The Past Year II. It sucked or maybe life just sucks.

It was a terrible year.  It's bound to be a worse year.  We were all stupid as December wound down in the dreadful year of 2020 thinking that 2021 would of course be better, we elected a competent president, the vaccinations were rolling out and come January 20th things would start proceeding normally as in the past, solving seeming insoluble problems as Americans do, like you know, landing on an enemy-held fortified continent on D-Day and saving the world for democracy, landing a man on the moon, stuff like that.  But then January 6th happened that threatened and still threatens to end democracy in the world, and the cuckoo-heads won't get vaccinated so we can't get out of this covid soup.  On a personal note I picked up pickle ball in August and maybe I'm playing above my level but I continue to lose 9 out of 10 games despite my continuing improvement, and it is terribly frustrating to go along with not having any children, not knowing my grandchildren, losing a third of my 401K and owing another third of what's left on April 15th to the government in taxes due to a disastrous conversion and, well last year sucked even during attempts at recreation and this year will suck just as bad or worse I'm convinced (I went 0-6 today) and maybe life just sucks.  (Wanna win?  Play against me.)

I tried my hand at political cartooning.  Whaddaya think?  This is the twice-impeached, disgraced, unfit former president plotting a coup with the squirrelly Pillow Guy.  (You can be my Albert Speer in my dictatorship, Mike.)

Was everything last year terrible? I liked my trip to Colorado in August to check on my rental house in Louisville.  And then it came within a hairsbreadth of burning down on December 30th as half the town succumbed to a raging, wind-driven wildfire, and it undoubtedly suffered smoke damage and possibly scorching, I just don't know yet.  The holocaust leveled the row of houses a mere two blocks away.  (At my sister's house in Denver I discovered on her mantle this cross-stitch piece which I had stitched 40 years ago and given to my aunt in Colorado.  My sister acquired it upon my aunt's death a few years back.)

I did take a two-hour hike in Rocky Mountain National Park.  That was a short bit of relaxation and beauty in the vast Saragossa Sea that was 2021.  (A high mountain meadow in RMNP.  The friend I was hiking with pointed out that a wildfire in the mountains came down from up high a few years back and came roaring across this meadow and caused the evacuation of his town, Estes Park, although the fire didn't reach the town that time.  Since he is president of the board at the town's sewer plant, he could not leave, as he had to stay and try to save that public utility in the advent the wildfire consumed the town.)