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You know you’ve established yourself in a town when the newly-elected mayor -— wearing a pink suit coat, cowboy hat and carrying a pink umbrella for Paint the Town Pink —  calls you out at a county commission meeting just to ask how your cats are doing.

Listen, I’m not going to pretend it hasn’t been a weird two weeks down here at the Herald. Really it’s been a weird two months as the staff have been busy not only putting papers together, but finishing off our biggest special section of the year in Progress and an issue of Austin Living Magazine (sending them within three days of each other no less).

It’s because of this that I didn’t have a column last week, resulting in what I suspect is at least one person glancing toward our house on a morning walk, wondering what happened to my scribblings.

Or maybe he was wondering why this guy is brushing his teeth while looking out the big picture window.

All of this has been done with a pandemic complicating everything, a national political scene that Tom Clancy would find two silly to even entertain in a parody comic strip and a plethora of things that could be tucked under the general heading of “shenanigans.”

During this time, I’ve single-handedly kept the coffee industry afloat, doing my level best to ensure I don’t sleep at night, which has been a stellar success. That and some help from the cats, who for whatever reason have decided that during this last two-week stretch of everything in the universe coming to head, it would be a good idea to ensure I’m sleeping at 2 a.m. by waking me up.

So the cats are fine Steve … want two of them?

I’m not going to pretend that this column won’t ramble a bit (coffee industry, staying afloat). Finding time in 2021 to concentrate on just one thing at a time hasn’t been possible, requiring that all the various parts of my brain be subdivided to work on multiple things at once. This is a challenge as I’ve told people reportedly that winning the day is only evident by the act of remembering to put pants on before leaving the house.

I would wear shorts … I think.

I’m not sure of much these days, other than the fact it’s cold. I can tell it’s cold because most everybody in Minnesota and South Dakota have posted this meme on Facebook: “(State of Residence) Come for the culture, stay because your car won’t start.”

On this note, I’m not entirely sure why the National Weather Service even bothers with normal forecasting. Just post a meme that represents what the forecast is that day.

It can’t be any worse than some of the things they have now. Temperature — High: 6, Low: – Europe Ice Sheet. Conditions — Cold.

Yeah, you think?

Where was I? Rambling … nonsense … NWS … oh yeah, professional wrestling.

A state of where I am these days is for some background noise when I’ve been doing busy work I’ve been playing videos of past WWE Royal Rumbles. You know, the matches that have, like, everybody who are wearing tights in the ring at once, with crossover plotlines that require the actors to duel for a chance to win something else or another.

Two wrestlers start off the match and then every few minutes another wrestler comes jogging into the ring where fake things are done. Fake athletic things, but fake nonetheless.

Hold on wrestling fan. I know that there are injuries and the blood is real sometimes, but I did call them athletes. I think that’s a good compromise, don’t you?

Anyway, it reminded me of the days when I was an actual fan. My dad and I would watch the shows going all the way back to Harley Race up through Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair and starting to peter out around about the time The Rock started doing Rock things.

I used to love it and often wondered what it would take for me to be a professional wrestler. Not so much any more.

Turns out, I was a horrible actor.