The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I’m going to let you in on a little secret:  I don’t consider myself much of an artist.  I’m around people who are … so maybe I know the difference.  I never studied art, never took an art class, couldn’t draw my way out of a paper bag or even one of those recyclable totes I keep forgetting to bring into the grocery store.  Creating designs for my glass commissions is akin to extracting my own teeth with a pliers.

Take this latest.  Twenty plus years ago we built the Camano Island Visitor Center and I put a 15 foot by 12 foot mural of colorful glass in the front — which is now on life support after bullets, bottles thrown from passing cars and lawnmower rocks have shattered and broken most of the panels.  I suppose, when the new folks who now own the decommissioned Chamber of Commerce Visitor Center asked me about repairing it, I could have walked away.  Or I could have repaired the thing.  But no, I offered to build them a new window.  New design, new glass, for free ….

Oddly enough, they accepted my offer.  So now I’m scratching my head, noodling with design concepts, tossing away my summer, but here’s the deal.  I still haven’t designed anything I particularly like.  After a hundred sketches.  A good artist, a real artist, would sit down, draw on skills and talent and inspiration and voila, pop out a masterpiece.  Or at least something to wow the commuters on their hellish drive back onto the island.

But me, not so much.  Sure, I could make excuses — after all, I’m 72 years old, the well’s maybe going dry, maybe if I was younger, more energetic, but the truth is, it’s always been like this for me, a struggle and a slog.  I could build the damn mural faster than what it takes to come up with a design.

I guess at this late date the only course left to me is keep on keeping on.  You can introspect yourself into a dozen corners, you can develop stage fright, you can decide to throw in the towel and the paint brush too … but sometimes you just have to put those doubts aside and do what you can, maybe the stars will align, maybe the inspiration will land on your shoulder, maybe you’ll realize you’re not Picasso and maybe he had his own doubts.  Okay, probably he didn’t ….

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My name is Skeeter Daddle and I’m an art alcoholic.  Stained glass art, to be specific.  And now a chicken artist, to be precise.  We hopeless addicts find ourselves in baffling and unpredictable predicaments, victims of the vicissitudes of economic necessities.  Over the years I’ve made windows to keep neighbors from peering into clients’ bathrooms while they do their ‘business’, I’ve created art for kitchen cabinets that prevent viewing their mismatched dishware, I’ve designed murals for schools in red-leaning areas of the state that weren’t really wanted but were offered as part of a 1% for art program by our leftist government here in Washington.  In other words I go where the money leads, no need to prove the adage of ‘starving artists.’

Just before the Covid plague swept the client base pretty much flat, I got a commission to do the neighbors’ barn, a series of five fairly sizeable windows that faced their new house.  They seemed hesitant to ask me, assuming no doubt that Picasso wouldn’t paint the side of an outhouse if his neighbor asked, but … like I said, pride is not one of my virtues or vices.  Art is art and barn art works just fine for me.  And besides, most of my large scale glass murals in the realm of public art commissions were drawn on that barn’s loft floor once the hay bales were moved to the sides.  It was actually an honor to do those barn windows.

So when the same neighbors’ broached the idea of another window up at the barnyard, this time for a chicken coop, you can guess, rightly, that I jumped at the opportunity.  Chickens need art too, you know, and maybe you didn’t know that a happy hen is a good layer.  I suggested piping in classical music, create a veritable chicken cathedral up there, get ready to corner the egg market of the South End.  So I accepted the challenge, happy to focus on something other than geo-politics, inflation, pandemic paranoia and partisan warfare.  I can now turn my attention to a design that will maximize egg production.  And hopefully not make the goats jealous of their cackling brethren.

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Babies have rights, in case you’re some libtard snowflake living under a bituminous rock who thinks they have to go through 9 months of gestation before they can get a driver’s license or a social security number.  Unborn babies have the same rights as we do, sweetheart.  They can get a tax deduction from the IRS, sign up for pre-natal care subsidies, get a concealed weapon permit, use the HOV lanes with their mom and … well, they’ve got the same rights as you and me.  Of course, if you’re a pregnant mother of one of these unborns, you better behave.  Drinking, drugs, smoking cigarettes or vaping, that’s child abuse now, clear and simple.  Light up a Camel, you should be arrested, fined or both.  Personhood cuts both ways….

I’m wondering if sperm might qualify for personhood.  Lots of those out there, potential humans, and if states start to outlaw birth control, well, there’s all the evidence you need for claiming a few extra deductions come tax time.  Probably get a refund in 6 figures every year.  Me, I had a vasectomy at 21 so I lose out in any case.  My bad luck for killing all those potential kids I never had.  Might even get me hauled into jail for mass murder.  My cross to bear, I guess.

Nevertheless, it might be nice if we had the same concern for kids after they’re born as we seem to prior.  You want the government telling you you have to give birth to that unwanted fetus, let them help out, let them pony up some money for food and rent, maybe find you some daycare that’s affordable enough to let you work your minimum wage job, let them be the nanny state they seem to hate unless it’s got something to do with controlling your own body.  Life, so they holler, is precious.  Don’t want to stop a beating heart … unless we use a gas chamber or a drone missile.

And I don’t even want to get into the stem cell controversy.  More slippery a slope than the birth canal.  All I know is babies in the womb are protected now from pretty much every threat from abortion loving woke liberals.  Good luck once they’re born, life will get a little tougher.  Probably why they’ll need that concealed carry permit.

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My old roommate in the days we lived in the Seattle ghetto back in the late 70’s told me today his property taxes down there in Gomorrah were killing him.  Second kid finishing college, he’s still working, so’s his wife, they’re still paying off a 40 year mortgage.  Always the optimist, I said well, Joe, your place must be worth a fortune in that city where real estate prices are practically lunar.  He said you know the house, built in 1919, sort of run down.  He said he didn’t know what it was worth, but couldn’t be all that much.  I said I’m betting a million.  He said you gotta be kidding.

When I got off the phone I checked his estimated house price on the internet.  Yeah, I know, it’s not always accurate, give me a break, I’m not making an offer on the place.  It was worth a tad over one million bucks.  I don’t know what he paid for the place back in the 80’s, too much is what he told me then, but he wanted to get in before the prices made it impossible.  I remember at the time thinking it was too much too.  I do know what I paid for my ghetto chalet.  It was being auctioned off by Uncle Sam as a HUD repo and I bid 24, 000 dollars, 6 over the starting price.  Naturally, while I was googling up real estate figures, I checked on the old homestead.  You guessed it, over a million bucks.  And the neighborhood is still what they call ‘transitional’, meaning the gentrification hasn’t rooted out the meth dealers yet.

So Joe is a millionaire.  On paper.  He would be if he sold the joint, packed his belongings into a VW van like he used to have, lived on the road, king of it, matter of fact.  Maybe collect his social security early to help pay for the gas.  Forget his cares and woes, forget the property tax bills, just take the money and run.

His kids will never own a home.  Unless they move to some dirt patch in Alabama.  The American Dream of buying a house, mowing the lawn, erecting a fence between you and the neighbors, finally paying off the mortgage which means you paid twice what the place cost to the bank that gave you the loan, then cashing in when you die so your kids can inherit the equity, well, that dream is dead.  Meantime, you can bask in the knowledge that you’re a millionaire.  Enjoy it while you can.  Before inflation eats it up.

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I keep hearing how what us South Enders want fom our health care is more choices. Me and the mizzus, both past Medicare age now, started shopping for supplemental insurance. If we wanted choices, whoo-ee, we got em!! Well , not so much in different companies offering competitive prices so much as the two companies offering plans with plenty of their choices.

Maybe you want Plan X, pays 80% of Medicare A’s deductible, 100% of Med B’s. For $50 more a month you can get 100% pay on A & B. Want to save $$$’s, go for Plan D, you pay $3200 out of pocket before D kicks in, maxes out at $50K or Death, why they call it Plan D, you will opt for death before bankruptcy. Plan Z you can get some nursing home care, but not on Plan Y. Out of country coverage? Some yes, some no. Want co-pay or Medicare D, check out plan C? Need dental or glasses, Plans X and G and maybe N, but see if it covers contacts, bifocals or Lasix.

The list goes on. And on. And on some more. If you got a month or so, download the prosepectus of 43 pages or so per plan. Price per month is pretty prominent, you won’t need bifocals, but try to compare those prices with the juggling options, you’ll need something for your vertigo, check if it’s covered on your Medicare D, the pharmaceutical part. And if you’re not like ma and me, you’re searching for the equivalent of Medicares A and B in those health plans, god help you.

Call me cynical but if I didn’t know better with all this accumulated Wisdom old age is supposed to accrue along with arthritis and prostate problems, I’d say the health care industry makes this purposely obfuscated, a labyrinth of impossible to calculate connections between the fees and options, throw the dice, pay the price, take two aspirin, hope you make it til morning….

So … do I want more options? I don’t know. It seems like that stupid beer ad for the most popular beer in America: More Taste, Less Filling. It doesn’t have any taste whatsoever and it’s less filling because it’s mostly water. Still costs plenty, that’s for sure. Health care: more options, less expensive? We’re all being sold a bottle of snake oil, just 25 different labels on the same bottle. Glad we got those choices, though! Well, maybe if you’re wealthy….

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