Somethin' Strange, in the VALihood

Doo doo doo doo...doo doo doo doo...you are about to enter another dimension. Val's brain.

I must be going crazy. These things don't happen without a logical explanation. I was a science teacher for 28 years, by cracky! You can't break the laws of physics.

Yesterday (Thursday), I was washing dishes at the kitchen sink. That's the best place, you know. Even though I don't have a dishwasher, it's not like I have to haul my eating utensils down to the creek. I have stood at that sink washing dishes on an almost-daily basis for the past 20 years. And I've never observed the occurrence that grabbed my attention yesterday morning.

We've had a cuckoo clock, given to Hick by my grandma, hanging on the wall for the past 10 years, at least. Hick used to visit Grandma every Sunday evening, and she liked giving him things. He was in his clock-collecting period when he brought home this cuckoo. I despised the thing, really. He never had it set at the correct time, and those cuckoo chimes drowned out the TV when they went off every hour.

I've since grown used to it, and do most of my TV watching in the basement on the big screen. So it doesn't annoy me as much these days. I also remember that every time Hick went away on a trip for work, Genius had to make sure to wind the cuckoo clock. That is done by pulling on the chains. The chains with 10-pound weights attached to them. They feel like 10-pound weights to me, but Hick says they are probably about a pound each. I know I've shown you pictures of this clock before.

There I stood Thursday morning, between 10:00 and 10:30, washing dishes, looking out the three kitchen windows periodically. The morning was overcast, and we had high winds in the forecast. I could see the polleny thingies on the cedar trees out back, blowing to and fro. I mentally made note that it was going to be a bad hair day, and that I should probably wear my jacket, even though temps were in the 50s, so that my shirt didn't blow up over my head as I walked into Save A Lot and the Gas Station Chicken Store.

While I was washing and rinsing, something caught my eye. I looked up to see the chains on the cuckoo clock swinging wildly. Even the weights were bobbing sideways, almost reaching horizontal alignment. Like somebody was yanking those chains from the top, like a marionette-a-teer (like a puppeteer, but with a marionette).

WHAT IN THE NOT-HEAVEN?

I stood transfixed. Those crazy chains eventually settled themselves down, and were as still as they are in this picture I took about 90 minutes later. You know me. Always the investigator. I mentally ticked off several theories that would explain this phenomenon.

Wind. The wind was stronger than usual. I'd just been noting that, looking out the window. I dried my hands and went to the clock. It's right beside one of the windows, you see.

Please pardon my 2011 calendar. My life is teeming with activities. I stood by the clock, and stretched my still-damp-from-dishwater left hand over to the window frame. Nothing. I waited until I could see big wind gusts heaving the tree limbs again. Nothing. Not a gust, not a draft. No air was getting in that window. As it should be. What kind of a house do you think Hick built, anyway?

My next theory involved the air vent right under the clock.

That's it. I'm sure that when the heat kicked on, the whoosh of air caused those weights to swing wildly to and fro. Not really sure. Hoping. I went back to washing dishes, and kept an ear tuned to the heat kick-on. Aha! There it was. I looked at the clock chains, but they were still. Perhaps a tiny bit of barely-perceptible sway at the very bottom 12 inches or so of the chain. The weights didn't budge.

When I later related the incident to Hick last evening, he suggested that the chains got stuck on the chair, and once they yanked loose, created the swinging weights. Poor, dear Hick. So unaware of his surroundings. There is no chair near the clock chains. That's the closest one there in the foreground, with a hat draped on the back. In case Hick meant the stool, let the record show that from the other angle, these chains are at least two inches away from the stool. And it seems far-fetched that one could get caught on a smooth, rounded bar on the stool.

Not as far-fetched as those weights and chains bobbing in a frenzy with no discernible stimulus, though.

Later in the evening, Hick DID confirm that this is the cuckoo clock that my grandma gave him. And that a couple months after she died, he was sitting at the kitchen table, doing some paperwork he'd brought home (a rare occurrence), when the kitchen door opened by itself. I'm sure he just forgotten to pull it closed until it latched. And that the wind caught it and opened it. Since nobody else was home. Pretty sure that's how it happened.

So...I had no answers to my clock chain mystery. It wasn't creepy or anything. This was DAYLIGHT, by cracky. Mid-morning. I finished my dishes and gathered a dentist bill Hick drug home for me to pay Wednesday, the dentist and his hygienist having no idea how to charge the debit card, their office gal being out to lunch. I had several tasks to complete before a shower and daily 44 oz Diet Coke trip.

I kicked back in the La-Z-Boy and put the TV on that new channel I found, 82 on Dish Network (FETV, Family Entertainment Television), showing old stuff like The Lone Ranger and The Flying Nun and The Partridge Family and Matlock and Perry Mason. Today it was Bewitched. A two-parter. I wasn't really paying attention. I think Cousin Serena turned some gal into a chimp. At one point, it was eating spaghetti at the table while Samantha made excuses to Darrin. Everyone was wishing Cousin Serena would come back and change that chimp back into a gal. Like I said, I wasn't paying a lot of attention.

I wrote out that dentist check. Called the bank's automated line to check on our direct deposits. I made a mobile deposit in The Pony's account with his monthly allowance. I sent Genius an apology text for sending him a text meant for Hick yesterday, and thus ensued a back-and-forth textversation about his phone bill and insurance. I read the local news online and checked my blogs while waiting for his responses.

I was still replying to Genius, after just replying to The Pony (careful not to send one a text meant for the other) when I glanced up to see that Samantha's chimp had escaped, and was running down a back-lot city street. You know the look of those old TV shows. The color faded. Fake storefronts. Wait a minute! I know times were different then, but I can't believe the Bewitched people let this print be broadcast. There was a black spot on the film. Maybe a bug got on the camera...wait a minute!

THAT WAS A LADYBUG ON MY TV SCREEN!

As that thought sunk in, I saw the ladybug slide slowly off the screen (darn my slovenly housekeeping habits, it probably couldn't get a grip with all that dust on its six little feet) and plop onto the black rectangular base for that living room flat screen TV. I cranked the La-Z-Boy down and started across the room to get a picture with my phone. Darn! That ladybug went back under the TV. I leaned over looking for it, but it had gone off the dusty metal base, and farther back into the depths of the cabinet where it sits. I tilted the TV forward, but still couldn't spot the ladybug. No pic, but it DID happen!

Has anybody heard? Have any of the Laws of Physics or the Laws of Nature been repealed lately?