You might think there is nothing going on these days besides new episodes of “The Further Adventures of Donald J. Trump,” but you would be wrong.

Life continues in the Upper Valley, sort of, although I seem to have skipped the Trump Recession and gone right into the Trump Depression. The body politic is not in a rosy state.

I looked up old-time words for the blues and the Mental Floss website had some doozies: the black dog, blue devil, the morbs, megrims, wiffle-woffle.

I have felt them all, every time my thoughts turn to the White House, Mar-a-Lago or some golf course where an overweight duffer makes the world wobble.

When I started this column, Wall Street certainly had the wiffle-woffles, brought on by tariffs. But the next day Trump changed his mind, such as it is, and the market roared back. I had thought the tariffs were calculated by Billy-Bob’s After-School Math Club in Plano, Texas, but now I think they are directing policy, too. Oh well, tomorrow is another day.

Now if only the administration can somehow manage to not foul up Social Security, which I have been contributing to since I was 16.

It’s true that when I was a burger flipper at Howdy Hamburgers for $1.65 an hour I wasn’t thinking ahead to retirement, although maybe I should have been. I trusted that the system would hold up and someday I would get my share, a faith that thus far has been rewarded.

Now don’t mess it up, stable geniuses, or hordes of old folks with wispy white hair and aching hips and knees will hobble to Washington and protest, preferably early in the day so they can get home before dark.

A Grandparents March on Washington would be something. We could re-learn the lyrics to folk songs from the 1960s. We may not look as cute in tie-dye, but we can still belt out “If I Had a Hammer,’’ and “Blowin’ in the Wind.” If the administration resists, it’s Sonny and Cher, and “I’ve Got You Babe.’’

A dumb song? Sure, for dumb times.

I say declare a National State of Apoplexy. When fellow columnist Willlem Lange is writing pieces about the shaky Trump administration, instead of road trips to Maine, hunting camp, or the bravery of Vermont boys at Gettysburg, there’s little doubt that this nation has lost the trail.

Meanwhile, back in West Lebanon, life has been less chaotic, but not stress free. The gateway bridge to Route 12A finally reopened Wednesday, ending our own national nightmare. You would think they’d have released balloons, or doves, or sent in the city’s ceremonial street sweeper.

We survived the detours, sometimes taking the official highway loop and sometimes tempting fate on Glen Road. Traffic wasn’t jamming, but it crawled, as people took turns creeping through the railroad underpass. The process seemed polite and cooperative, a testament to Upper Valley sensibilities.

Safely parked at home, I have taken the rake out from its winter hideaway and did a couple of test runs. It still works, even if sometimes I do not. We have hopes for better garden results this year, although what we dream in April often does not match reality in August.

“Tend to your own garden,’’ people advise when you face big things you cannot change. So this could be a golden age of gardens.

Along those lines, somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 people gathered in White River Junction last weekend to protest the White House’s cruel and erratic policies. Grievances were aired, horns were honked, spirits were raised. The signs were often funny, proving that not everyone has lost their sense of humor. Someone said of this administration, featuring the likes of Kennedy, Hegseth and Oz, “I Can Get a Better Cabinet at IKEA!”

Indeed.

IKEA, for all its Scandinavian charms, makes furniture that you assemble at home, guided by instructions that have driven millions of Americans into despair or madness — mostly temporary, rarely permanent. Many couples say their marriages first started to crumble when an IKEA do-it-yourself project went bad, or dalig, in the original Swedish. Some report that they found themselves swearing in that language in frustration, even though they previously knew not one word of it.

They might scream out helvete! (Hell!). Or something we can’t print here, lest we scandalize our Swedish readers.

And that is kinda/sorta how I am feeling about the state of things in Washington just now. But things are looking up somewhere, probably someplace without TV or internet, or do-it-yourself furniture. Mongolia comes to mind; how are the tariffs there?

Dan Mackie lives in West Lebanon. He can be reached at dan.mackie@yahoo.com.