“What are you doing,” asks the lovely wife.

It’s 7 in the morning and it’s obvious what I’m doing. I’m sitting on the living room couch, a cup of coffee on the table beside me. My tablet is open and on my lap.

“You’re not reading the newspaper, are you?”

“Uh, no, not really” I say. “Just, uhm… taking a quick glance at the headlines.”

“I thought you said you were giving that up.”

I have said that. Countless times. Because these days, even glancing at the news is like falling headfirst down a dragon hole. Headlines that read like the titles of catastrophic horror movies. Opinion columns that sternly address the problems plaguing modern society but offer no viable solutions. It’s not a positive way to start the day, but I too often do.

“I wanted to read about the tennis,” I say. An excuse.

“The what?”

“Tennis? The US Open? It’s going on in New York right now.” Yes, it is. Twenty-year-olds, most of whose names I can’t pronounce, madly galivanting around, playing a game I no longer recognize. The New York Times coverage mostly focuses on the confrontations that take place at the end of the match where players meet at the net and angrily accuse one another of bad sportsmanship. Why wouldn’t they? There are no linesmen to blame anymore. The Times referred to the U.S. Open as a fashion show.

“Anything more important than sports happening in the world?”

What a question. One only the lovely wife would seriously ask. “Oh, one or two things.”

“Like what?”

“Well… Russia, India and China all just had a happy get together in Beijing celebrating them winning the second world war together.”

“I take it we weren’t invited?”

“Either that or someone was too busy playing golf and posting on social media to attend.”

“The someone being…?”

“Yup. Apparently he threw out over 95 posts in 24 hours, mostly about his health.” I glance down at the tablet screen. “Oh, wait. No, sorry, my mistake. What he did was he shot 95 on the golf course and took 24 mulligans getting it done.”

“A mulligan being?”

The lovely wife. Not a golfer. “A do-over. You hit a bad shot, you get to take it over.”

“I think it would be very nice if America got a mulligan.” The lovely wife. Yes, occasionally she does make me laugh. “Didn’t you tell me someone just had Russia over for dinner last week?”

“Yeah. In Alaska. And now it’s Poland coming to visit this week.”

“Oh, my.” The lovely wife sighs.

“Yup. Hot dogs for lunch.”

“Anything else I should know about?

I look down at the tablet again. “Well… U.S. Space Command is being moved from Colorado to to Alabama.”

“Wait. Okay, now what exactly is US Space Command?”

“It’s the part of the military that defends U.S. national interests in space.”

“I didn’t know we had any.”

“Me either.”

“So why are they moving?”

“Because Colorado has mail in voting and someone says that means they automatically have crooked elections, and we can’t have that.”

“But… we have mail in voting.”

“Yeah, but we’re California, so we don’t count.”

“I don’t understand any of this.”

“You’re not supposed to.”

“Is there anything good you can tell me?”

“I can show you something.” I press several buttons and hold up the tablet. A video is playing. An enormous passenger jet is moving towards the side of a runway. “Several hundred Guatemalan children were loaded onto planes. They were about to be deported when a federal judge blocked someone from doing it.”

“You mean for the time being.”

“Yeah, probably.” I hesitate for a moment. “You know, you’re right. I shouldn’t be reading all this negative stuff. All it does is put me a bad place.”

Much to my surprise, the lovely wife shakes her head. “No, I think you should be reading it. Everyone should.”

“Really? Why?”

“Because when people realize things like this are happening, maybe they’ll get up off the couch and do something about it.”

What is there to say? Putting tablet and coffee aside, I get up off the couch.

“Time to begin the day?”

“Time for all of us to begin the day,” says the lovely wife.

And with that, we hug.