The last year of normal.

 The odd thing about the upcoming thirteen months of strips is having to remember something that we didn't know back in 1989. Back then, I'd breezily described the Patterson saga as being the story of a pair of yuppie scum and their two ungrateful brats because I didn't like how Michael used Remembrance Day as an excuse to play the fool and also didn't like Elly standing around like a pole-axed ewe because his stupid answer made her brain shut down. This is because I had no idea what would be happening in September 1990. Before then, I'd assumed we'd be settling down and spending most of our time watching Elly run around in circles trying to keep up with her children's social lives and stressing about the mature woman's health issues because I had no idea that Lynn seemed to see it as her job to write her idea of what cute kid strips: a child doing something banal and Elly overreacting to something her mutated brain saw as an atrocity and thus didn't know of an upcoming storm in April.

This means that we left trying to figure out what trajectory the characters' lives would have taken had Lynn decided not to listen to the unsolicited advice of a peer and not created a stand in for the disappointing brunette Katie she had to go with the wispy blond one that ended up marrying a used car dealership ten years ago. Lynn might think that Elly wouldn't have found a way to piss away her forties and fifties on bullshit but I have faith in Flapandhonk. Her career ambitions would have circled the drain, Martian princess or no.