Notices by M.S. Bellows, Jr. (msbellows@c.im), page 5

Today I hope John Roberts develops athlete's foot and it's really cracked and painful and burny.

Today because it's 68° and sunny in DC I hope John Roberts goes for a walk to see the cherry blossoms but they're not quite open yet and he knows he's really busy for the next 2-3 weeks and won't be able to make time to come see them at their peak and that makes him sad.

I hope that when John Roberts got home from work tonight, he was juggling his briefcase and a couple loose books and a bottle of wine someone gave him and managed to awkwardly get his right middle finger in the way as he slammed the heavy door of his Mercedes and it damn near broke it and at least jammed the joint, and now it's substantially swollen and turning purple and the whole thing throbs with pain with every pulse over and over and over even though he's taken too much ibuprofen and is applying ice, and he might lose his fingernail, and also he dropped the wine when he klutzed out and the bottle broke on his driveway and despite his pain he really needs to go sweep it up.

Today I hope John Roberts is finding it difficult to work because his jaw pain kept him awake last night and now he's really, really sleepy.

Today I hope John Roberts awoke with a sore jaw because all the small bad things that have been happening to him every day for the last couple of months are cumulatively starting to overwhelm him with cortisol and he has begun to grind his teeth at night, and later today he learns that the grinding has made his teeth super sensitive and how he learns this is that he sips a cold drink and experiences a sharp jab of pain right through his skull and also his jaw keeps clicking in a weird way.

I hope that last night John Roberts had insomnia and couldn't fall asleep until 6 a.m. and then his alarm went off at 6:30, and he's pretty sure the "decaf" his wife served after dinner accidentally wasn't decaf, and then he remembers that (unusually for her) she had Sleepytime tea instead of coffee, and now he's wondering whether it was really accidental.

I hope that last night John Roberts' wife didn't come home from yesterday's #NoKings protest until 3:00 a.m., and that when John awoke and saw her with her clothes rumpled, her hair disheveled, and her makeup smeared, he exclaimed, oh my God, did the protest turn violent?and she answered icily, my God, could you be more naive? and headed for the shower.

I hope that this morning John Roberts awakens pleasantly horny and happy because Saturday mornings traditionally are when he and his wife make love and then she makes her special super-hot, super-fluffy waffles, and before he even opens his eyes he extends a gently probing foot to touch her lovely warm body and initiate a cuddle but his foot finds only a cold empty bed, and then he gets up and wanders downstairs to a cold empty kitchen because his wife is at a #NoKings protest, and she didn't even set up the coffeemaker for him.

Today I hope that, yep, John Roberts is losing that fingernail because of the giant blood clot that formed, painfully, underneath it last night.

I hope today John Roberts realizes that Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito probably will retire before the end of T's term so T can attempt to name their replacements the way Obama never got to because RBG was too stubborn, and that that makes him sad because them leaving literally will eliminate half of the friendships he's had in his entire miserable life.

I hope that this morning, as he transitioned through that productive, liminal state halfway between sleeping and waking, John Roberts was struck with the unpromped insight that all his success as a student and lawyer was born of a pathological need to please his overdemanding, vicariously ambitious father, and that he stumbles through the rest of the day with a surprisingly strong, even pathetic feeling of sadness that he actually should have been a professional sailor or large animal vet.

I hope nothing bad whatsoever happens to John Roberts today!

Ha ha April fools no seriously I actually hope he slips on a banana peel and breaks his elbow and has to be taken to the emergency department and today's oral argument on birthright citizenship has to be rescheduled for sometime in the next term of court and Trump's illegal order remains stayed until then.

I hope that someone keys John Roberts' car today, and not just shallowly so that it'll buff but all the way through the clear coat into the paint.

I hope that this morning John Roberts chose shoes he hasn't worn in a while that are a little narrow in the toe box, and also that his left fourth toenail has a sharp corner that he should have rounded off last time he trimmed them and all day long that toenail corner just grinds into the third toe next to it so that by the end of the day he actually has an open sore there that's annoying and makes him limp.

Today I hope John Roberts is starting to wonder whether he made the right decision spending his spare time last weekend working to clear the way for Steve Bannon's conviction to be reversed on Trump's whim instead of what he really wanted to do, which is just hang out following updates about the Artemis mission because when he was young Apollo really was important to him.

Today I hope that when John Roberts's wife awakens he's already up and because it's #Easter he says sincerely and joyfully, "Good morning! He is Risen!" and she looks pointedly at his pajamas crotch and replies dolefully, "at least someone is," and then they go to church and the scabbed shin scrape he received yesterday makes it painful every time he needs to kneel on the tilt-down genuflexorium, which let's be honest Catholic services require worshippers to do a lot.

Today I hope that John Roberts decides to get out the stepladder and clean that one leaf-filled gutter over the garage and he doesn't fall or anything but as he scoops the half-decayed leaves out of the gutter he tosses them onto the driveway below and when he's done with the first section he climbs back down to move the ladder over a few feet and when he has one foot on the bottom rung he puts the other one on the ground covered with leaves and that foot slips out so his legs straddle and he pulls his groin painfully and also the other foot slips awkwardly between the rungs which scrapes his shin all the way up and as he's lying on the ground the ladder topples comedically over on top of him so when he finally extricates himself and hobbles into the house he's bleeding from his shin and also his forehead where the falling ladder hit him and when he gets inside some of his blood drips onto the entryway and then he feels even worse because he knows his wife is going to scold him for being clumsy and making a mess.

This morning I hope John Roberts goes out to a really good breakfast diner with nice waitresses and the food is delicious and the portions are *really* large so he puts two-thirds of his plate into a to go box to enjoy later and in general it feels like the first really good day he's had since, what, January? and then as he's walking back out to his car he stumbles for no reason besides inattention and drops his to-go clamshell which pops open and the French toast and bacon and flimsy little container of real maple syrup all just smear across the sidewalk and instead of being happy today he becomes sad again.

I hope today John Roberts has trouble getting his tie tied correctly for some reason so that he spends 10 minutes just standing in front of the mirror tying and re-tying it because it keeps coming out too short or too long and when he finally gets the length right the knot lands at a slightly too narrow part of the tie so it comes out sort of small and the dimple is a little to the side and then all day it just keeps twisting and twisting until the knot is sort of sideways and it just looks like he's some kid who's never tied a tie before and he stops thinking about it eventually because he can't see it but everyone else in his chambers notices and thinks that despite his two Harvard degrees maybe he is not as sophisticated as they thought he was.

I hope today all the U.S. Supreme Court justices had a conference and John Roberts was just trying to get through it efficiently but Clarence Thomas kept derailing the conversation by perseverating about the cost of RV repairs and the unavailability of a type of hose connector needed to supply the obscure brand of Latvian plumbing fixtures he got a great deal on on Facebook Marketplace, and the meeting didn't wrap up until over an hour after it was scheduled to.