I should have known this week was cursed on Monday. It took forever to get out of the house — forgot this, oops I need to put something in the crockpot, etc. And I lost my wallet. It fell out of my pocket as I was putting the dry cleaning into the car, part of my super-efficient early-Monday, after-workout routine. The good news is, it was found by a nice older man who was trying to find me in the White Pages (HA HA HA HA HA) when I realized what I’d done and raced back to the dry cleaner.

Some would see that as a glass-half-full good omen for the week, along with the chicken soup that turned out fine after I threw it together in the crockpot practically on my way out the door.

But I woke up Tuesday sick, and remain sick. Half a cold, kinda-fever, GI discomfort, nothing specific, just general malaise. (I’m the only person in the world who gets sick after eating chicken soup, evidently.) I relocated to Kate’s bed when Alan woke me at 3 a.m. to inform me I was snoring loud enough to wake the dead in cemeteries miles away. It was Kate’s bed instead of the guest room, because that bed is still strewn with tax documents, for the returns I have yet to finish.

So not a great week. so far. I have hopes for the remainder, as soon as I get this little mixed salad of bloggage served:

The Trumps — and the U.S. government, because who are we kidding about who paid for this — have access to the greatest photographers on the planet, and this is what some Belgian guy woman serves up for the first lady’s official portrait:

Of course Twitter is beside itself over this. Glamour Shots has been invoked, as has Olan Mills. I keep looking at it, wondering why a 46-year-old woman with classic Slavic bone structure and piercing blue eyes, not to mention access to the finest makeup and makeup artists in New York City, would approve a soft-lens product that you’d use on a pimply 17-year-old for her senior picture. I wonder if that’s a layer of subtext, the fogging of the lens that symbolizes her fundamental iciness and, shall we say, lack of enthusiasm for her new job. I’m fascinated by the background, which doesn’t say White House at all. (Although I think it is the White House; that looks like the window over the door on the Pennsylvania Avenue side.) And of course I see that Natasha always puts her hands in show-the-diamond position, her way of saying it was all worth it, all the humiliation, all the cheating, all the nights spent next to an old man who, having caught you, now barely acknowledges your existence, because this is her ring, and not yours.

Like I said, I’ve been sick. My mind gets sorta weird when its feverish. UPDATE: As usual, Robin Givhan has something smarter to say.

Also, there is this, and it is funny.

Back to work. Yes, I’m working. You think a sick day means couch time and Netflix? Ha ha ha ha ha.

A glorious weekend, gloriousness mitigated only somewhat by having to spend 50 percent of it at workish activity, but oh well. I’ll just have to finish my taxes during the week sometime. But I got in the first bike ride of the season, which was preceded by a humiliating fall.

I pumped up the tires in both bikes and took them for around-the-block spins, just to see if there was anything that required immediate attention. Both were fine, but as I brought the road bike in for a landing, I realized too late that I’d clipped in, which meant my feet were attached to the pedals and I couldn’t twist them free in time to get one down. When this happens you basically fall over on your side, which is not as scary or disaster-tempting as going over the handlebars, but still hurts, especially when you fall onto your garage floor. I’m going to have at least one bruise tomorrow, maybe a few.

No one was there to witness my humiliation except Wendy. And she can’t talk.

Let’s hope that’s the worst the season has to offer me. I went down to the river on my usual one-hour circuit and checked out the creeping gentrification in the Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood. A co-working space opened over the winter, a sure sign that the hipsters are coming. But there’s still a great bar I discovered only recently, so fingers crossed all is not lost yet, even if they now have a coffee shop and bike lanes.

And on the drive to Lansing, I started the S-town podcast, about which I will surely have more to say, eventually.

But not before I say something about Bill O’Reilly, serial sexual harasser, whose sordid history with female underlings was covered rather comprehensively in the NYT over the weekend. I will say what I’ve been saying a lot lately: These are repulsive people, and seeing O’Reilly’s smug face on the same page with Roger Ailes’ jowls only serves to remind me what these guys’ world is: Powerful, rich, awful men and their cocktail-dress brigade of sweet young things, mostly mistresses and side pieces. Reading it made me mad at everybody — O’Reilly, Ailes, every lawyer involved, the women who walk willingly into these jobs for whatever reason. May they all fall into the abyss.

Things aren’t going so well for the young and used-up down in Trump country, but they have their fingers crossed they can get on disability. A sad story.

With that, our day begins…with rain. Fine. At least we got two days of sun, going into it.

Have a good one, all.

The other day I told Alan that if I opened a dog restaurant, I’d call it The Bowl. Or maybe just Bowl. More modern, that one. He replied that if he opened a dog restaurant, it’d be fine dining, and he’d call it Squirrel.

We will have been married 24 years in May, ladies and gentlemen. This is what we’ve been reduced to. Dog restaurants and complaining about the president.

What would a cat restaurant be called? Can Opener.

Doing better today, thanks. Got more sleep last night, for starters, and had a great swim this morning. My insomnia is worse than it’s been in a long time, and I’m not sure why. However, I do know that the first way you treat it is to get your shit right, your ducks in a row and just take better care of yourself. (A little melatonin can help, although it didn’t this week.) Do that before you call the doc for sleep meds. So, lentil soup for dinner, just one glass of wine, and all was better.

And then I woke up this morning and read all about Karen Pence, America’s second lady. He keeps a separate landline phone on his desk that only she has the number to. They exercised in the Indiana governor’s mansion on side-by-side treadmills (ugh, treadmills — go for a run outside, Pences!). And this startling detail:

In 2002, Mike Pence told the Hill that he never eats alone with a woman other than his wife and that he won’t attend events featuring alcohol without her by his side, either.

I recognize this as a cornerstone of the “marriage retreats” someone in Indiana was always throwing. The takeaway from these is always to concentrate more on one another, and avoid even the occasion of sin by not having separate lives beyond what is absolutely necessary. While on the one hand I understand the impulse — one of the few beliefs I hold in common with most evangelicals is to focus more on your marital relationship than your children — I don’t believe this python-like, wrapped-together model is healthy, either. As the great Esther Perel counsels, if you don’t get some distance, even just psychological distance, you will absolutely lose your fire. It’s a paradox, yes, but true.

And pro tip: If just sitting across a lunch table tempts you away from your marriage, man, you have more problems than I can advise you on.

Yesterday I told you about Dustin and the Olds, aka all his favorite bands, not one of which has an average age younger than Medicare eligibility. So enjoy this story about adjacent demi-celebrity Old wife that he passed along today:

Donna Betts, wife of founding member of the Allman Brothers Dickey Betts, was arrested after deputies claimed a video showed her standing on her dock, aiming a 30-30 Winchester rifle at a high school rowing crew threatening to shoot them.

What I found most alarming was the mugshot:

Ever since I started covering my gray hair with color, I knew the day would come when I would tip into Ronald Reagan territory, where the hair was such a mismatch with the face that it would be jarring. Every time I get a touchup, I ask my colorist: “Is it time to start transitioning to silver? Soon? Next year?” She always says no. I suspect she’s starting to fib a little. Hey, we can’t all be like Deborah with her icy-white fabulousness.

Back to brainstorming dog restaurant names. Or horses! How about Hay, Baby?

An all-links piece tonight, sorry. I had a full, long and busy day, and am working on a story, and it’s going …fairly well. Y’all might even like it. But right now it’s after 9 p.m. and I just want to shovel some links out and go to bed.

Hoosiers! Remember when the state didn’t observe Daylight Saving Time and every year we talked talked talked it to death? And how perhaps one good thing Mitch Daniels did was ram it through the legislature? Well, Michigan is regressing in that direction, or at least there’s a bill in the legislature and it’s getting a little attention. I don’t think it’ll pass, but reading my colleague’s story about it? It made me feel…12 years younger. Because stories like this ran every year.

My young friend Dustin loves to see “the olds,” as he calls the music stars of my youth, and I am old enough to be Dustin’s mother. In fact, I am older than Dustin’s mother, and now that we have that out of the way, Dustin! Someday an experience like this will happen:

Few concert experiences are more dispiriting than watching a proven artist flounder onstage. Especially when the performer happens to be an icon. His glory days behind him, Kris Kristofferson played a 95-minute show Wednesday at a sold-out City Winery that engendered feelings of pity, discomfort and bewilderment. Witnessing the 80-year-old singer-songwriter/actor struggle to get through even a single verse without mistakes raised the question of why he chose the solo route — and put his dignity at risk.

This weekend he spotted Exene Cervenka in Detroit, and chatted her up. It’s like Pokemon Go for him.

The semiotics of the all-male Trumpian photo op. Disturbing:

At some point, we have to ask: Is this really a pattern of errors? Maybe these aren’t tone-deaf mistakes at all, but intentional messages to right-wing supporters.

…Of course, the reality behind the photo is nearly as disturbing as the image itself. There weren’t many women in that room because the Freedom Caucus appears to be almost entirely male. Women make up less than nine percent of congressional Republicans. President Trump’s cabinet is the most white and male in 35 years. Among his top staff members, men outnumber women two to one. From the top of the Republican Party on down, men run the show; there just aren’t enough women for every photo.

Yet this, too, is a choice, and it also sends a message about the party’s values and to whom it appeals. Republicans bank on a white male voter base that is shrinking demographically, yet they are making no real effort to broaden their appeal, perhaps counting on voter suppression to make it harder for likely Democratic voters to cast their ballots, and simultaneously throwing red meat to the men they need to turn out to carry them to victory.

Finally, Dexter is fine! He writes:

…just busy here with a massive spring cleaning, for which we had to hire two cleaning ladies as Carla Lee has cataract surgeries (one tomorrow) and next month her second knee replacement. This is the total job here, from wall washing to carpet scrubbing to emptying and sorting every shelf and cabinet and donating ten big garbage bags of out-of-date clothing, coats, boots and such. I am just going to wait until next year to do the same to the garage.

We care about each other at this blog, folks.

I swear, when this presidency is over, I’m going to turn off Twitter, turn off Facebook, turn off this damn blog (for a while, anyway). And I’m going to go to a cabin in the woods with a nice wood stove or fireplace. I’m going to bring a stack of novels and Vogue magazines. And you won’t see me until I’m damn good and ready.

This shit is exhausting. Even on a “good” weekend, it’s almost impossible to keep up with everything. The analyses. (Very good one there.) The outrages. (Very outrageous one, yes.) The WTF-we-are-doomed / thanks-deplorables reports from the field.

This was a wonderful read — a dispatch from Trump country that somehow wasn’t about politics — but of course you couldn’t help thinking about whether this event, a free-for-all amateur boxing…thing, would even exist if the whole county wasn’t poor as dirt and has nothing better to to:

One weekend every March, almost every resident in this town crowds the tan-and-gray bleachers of the local armory to watch their friends and neighbors beat each other bloody. The boxing-brawling event — known as “The Rough N Rowdy” — draws more than 2,000 spectators a night in a 3,000-person city nestled so deep in the mountains that your cellphone won’t ring. The winners leave with a trophy, a jacket and a check for $1,000 — the same take-home as a few weeks of soot-covered work in the local mines.

“People love violence. You’ve got a bunch of people down here who just want to show they’re a badass,” said Breyer Morgan, 21, who has been coming to the fights since he was a little boy and has worked the bell at the event for the past three years. “They see that $1,000, and you’ve got people coming out of the woodwork. There is nothing else to do out here … and that $1,000, that’s a whole lot of beer, man.”

And the above is only a fraction of the reading I did this weekend, very little of it recreational.

Gray and overcast, and I’m starting to get peevish about it. But the financial well refilled with Friday’s payday, Kate blew through for a quick visit/practice sesh with her band, we had Chinese takeout with friends in their brand-new house and so there was very little to complain about, all things considered. A few pounds found their way back into the house over the long winter, and I’m setting about shooing them back out. I’m finding the question, “What am I really hungry for?” is useful. Sometimes I just need a glass of water and 15 minutes of quiet time.

Any other bloggage? Well, let’s see here…

You could read Mitch Albom’s modest, self-effacing column marking the 20th anniversary of “Tuesdays With Morrie,” if you like. I don’t recommend it, but maybe, like me, you enjoy a good hate-read.

Tanned, rested and ready, the Obamas enter their next chapter. Not a minute too soon:

…While other recent ex-presidents have devoted their retirement years to apolitical, do-gooder causes, Obama is gearing up to throw himself into the wonky and highly partisan issue of redistricting, with the goal of reversing the electoral declines Democrats experienced under his watch.

Both the continued interest in Obama and his desire to remain engaged in civic life place him in an unusual position for a former president. George W. Bush left office with low approval rates, retreating to Dallas to write a memoir and take up painting. Bill Clinton decamped for New York on a somewhat higher note politically but downshifted to a mission of building his family’s foundation and supporting his wife’s political career.

Can the Obamas put their heads down and build their ambitious presidential center while living only blocks from the White House? Or is it inevitable that the former president will get pulled back into the political swamp?

Time to make dinner, make a to-do list, maybe watch some Jack Russell videos.

My week usually starts at a gallop and slows to a trot, but this was pretty much a good brisk canter Monday through Friday. Last night was a Thing, a dinner, and early this morning was another Thing, and now it’s the almost-weekend, and you guys need, if nothing else, a fresh comment thread.

The debate over the health-care bill is still going on, although it appears pretty much dead in the House. Some Republicans think it punishes too many people, and a significant number think it doesn’t punish enough. Now that’s what I call a winning coalition, but hey — whatever works.

And things are not likely to get any better from here on out.

I interviewed this author on another matter, but in the course of poking around his website for a photo I found this piece, about the launch and almost immediate failure of Melania Trump’s skincare line. Of course I was entranced when I realized the story included the Hilberts, the Indianapolis version of the Trumps, if Melania had been an exotic dancer at Eric or Don Jr.’s bachelor party.

So that’s worth a read. A good weekend to all, guys. I have yet more work to do.

I am having a moment of ass-chapping here, in that my ass is feeling rather chapped. Why? Because Princess Ivanka is moving into the West Wing, and I’m cocking my head and holding my hand to my ear to hear the screams of protest from conservatives, and whaddaya know? Nothing. None of the people who howled when Hillary Clinton was occasionally stopping into the Oval for a reason other than to ask the POTUS’ opinion on upholstery swatches are saying a word today.

Many of these same people were all over the media at the time, similarly up in arms at the idea that a mother who wasn’t an actual welfare recipient might want to work for a living. “Cut out those manicures and pantyhose, and you won’t need a second job,” they’d say. “Kids love macaroni and cheese.” Admittedly, the 2008 crash crushed the idea that any person who puts a career on hold isn’t risking a terrible financial setback down the road, or that a one-income family can just float along forever as though they haven’t gotten rid of their safety net, and that more or less crushed the mommy wars, but I’m still pissed. If there’s one person who should feel completely secure in delegating a career to an underling and going home to raise one’s three small children, it ought to be the rich daughter of a rich man, whose husband is also rich and whose fashion empire is basically just Chinese crap and not exactly haute couture.

And now one is going to the White House, but hey, freedom. And it’s 25 years later. We’ve evolved.

I shouldn’t hold a grudge, but I do.

And I can’t even with these people anymore.

David Ignatius on a reality we can only hope to see:

The House Intelligence Committee hearing Monday marked the end of the opening installment of “The President,” the must-watch reality/horror show that has transfixed the nation and the world. Now the plot gets more serious, perhaps darker, with some new characters likely to emerge in key national-security roles.

President Trump should be less of a stage hog going forward, and his Twitter storms less intense. He is often described as a narcissist, but he’s not suicidal. He knows he has been rebuffed in a public hearing that he can’t ridicule as “fake news.” With his approval rating below 40 percent, he needs to broaden his base. Trump wants to disrupt, but he also wants to succeed.

John Hinckley is out of prison, but don’t read anything into the juxtaposition. I just thought it was interesting. Hardly any mental patients get serious inpatient care anymore.

Happy Wednesday, then.

What do you call a day with three hours of meetings? (With an extra hour for management, plus driving, plus some of another meeting?) Long, that’s what. So here I am at the keys, thinking: I’m not into this.

On the other hand, so much news today. The big news! More news: Right-wing Barbie suspended for thinking independently. And then, of course, the SCOTUS hearing process began.

Isn’t that enough to discuss for 24 hours? I hope so, because I don’t have much more.

Two notable deaths this weekend, neither of them tragedies — Chuck Berry and Jimmy Breslin. Of each, I can only say that they were appreciated at this end. I saw approximately one million tweets that mentioned he could play a guitar just like ringing a bell, but for my money, I’m partial to “Nadine.” Not his biggest hits or quite the rave-up, but it has some wonderful rhymes in the lyrics. (I’m a writer, I notice the lyrics.) My two faves:

I saw her from the corner when she turned and doubled back
And started walking toward a coffee colored Cadillac
I was pushing through the crowd to get to where she’s at
And I was campaign shouting like a southern diplomat

and

She move around like a wayward summer breeze,
Go, driver, go go on, catch her for me please
Moving through the traffic like a mounted cavalier
Leaning out the taxi window trying to make her hear

“Campaign shouting like a southern diplomat” — that’s a phrase we should hear more often.

And then there’s “Brown Eyed Handsome Man,” can’t forget this one:

Milo Venus was a beautiful lass
She had the world in the palm of her hand
But she lost both her arms in a wrestling match
To get brown eyed handsome man

That made me laugh on many a bike ride when it came up on the iPod.

Berry was 90. Breslin was 88. Deaths at this age, after long and fruitful careers, aren’t tragedies. The tragedy is the decline in the newspaper business that makes it impossible for another Jimmy Breslin to emerge from its wreckage. Yes, there are wonderful new writers that we never would have found without the internet, but a moment of silence for what we’ve lost. Like this:

Here is how, in one of the columns that won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, he focused on a single man, David Camacho, to humanize the AIDS epidemic, which was widely misunderstood at the time:

“He had two good weeks in July and then the fever returned and he was back in the hospital for half of last August. He got out again and returned to Eighth Street. The date this time doesn’t count. By now, he measured nothing around him. Week, month, day, night, summer heat, fall chill, the color of the sky, the sound of the street, clothes, music, lights, wealth dwindled in meaning.”

That’s a good obit I linked to, up there. Dan Barry. Can’t go wrong with him, either.

Sorry I’m just noodling around here. Long weekend, good weekend. Finished “The Underground Railroad,” finally. Schvitzed. Hit the Eastern Market for the first time in weeks, where I saw this:

I think it’s a writing center. But not a bad motto. Since we’re talking about writers today.

Happy week ahead, all.

I have to make little sticky notes about this stuff and get it out of the way right up front, so: Sherri, send me your email address, so I can share it with Basset, who wants to know something about your transportation package.

Also, MichaelG? Send up a flare. We’re worried about you.

And now it is Friday, or nearly Friday. Another insane week on the national scene, in which the president unveiled a budget that would make him a literal granny-starver. Of course it won’t go through like that, but here’s what we are in for, for the next four years.

Forcing rictus-like smile here.

At least we’re not one of these people:

In interviews, nearly a dozen White House aides and federal agency staffers described a litany of suspicions: that rival factions in the administration are trying to embarrass them, that civil servants opposed to President Donald Trump are trying to undermine him, and even that a “deep state” of career military and intelligence officials is out to destroy them.

Aides are going to great lengths to protect themselves. They’re turning off work-issued smartphones and putting them in drawers when they arrive home from work out of fear that they could be used to eavesdrop. They’re staying mum in meetings out of concern that their comments could be leaked to the press by foes.

Many are using encrypted apps that automatically delete messages once they’ve been read, or are leaving their personal cellphones at home in case their bosses initiate phone checks of the sort that press secretary Sean Spicer deployed last month to try to identify leakers on his team.

Imagine working like this, day after day. Would it be worth it, because you were in the Oval? Or would it be the sort of soul-sucking hellishness that makes you lie in bed at night and stare at the ceiling with laser-beam eyes?

And here, of course, is another terrible story about our world today, heroin division:

West Virginia officials estimate 150,000 residents — 8 percent of its population — needed substance abuse treatment in 2016. Just a fifth received help from treatment providers belonging to the state’s top behavioral health association. And only 156 detox beds were available across the entire state.

“There are not enough resources available,” said Kim Miller, director of corporate development at the Prestera Center, West Virginia’s largest behavioral health service provider. “There’s a workforce shortage. If we could pay people better, we could have a more robust workforce — more docs, more psychiatrists, more counselors — and more treatment.”

Went big for Trump, who wants to cut drug treatment from health insurance.

I don’t want to leave you with bummer stuff, but it’s almost the weekend, and hey! Happy St. Patrick’s Day. The Irish are a wonderful race. Enjoy it.