The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Merry Christmas, Everyone! I guess it’s okay to say Christmas, but if you find that offensive, Happy Holidays! This has been a great year for the Daddle family and as we do every year, we like to share our glad tidings. Daughter Brenda went back to community college after her degree from Swarthmore proved less than marketable. She is taking Business Accounting and expects to find much better prospects after graduation. We told her English Renaissance History narrowed her career chances, but you know kids these days. A year working for Burger King as an ‘essential worker’ convinced her to change her major. Even with the minimum wage increase that’s coming.

Son #1 Jeremiah served his 9 months and two weeks at the Snohomish County Jail for some breaking and entering. Drugs! You think you’ve warned them about the consequences but they think we’re just old fogies. Jerry should be fine after his Narcotics Anonymous regimen. For the time being he’s comfortable in the basement apartment Linda and I set up. Sure, I miss the pool table, but family always comes first! And it’s great to have him home again, even if we have to lock up our valuables and continually need to quarantine when he exposes us to the Covid his friends seem to always bring to the party.

Son #2 has joined a religious commune down near Santa Cruz. Brian is not supposed to contact his earthly family so we haven’t got much news to report. Occasionally he writes for money and we are happy to help out. Well, Linda is, I confess it irks me no end to send that little twerp anything beyond a message to Wake Up! But these things too shall pass, isn’t that what they say?

Linda is doing much better this year. As you might remember she struggled with some mild depression. Empty nest syndrome is what I thought it was, nothing she wouldn’t pass through soon. Boy, was I ever wrong this time! But her doctor has her on some very effective medications and her crying has greatly lessened. Jerry has been a great help. Sometimes he even makes his own lunches.

Retirement, as a friend of mine likes to say, is greatly underrated. Oh, I struggled a little with boredom at first. Like everyone. But right after my heart attack in February (not to worry, I’m okay, just a couple of stents) I started walking more. You know I never really liked exercise of any sort, but that ticker-tweet kicked me in the butt to get up off the couch and get outdoors. I’ve been walking every day. Truthfully, I walk almost all day. Linda says I’m obsessed, but I say a walk a day keeps the cardiologist away. I tried to talk Linda into walking with me, but she says 20 miles is too much for her. Ha ha. Her sense of humor is coming back!

We did make a couple of trips this year. One to Santa Cruz to see Son #2 at his Seeing Orb Commune, but we were told at the security gate no one was allowed inside, not even parents. Admittedly things got slightly out of hand and the sheriff’s office had to intervene, but in the end I settled down — without some damn mantra — and we drove to the coast and stayed at a very nicely restored auto court overlooking the beach before driving back home.

We also attended a Trump rally in October up at Lynden. The man can connect with an audience, I’ll say that, and we were happily surprised when he won again this year for another four year stint. He’s making America great again and even though I know some of you didn’t vote for Mr. Trump, I think you must to be pleasantly surprised. The business of America is business and this is a billionaire businessman. Okay, enough politics….

Hope you and your family have a warm holiday. We in the Daddle household are going to make Christmas Great Again. It will be Yuge, as Donald says. Ha ha! I mean Ho Ho! Love at ya! Linda and Jeremiah and Skeeter

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Thanksgiving came and went a few days ago. We usually invite a few friends and neighbors in for turkey and dressing, cranberries and sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie and plenty of libation … but not this year. Just us chickens, Ma and me, plus a turkey, smallest one I could find, too much for two people by double.

These are the dark days of Northwest winter, rain and wind, the dreary beginning of months of northern latitude, early sunsets and late sunrises. The urge to hibernate beckons seductively from under the quilts. Like it does every year. Add to that Covid, be nice to sleep until the vaccines are ready.

But, in all honesty, the holidays find us healthy, still here on the remote South End, busy with our projects, retired or not. Our Thanksgiving was a nostalgic flashback to those first years down here when we knew virtually nobody and nobody knew us. Anonymity, thy name is bliss. We had each other after losing that for a few years, so to reunite was a small miracle and one to be thankful for, not just those early years, but every year. So to spend a Thanksgiving by ourselves during the plague, well, we’ve learned how to celebrate that long long ago. The only difference, I suspect, is we have so incredibly much more to be thankful for.

Sometimes life surprises you with lucky rolls of the dice. We’ve had more than our fair share. But none, if you ask this old codger, as lucky as the year we got back together, two broke kids holed up in a shack at the end of America, on an island far from anywhere, just the two of us and a future we hadn’t yet dreamed.

What more could anyone ask for?

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