The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Now the mizzus was a sort of mail order bride.  I came out to the rainforests here in the 70’s, bought my 7 acres and my mule just before the interest rates went wild and discovered how few single ladies there were in the woods of the South End.

So I resorted to what our pioneer ancestors turned to … no,  not THAT … I wrote back to the Midwest for a wife.  I had a lady friend in Minnysota who was just fixing to graduate with her masters degree in librarying.  Librarying, I thought to myself, is even better’n school ma’arm.  She could teach some of the artists on the South End here how to read and write and then we could sit around the porch and discuss Nietzsche and Tolstoy, the events of the day.

Late spring of l981 I commenced to writing heart wrenching, bodice ripping, pulse pounding love letters.  I told my darling all about our little island, how it was a tropical paradise where our beautiful cottage nestled in the arms of million year old cedar trees and coconut palms and you could see the Olympic Mountains every night at sunset glowing like a fireplace and that old sun had nothing on the lovelight in my heart for her …

Course she didn’t have a chance….  Who could resist my literary charms?  And I’m sure she carried a picture of my irresistible self in a locket in her bosom, pining – PINING, ladies and gentlemen – for that day a letter would arrive from her Prince Charming, old lumber Jack himself, king of Camano, practically Paul Bunyan with a book of poems under his ax arm.

Well, I was surprised TOO she didn’t rush out to my waiting muscle bound arms.  So I wrote some more.  I wrote a dictionary worth.  Then I wrote an encyclopedia Britannica.  Spring turned to summer, summer turned to fall, fall became winter, my dreams turned to mush.  I run outa words.  ME!  With nothing left to say.  I was about to give up and become a Zen hermit priest.

But one day I got a letter saying she was coming OUT.   …  For a day or two, then going to Alaska to see her cousin.  Alaska?  Why on god’s green earth would she go to a godforsaken hellhole like that when she could have the whole South End paradise?

Course she was gonna see the cottage wasn’t a cottage – it was a shack.  Leaky roof, crooked floors, a ladder to the upstairs.  Alaska was gonna look REAL good.  And Prince Charming?  I was in serious trouble now.

But luck was on my side.  The day she flew in a storm took out a dozen trees to the South End and power was out when we pulled in the drive.  So I lit up the oil lamps and popped the champagne and boiled the crabs on the woodstove and I won’t tell you the details but let your romantic imagination run wild and you might have some small notion of why the mizzus is still the mizzus and why we both still celebrate the day she came out here and not our wedding anniversary and why the South End will always be a tropical paradise to at least a couple of us old lovebirds.

Well okay, that Big Red Wave for the Republicans came in with a little less than what they’d hoped for, no doubt figuring Sleepy Joe’s age and world inflation would be all they’d need for a wipeout victory.  Maybe total negativity isn’t the best message for the voters.  But what are ya gonna do?  After all, tax cuts for the rich probably aren’t going to slow down inflation.  When bread prices go through the roof, telling em to eat cake won’t fly either.

Where we sit right now, the Senate is a toss-up.  If Nevada drops in the Dem category, game over.  If it flips red, we got ourselves another Georgia finish.  A reverend vs. a football hero.  Tough choice down there in the Peach State.  Herschel is carrying a lot of baggage, even for a big running back.  Doesn’t like abortions but paid for two of his out-of-wedlock sweethearts to have one.  Then lied about it.  Claims we can push that bad Chinese air back where it came from and solve pollution woes.  Asks why we want any more trees.

You probably don’t expect football stars to be Rhodes scholars too, but maybe they should be smarter than this guy.  And maybe morality should count too.  Especially if you’re the party of family values.  The hair on fire boyz are rallying like dumpy old cheerleaders for Walker, exhorting the crackers to get their redneck asses out to vote, the fate of America is on the scrimmage line.  Me, I think this is the ultimate irony for the GOP.  A candidate with no solutions, no real ideas, no telling how he got to be the spotlight for the entire country to parse and analyze.  I wouldn’t want to be Herschel right now, no way.

And if I thought bozos like Lindsay Graham or Newt Gingrich were going to save the day, maybe block those 300 pound gorillas on the front line, holy pigskin, Fatman, I’d be wishing I was back with a couple of my sweethearts, promising to use protection this time.  But you never know in the Yew Ess Aye these happy days what the ending to this election might be.  Walker is Trump’s pick and so I expect he’ll have to go up to Georgia, give his usual stump pitch whether the Republicans like it or not.  Poor Herschel, damned if Trump does, damned if he doesn’t.  Why can’t life be as simple as football?

Just before Election Day a major blow hit our area, knocking out power, internet, phones and most remnants of what we like to call civilization.  Five days later, yesterday, the power came back on and we could get the dreaded election results we’d missed.  You know and I know and so does Q that this was no coincidence, this blackout, just another conspiracy to rig the polls while some of us could do no watching, not while we were struggling to stay warm, forage for unspoiled food, haul water and help the neighbors who didn’t have generators whining 24/7 for 120 straight hours.  Who could possibly know what tampering was at play down at the ballot boxes.  Or what last minute Dirty Tricks were being conducted in the electron darkness.

We fully expected the power might never return.  Possibly the entire country was cast into the Bronze Age, the coup Trump had planned for Jan. 6^th nearly two years ago might have taken place, the country might have declared martial law and the Proud Boys possibly confirmed to sit on the bench of the Supreme Court.  The Storm Qanon had predicted had manifested while we were occupied with surviving, little knowing the real occupation had arrived.  The Red Tsunami had swept away democracy as we once knew it.

But … as is usual, paranoia might have some basis in reality, just not most of it.  Our state, Washington state, ‘woke’ that it is, remained mostly blue.  Florida, well, there was your tsunami, with a hurricane close on its heels, headed right at Mar-a-Lago, another embarrassment for the President-in-Exile who refused to heed evacuation notices.  The Red Wave, the one predicted by nearly all the pollsters and pundits, washed weakly to shore.  As of right now, the House looks like it will go red, the Senate, probably a repeat of the Georgia vote, the state that will determine the majority.  From where I sit, power on, lights aplenty, water running, refrigerators working, internet back, phone working … I feel like we dodged some bullets.

If the women who voted based on abortion rights or the kids who voted to save the planet, I thank you.  If you were the dickwad who voted for Dr. Oz or thought De Sanctimonious was the answer to inflation or the Ukrainian war, hello, the country hasn’t gone totally batshit crazy.  Just yet.  Return to your idiot newsfeeds and hope to god your power doesn’t go out for five days.  Stuck with your own fantasies and conspiracy theories, you won’t make it.  Bolt the doors, load your AR-15’s, listen for the zombie apocalypse coming for you.  Exactly what you feared….

A bunch of us yahoos are gathering for the apocalyptic midterm election returns coming  this Tuesday, masochists all, hunkering down for what portends to be the end of civilization in America as we know it, plenty of liquid courage at the ready.  The pundits are predicting a Red Wave based pretty much on the price of gas and groceries, which are, according to the GOP, Biden’s fault.  No doubt the rest of Europe, the Chinese, hell, the entire world’s inflationary woes are Sleepy Joe’s fault.  That damn Joe!

I’m really not sure why we’re even having elections.  Plenty of Republican candidates have already declared that if they lose, the election was rigged.  If they win, it must be okay, fair and square.  Somehow when Trump lost and plenty of GOP Reps and Senators won in the 2020 fiasco, the elections were both.  Go figure.  My pals are thinking the worst this time around.  The demise of Democracy.  Post truth.  Fascism on the march here in the Yew Ess Aye and around the globe.  Doomsday for the Democrats.  Nothing short of a Proud Boy takeover.  Thank you, Donald J. Trump, for destroying America.

Me, I’m clinging desperately to a longshot  turnout by women and maybe even the younger generation.  I know, fat chance.  But the kids, you’d think with all the existential threats swirling around their little metaverse, they’d intuitively understand the absolute necessity to keep the bootlicking Trumpists from ascending to power.  Although … maybe they’ve drunk the Kool-aid too.  The women, that little agenda of the Supreme Court might have given them some inkling as to what’s coming.

Course, in the era of social media, all bets are off.  Black is white, good is bad, truth is bullshit and vice versa.  I don’t have a clue anymore.  Folks just believe what they read and see on their bubbled sites and only read and watch the sites they want to believe.  Maybe the Storm is coming.  Maybe Q is on the way.  Maybe Jesus is orbiting the planet, planning a Grand Entrance.  Maybe gravity is faux science.

And maybe, just maybe, it’s true that we get the leaders we deserve.  All this evolution to produce big brains and it comes to this, just chimps who invented the internet and the computer, then used them to make themselves stupid.  Serves us right….