Dear President Trump,

This morning we encountered an unexpected traffic snarl when we took my brother’s birthday card to the post office. The plan was to mail it there so it will get to him by Tuesday (hopefully) and then walk the dogs in that neighborhood to mix things up. We didn’t realize that the northbound lane of a major arterial near there is torn up and we forgot about the Christmas tree lot next door. Basically it was a zoo. I don’t know if I’ve told you, but we don’t have the most well behaved dogs in the world so while Laura dropped the card in the mail and said hello to one of her friends who sells the Seattle homeless paper, I hurried the dogs up the block, skirting all the people picking out their trees. After that, though, we had a really nice time and we took an entirely different route home (along with half the people in Northeast Seattle who were also trying to avoid the construction).

I’m not really sure why I’m telling you this. I guess it’s just kind of nice to focus on benign stuff for a change. I’m quite sick of you and all the overwrought drama you foist on us all day, every day. I miss those weekends when you used to disappear to Mar-a-lago. How about you go back to focusing on your golf game? Really, you might as well since I can’t imagine you want to concentrate on the cracks opening up in your brittle little shield. Perfecting your approach to the 13^th hole wouldn’t be a bad way to spend the rest of your time in office.

I spent most of the rest of the day working on a print – just quiet, no music or news or anything. Laura worked on a draft of the final exam she’s giving next week and aside from trying to help her come up with plausible population statistics to work into test items, I got to just play with color and think. Do you ever have time to be quiet and think? I bet you’re one of those people who don’t like silence, that you prefer to have the TV on when you’re alone so you don’t have to be quiet in your head. Well, it’s not like I do all that great being quiet when I don’t have something to keep my hands busy, so I’m not one to talk. Mostly today while I was quiet I thought about our brother-in-law. I miss him a lot. It was nice, though, to hang out with him in my head.

May we feel safe enough to take some quiet time.
May we be happy to poke around in our heads sometimes.
May we take care of our health by taking breaks from negativity.
May we treasure peace and quiet even if it’s not super comfortable or easy.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson