit that I've been a bit puzzled by this current campaign. I've not been bombarded with policies that ignore me. In fact, I haven't really been bombarded with any policies at all. The major parties seem to have been strangely silent on what I would consider to be vitally important policy areas. I've heard of some of the bigger promises, but neither party seems to be rushing to be giving any great detail. It's all "OMGZ TEH LIBZ, THEY ARE COMING!" from the ALP and "Well, they suck. Vote for us" from the Liberals.

What does that leave me with? Self research. Something that while totally necessary is incredibly painful to do.

Trying to compare political party policies is a bit like trying to buy a new car (funnily enough, something else that is happening to me at the moment as well!) With cars, every maker seems to have their own ideas about what specifications to provide in the brochure or on the website. This makes it impossible to properly compare and cross reference two vehicles - you often can't find information that pertains to the same thing for both. Same with the major parties. There's no handy-dandy table on their websites. Each policy area needs to be clicked on separately, and each party addresses things in different ways with different stats and details.

It's almost like they're trying to make it hard... just to make sure that us voters don't get too confused with the actual issues and focus more on the smear and scare campaigns. Clever pollies.

Come Saturday, I can only hope that I've done enough research to make the right decision for my vote. Then I plan to watch the results by candlelight, with knitting and wine, which is useful for toasting successes and also helping to cope if results don't quite go the way I want them to.

Anyone else having an election party?

Runupdate: Or not.

It's been a bad couple of weeks. I picked up a sinus infection last week that laid me up pretty quickly (movement just hurt) and needed some antibiotics, only to recover enough for the weekend and proceed to pick up a cold!

I've now been at home for 1.5 days and am slowly starting to feel alive again. It could have been the massive soup intake today though. I maintain that there is nothing like a spicy udon noodle soup or a big bowl of tom yum to chase a virus away. Must be all that chilli!

I'm starting to feel a little worried about my prep for the Mother's Day Classic now that I've missed two weeks of training. Here's hoping I get better and stay that way soon.