For Labrys

 She doesn't post to the 'net anymore but since she's still in this space I thought I'd us it to write her back.

Get it?

 

I do enjoy your old-school handwritten correspondence; I promise - really, no shit, promise - to actually write, pen-and-paper, back to you. 

 

But for now, this will have to make do.

Bottom line? I'm...good-ish. The thing I wrote away back still holds; here, now, I'm fine. Oh, sure, I have the usual pissing and moaning any GI has a right to, but it's mostly First World Problems. But I'm still the "optipess" I was then; happy locally, dismal globally.

At home? My Bride is lovely, and The Girl is a lot of salty teenage fun.

The Boy? Is being pretty useless at the moment. 

He's given up pretending to be striking for a PGE lineman job. His latest scheme is supposedly looking for something as a cop...but his "effort" in that direction is lacking, well, pretty much everything. He's talked about applying for the Portland Bureau's "cadet" thing this winter, but the Bureau began taking applications back in September and his is still unfinished. I've pointed him towards the Criminal Justince programs at both our local colleges and he's done nothing there.

He is still doing what he did in high school; hanging around playing videogames all day and into the night. 

If he was actually any good I'd recommend he fly to Seoul and try to get on a professional team, but I'm skeptical he'd have the remorseless drive to do that; as far as I can see he games for the giggles.

Now. Me?

My only real bitch is that my new knees have refused to shake off the weird post-op thing that they developed nearly immediately; my shins and insteps are partially numb.

 

Not completely; I have feeling in them. But they have that sort of tingling you get when you sit or lie on an arm or leg wrong and cut off the nerve impulses? Y'know what I'm talking about? "Asleep" as in "Oh, my foot's asleep" when you've sat with your leg tucked under you too long.

 

The fronts of my knees are like that, too, which isn't really a shock given the massive insult involved in tearing onto them, hacking out the bones, and then shoving in metal bits and sewing them back together.

 

But the instep thing?

 

That's weird, and I figured it'd wear off after a while. Nope. I'm to the point of calling the cutter and asking WTF. Not a life-changing problem, but...weird.

 

Other than that, I'm well and healthy. I'm enjoying the first couple of weeks of my retirement. I'm looking at ideas for more writing, including possibly flogging my "battles" pieces to a publisher or magazines. We'll see how that goes.

 

It's on the larger scale that I despair.

Beginning here in Portland, where the local government has decided to go with the Stupid Option for dealing with the homeless situation. I've been over and over this and it's not really worth rehashing other than to note that with a whole range of options to pick from the City commissioners went for the most crude and dismal - herding the scruffy poor into camps. Yeah, because that's worked so well before.

That and the local version of the "crime" panic has let the worthless fucking Police Bureau off the hook again, another subject we've beat to death here and not worth recounting, but my kid might be involved some day (are you reading this, kid? If you want that you gotta get your shit together!) so I keep hoping that someone or ones will force the worthless bastards to be better.

Then move up to the state, where the even-more-worthless GOP managed slight gains in the lege despite being no less worthless than ever (and even moreso in the case if the idiotic Greater Idaho nonsense) as a testimony to the poor taste of the average Oregon voter.

And from there to the nation, where, likewise, the GQP now will flood the federal House with shit in the words of the immortal Steve "I Fell Asleep Drunk With My Head In The Stewpot" Bannon. We're guaranteed two years of unmitigated monkey-shit-flinging about Hunter Biden, Tony Fauci, China Virus, J6 Conspiracies, and every other looney QANut bullshit thing ever thought of.

And meanwhile the climate continues to slowly boil.

I don't want to be dead any more than any other person who ever existed. But there are times I'm glad I'm old. I don't want to be here when the bills come due, the bills for our fucking stupidity about the industrial age, for our fucking unwillingness to call weird and creepy fascists weird and creepy fascists, for our very-human-but-utterly-dysfunctional happiness to whistle past all the difficult and dangerous issues that we should be willing and able to address.

Fucking people, as SSG Layne would have said, they could fuck up a wet dream.

But.

I'm still here. I'm still trying to do what I can. I'm still enjoying what life and living bring me.

And that's pretty much all anyone can do.

So. I hope this finds you and yours safe and well. May the aches of our age lie lightly upon you. May you find some moments of clarity and peace. May you be well and do well, for yourself and for those you love.

I remain,

your friend.

J