For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for September 06, 2019

As Misters Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal used to say, “dink it and sink it.” Sure doesn’t seem very sane when you’re doing to yourself.

For a day or so, until you get bored.

For the purposes of this comic strip, you will need to pretend that Elly did not start working full time at the beginning of this summer. You will also need to pretend it is normal to do a toast with yourself in a mirror while holding a coffee cup. You can tell Farley is having trouble with both those ideas.

I felt that way every fall when my boys went through the school years. They had a schedule, organized sports and structured and productive days organized by other people, giving me more personal time.

Farley: “Kids are gone, but I still gotta go pee! Who let’s me out now?”

For some people — if they truly love what they do — sanity is maintained when they go to work. That is their “real world” and home is a foreign existence to be endured until the next day. This was especially true for of my late son, the avionics technician.

I’m sure that many many other parents feel exactly like Ellie after the kids leave for school after a long summer break! One can almost hear the collective sighs of relief from the parents……and groans from the kids. Am sure her new job helps her feel more useful to the world that continually telling kids where the snacks are and that their jeans are still in the dryer.

Farley is probably waiting for the regained sanity to be reinstalled.

This may be weird, because I actually work at a school FT and have kids who attend as well, but I feel like this, too. A lot of it is the imposed structure and not having kids sitting around fighting and not doing what we’d like them to with all that free time. During school, they are learning and meeting new people and generally it’s wonderful to see every day what they are up to. If I didn’t work with the kids, and instead had to prep for their entertainment or get them to a patchwork of camps, it would be even more amazing.

COUGH Some of us know just how Elly’s plans are about to turn on their head!!!!!!

There are some, however, who see the day as the end of their freedom.

TEN months? Nine when I was in school. Then again, we weren’t given a dozen "breaks during the school year like today. 180 school days no matter how it’s done.

When my boys went back to school each year, I was truly torn between crying and laughing hysterically.

….."I dunno but, it didn’t look like sanity. ;o)

Elly, wait until tomorrow………

I was wondering if Elly saw Liz leaving for the bus looking like a bum. Or if she cared, just so ling as the kids were out of the house and back to school.

On Lynn’s official site she’s celebrating 40th Anniversary of For Better or For Worse, and she’s linking to the very first strips. They are laugh out loud funny, and even forty years later, they are as a propos today, as they were then…

Elly has some time to herself, since her kids Goofus and Doofus are once again in the government schools, learning gender studies and whatever other propaganda they are brainwashing the kids with. Soon they will be out of the house for good. It was all go perfect, assuming everything stays exactly the same as is.

And you have to realize it is a comic strip!

We know all mothers have this feeling for 10 minutes after the kids depart but start preparing for welcoming them in the 11th minute.