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I am beginning to despair about getting back into my regular writing routines. I am plagued with an inability to concentrate, my fingers don’t work right on the keyboard anymore, and I am not getting enough sleep. The ideas are there in my writer’s brain. Two novellas and a novel are already planned out to the end and packed in mental packing peanuts in the novel-storage closet in the fore-brain. I need to get them out and start juggling, the way the girl in the illustration juggles three bunnies.

By the way, the Paffooney was not my idea. It was inspired by #mandyslittlestudiodtiys on Instagram.

Soon we will start the administration of The Pumpkinhead President, the Sequel. My Gawd! Since 2016 we have been going through this. When does it end? Should we have been rooting for the assassins? No. If the Orange Thing that Rules Our Lives had been shot in the head, it would only have made him madder and more Hitler-y. You can’t assassinate someone by shooting them through an organ they don’t have. But I am bone tired of putting up with the Monkeyother Firetrucker (You know which letters to remove.) Everything he does and everything he plans to do hurts me. I invested my life in Education. He plans to eliminate the Department of Education in the Federal Government. My wife is an immigrant from the Philippines. She spent more than twenty years nailing down her US Citizenship. He wants to denaturalize immigrants of color and deport them. For the sake of meanness and petty cruelty. My kids were all born here, but their Birthright Citizenship is going to be removed too. And he is going to slam the economy again in the way that Republicans always do so that I have to choose between buying overpriced medication to stay alive and buying overpriced foodstuffs, allegedly to keep myself alive. And this will be done so he can renew the trillions of dollars in tax cuts he gives to millionaires and billionaires, very few of whom work as hard as I do (even though I am retired.) The gassy turbulence his actions build up in me threatens to explode into firey coot-rants and burn it all down. And I am a man, even as a crazy old coot of a man, who would much rather build things than blow them up. So, let’s find ways to turn down the gasses that the Fartbag Fuhrer generates, and keep me away from open flames while I am still ignitable.

My wife’s mother passed away on my birthday. My wife is now in the Philippines. Tronald Dump is now going to be Pumpkinhead President again. Maybe when the funeral and affairs are settled, he won’t let her come home again. And my daughter is sick with severe flu and has no health insurance or job. I can’t afford one trip to the emergency room. So, we are walking the tightrope over a pit filled with red-bellied piranhas and the rope has been slathered with axle grease. The director of the scene hollers that the time has come to dance a ballet twirl. “But those are real piranhas!” I screech. “It’s in the contract!” he yells back. So, we twirl… as the wind comes up.

Metaphors can make you laugh… or make you squirm… depending on what happens next.

My time left on this Earth is limited. My art skills are deteriorated. Using AI art programs feels like cheating, because the drawings are mine, but they are worked on by computer programs that overlay someone else’s art skills on my drawings.

But I am determined to draw and paint as much as I can for as long as I can until the Grim Reaper finally beats me in that chess game that determines the final outcome. Bree in this picture won’t be there to watch the chess game. She’s not real. Like most people in my life at present, she’s imaginary, based on a memory and a photo from Instagram. The promise is that I will not give up drawing and making pictures, no matter what compromises I have to make, until Grim pries the art tool out of my cold, dead hand.