I know, dear readers, Christmas has passed, the New Year is upon us, and the Three Kings celebration has passed, too. I suppose it is time to make a post-holiday visit to see how Ms. Pigette is doing as she holds up her mailbox on the side of Route 27.

In between football games, pro and college, I went to the dump (er, transfer station) and stopped to see her and asked her how she was doing.

“What do you think? You idiot. I am standing in frozen mud. The snowplows have hammered me so many times I have lost count. My smarter-than-I-phone is about out of juice, and I can’t find out if I scored a big parlay on my online bet that America would invade Venezuela. I figure that payout should provide me with a lovely warm island vacation.”

Well, I said as I hooked her phone up to my car’s charger, there might be a problem. It seems the online TV bookies are balking on the Venezuela invasion prediction bets.

“Whoa,” she said. “Wait, just a New York minute. POTUS sent the Sneaky Petes into Caracas, they shot up the place, whacked a bunch of Cuban bodyguards, snatched the president, and his old lady. Where is this not an invasion? I placed a bet that we would invade Venezuela using (never mind whose) credit card and hit it big. They should pay me, right?”

Look, I answered her. It is not up to me. I am on your side, or maybe the side of the sucker who let you hold his credit card for a couple of minutes, but the online bookies are balking. Someone claimed a $400,000 payout, and bookies think that bettor might be a government mole with inside info on the Caracas raid. So they stopped the $400K payout, arguing that it was not an invasion but just a police raid busting a narco kingpin.

“A police raid, my wiggly tail. When you send in a quarter of the U.S. Navy, a gaggle of choppers armed to the teeth, and drop off the special operators, it ain’t like the cops grabbing a drunk driver after the bars close. Invasion, Schminvasion, or whatever. I want my money,” she said.

It looks like you are going to have to find a friendly/free lawyer, I told her.

Now, I said, let’s get to the good stuff. Republican Senator Susan Collins, who is seeking her sixth term, voted against El Presidente last week on a measure requiring him to get congressional approval before invading Venezuela. Needless to say, that honked El Jefe off, and he hammered her, saying she should never be elected to office again. That puts her in the same pew with her two Democratic challengers, Gov. Janet Mills and the oyster fisherman Graham Platner. Mills said Collins was a day late and a dollar short. Platner called her spineless.

Pigette laughed. “The White House did more than that last week. They told us to shut our eyes and believe that the Jan. 6 insurrection was just a patriotic campaign rally that got a bit out of hand, they told young mothers not to worry about vaccinating their kids to prevent terrible diseases that might kill their precious infants and, oh yes, ICE killed a mother in Minneapolis, and shot a couple more in another city.

And, to top it off, when he and his myrmidons mentioned they would like to grab Greenland, a GOP senator said it was “stupid and amateurish,” while another called it “weapons-grade stupid,” she said.

“But, old scribbler. Here is the real scoop. I have it on good authority, from at least one anonymous source, how POTUS plans to keep power when his term ends.”

Wait a minute, I said, stopping her in mid-sentence. The 22d Amendment says: "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.” How can he get around that?

“Simple, she said. “He puts up a mummy dummy to run for President, and he runs for Vice President. Then he runs the country while the stooge/president shuts up and goes along with the gag. Look, this is what some guy named Putz, or put-it-in, or Putin did in Russia a few years ago. His term ended, so he forced them to elect a stooge as president, and he pretended to be Veep for a couple of years, but was the real power. Then, after the stooge’s term ended, he slipped back into the big chair and resumed his reign. Simple,” she said.

I told her she was nuts. No one would ever go for a stupid scheme like that. Right? Right?

Meanwhile, she just smiled as she claimed our nation is still just fine, at least according to the poet Ruth Zardo.