The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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Most of us red blooded freedom loving Americans hate to take a vacation, not because we are fun-averse, but because when we come back to the Job, we have to work doubly hard to catch up with all the unfinished bizness we left behind.  I should know, having just returned from a three week road trip cross country to find all the backlog waiting open jawed.  For the purpose of this lament, I’m going to skip the saga of the broken drain in the kitchen sink I’m still trying to repair.  You’ve heard enough plumbing nightmares from me to last a Maytag repairman’s lifetime.  Instead I’m going to focus on my little park across the island and the mudhole I left behind.

If you’ve missed the previous bitching about my county park guy telling me he was going to put my request at the bottom of his To-Do list because I’d complained that after two or more years I was sick and tired of my parking lot that was a complete mudhole hell after any rains, well, count yourself lucky.  Me, I just pretty much figured that car swallowing tarpit would have to stay the same, an invitation to vandals that nobody cared about this little pocket park so go ahead and trash the place.  But … to my surprise, I got a photo on the trip from a neighbor showing gravel had been spread over the parking lot, not really evenly or tamped down, but hellfire, better than tire-sucking mud any day of the week.

Turns out, though, someone, probably the county, had dumped the gravel and a good Samaritan neighbor got tired of looking at the little mountain of it so he drove his tractor down and spread the stuff.  All fine and dandy, you might think, but I think maybe the county might have planned to even out the craters, spread the thicker gravel next, then add the 5/8ths minus stuff on top, kind of a professional job.  Oh well, another South End attempt at do-it-yourself gone awry, which reminds me, I got that drain to fix later today.

Needless to say I’m waiting for the county to contact me now that I’m back, tanned and rested from our trip back east.  I’m expecting a pretty pissed off county guy to call any day now.  Course, I’m not answering phones.  And in the future I expect I won’t just get put at the bottom of the To-Do list, I’ll be on my own from here on out.  Sometimes you just can’t catch a break.  And you probably shouldn’t take vacations….

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I’ve been out of the Loop lately, walking the Pacific beaches over on Washington’s pristine coast on the Olympic Peninsula. No wi-fi, no newspapers, no TV. I know, it’s hard to imagine in this day and age. Cold turkey from the Trump news cycle. Forget the 12 step program, just Total Immersion. Or Aversion. After a day or two the shakes settle down a bit, the fever abates, the absence even grows fonder. Just the slow rolling of waves endlessly soothing, endlessly churning, endlessly washing the sins of the world. Or something delusional like that….

But we’re back now in cell tower range, back to the endless crawlers of the news cycle, back to … yup, Trump stunts. Trying to catch up after a 72 hour hiatus, forget it, too much backlog and like they say out on the coast: Backlogs Kill! Or was it beach logs? Either way, they both probably do.

We’re evacuating personnel from Iraq and deploying a carrier fleet to the Gulf. Sounds ominous. We’re sending troops to the Mexican border, maybe to staunch the Iranian Revolutionary Guard from slipping through. And we escalated a war with China. A trade war anyway. Some other Cracker state has banned abortions. Trump pardoned a crook who wrote a book on what a great president he is. Jared has come up with a ‘new’ immigration plan. Immigrants on the border are being flown to Democratic counties in Florida. Half a dozen more Democrats have thrown their hat in the ring to run for President. The Attorney General is re-investigating FBI ‘spying’ on folks in Trump’s election campaign. Three days out of earshot and the world has destabilized in our absence. I doubt we’ll ever take another vacation again unless we’re hoping for an apocalypse. It’s too stressful coming back to a dystopian America every time.

We had a friend who trekked Nepal for a month and when she returned, she experienced what she called ‘culture shock’. Too much traffic, too many cereals in the grocery store, too much media, too many emails, too much stress, too much overload on every level. I know exactly what she meant. After only a few days…! Today I plan to go down to the beach. Walk in the woods. Work on a stained glass window. Maybe China will pay for it. Sure, China will pay for it.

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