random thoughts – Day 1,753 – (Friday) – questions

Some days deliver weird things. Little oddities that lack explanation. This morning, while getting into the car to go to work, I noticed something white in the rhododendron in front if the house. It piqued my interest enough that I got out of the car to look more closely. It was a roll of paper towels. This led to many questions including:

Is that really a roll of paper towels in the rhododendron?

Where did it come from and how did it get there?

Who did it belong to?

Why is it there?

How long has it been there?

On the drive to work, the questions floated in my head like dandelion fluff. Then I forgot about them.

Supper out.

Every few weeks or so, a friend and I go out for supper and drinks after work. Tonight, we went to Warp & Weft, conveniently located two blocks from work. We ate and talked. It’s been a weird two weeks with the Wednesday holidays splitting the weeks so that it feels like there have been two Mondays. Four Mondays in the space of two weeks is too much. 

After a couple hours, we headed back out to the cold, crisp night. The sky was clear, with a shining silver crescent moon sliver in the sky and a bright star (planat?) nearby. The air was cold, but the forecast is for potentially colder, so there is that to look forward to. The Wannalancit smokestack tree shone bright green in the dark sky.

Clear night in Lowell.

Back at home, the paper towel roll still sat in the bush. I couldn’t reach it from the driveway and the gate on that side is hard to open and close ever since it magically and mysteriously went out of alignment so I went into the house and came back out the front door to fetch it. It was flattened and lightly frozen to the branches. As it finally released from the branch, a bird squawked and flew out of the bush, startling me probably as much as I startled it. After a quick "oh shit!" there was an apology to the bird and I went back inside. 

The flattened, dirty, half-full roll of lightly frozen paper towels now sits on a table in the front porch. For now. It will go into the trash tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ll keep wondering how it landed in the rhododendron and when. Seriously, I need some answers.