When I got home yesterday from another morning on the radio, Meat and Tater were sitting on their front porch. I walked straight over.
"Permission to come aboard." I was speaking to Tater.
Meat responded. "We don't need any!"
"Speak for yourself, grumpy. I haven't had any SJ in over a month...come on up here."
It's true. After a couple weeks of fine porch sitting with the local vaccination club, we all went off on vacations. I hadn't seen either one of them since early May.
"Ignore Meat. He's been in a mood ever since his Derby horse got busted."
"It's not the horse's fault somebody roofied him. They shoulda let him run the Preakness and Belmont, anyway."
I plopped myself down in an empty campchair among the half dozen around the porch. Meat got up and handed me a cold beverage from the cooler positioned as a table between he and Tater. Tater was working a jigsaw puzzle.
She swatted him with it as he came back by. "Quit whining. You cashed a winning ticket on that horse before it came out didn't you?"
"I did."
"Then drink your beer and be happy."
Meat took her up on the first part. I don't think he was having too much of the second part.
"So how was Idaho...or was it Vegas?"
Tater arched her eyebrow at me. "Colorado, SJ. Rocky Mountain Way." Then she winked.
Meat let out a "O loaaarrrd". He rolled his eyes and smirked. "You'd looovve Colorado SJ. Lots of tie dyed hippies with banjos."
The tie dye wearing hippie with a jigsaw puzzle swatted at him again. She could have used a banjo.
He ignored her. "Tell me one thing SJ, did you pay income tax last year?"
I nodded in the affirmative. "Yes I did. Did you?"
He straightened himself. "You know I did. You know who didn't? Jeff Bezos didn't...or maybe that was the year before. Neither did Elon Musk. Or Donald Trump. Or most anybody else on the billionaire list."
Tater looked at me. "Did you see the ProPublica report?"
"Yep, I'm down with it. Seems like more confirmation of things we knew than new information. But confirmation is pretty powerful, in a normal world it'd lead to some fixes."
Meat burped. "The only thing that will get fixed is the leak that confirmed how thoroughly McConnell and his posse fixed the tax codes to work for the big rich and not us."
Tater sighed. "Just when he was getting over the horse scandal, the ProPublica report broke. He's been a grump all through vacation. Who else could spend a week brewery hopping in Colorado, come home with a whole sack full of goodies, and still want to kick the dog."
A look of shock and sadness crossed Meat's face. "I'd never kick the dog." Then he broke into a smile.
"But you know, turtles and other swamp creatures might want to steer clear, this tax report's got me craving some soup."