So What's With The Glut Of UFO Nonsense?

 I will be sticking with "nonsense" in this post. Most of the stories I'm seeing could, perhaps would, have been front page on the "rags" next to check out counters. I don't even notice if those exist anymore, and if they're still at the counters, I ignore whatever the covers blare at potential customers. Even if they're so ridiculous they might make me laugh, it's a hard no. Call it mental censorship.

But suddenly the stories are all over the place. Let's start a couple years back with pilots supposedly having video from their cockpits of "TicTac" like UFOs following their planes, suddenly making right angle turns at speed, dropping into the water of the ocean without slowing or splashing. If one could believe them, they'd be amazing, some kind of technology way above us at this point. But... CGI. It exists. I haven't the skills to duplicate that kind of video, but I've seen it in theaters. You likely have as well.

There are alleged brown skulls that have the huge eye holes in the face that would do any alien-party role player in Roswell, New Mexico proud to wear... except it wouldn't fit over their heads. Thank goodness there's flimsy plastic white ones for sale there, eh? Meanwhile, I look at those photos and think "movie prop." Any human with the skill set and a streak of mischief could have manufactured one. So, proof of nothing alien, unless you judge the mindset of such a designer/manufacturer to be "alien" - to you at least. Maybe not even so alien if making it came with the right price tag. I bet they could do T-Rex skulls too, or super giant King Kong ones. Heck, I'm sure they already have. We've seen those movies too.

It used to be the stories were about abductions and surgeries to find out the internal anatomy of helpless victims. Somehow those folks always managed to arrive back on earth, a "big chunk of weird", but somehow scar free and with a deep thirst for whatever was served in the local bar... on somebody else's tab of course, since telling long stories is thirsty work.

The flavor of the stories has morphed again. The most recent ones are alleged to be from some previous administration's has-been, spouting secrets about how jets at 40,000 feet are stopped and held stationary for a bit before being safely released to continue to wherever. Or our moon walking astronauts either never arrived but the "proof" was set up by resident moon aliens who somehow knew how to get all the details right, or our astronauts did arrive and were being observed by aliens while hiking around on the moon. No doubt those aliens were waiting to see what was going to happen to the neighborhood now that some "wrong color" new neighbors were starting to show up with big reflective heads, and wondering how they'd affect property values. Was it time for them to move further out to the suburbs... of Mars?

Conspiracy theories abound around these stories. Maybe they're waiting for us to overheat this planet and make it perfect for their next colony? Or they're in league with (pick an enemy, real or fever dream) and will reveal themselves as they start to round us up for dinner - theirs, not ours. Maybe they have the "fix" for what makes us (fill in the blank with your favorite flaw) and with enough study will step up and rescue the deserving of us from the flawed rest of us. Note that nobody ever manages to come up with a reason for them wanting to rescue us. I figure that last is just our own desperation and unwillingness to change speaking.

I suggest a more plausible conspiracy. The actual humans who wish to take control of the entire planet have figured out that fear, especially irrational amorphous fear, can make us do just about anything. We'll attack anybody "other", align with whatever silly improbably hope seems to be offered, believe almost anything without question. All this combined would prompt a vast majority of us to cede our own thought processes to a leader, do whatever is "required", and enable such a professed hero/leader to do whatever the hell they want to whomever the hell they want for as long as they just keep us afraid and make promises for improvement.

If you have trouble accepting that concept, tell me how recent elections around the world are NOT proof it's already being done. No aliens necessary, of course. Sorry if that spoiled it for you.

How To Get Haunted

 Or maybe this should be "how to haunt somebody." It's a "Concept of a Plan."

I was joking with a friend online earlier that I've never actually met in person, and who's now in hospice, about seeing my crocus when they bloom this next spring. It started with a notation by me that now that the snow had again melted, the tips of last fall's crocus bulbs were poking through the dirt by between a  quarter and eighth of an inch, and really needed snow again to protect them with the expected sub-zero weather coming up. He replied with the assumption that they would be yellow, to which I countered with a list of all the colors I had ordered them in, some of which I'd never seen in a crocus before, like orange or blue.

Both of us know he won't be leaving Arizona for Minnesota to see them in bloom. It's not necessarily his expected life span, as he's been holding on for a nice while now. Even my dad hung in there with official hospice status for eleven months, and I've heard of both longer and shorter stays by different folks.  In his case not traveling that far is guaranteed by his health concerns and difficulty in any mobility. Travel of any sort isn't happening. I'm not sure he even makes it to see his doctor, as a nurse pops in to visit him regularly. The nurse is the go-between for things like a change in medications, in addition to tending immediate needs.  Anyway, he's already been sticking around for longer than he initially expected. The positive is his mind is sound, he spends time researching a specific climate change topic, and he still has - at least occasionally - his sense of humor. Some days it's rare, but it hasn't fully deserted him.

I told him that we wouldn't know till April the actual colors the crocus the crocus would bloom in. But then, a few practicalities occurred to me, and I shared those with him.

"We'll have to see what's left from what the squirrels dug up to eat. This means, of course, to find out you have to stick around till April.  : ) That, or figure out how to haunt me as a ghost. So-o-o... first you have to believe you can be a ghost, then manifest as one, then figure out that you'd want to bother with haunting anybody, then whether that might be me, then figure out how to find somebody you've never met.... I suppose there's a part in there where  you'd have to decide if it's worth all that energy! LOL "

His answer was prompt:  "Cute, me a ghost? Why not? :-))) "

I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Meanwhile I expect we'll continue to correspond almost daily, sharing thoughts about the world, politics, climate, personal history and experiences, philosophies about life and death and what has meaning, etc. We'll continue till it can't.

Santa's Judgment

I will presume you've already read my post "Then On The 25th". If not, this won't make much sense to you. There were consequences, and decisions were made.

Billy's father contacted Santa after Billy's misbehavior. After all, those presents came out of a year's long observation of "naughty" and "nice" behaviors. And yes, Santa still had enough magic after his flight with his reindeer around the world that he had enough energy left to spend a few necessary moments discussing the problem together with Billy's Dad. 

I mean, just think of how exhausted an ordinary magic person would have been after such a tremendous amount of work all in one night! Why I'd have been so tired I would have needed to sleep until the following October, relying on the elves in the workshop to keep things running! And I'm not magic at all. Santa's magic is truly amazing and powerful!

Santa did delegate a few elves to head back over to Billy's house to sort the tags and re-wrap most of the presents for the other members of the family, while Billy was sent to his room. Daddy sent most of Billy's presents back to the workshop, maybe for another year, maybe for other children who'd been better behaved that night. Only Santa and his elves really know, and they aren't talking about it.

But Santa did remember the good things Billy had done all the past year, and decided that Daddy could pick out just three presents to keep, though not to give to Billy, or at least not quite yet. In the morning, Billy was told that, only because he'd been mostly good the last year, he would be given a chance to earn his presents back. But only by being extra good through this year. Santa sent one of his elves, a young one still in training at the workshop, to keep an eye on Billy and see how he was behaving. If, and only if, Billy went back to behaving well, then Santa would let Billy get one of his presents to keep. And then another after earning it, and finally the third. But he'd have to earn each by being extra good. It would happen either in the next couple months of the next year, since Santa couldn't spare his junior elf for very long away from the workshop, or Santa's elf would take the last three presents back to his workshop and some other well-behaved child would get them instead.

I know we're all hoping Billy can earn his presents back. He's usually a very nice little boy, and smart enough to learn his lesson pretty quickly.

Late December Fog

 This will be more pictoral than verbal. We've had several days now of fog with unseasonably warm temperatures. (Spoiler: it ends very soon. A deep freeze is coming.) I spent a bit of today outside with my camera, after discovering this morning how icy everything was. Not hoar-frost icy, but watch-your-damn-step! icy. It was a freezing fog. I had to sprinkle salt on the porch steps and the path to the car, in near pitch black dark except for what was picked up and bounced around by the droplets, to get to my job. The drive takes me up a steep hill. But fortunately there is a longer, shallower slope back entrance, which I'd studied ahead of time. If we get solid ice, I'll stay home. It's understood at the job.

A bit later in the morning I got the camera out, since I had about an hour to kill at one point. There were some places I'd had in the back of my mind to shoot, given the opportunity. First spot was the local lake, just a check on visibility and the craziness of folks out in their fish houses, considering how high temps had just been for days.

The horizontal ice stripes were mostly narrow bands of re-frozen melt water close to shore. But a bit further out were two ice houses, somehow lightweight enough for the ice to hold them. The one on the left is shown on runners, the other flat on ice. Fog hides other details including color and backdrop. I happen to know there are trees in a direct line behind them, as they are tucked in a bay, but it's early in the day yet. The weather forecaster claims the fog will be gone in about another hour from this point.

A few miles along the road is a well used boat launch, at least in summer. Over a half dozen vehicles were parked there today already, but none so stupid as to have hauled a standard ice house out on the lake. The color of this one is almost beginning to show the deep blue tent it is made of, while fog is thinning enough to reveal a side of the bay and the point behind it. Water levels, well frozen, are low enough to allow one to walk out on concrete lanes down into the lake, so my angle is about ten feet from shore.

Just a few degrees to the left are two more, much closer, with the land behind forming the bay more visible. Somebody is working on putting up the support poles for their tent - the red - while closer to the far shore is a modest square blue. Either the blue was unattended or its occupant content to sit inside, likely on one of the ubiquitous 5 gallon plastic buckets used both for hauling in/out, and sitting meantime.

If I turn  fully left and zoom to the next spit of land you can see where a supply of summer docks have been pulled out to wait through winter. Well before fishing opener in the spring they will be anchored back in the lake, jutting out from shore where boat owners pay for slips for the season they can walk to from their cars, or even their back doors. Another bay opens on the other side of this spit of land, again too far  to spy through the fog. The white along the shore on this side is likely where snow drifted on the ice and didn't fully melt in the latest warm spell.

It was finally time to try a different spot. I've been waiting for the perfect lighting to catch the shot I wanted, for several years now. There's no lake here, just a drop to the highway below, and one old tree which is having a difficult time deciding whether it is going to die outright or just a bit and spring back with new growth from the trunk. Those are not vines clinging to it. It has a rather cluttered background, with office buildings, a motel, signs, large trees, and steady highway traffic. Fog is a must for a shot of it, isolating it enough so it can stand out and show it's own unique beauty.

One of the medical buildings on this side of the tree uses the nearby ground under it for snow removal from their parking lot. Of course it's not completely necessary to showing off the tree,though the angle showing the snow is otherwise more effective.

Next summer the clinging red/brown leaves will be replaced by green ones should the tree survive another winter, the trees across the highway will be solid green, and you'll almost have to know this tree is there to see it... and its beauty.

Kettle Drums In The Back Yard

I've been hearing the thumm... thumm for months now, after my head hits the pillow and the dark house is nearly silent. My head is next to the outside wall, a bit down in the next room from the front door. There could be many explanations. There just never are.

Several times I've gotten up and looked out the window to see if there was something I could point to, perhaps something needing fixing, to pin the noise on. I'd open the front door, step out, look around, try to pinpoint a noise, a source, some reason. Eventually I'd give up worrying and go to sleep. However, if I woke in the wee hours I could hear it again, or at least until my bad shoulder drove me out of bed to finish sleeping in my recliner where the pressure would be off the shoulder and eventually I could sleep again.

In the middle of the house. No windows next to me. No outside wall by my head. 

I wondered if there was a leak somewhere from the roof or in a wall, perhaps even in the plumbing underneath where I slept, or inside a cabinet - any excuse for the noise, any reason for a repair being missed  that we could address. 

Nothing. When I walk around, it always seems to come from outside, never has a source I can find.

Oddly, it never seemed to depend on the weather. I opened the front door several times to look out, see if something was dripping off the roof, hitting, say, the porch to make the noise. There'd be no drips off our roof, the porch was dry, no snow was thawing, no rain falling. Was it in the walls? Would something ignored be rotting away to fall apart with us inside the home?

Sleep can be a challenge with those thoughts running through your head.

We just had a really good rain the last couple days, with temperatures in the high 30s, and snow melting from all but the most determined banks where shovels and plows have piled it. A look at the lake reveals glass where two days ago it was solid snow white. So far no fishermen are braving the ice, sensibly wary of how thin it may have gotten. Rabbits have been in the yard, piles of droppings sitting where they long munched on missed clumps of green grass formerly hidden by snow. We'd been seeing the tracks where they had passed through, but nothing had looked like them stopping for a buffet, until now. Our trips to the garbage and recycle bins will have to be in daylight for a few days so we can monitor where we step to keep shoes clean, but the rabbits are welcome to the grass. Normally we have to pay for the trimming.

But last night brought the kettle drums into the back yard. It was no longer a steady slow thumm... thumm. It was a percussion masterpiece, an endless performance worthy of Symphony Hall. And no, it didn't emerge from off our roof at all. Or at least not the house roof.

Instead it came from out in the yard, where the shed sits, or to be even more precise, where the sloped shed roof deposits water onto the trash bin, and the recycle bin. Each has a slightly different quality of plastic hinged lid, with different levels of emptiness inside to mellow the sound or accentuate it. Those were our kettle drums! I even called Steve to come and listen to them for a bit, which he did.

While they were loud, the sound soon soothed me to sleep, rather than keeping me awake with imagined cares.

It's going to be dry again tonight, and likely for several more. I'm wondering if the thumm... thumm will return tonite. I'll be sure to poke my head out and search for a cause when it does. This time I'll make sure to check the shed roof to see if it's dripping onto the bins. They have tended to be wet in the mornings, or even iced up when it's cold enough inside a little trough at the hinges. Sometimes I have to  whack the lids to get them open.  I know it doesn't really make sense that they'd be a source of the nightly dripping, but I do want to be sure. I'd love to settle in to sleep without needing to worry about some missed repair somewhere. 

But in a good rain I'll also be alert for the kettle drums to return to the yard. We both love a free concert.

Then OnThe 25th...

 One advantage of marrying into a large family is that you get a lot of stories to tell. This one involves a four-yer old, and I'm going to use a nickname for him based on his middle name. After all his first name is quite unique, and someday he'll grow up and might not want to be identified by his recent exploits. So I'll call him Billy.

We've been seeing a fair amount of Billy this past  year. Right now his parents are moving to a new apartment, but still managed to get a tree up to celebrate Christmas and Santa. The first time we even met Billy was just after we moved north last spring, when he was having his own 4th birthday party. It was full of relatives from both his parents' sides of the family, but even better was he got to invite his best friend along so he'd have a playmate through the party. When it came to present opening time, bedlam ensued, wrapping paper removed as soon as possible and scattered even more widely than previously thought possible, with the result that presents were very rapidly revealed.

This was little kids being cute, right?

Skip forward to a couple months ago. A big birthday party was held for Billy's cousins, sisters whose birthdays are a week apart on the calendar, though by a couple years in fact. The family held a joint party for the girls, and Billy and his family were present. It was a challenge to keep Billy from "helping" unwrap all the girl's presents, and for several minutes his parents kept him confined in a cardboard box, back next to where they were sitting watching some much more sedate action than the previous big party. The box was big enough big enough for him to comfortably watch the proceedings from, small enough to keep him out of the way, and to reach him in with frequent reminders and some gentle tugs on his clothing. These weren't his presents, after all.  Billy is one of those kids who likes boxes to play in, so he was only disappointed that he had to give the empty box back after the fun was over. Well, maybe a little bit let down that this time the goodies weren't for him. One of the birthday girls likes boxes as much as Billy does, maybe even more, and this box was for her.

Skip ahead once more to Christmas Eve. Billy is put to bed, where he is to get a good night's sleep while waiting for Santa to bring everybody's presents overnight. It works for a little while, but then Billy decided to be a helper for Santa, just not by sleeping so Santa can sneak in and leave presents. He has a different idea in mind. When the family wakes up in the morning, they find Billy has unwrapped every single present under the tree. Every! Single! One! Billy happily greets them from the middle of the piles.

We have not been told the family's exact reactions. It may be best that they remain private.

But if any of you out there were looking for a thank you note from somebody in Billy's family, please note that your present was most likely received. And opened, very promptly and efficiently. Now they may never know exactly who sent it or who it was really meant for. A brief note may be in order with a quick little mention of what was sent to whom. I'm sure they're not intending to be rude if you haven't heard quite yet. Santa just got a little too much help last night.

On December 24th...

I was in a bit of a grumpy mood.  Company was coming... though I didn't know how many. Ten? Twenty?  Who today? Tomorrow? The person who'd offered to help clean was not feeling well, and wisely staying away, while I, of course, had left a lot of those chores to the last. C'mon, a lot of that made sense: why empty the still-mostly-empty wastebaskets when two more days of trash were still to go in? Why extend tables this early when they'd mostly be blocking paths? Decorate them later too. Why clean the floor a week early when lots more would be dropped - or dripped - on it? Same with dishes: there would be a plentiful supply of them once the "do ahead of time" food prep was, well, prepped, so why not do it all at once? I'd had to work for a couple hours in the morning I hadn't planned on earlier in the week so it was just all mounting up, and suddenly there was only an hour left till the first guests were due to arrive. 

I needed some lunch.

Then there was the phone call from younger guests asking if it was "still OK" if they came over (?!) and could they maybe show up a bit early? I overheard some of the conversation, and the caller sounded upset. Of course they were welcomed! No question in the world about it, just some unvoiced ones until later to each other about what might be causing the upset we picked up from the voice. It just meant I had to put off lunch yet another hour when I was already feeling an energy low plus a need to tuck my feet up for a bit, and do that last-second run to the store that was suddenly needed when shopping lists had been made and fulfilled the day before. Except this one wasn't, because first Steve needed things, then didn't, then finally decided he did after all... right when I needed fewer things on my to-do list rather than more. I guess my early afternoon shower wasn't happening after all. 

Sighhhhhh....

He swore I didn't stink. And my cowlicks were laying down for a change.

At least the weather was warm, meaning snow was melting off the roads. And the local store was close and still open, even if pricey. Of course, I'd make up for less driving time by more hunting through the shelves, since I was usually happy to drive farther for low prices, and not that familiar with this store. Plus I'd already driven right past it earlier that morning, on my route between work and the post office where I popped in to find out why a priority package was on the east coast instead of the west, and what could we do now that tracking claimed it was delivered... somewhere... thousands of miles away from its goal. I mean, how does a package leaving Minnesota for Oregon wind up in New Hampshire? At least they verified it was not infact delivered, but still on a truck, arriving late but still on its way, apparenty enjoying the scenic route.

As I parked in the unusually jammed parking lot for the grocery store, I was mentally going over his list and trying to figure out whether there was anything I needed to add while I was there. There was NOT going to be another last minute run! 

Thus preoccupied, I was totally startled by a very warm "Merry Christmas" from a complere stranger coming out of the store on the way to her car as she aproached me heading in. Seeing it was for me, I smiled at her, thanked her, and offered her a heartfelt one in return. 

It had been a gift, the best kind, totally unexpected, a nice wish from somebody who could tell I needed one right then. It worked.

Once in the packed store, the feeling persisted. I found what I needed, added a few last minute things to help set amore festive mood at the tables, and actually noticed the shoppers around me. We were all happy! When carts bumped, people smiled, apologized, laughed, and moved on. People waited for the person ahead to choose the exact right item before reaching in for theirs. They might even chat with the next person behind them while waiting.

When I finally reached check-out, I paused a moment to decide which line I wanted to get into, and a man coming from a different direction waited for me to choose. I smiled at him, aplogized for my delay, due to mentally double-checking my list,  and he offered that he was still doing the same thing. 

It ran all through the store! People leaving were greeting new arrivals in the parking lot, folks waited patiently for an open parking slot. There didn't seem to be a bad mood in the place, including mine, and the feeling lasted till well after I got back home and my to-do list vied for attention again. 

Lunch? How about a few pieces of the holiday candies I'd picked up last minute to fill centerpieces for the tables? Mmmmmmm! Later a certain four-year-old had just as much enjoyment from them (with his mother's blessing - I checked)  as I'd had, and his older sister had, and Steve had....

The day ended with a houseful of children's giggles as they played tickle and destroyed all the spare empty boxes set out for such entertainment. No fancy holiday choir music could possibly compare.