Category Archives: Uncategorized

Texas weather is getting wildly wonky. For the third time, and also the worst time, it rained so hard that the water coming downhill from the neighbor’s yard flooded through cracks in the brickwork outside and endampened the family room carpet. It is a mess. And probably not covered by insurance, since we didn’t specifically have flood insurance, and if we did, we didn’t have downhill-racing flooding insurance rather than up-from-the-creek flooding insurance. The Princess’s bedroom had two inches of water on the floor where flooding had previously destroyed her carpet.

And since that wasn’t test-of-our-character enough, the electricity went out at 11:00 p.m. and didn’t come back until 11:00 a.m. this morning. Twelve hours of darkness, no air-conditioning, no fans, standing water everywhere, and a panicky dog afraid of the thunder… How can that not be good times? But we survived it. Better than a tornado. Right? That’s probably reserved for next time.

I am having trouble drawing due to arthritis and other illnesses all mixed together like witches’ poison. So, today I apologize with old drawings and a promise to do better next Saturday.

Let me also show you Firefang, a D&D character who may soon make her way into a novel, The Forever Boy. She’s supposedly a dragon traveling in human form. I don’t know if we can believe her, but I don’t plan to make her mad anytime soon. The dragon in the picture is what she says she looks like au naturel. Let’s not try to argue with her about that. Fiery temper, don’t you know.

The world that I grew up in has disappeared into the past. I do not know what the future will bring. It used to be that spring was a time for flowers that reappear and fill Iowa with color again after a gray-and-white winter of cold and snow. And you could protect the little garden that exemplified your whole world with chickenwire, that Midwestern thing you see between the kids and the flowers in the Paffooney above keeping the beauty from being picked or trampled during games. As I write this, a massive cold front and potential blizzard threatens Iowa as a result of the changes industry has made to our climate. Will Iowa survive? The breadbasket of the world should be starting to plant the new summer’s crop. And floodwaters have spoiled enough of last years harvest to influence gas prices and raise food prices as there will be less ethanol and corn oil this fall.

And will I myself make it very much longer? I am ill today. I seem to have developed a pink-eye infection out of nowhere. I feel bad. And having just paid an exorbitant amount of money for Trump’s “beautiful tax cut”, I don’t have enough left for both a doctor’s visit along with antibiotics and food to last the rest of the month. Ah, the joys of being ill and bankrupt! Hopefully my body can still fight off infection by itself.

So, I end here today, feeling awful and still being a pessimist. We shall see if hope survives tomorrow. The fight is set before me for today.