There were two boys, and for their birthday they were placed in a room full of horse manure. One of the little boys was an eternal optimist, the other one was a pessimist. As you can imagine, the pessimist drew to him circumstances that were less than ideal. On the other hand, the optimist was always grateful, and drew to him wonderful things. When they were placed in the room, the pessimist simply started to cry and whine about his lot in life, wondering why on earth he should be bad enough to receive nothing but horse manure for his birthday. The other little boy, however, was gleefully digging through the stuff, throwing horse manure this way and that, having a ball. The pessimist asked him, “What on earth are you so happy about? It’s a room full of horse manure!” And the optimist replied, “With all this horse manure, there has to be a pony somewhere! I’m going to find that pony and go for a pony ride!”

This month, you could substitute “the heat” for manure in the preceding story and be pretty close to the truth. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve wavered between optimism and pessimism, but I’m going to eventually find that pony. There is a white knight coming to our rescue, I hope, his name is Don. Right now, Don is just a tropical depression in the Gulf, but he is scheduled to make landfall this weekend, along the Texas coast. The current forecast has Don dissipating in West Texas. This would be good for them, providing some much need rain, but what we need here is for Don to make a right turn and head up to Missouri. It might be enough to break open the heat dome that has been sitting over the Midwest. If it does, then I’ll go for that pony ride. 😉