At least twenty of the last twenty-eight mornings, I’ve awoken with an overwhelming relief that, THANK GOD, that horrific nightmare was over.  The seafood risotto, or the shrimp/quinoa stir fry or T-L’s lentil soup had traversed my digestive tract and sanity once again ruled.  Then I turned on my laptop to check my email and, assuming I wasn’t, in fact, still asleep, I found posted evidence that monsters are real, my face may have literally been melting off and Donald Trump was, WTF, President Elect.

I remember when W was pretend elected.  It took me months to comprehend how someone so incapable and so certifiably stupid could possibly have ascended to such high office, to be the virtual leader of the free world.  I was certain that his incompetence would have dire consequences and although my worst fears became manifest with the unconscionable, deadly invasion of Iraq and the blind-eye approach to the despicable behavior of Wall St., the man, the awe shucks moron, never seemed evil or cruel or despotic.  Sure, there was Cheney, the satanic puppet master, but W seemed to possess a simple sense of decency.

But Trump, the potential reality to what I still hope may be an E.coli-induced reverie, is evil and cruel and despotic and surrounded by a coven of howling, drooling homunculi.  And my relief that this may only be a bad dream where I’m not in Kansas anymore is overshadowed by a crushing foreboding that this is exactly like Kansas and Mississippi and Texas and lions and tigers and bears…oh, my!