Every couple of weeks over the past couple of months, I’ve gone back to my hometown to help my mom with things she needs help with as she’s selling her home and preparing to move. (She’s staying in my hometown.) I was there this past weekend, and I’ll be there for a bit over the next couple of weekends as she finally closes on both her current house and her next.

The two-hour trip gives me some really good quiet time to think and create, but without being able to actually put my thoughts to paper (or computer file), the time and thinking tends to get wasted. But even so, it’s two hours of quiet time that feel so wonderfully refreshing at times. Since having children, I’ve sometimes come to really miss quiet time. Time when no one wants or needs my attention. Time to just sit with my own thoughts, uninterrupted.

The trip from my current town to my hometown is pretty boring from a sight-seeing point of view. Once I leave my current, “big” town, it’s most all highway and green trees or fields. I do pass through a few small towns — so small it only takes about five minutes to get through.

There’s been some new road construction at about the half-way point of the trip, where they’ve made it so I have to get off my highway to stay on my highway, if that makes any sense. This last time, Friday evening, I apparently missed that turn off. I was driving along and started to notice things, churches, barns, a gas station, that I didn’t recognize. I turned around at the first chance and headed back to find where I missed the turn. But the crazy thing about it is that on my way back, I found myself on the correct highway going in the correct direction, without having to turn off anywhere. It was like the world just shifted and changed to help me out.

I appreciate the effort of changing time and space to accommodate my trip, but why couldn’t it have morphed the first time so I didn’t end up 10 minutes out of my way?

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I’ve shown you the Captain America action figure I have on my work office desk, and I’ve since then added an Iron Man action figure. (I want to add a Hulk figure, too, but I haven’t found one I like.) But I haven’t mentioned my other action figures on my desk. They’re MagWarriors — their arms, legs, and heads are connected by magnets, and their weapons are changeable.

They’ve been on my desk for a few months, and I used to fiddle with their poses occasionally when I needed a break from my computer screen. I eventually got them into positions I really like, so I don’t mess with them anymore. Then the other day, when I came to work at 7:00 in the morning, I found them exploded in the corner.

It looked like someone had thrown something at them and knocked them down and scattered the pieces. Arms and legs and a couple of heads were scattered about — one head was over two feet away. Fortunately, nothing was really broken. I picked up all the pieces and attached them back, and set the guys back in their places.

The figures are under a large metal shelf, so nothing could have fallen on them from above. None of my paperwork, including papers stacked in a wire rack right beside the figures, was moved in any way. The figures were not messed up from being played with — the “scatter pattern” of their pieces didn’t suggest one or more was dropped. It really looked like something was thrown at them, intentionally or accidentally. Something fairly big, like soccer ball sized. The two in the middle were shattered, the one on the left was smushed but still in one piece, and the one of the right looked untouched.

I asked my coworkers if they knew what had happened, and I explained that I wasn’t mad, and nothing was broken, but I was just dumbfounded by the strangeness of it. No one knew/admitted anything about it, but one suggested that maybe Cap’n A and Shellhead had fought them.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com