Marking Inauguration Day with mixed emotions and a heavy heart 🇺🇸 🗽💔"

Today was a catch‑up day.
I finally finished the laundry, though I’m not sure how it piled up so fast.
Badger had been doing it for me while I was sick.

Poor Badger got drafted into a minor clean up this evening.
We kept smelling, and I’ll be honest, road kill.
I mean, it smelled point-blank like road kill that had been sitting in the hot July sun for a month.
OK, maybe Raven’s work boots, he keeps his shoes in the hallway in front of the heater.
Possibly Lady, I mean, she smells plumb fishy some days.
We haven’t figured that one out.

Finally, Annabelle jumped into my lap.
I looked down, and oh, gag.
She’d had an accident.
Right in my lap.

Yeah, I went to clean up.
Badger sanitized everything, and Miss Annie is sitting in a crate howling.
I’ll call the veterinarian because no animal should smell that nasty.
The floors got mopped, the house smells piney fresh, and the couches got washed again.

My crazy Heron went fishing this morning, came home, grabbed his dog, and went hiking at Seven Islands State Birding Park.
I told him it was too cold to do either of those.

New, old president has been elected.
I’m doing my best to ignore the change of power.
Cowboy says that surely they had someone better than that nut, but he wouldn’t vote, so I don’t see how he can complain.
I did vote, and I will complain.

Four years of the “great orange one” and the so‑called Appalachian vice president.

Pretend.

I’m Appalachian, born and raised here, living the real culture, not the stereotype.

You don’t grow up somewhere else and then turn it into a costume when it suits you.

That man grew up in Ohio, not here.

“Handmaid’s Tale”, here we come.