Good News (or bad, depending on your point of reference): the Grouchy Geezer will be back real soon to reclaim my temporarily abandoned station as America’s (well, okay, this small portion of the state of Texas if you insist) reigning curmudgeon. This has not been the first time I have taken a leave, and I’m sure some of you may not have even noticed I’ve been away. One thing the gg has learned in his time away is just how hard writing really is. By writing, I mean regular writing. Writing often enough to justify calling itself a blog. I’ve come to admire people who write for a living – who have to write everyday to meet a deadline, or who have to write everyday to stay on the path toward that novel that their agent is pushing them hard to finish or that their publisher insists be completed by a certain date. Sure, a blog writer like the gg has more leeway – we can write whenever and however often we damn well please. But if we don’t write often enough, pretty soon our regular readers lose interest and will cease to follow us when we do decide to post on our blog. I hope there are at least a few of you out there who have had the patience to wait me out. Rest assured, you’ll be sorry you did. But never mind all this. For better or for worse, the gg full well intends to re-activate The Grouchy Geezer in my now-familiar iconoclastic style. I have a whole new assortment of things that make me grouchy on a daily basis that I am ready to share with you the reader. So batten down the hatches and brace yourselves. The Grouchy Geezer returns ---soon . Past readers know that the things in life that irritate the gg the most are not those big issues symptomatic of a breakdown in our social order, but small every-day matters such as the following, which I have written about in the past: kinky water hoses, hard-to-open pill bottles and snake repellent, for example. Those are the truly big issues. So forget about tariffs, trade wars with China, missile tests, background checks and all the rest of the little things that consume us on a daily basis. The gg can deal with those. But about those little thin plastic bags used to bag fruit and vegetables in the grocery aisle that you have to delicately roll between your shaky, arthritis-laced fingers just right to get them to open………….. . Stay tuned. gg