A couple of days after the election, my husband and I were walking down the street when I saw a sign that made my jaw drop: “REPUBLICAN PARKING.”

“My God, they work fast,” I thought. “They’ve already taken over the parking lots!” Then I did a double take. The sign actually read: “PUBLIC PARKING.”

Oh. As Emily Littella used to say, “Never mind.” But I do think my subconscious got it right: It’s a Republican country now. The rest of us just sulk in it.

Or, at least, that’s what most progressives are doing. But me, I have yet to be filled with unutterable, nonstop-chocolate-eating despair. (I’m eating chocolate nonstop simply because it’s leftover from Halloween, thank you very much.) My husband, for instance, is far more depressed. My friends are doing the whole moving-to-Canada thing. The counterman at the deli just greeted me with a woebegone, “Four more years, and that’ll be $3.75,” even though for all he knows, I’m a prayer breakfast/WWJD/anti-gay-marriage zealot with a picture of Karl Rove wood-burned onto my shotgun. No, the deli guy is just a sad New Yorker who figures I’m sad, too.

But I’m not. I’m pleasantly numb, and I can tell you exactly why: rationalizations.

They’re all over the place. They’re zooming around like paper airplanes at fourth-grade recess. You can’t help but get hit. Everybody has one — or 17 — and, frankly, they all sound really good.

The “17 Reasons Not to Slit Your Wrists” e-mail by Michael Moore, for instance, is making the rounds faster than a Paris Hilton retrospective. Moore’s list is filled with uplifting observations like, “More people voted for Kerry than Reagan.” And, “In spite of Bush’s win, the majority of Americans still think the country is headed in the wrong direction (56 percent).”

Um. Well, I’m not sure that’s so uplifting, but it does indicate liberals are hardly alone in their assessment of Bush.

The conversations I’m having are heartening, too, most of which go something like, “People may not want gay marriage, but almost 60 percent are OK with civil unions, and that’s great progress!” “Inside every red state is a partly blue state you just can’t see.” “Hillary/Obama in ’08!”

These things buoy me.

So do all the Kerry/Edwards bumper stickers still around, and people wearing buttons that show a big “W” with a slash through it. East Village stores are still selling T-shirts that refer to Bush in any number of unprintable ways.

In short, I’m still cheery the way kids are still cheery for weeks after Christmas, because the decorations have yet to come down. As long as there’s a plastic reindeer on the fire escape, there’s hope.

Maybe the word for this blissful state is denial. And maybe, for the next four years, denial is the perfect place to be.