Just Call Me Blue

Lucky for you, I survived!

I just went through quite a stretch without much writing at all. Something I don’t think I’ve done in years.

It all started with the Independence Day holiday. I didn’t figure that too many people would be interested in reading about Freemasonry, or Tarot, our my random nonsense over the holiday weekend, so I intentionally stopped writing in earnest on July 3, and figured I’d get back to it as the weekend started to wind down on July 6.

But here it is July 10, and I’m just now getting back to it. I did have a little handful of things publish on the 8th, but that was it.

Why?

Because, I’m so white, I’m blue.

Photo by Birger Strahl on Unsplash

I suppose that requires some explanation.

You see, some years ago, I was down at my mother’s house in Mexico. She was having a party and had invited the family of a fellow who does some minor building work for her.

Now to get the true effect of this story, one must know that pretty much no one thinks I can speak a word of Spanish. And that’s kind of true. I can communicate in Spanish, but only if the subject is simple, and only if the person I’m trying to talk with is really patient. But, I can understand it much better than I can speak it. I can read it OK too.

So, in comes this fellow, with his young children, and the kids are kinda nervously looking at me and everyone else. I don’t imagine that they attend too many expat parties.

He says to them, indicating me, in Spanish of course: “He’s so white, he’s blue.”

It was a joke, undoubtedly to get the kids less nervous about being surrounded by so many gringos, and I took it as such. But, of course, he didn’t think I would know what was being said.

I thought it was funny. I suppose because I think there is plenty of truth in it.

My family is pretty darn northern. My father’s side of the family came here from England in 1890. My mother’s side came over from Germany following World War 1. So my skin is really, really light. Fair, some might generously say. Ghostly is probably closer to the truth. Hell, we could go with either dead or transparent!

So it’s good that I live in Western Washington. A glorious land where it is almost never hot, and almost always damp. 65 and a wee bit damp is perfect summer weather for me.

But, after the 4th of July it started getting hot here. Not a little hot. Really, really hot. Like over 100 degrees hot.

We put in a couple of window air conditioners but that only moved our house from ‘I’m going to die right this damn minute’ to ‘I will die if this gets any worse.’

So instead of writing the past few days, I spent that time marinating in my own sweat, slowly roasting in my own juices; moving from a nice medium rare to a tough well done. I kept wondering if Mrs. Bailey would start basting me with onion soup like she does with beef roasts.

Today, it is down to the mid 80’s here, and I’ve got the AC set to 67.

Hence, I’m alive once again. Slowly moving back to that preferred medium rare.

You may have thought that you could escape, but the heat wave has petered out, so I’m back to flooding your email box! Expect plenty of Bailey to be filling it once again.