A Blue Melancholy Monday Brewing Tea While Channeling My Inner Abraham Lincoln

In the picture we are looking at my swimming pool hours after I got wet in it this morning.

You can not tell it by looking at this picture, but it is a clear sky, blue Monday in North Texas.

I am also blue this Monday. With a bout of my chronic melancholy. Bouts of chronic melancholy are just one more thing I have in common with Abraham Lincoln, along with being tall and lanky, with a scraggly beard and the frequent wearing of a stovepipe hat.

I think I had myself a sleep walking incident last night. The evidence of this is that this morning the patio blinds were open, with the patio door slightly open. Both are closed when the sun goes down.

Currently I am leaning towards the idea of returning to the Tandy Hills today to see if the Tandy Turtle is still stuck in its little puddle.

I am also leaning towards the idea of going up to Washington this summer. On July 20 it will be 4 years since I last flew north. I have 2 new nephews and a niece I have not yet met, who I am told are a lot of fun.

I've got some sun tea busy brewing out on the aforementioned patio. In the brewing mix are ginseng, green tea, chamomile, spearmint, lemongrass, blackberry leaves, orange blossoms and rosebuds.

I am hoping this potent herbal mix will give me some temporary relief from my chronic melancholy.

I Am Being A Melancholy Baby In Texas Today

It does not happen too often, but every once in awhile something will trigger me in to a melancholy mood. Sort of a wistful, nostalgic, sad feeling.

Today is my little sister's birthday. That is her in the picture at about 4 years old. I'd moved on to college by the time my little sister was about 2.

When I'd come home from college and come in to the house, my little sister would run at me at full speed and literally jump into my arms.

We had a poodle then, named Peppy. Peppy and my little sister would act the same way. All glad to see me.

But, thinking of my little sister, back when she was little, is not what got me melancholy.

I was in the ALDI store in Hurst. There was a little kid that so reminded me of my nephew, Joey.

When my nephews were little kids I used to have so much fun taking them places. To Seattle, up in the mountains, across the mountains to Eastern Washington. Up to Canada.

Joey is the nephew who would go mountain biking with me. The last time I was in Port Townsend, Joey and I parked at Fort Casey State Park and rode our bikes on the ferry to Port Townsend, then pedaled out to Fort Worden. We were having too much fun and barely made it on the last ferry of the day, which turned out to be a rock and roll wild ride, due to a big tide change.

I last talked to Joey after the tropical storm Hermine flooded us in North Texas. Joey saw it on the news. Apparently it looked bad. So, Joey called to see if I got flooded. We talked for a long time. The grown up Joey is my nephew who most reminds me of the little kid version of a nephew.

I last saw Joey in person in early August of 2008, at Bay View State Park, in the Skagit Valley. I was in the valley to meet my grand nephew, Spencer Jack, for the first time. So, Joey came out to the park.

The summer before I moved to Texas, Joey and his brother took me to Las Vegas for 4 days. That was the last time I've spent extended time with any of my nephews. That was 1998. Joey was 15 when we went to Vegas.

I did some of my usual "Nephews in Danger" stuff when were in Vegas.

If I remember right the Hard Rock Casino and a Bordello Museum in Pahrump were involved. Also swimming, after dark, in Lake Mead, behind Hoover Dam.

That is Joey and me on the roller coaster at the New York New York Casino. I am not a big fan of getting flipped upside down on a roller coaster.

A lot has changed since I moved to Texas.

One of my sister's and her family moved to Phoenix, along with my two youngest nephews.

My mom and dad moved to Phoenix.

My brother, Joey's dad, moved to Phoenix, well, actually Maricopa, south of Phoenix. It's just easier to say they live in Phoenix. If I say Chandler, Sun Lake or Maricopa, no one knows where that is, just like on a trip, whilst living in Washington, I'd say I was from Seattle, not Mount Vernon.

Or like now, I say I'm from Dallas, not Fort Worth. Dallas and Seattle have greater name recognition than Fort Worth and Mount Vernon.

Anyway, thinking about fun times, long gone, never to be repeated, is what has me feeling melancholy.

I think a hike around the Tandy Hills will break me out of this mood. Or make it worse by getting me dwelling on where I used to hike and what I settle for now.

Melancholy 1st Of July In Texas

You are looking at my melancholy view of Texas from my patio on the 1st day of July.

Once again the sun is hidden behind a shroud of clouds.

I've been feeling melancholy ever since a moment in Wal-Mart in Hurst yesterday. I've had these type melancholy moments at Wal-Mart before.

I'd just gotten gas and then went to Wal-Mart. Because I'd gotten gas as I walked into Wal-Mart I got my phone out of my pocket to call my mom to tell her I got gas. Just like I always do.

Then this lady caught my eye. She looked to be in her 30s. Tall. Nicely dressed. And she was disabled. Something had happened to her feet and legs that made walking very difficult. We both entered Wal-Mart at the same time.

The Wal-Mart greeter greeted her as if she was a long lost friend. And proceeded to help the lady get a motorized cart running.

I continued on walking. But put my phone back in my pocket. I was sort of overcome with feeling real sad and didn't feel like talking to my mom right then.

I was thinking how lucky I am to be able to do what I do without having the sort of struggle that lady goes through.

I wondered what happened to her. Was this a problem from birth? Was she in a car wreck? A wounded vet from Iraq or Afghanistan?

Is the problem fixable? Did she get the medical treatment she needed?

Another time at another Wal-Mart I saw a little girl with a club foot. That was such a sad thing. And treatable. If one has access to a doctor's care.

Sometimes when I am in the mood to be aggravated I listen to Rush Limbaugh. One of his things he repeats, that always aggravates me, is when he says that "Americans have the best health care in the world." Limbaugh never adds the corrective caveat, "If they can afford it."

I hope the lady I saw struggling to walk into Wal-Mart yesterday was, and is, able to afford the health care she needs.

And, on another related note, I think it's a nice thing Wal-Mart and other stores do in providing electric carts for those who need them. Though it sort of irritates me to see them being used by obese people who would likely be doing themselve a favor if they pushed a shopping cart through the store, rather than riding.

I'm thinking, would it not be a good thing if Wal-Mart, and other stores, had some sort of buzzer that could be pushed, located at the handicap parking, to summon the Wal-Mart greeter to bring out a cart?

When you help those most in need among us, you help yourself, because you never know when it might be you, or someone you love, who needs the help.

Or so it seems to me.

Oh, eventually I did call mom while I walked around in Wal-Mart. I got the answering machine. Mom and dad had gone to lunch at my brother's in Maricopa, about 20 miles south of where mom and dad live in the Phoenix suburb of Sun Lake. Mom called back later. It is being HOT in Arizona. Over 110 for days in a row. I told mom to come for a Texas visit, where my windows are open, right now, at 76.

A very pleasant hour in the pool this morning. One of my blessings I'm counting.

Melancholy & Baldness Outbreak Goes Epidemic

Gar the Texan made a totally inappropriate comment about my new hair-free hairstyle. The poor boy seems to always be about a decade out of sync. He had a mullet, known in the Northwest as a Pocatella-doo, well into this century.

I was appalled when I first met Gar the Texan and saw he had hair that said, hello, I am visiting from 1980. It took all my tactful, diplomatic skills to get that boy to realize the error of his hair choice. Within a year he credited my good advice with causing him both a promotion at work and the acquiring of yet one more wife.

And just recently Gar the Texan learned he will someday have a house in Germany, courtesy of that new wife. Without my gentle prodding to lose the mullet, none of this good fortune would have fallen Gar the Texans way. But is he grateful? No. Instead he cast aspersions, today, on my advice giving. I'm appalled.

Meanwhile, I guess Ryan Seacrest decided to try out being bald. I don't know how to get to the totally bald point. Nair for Men?

In addition to the self-inflicted baldness epidemic, melancholy also seems to be spreading. Today my physical therapist, Dr. L.C., came down with a bad case of the blues. I tried to get her to come hiking with me at the Tandy Hills Natural Sanatorium Area, but she refused. Without my daily boost of endorphins triggered by aerobic stress, I'm a mess. After I get my fix, I'm a new person, before that, not so much.