A fox’s den...

F

Fyrefox

Well-known Member
When I was a child, I often fantasized about being a superhero; you know, one with powers! Such superheroes often wore masks or cowls to hide their secret identity. Well, now with the COVID-19 pandemic, it appears that I can live out my superhero boyhood fantasy everyday, wearing a mask out in public wherever I go without being hauled off to the asylum. And to think, had I worn a mask out in public even six months ago, people might have thought me an armed robber! Now I can wear a mask, and just blend into the crowd undetected, ‘cause everyone’s wearing a mask!

Now the type of superhero mask that just goes around your eyes like the Lone Ranger or Green Lantern wore won’t pass muster in the pandemic. It’s got to go around your nose and mouth, which is more concealing and mysterious. So concealed, I could be The Shadow, with the power (acquired in the East) to “cloud men’s minds!” The trouble is, such masks tend just to cloud my eyeglasses, and crime fighters who blunder into things make a poor nemesis of crime.

So I’ve got official blessing to wear a mask out in public, and in fact am strongly encouraged or even required to do so. Now if I could just get a similar blessing to wear a dramatic cape, I’d really be on my way to my boyhood superhero look! Capes are dramatic, you see, just by their very nature, and you can really swish about with them, assuming that they don’t trip you or get caught in the door, which might be embarrassing.

Eventually, of course, the aspiring superhero must acquire a sidekick, kind of a crime-fighting associate who is kind of learning the trade. I’m still working on that one... 🦊
 

Double RR's post

Hey, I want to see The Frogman as a superhero-yea.

The plot should be, he is searching for the lost princess, only her kiss
can turn him into a human being. (That would be an original plot???)

While searching he runs into all kind of bad guys...good for a season or two.
 
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Going Batty...

A bat made its way into my cellar. I discovered it when I went down into my basement to extract some of my summer wardrobe. The d**n thing was flying in ovals, just above my eye level. Surprised, I did what any manly man would have done...yes, screamed and beat a hasty retreat! 🦇

Gathering my wits (not that there are many to gather), I armed myself with a tennis racket to wield against the bat should he venture too close, and cautiously went to open an exterior door in the hopes that the bat would find his way out. But bats are nocturnal, and instead Mr. Bat roosted behind a high pipe. So I left the door open into the night hours with the interior light on, hoping the bat would eventually fly out into the darkness. Instead, he continued to snooze behind the pipe. Not wanting to keep my basement door open all night for fear of drawing nocturnal mammals, I seized the initiative and poked at the bat with a broom! He chittered at me (very creepy), and flew away to another location where I couldn’t locate him. I retired for the night, although one of my cats, an amazing hunter, took interest and remained in the basement all night.

The following day, I couldn’t locate the bat. This may mean that he either found his way out, is still in hiding, or was eliminated by the feline. You may place your bets now. At any rate, if the bat bit me, perhaps I could have transformed into an undead vampiric count with a Transylvanian accent...

...and I think I could get into that! 🦇
 
The Roadwork Blues...

Summer is supposed to be a time when you branch out a bit, get out into nature, and maybe take a nice vacation trip. Instead, I’ve been feeling trapped. Why, you might ask?

Roadwork, I reply. For weeks now, my street has resembled a war zone. It began with several weeks of the installation of large storm drains. A cavernous ditch of six foot depth was dug at the foot of my driveway, and I was without the use of my driveway for eight days. 🙀

Now, folks seldom think about much less appreciate their driveways until they don’t have them. Then you realize that your driveway is your key to the outside world. Without a driveway, your vehicle becomes a large, costly paperweight. Things like food procurement become a real problem.

I survived by parking at a church parking lot some distance away and trekking there on foot when I needed to get out. Eventually gravel was filled into my ditch so I could traverse it, but now they are paving the road, and as a note left on my porch on Friday informed me, I’ll be likely to be trapped in my house until Tuesday or so, assuming that there aren’t rain delays.

All of this has led me to better understand what in-house arrests must somewhat be like, and if you’ve never experienced major roadwork on your street, I hope you never do. One never appreciates a driveway and road access until you don’t have it... 😩
 
Winter storm musings…
Trapped by winter storm Ember in the American Northeast, I was driven to watching the Pennsylvania Farm Show on television to pass time as the snow fell relentlessly outside.

Now I consider myself a suburbanite at core, neither a city dweller nor a rural boy although displaced in a semi-rural environment. I can find both humor and discomfort in either the city or farm polar extremes. At the opening of the Farm Show complete with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, I could see perhaps half a dozen sweet young women in the background, beaming smiles as they wore tiaras and sashes on their dresses. These were Farm Show princesses, you see, and their sashes bore their title…

Not Disney princesses, to be sure, for one bore the title of Dairy Princess while another was the Lamb Princess. My twisted mind went to work…what if the Lamb Princess made a mad grab for power, and decided to send her minions…yes, the Sheeple…out to paralyze the nation by clogging all of the roads with sheep herds?! Would the Sheepocalypse be on hand?! 🐑 🐑 🐑

And if there could be only one Farm Show Princess, could we hope to see a steel cage death match between the the Dairy Princess and the Lamb Princess? Now, that’s entertainment! I’d pull up a chair to watch that one! 😸

I do hope for an early end to winter snows, because cabin fever madness is sneaking in… 🙀

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Time for a little bittersweet entry triggered by Father’s Day. I almost skipped going to church today knowing that Father’s Day would be on the agenda, if not the main topic. Sure enough, it was.

Father’s Day is a bit painful to me both because my own father is long dead, and because fatherhood escaped me. I’m in the 19% of the population that’s infertile, you see, those invisible folks that almost no one talks about. Our walk through life is a different one from those of you who had children. We often feel like incomplete people, at times pariahs in a world where having children is the norm and frankly, expected.

When you are childless not by choice, you get asked things like “When are you going to have children,“ or “How many grandchildren do you have?” My answer is zip, zero, nada, and it wasn’t from lack of desire, or lack of trying. So please refrain from asking strangers how many kids or grandkids they have. You could unintentionally be opening up an old wound. Please remember that not everyone can have children who wants them.

Adoption? Sure, tried for it. But there are hundreds of people contending for every adoptable infant, and even if you manage to get in the running for one, unwed female mothers are among the most unstable creatures on the planet, and society now favors them keeping their child regardless of what’s best for the child. I lost a child in my possession for nine days when the biological mother changed her mind. Believe me, that surrender wasn’t easy. No further children came to my possession after that despite financial investments in lawyers and investigations. Eventually you become financially and emotionally exhausted, and move on to parts of life that you can control.

Infertility has been termed the last closet illness, and in a way, it is. It’s certainly changed and shaped my life. But we must accept the things that we cannot change, eh? And I hold the image of a chain in my mind. All chains, regardless of their length, have a last link. The fact that I’m the last link in the chain of my family doesn’t make me any less a part of it. There’s peace in that thought…

Thanks for listening, and participating in my self-therapy…
 
Said with respect to you. Children are not possessions. You refer to them that way, as being in your possessions. They are not. Custody? perhaps? Sorry for nit picking. You spoke beautifully.
 

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