Answers? Maybe.

My last post apparently took some of my regular reader friends a bit by surprise.

I've dealt with depression issues, off and on, for many years now and sometimes, it comes on me, wraps itself around me a little tighter than I like, for sure. Wednesday was one of those days.

Some of the issues -like the ones I talked about in Wednesday's post -are things I try to keep at bay as much as possible mainly because when they creep in and sneak up behind me, they tend to make me angry and bitter -both emotions I don't like at all so I try not to dwell on them. But sometimes too, they take a bite too large and then, I feel compelled to speak about them.

Usually, when I do that -write about the negatives around -it does help to clear the air as well as my mind.

After my major vent post, I decided I needed to get out of the house while the weather was still decent so Sam and I went for a walk up the road -through the area that is civilized, not down the road to the woods. And that walk really did me a world of good too!

Three doors up the street from my house, I saw the first peonies of the season in bloom!

This bush has several blooms on it -right in the middle of the front yard of my neighbor, Genevieve's place. Seeing those pretty flowers really set the tone then for the rest of Sammy's and my walk. (I have a fairly large peony bush along the side of my house that has several nice big buds on it but it is generally among the last of the peony bushes around the neighborhood to bloom. I guess it must not be in a location that provides the right kind of sunlight to make it blossom at the same time as others around me do. I also have a peony bush in front of the house that I transplanted last fall from some plants my neighbor, Jodi, had given me. (She and her husband Tony own the house that had belonged to my great-uncle, Erik Eld, and when she thinned out her peony bushes along her front porch, she asked if I'd like some of them, knowing that they had most likely been planted there many, many years ago by my uncle and of course, being the sentimental slob that I am, I jumped at that opportunity!) However, that bush -although it's growing okay and all, doesn't appear to have any buds on it. But a smaller bush Jodi gave me and which I had Clayton plant over in the far left corner of the yard, by the spot where he and Mandy had buried our beloved cat, Gracie Baby -who we had for over 16 years -that bush is also doing well and does have a couple buds on it already now!

Sam and I had a very pleasant stroll -at a nice pace for both of us. Not too fast but fast enough to make it a worthwhile exercise kind of walk. We saw several friends along the way which always helps in the mood improvement department too.
A few doors further up the road from Genevieve's home, is this house that had originally belonged to my Grandpa's cousin, Anna Engstrom, and her family. When the family sold the place, it was purchased by the daughter of a neighbor who lives down the road from my home -Charyl and Charlie Engleman -and they had sold it about 4-5 years ago to a couple, Woody and Cynthia Miller -who moved late last summer down to Georgia. The house had been up for sale since then and I had heard rumors last week that some family had purchased it but when I walked past there on Wednesday, I saw the "For Sale" sign was gone so I took that as proof positive that we will be getting new neighbors along the street now very soon.
Further on up the street, I noticed all these buttercups growing and in full bloom along the bank of the home there that used to belong to George "Stiney" Lawrence and his wife, Elsie. Stiney and Elsie have both been gone for many years now but seeing all those buttercups just reminded me of them and what good people they both were. Stiney was a big fan of hunting and fishing as well as baseball and for many, many years from the early years of the village until probably the 40s, he was one of the best known pitchers for the old baseball team that the village fielded, year after year. And Elsie, his wife, a little bit of a woman, was well-known for her ability to talk. And talk. And talk some more. If you had to go up to the old company store or to pick up the mail, and had only a limited amount of time to do that, you would pray that she wasn't outside when you went by her home or if she was, that she didn't see you or you'd never make it back home in time to make any appointments you might have had! But she was such a sweetheart, you could never get angry at her -or yourself -from having found yourself in one of her conversational clutches.

Sam and I walked on up the street, passing my friend Sherri's home where she was sitting out on her front porch and greeted Sam and I with a "Hello" and a wave. Up by the Moose Club, where we turned around, I saw another old friend sitting out on her porch too so I called out to Bernie that it was good to see her up and about and outside, getting some fresh air. Bernie is in her 80s now and has had some ups and downs over the past winter with health issues but she looked good and seemed very chipper when we passed by her place.

On the way back home, I took this picture then of my neighbor and good friends, Shirley and Bo's rhododendron bush in front of their place.
This particular bush has beautiful lavender colored blooms on it and as it is just beginning to blossom, by next week, the whole front of her house will be covered in those pretty purple posies! So many folks up and down this street have rhododendron plants in various colors ranging from a pale pinkish-white to the lavender and some are a much brighter color of a deep rose shade. My neighbor down the street, Kate, has three different colored bushes that have just started to blossom in the past day or two but I didn't get a photo of hers as yet. I'll have to get a shot of her plants blooming though to post in the near future as they are really quite spectacular.

I have a bush at the front of my house that has blossoms very similar to the rhododendrons of my neighbors but my plant is a Mountain Laurel and like my peony bush, is a much later blooming plant too.
Here's my Mountain Laurel and maybe, if you click and enlarge this shot, you might be able to spot some of the buds beginning to show up on it. But it will be at least the end of June before they will burst open and blossom, giving the front of the house some little dabble of color then.

By the time Sam and I got back home, I still had the 'earworm' going on in my head of that Beatles song, "Help" but having been out for a pleasant walk, seeing some pretty flowers blooming, a friendly hello from several folks too along the way, and I could feel my mood beginning to lift and being replaced with some positive feelings by that time.

It's really amazing what a difference that short amount of exercise, sunshine and friendship, combined with some pretty sights too, can do for a person, isn't it?

Wednesday evening too Mandy sent Ken and I on an errand -supposed to go up to Kylertown to pick up a few things that were on sale there this week and Wednesday is the day I usually try to go to that store because, being of Scottish ethnicity ya know, and that store gives a big 5% senior discount every Wednesday so I like to take advantage of whatever they have on sale that I really can use. This week it was a good sale on Perry's ice cream -2 half-gallons for $6.00 and with my discount as well, no way was I about to pass that deal up so we came home with four cartons of ice cream then!

On the way up to the store though, Ken and I had to make a stop at the Moose Club so he could "sign the book" and thereby, be eligible for the daily drawing there. Unfortunately, his number didn't get picked that day, but my neighbor down the street, June and her husband Daryl, were the lucky ones and they came home close to $300 richer! Not a bad deal I'd say!

And, the neat thing for me in stopping at the Moose, having a quick draft beer then, was that I also got to see a guy who graduated three years behind me in school and who I hadn't seen for several years now. Always enjoy talking to Jim -or "Simmie" as most everyone around here calls him. He's still just as much of a fun guy to be around now as he was way back in those dark ages when we were both in high school.

Thursday night though we got hit here with a heavy rainstorm! Mandy and the kids had been into Philipsburg so Maya could attend play practice for the summer production the Front and Centre Theatre Group is going to be putting on in July - "The Jungle Book" and Maya will be an elephant in this play. Mandy and I are both really excited about how she will do in this event and we have her all psyched up telling her that as an elephant she will get to do the "March of the Elephants" number then! Something really neat and fun to look forward to then, ya know!

The storm uprooted lots and lots of trees around the county, including one big tree that had fallen and was taking up a big portion of Rte 53 as you come into Morrisdale. Mandy managed to ease her little car around that tree and got home without any other complications -except the problems that continued on through the evening with power outages that were several and frequent. Around about 11 p.m., after one of those outages -and off and then, quickly back on thing -my computer went dead on me! Now, you have to know that is something that totally strikes fear and panic into this old lady's bones, for sure!

About 11:30 p.m., the tv cable finally came back on line thus eliminating my issues about not having my regular viewing to see but still the computer was for all purposes seeming to be deader than a door nail!

First thing Friday a.m., I phoned a friend of ours who lives over on the back hill in town, told him of my dilemma and he came over to see if the computer had been really damaged big time or what.

Thankfully, he happened to think of what had happened just about 2-3 weeks ago with the computer when it wouldn't work here but when he took it to his place and hooked it up, it had fired up like there was nothing wrong at all so he reached down and unplugged the computer at the wall, waited about two minutes and plugged it back in and when he turned it on then, everything worked just fine and dandy! Seems in the event of a power outage like that, sometimes in order to get the computer to function again, you have to completely break the electrical connection by unplugging it, then plug it back in and fire it up! So simple a cure and so relieved was I at seeing that happen too!

Then, Friday night, Mandy drove down to Milesburg where she met up with my older daughter (Carrie) and my grandson, Alex, to bring Alex up here to spend the weekend with us. He and Mandy are like two peas in a pod -they operate on much the same wave length much of the time and I just enjoy having this young man here to spend the next couple of days with us.

Saturday afternoon, Alex, Kurtis and I went up to the local greenhouse to get a bunch of flowers to take to the cemeteries tomorrow -have to go to the Lutheran cemetery here in town to put flowers on my maternal grandparents' graves as well as on the graves of daughter Carrie's Godparents and from there, then we have to go up to the cemetery in Morrisdale where my parents are buried along with my paternal grandparents, and all my Dad's siblings and spouses except for one aunt who, with her husband, is laid to rest at the big cemetery in Philipsburg. The past few years, I have managed to coerce my son in to going with me to put the flowers on the graves as I need his strength to dig up the soil in front of the tombstones and also, have to have someone considerably larger than me -or at least a whole lot stronger than I am -to give me hand getting back up on my feet after I've been down on the ground planting flowers! One of the many features of the aging process ya know that I'm not overly happy about! I tried one year to do the transplanting alone but had such a bugger of a hard time trying to get up into a standing position again that I vowed I'd take someone with me in the future!

So tomorrow, after church, Alex and I will be doing the flower plantings together. He's a big young man, strong and capable and can dig up the ground, plus be there to lend a hand so old Gram get back up on her feet again too!

So all in all, that venting I did on Wednesday really did clear so much of the bad thoughts out of my head and that's a really good thing. I haven't yet figured out what things though I can put on my Bucket List that would be reasonable things to strive to achieve. That's part of the problem with that deal -figuring out what you'd really like to do that actually has potential because I sure wouldn't want to be having wild hair dreams of something that is not in the least bit possible for me to do as that would just complicate things and bring on another round -or two -or more -bouts of depressive thinking!

Oh and the neat thing too this week -on Wednesday afternoon -when Mandy went out to get Kurtis off his van coming home from school, the driver remarked to her that he had been singing his little heart out -the whole way home, all twelve miles of the trip! Deanna then asked Mandy "Does your Mom by any chance watch "All in the Family?" And Mandy had said well yes, she watches it fairly often on TVLand channel. Deanna then said she figured as much because near as she could tell, the song Kurtis was singing, over and over to entertain her -and himself -none other than the theme song ("Those Were the Days") of that show!

Yep! Kurtis loves that song and also, two songs on an old cassette that will actually work in the cassette player in my jeep -"Big Girls Don't Cry" and his true favorite I do believe, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight!"

One of these days I'll have to figure out a way to do a little video of him in the jeep, singing away those songs. Definitely will entertain ya, that's for sure!

A Weem a wetta, weem a wetta -whatever that means! And for whatever that's worth too!

Maybe the kid is just an old soul at heart and just loves those Oldies but Goodies like his Grammy!