Sequim Gazette Editorial and Letters to the Editor

Finally, I am catching up with reality. This follows months of living in a twilight world of lost days, weeks and months.

Of course, many would say reality and I were separated at birth.

To them I answer with a written raspberry: Thppppppppppppppppp!

Besides, everyone knows I am Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicholaevna, the rightful heir to the Russian throne. Bow down to me, you common Bolshevik weasels.

I am also Golf Man, the superhero who streaks through Sequim in my jazzed-up golf cart, fighting crime whenever the police are preoccupied with expanding the city coffers by writing traffic tickets for speeders.

If the bad guys become particularly nasty, I whip out my hybrid 56-degree wedge with the illegal grooves and horizontalize their perpendicular positions.

I just hope the police don't stop me for going too fast in my golf cart on my way to negate evildoers' nefarious narratives. In that case, I'd have to use my golf towel of invisibility to escape detection.

Well, that, and my trusty radar detector, which also serves on the golf course to alert me when the beer cart is nearby.

But I digress.

I've had trouble knowing what month it is, let alone what day it happens to be, ever since my dogs chewed up my day planner.

That happened somewhere back in July. I think. I can't be sure. I know we had house guests a little while after the Fourth of July, but after that, everything becomes a big blur.

I do know I lost a lot of sleep at night.

On the other hand, I gained a considerable amount of sleep in the daytime.

I worried at night about not wanting to miss summer because I had vowed to get in a lot of outdoor exercise, including considerably more rounds of golf than previous years.

Then when morning rolled around, I was too tired from not sleeping, so I went back to bed, vowing to wake up after a short nap.

Then it would be night again and the whole vicious circle started all over.

Occasionally, I would go upstairs to check my day planner, forgetting its masticated fate, fall into a state of date-deprived depression, lie down on the couch and watch "The People's Court.

I contemplated suing my dogs, only to realize they probably wouldn't have legal standing in court, especially the yellow lab, who suffers from bad arthritis in her hind legs and can't stand for long periods of time.

Judge Judy would sneer over her glasses, give me the skunk eye, then bark at me for taking up her time with a frivolous case.

Frivolous? Your honor, I loved my day planner, with its burnt-orange colored, fake-leather cover. It had ample room in the back for notes I should take when I have a great idea, but forget later because I left my day planner at home.

And it had a mini-world atlas, so in the event of a geography question on "Jeopardy," I could run to my daughter's former bedroom that serves as my office, check the atlas and shout, "Where are the Canary Islands, Alex?"

The fake leather attracted the dogs, especially the beagle. He is always on the lookout for food, whether it's actually meant to be edible or otherwise - like, say, a pair of underwear, his leash or an electrical cord.

So far he appears to know the difference between live and unplugged.

My recovery has begun thanks to a new day planner for 2009 that includes the last five months of 2008, so week by week, I am putting together what I have missed since July.

I just realized fall started Monday, and that my column appears this week.

Unless the dogs eat it.



Jim Guthrie's journalism career has spanned 41 years with newspapers in California and Washington. He is interested in playwriting and poetry and lives in Port Angeles.