Invisible Distractions...

Today was a strange Monday. It was very slow and quiet in the office and yet the time seemed to move fast. That’s never a bad thing, honestly. I find that the world seems to be sluggish on Mondays; People are slow to return calls and emails and, when they do, they inevitably end up deciding they need to get back to me.

I can’t blame them. I’m sluggish on Mondays myself. Today was a very sluggish day on account of the fact that I felt like I was walking like Iron Man. This is the result of doing mass amounts of landscaping yesterday. On the plus side, it means I was using my muscles and getting a workout of sorts. On the negative side, it hurts to move and I feel like I belong in the Ministry of Funny Walks.

Still, as the day winds down, it’s a non-rainy Monday which is something for which I am thankful. Given that a week ago, I discovered those nasty termites in my house, I’m hoping that my day doesn’t end so eventfully as it did last week when I went to bed with visions of termites crawling and flying in my head.

We haven’t seen any of the little buggers since Terminix came and saved the day. It’s much nicer to know there aren’t horrible buggy intruders hiding in my woodwork.

Of course, I’m a little afraid I might have an intruder of another nature but I’m choosing to ignore it. Ever since I watched “Paranormal Activity” which, in turn, inspired me to write The Reluctant Demon, I’ve been just a wee bit paranoid that the creaks in my house are more than creaks. Sometimes, there does seem to be an awful lot of noise coming from the attic.

Still, I’m quite good at talking sense into myself. Most of my brain does not believe in ghosts and paranormal creepiness. There’s a teeny-tiny portion that does wonder if such things exist since there are so many accounts and stories of such things and I can’t help but wonder if any of them are true. Also, I like the possibility that there are such things as ghosts because, well, it makes life more interesting. Yet, I’m also surprisingly quite rational and logical and thus, the other side of my brain kicks in.

However, there are times when rational thought tends to get a little overruled. In my case, it, as so many things do, involves my dogs.

Rory, my overly clever and mischievous dog is also very sensitive. For example, one time I had a bucket in my hallway because I thought my roof was leaking (it wasn’t- it was my air conditioner) and I thought I could catch the drips with the bucket. One morning, I accidentally kicked the bucket (literally, not figuratively, thank goodness) and it headed towards Rory who was watching me get ready for work in the bathroom as she usually does. The kicking of the bucket terrified Rory and, to this day, she’s afraid of the hallway and very jumpy whenever my clodhopping feet accidentally kick something towards her.

Also, she seems to see things which is where my rational thought gets overruled. Not long after I got the puppies, we were staying at my parent’s house for the weekend. It was just after midnight, my dad had gone to bed and my mum and I were enjoying the peace and chance to chat.

Then Rory started watching something move across the room. She was very intensely focused on it. Her eyes were moving slowly as though they were following something. To make matters more creepy, Sookie also sat up and began to watch.

It was most peculiar and it gave both mum and me the creeps. Still, when your dogs are seeing an invisible entity move across a room, there’s really not much to do about it other than hope that it’s just a shadow that moved or something equally less…creepy.

The problem is that Rory has been seeing something in our own house lately. On Friday night, she was very restless. It turned out that the poor thing had a very upset tummy and there was a reason for her restlessness- at least that’s what I’m telling myself. Otherwise, I might be slightly freaked out that she woke me up in the middle of the night, shaking with her eyes fixed on a certain spot in my room for a long time. My room isn’t completely dark at night. There is filtered light coming in from outside. It’s enough light that I could see Rory turn her head slowly, shaking the whole time as though she was following something with her eyes.

She did this for a long time. At one point, I turned on the light to see what was bothering her. She continued to shake and watch the one spot in room.

It turned out that not long after, she had to make several emergency trips outside because of her tummy. I’m choosing to believe that she wasn’t feeling well and that’s why she was shaking.

Of course, the fact that both dogs often come into my room when I’m getting changed, making the bed, etc. and both stare transfixed at the same area of my room where Rory was fixated the other night, is a little disconcerting. The rational part of my brain thinks it’s because I have a decorative pewter goblet on a small wall shelf hanging there and it reflects the light and it catches their interest.

The non-rational part of my brain has decided that it’s not going to entertain any other possibilities and that it’s going to listen to the rational part of my brain. Also, it’s caused me to make plenty of invitations to whatever it is that Rory stares at to communicate with me. I mean, say it is a ghost. Which is very silly and most unlikely. But what if it is? What am I supposed to do about it? Usually, ghosts have a reason for being somewhere, according to lore, right? There’s really not much I’m going to be able to do about it. I will admit, on the days when I’ve been creeped out by Rory’s staring-at-the-invisible-thing, I’ve been less rational and more…open-minded.

However, honestly, even if I did have a ghost, I wouldn’t know what to do. I think it would be nifty to come home and find a note typed on my computer in Microsoft Word that says, “Captain Monkeypants, thanks for letting me haunt you. By the way, I need you to get rid of the fan in the family room because it caused me to accidentally get electrocuted and die and until the issue is resolved, I can’t move on.”

Naturally, this might also make me a little nervous since it’s one thing to occasionally allow yourself to entertain the fact that you could have a ghost and completely another to have a note from a ghost on your computer. However, in my vast knowledge which, admittedly has been obtained from occasionally watching Ghost Hunters, ghosts do not use computers. I could say that my first thought to that was probably because ghosts are older folk who died before computers took over the world but that would sound weird. Most likely ghosts just don’t use computers because…they don’t.

Speaking of Ghost Hunters, by the way, I often wonder why the Ghost Hunters run away and scream so often when they’re supposed to be professionals. I mean, you don’t see Billy the Exterminator squealing like a girl when he has to crawl under a house to pull out a dead animal that’s infested with maggots. Nor do you see the Ice Road Truckers pulling over and sobbing hysterically because they’re on a scary ice road.

(And yes, I just admitted that I have seen episodes of both Billy the Exterminator and Ice Road Truckers. I’m not proud. I far prefer Billy by the way. He’s like a car accident with really, really bad hair.)

Back to my ghost issue. I don’t think I have one. It still makes me wonder what my dog is actually seeing though. It’s worse when both Sookie and Rory seem to be staring at the exact same thing and moving their eyes at the same time. Those are the times when Rational Brain tends to lose out to Non-Rational/Non-Logical/Overly Imaginative Brain.

Still, in the end, I let Rational Brain win. I find it far safer and far less creepy. Of course, it doesn’t mean I don’t occasionally wonder if I’ll come home and find a note on my computer. Of course, that leads back to the comment I made earlier about ghosts not using computers. Which is why I often check to see if the pen and paper on my table is still blank.

Oh, don’t judge me. I’m a writer. I can’t be rational all the time.

Happy Tuesday!

The Mystery of the Hickory Nuts...

I have a mystery to solve.

It involves hickory nuts.

As you know, I recently bought my own house. I'm still getting used to being a homeowner but I'm slowly getting the hang of it...I think.

My yard was tree-less when I moved in. Last September, a couple of weeks before I moved, Ohio was hit with some massive wind-storms. There was a lot of damage to trees all over the part of the state in which I live. My current backyard did have two trees in it but they had to be chopped down because of the damage to them as did my neighbour's trees. Thus, my garden had absolutely no trees in it until Saturday on which day, I changed that by planting a little Japanese cherry tree.

I did have two trees on the strip of grass in front of my house. It's between the sidewalk pavement and the road and everyone in our neighbourhood is responsible for mowing this strip of grass. In my grass strip were two rather nice maple trees. They may not really be maple since I'm prone to only recognizing trees when they either have fruit on them or they still have the tag from the nursery where they were purchased on them. Yet, for the purpose of this blog, they're maple trees.

One day, a couple of weeks ago, I came home from work. I was talking to my mother on the phone and I looked out the front window. Something looked different. I slowly realized one of my trees was gone. It wasn't an old tree; it had only been planted a couple of weeks ago. Yet...there it was...gone...with only a stump remaining.

Naturally, I was baffled. I know that tree had been there when I'd left for work. Yet there were no traces of sawdust, no twigs, no fallen branches. It was just...gone.

I went to check out the stump. There were no clues.

I began to suspect that perhaps there was a Tree Serial Killer around, a crazed lumberjack who chopped down trees like a phantom so that all that remained was a stump.

I tested my theory on a coworker who has little time for my imagination. Thus, she suggested that I contact the City where I live and find out.

I decided that might not be a bad idea. So I emailed them, giving them my Crazed Lumberjack theory as a possible explanation. I got a polite reply that did not mention a lumberjack at all. Instead, the City Tree Person said that my tree had been damaged in the wind-storm last year and had been tagged for chopping for a while. Unfortunately, the nice lady who lived in my house before me forgot to mention that. Thus, while it may look like my tree was randomly taken, it was, in fact, scheduled to be removed.

While I was happy to find out the answer, I was a little sad that the mystery had such a simple solution.

However, I'm both pleased and a little scared to report I might have another mystery on my hands, as I mentioned in my blog opening: The Mystery of the Appearing Hickory Nuts.

For those non-nut-knowing folk, a hickory nut begins in this rather large green husk, the size of a tennis ball. When they're ripe, the husks split as the nuts fall from the tree, releasing the nuts. When they're unripe, they remain in their green tennis-ball-form, unable to be opened without force and great mess.

Last week, I was outside watering my plants when I noticed a hickory nut that was sitting in the very corner of my house on a little ledge that runs around the side of my house. It's only about two inches wide, large enough upon which to sit a hickory nut but not large enough that a squirrel could scurry around upon it. I knew that hickory nut hadn't been there before because I often go for a walk outside and look around that area to make sure there aren't any scary spiders. That night, there weren't any spiders...just a green-yellow unripe hickory nut.

Scenerios ran in my mind as to how that nut got there but I finally dismissed it, throwing the nut back into my weed patch and deciding not to worry about it unless another nut appeared.

This weekend, when I weeded, I found that nut in my geraniums and I tossed it towards the end of my yard. I tried to locate the hickory tree from which it must have fallen but I'm still not sure which tree that might be. See comment above regarding my recognition of trees.

I didn't give that hickory nut much thought again. I'd talked myself into thinking that perhaps that nut really had sat in the corner of my ledge the entire time I'd been living in my house and I hadn't noticed it.

Until last night.

I was in my kitchen, making tortilla soup and relaxing. I like making soup because it involves lots of chopping and I love to chop. I happen to glance out my window.

There, on the grill I had just moved to my deck, sat a green hickory nut.

Now, while I'd like to think there's a very muscular, very agile squirrel out there who can somehow climb onto the grill even though it's not anchored anywhere, I admit...I'm a little dubious about that theory.

My problem is that I watch too much television, too many movies and read too many books. My imagination has gone a little wild.

Firstly, I thought of some weird witchcraft. That's what I get for watching The Blair Witch Project fairly recently. In that movie, the Blair Witch Evil Thing leaves twigs outside the victim's tents. Then they die.

I'm hoping that hickory nut isn't like those twigs. That would be bad.

I looked up the meaning of a hickory nut. Apparently, it doesn't have much meaning. After much digging, I did discover that the Druids and wiccan folk believe that the hickory nut is linked to abundance, wholeness, power, presence, command, discipline, acquisition, giving of gifts, and the finding of direction.

Well, it'd be nice to find some direction, I admit. I'm just not sure how, exactly, a mystery hickory nut is going to help me find that.

Then again, it also represents a giving of gifts. Maybe someone is leaving me hickory nuts as a gift.

I even entertained the idea that the bunny that I see on my lawn every day is leaving the nuts. Naturally, the logical thought that bunnies can't climb followed shortly after. I did think for a brief moment how nice it would be if the bunny was really some prince or hero in disguise and the hickory nuts were a clue for how I could release him. That only lasted 30 seconds. I might have a vivid imagination but I'm also a realist. I'm not sure how heroic a prince might be after spending at least a couple of months hiding under my tool shed and enjoying a night snack on my lawn.

Still, despite all the ideas I came up with, I really don't have a good one for the hickory nuts that are appearing. As it got darker, I started to have a little less bravado and a little scarier thoughts. People are weird. The only way those nuts could really have got there was if a human put them there. What if that Crazed Lumberjack was not as fictional as I thought? What if someone was coming into my yard while I slept? This thought is particularly scary when you're lying in the dark, the house creaking a little because it's old with the windows open to let in the cool air. I have a one-level house. My bedroom window is right beside that grill where I found the second hickory nut.

Needless to say, I didn't sleep well. I had horrid dreams. I made sure my blinds were closed but I still felt paranoid, in case someone really was out there.

This morning, naturally, I feel a little silly for having such an overactive imagination. When I looked out of the window at the dark dawn outside, all I saw in the twilight was that bunny, having his breakfast by eating the grass at the base of my new tree. There was no lumberjack, no creature lurking in the shadows that I could see.

The hickory nut was still there.

That, at least, I hadn't imagined.

I'm sure there's a logical explanation for it. I just can't come up with one. I'll let you know if another one appears. Or if the Crazed Lumberjack shows up. Or it's a new Blair Witch. Or if the bunny turns out to be more than a bunny.

In the meantime, I think I should probably control my imagination a little better. It might make sleep easier.

But if you can come up with a theory for me on how these nuts are getting where they're getting, I'd appreciate it.

Happy Wednesday.