The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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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