Events #274-276: Nov. 25 – 28, 2011

Stewie's character reappears on the couch where he slept

There were about 3 separate events that I photographed during the period surrounding Thanksgiving.
Event #274: First, our son, Stewie had arrived home and he spent the night before Thanksgiving on the pull-out couch in the office. We spent Thanksgiving Day elsewhere, and when we arrived home, I entered the office and found his character on the arm of the couch that he’d slept on. See the picture to the left. Neither Bob nor I were able to say where his character has even been all this time. I suspect it was in the out-building, the last place Stewie stayed before he moved out this summer.

2 new sprigs of yellow flowers are behind Bob's 'arm'

Event #275: Bob pointed this out to me, since I initially missed the new addition to the table-arrangement of figures. I think the table is just getting really cluttered, and it’s easy to miss a subtle, slight change. The arrangement of figures/corn/pups was basically the same, but while I had brought one yellow flower-sprig to the table from my walks, there were now 2 additional ones of the exact same flower. I guess this was Nuttah’s way of saying that the flower is flourishing in late November in her world as well as ours. I don’t have an i.d. on this flower. Also, I separated the sprigs out for a close-up of them below here:

A close-up of the flowers that appeared in the arrangement

Event #276: And one last thing, which requires just a bit of background info to understand. Bob’s sister, Rue had brought us a book to read, something she’d gotten by chance from a charity give-away. The book is called “Animal Talk: Interspecies Telepathic Communication”, by Penelope Smith. Rue thought that we might find this book interesting given everything going on. Bob had already started to read it, and I came in one night (Monday night, 11/28) and saw the book sitting on the coffee table in our “stove-room”. But the book was not sitting there by itself. There was a turtle shell on the cover. It sat on the ‘face’ picture on the cover, front and center, as if it was the creature’s nose. This is a turtle shell that we had out on the front porch — it’s a real shell of a real turtle, and it has been on the porch outside for at least a couple of seasons.

The real turtle shell sits atop the cover of the "Animal Talk" book

I wrote Bob this email the next morning about it:
“Did you bring in the turtle shell from outside and place it on top of the animal book you’re reading?” (I really kind of knew the answer to this before I heard from him.) Bob’s reply: “On the turtle shell, I meant to ask you that last night, I thought you put it there, as a poke at me. I know I saw it around outside recently, don’t remember where, but I think it was out front.”

And sure enough, it was, but now it was sitting on the cover of the book. I asked Bob if it made sense in the context of the book, and he thought absolutely, it did. Here is a better angle of the shell sitting on the book:

Event #273: November 21-22, 2011

I looked at the first time this season that I mentioned the return of the hum/buzz in my ear. It was November 2nd, which would have been right around the time we put in the first fire in the stove. Bob drew this connection for me; we know by now that is my weak point — forming connections and “getting” the obvious. Nuttah would probably have to rap me on the head before I realized she was here. So there is a connection with the fire in the stove that somehow enables, for lack of a better word, their world to ‘see’ ours. About a year ago, I posted an entry about how “The ancestors see you through the fire.” The exact wording was: “Keep the fire going… it’s how the ancestors see you.” And now that the fire is going again – November, after all… does the hum/buzz I hear mean that the ancestors have returned? They are “seeing” us again? It is sometimes really strong — stronger than I remember from last year, that’s why I keep mentioning it. And Bob has a new thing that’s happening to him this season – the drums. Music, really, not just drums, but winds – flutes and drums. Here are 2 days of email excerpts that went back and forth between us about the new sounds that we’re hearing:

November 21, morning, from Bob:  Had company this morning when I came downstairs. Nothing else, just in the stove room.

Me to Bob: Interesting that you had company. I was hearing the buzz/hum pretty loud when I went to bed. Maybe she stuck around for a few hours. Maybe she is still here?

November 22, morning, from Bob: Very clear and strong multiple presence this morning, not in our room, but in primary [2nd] bedroom and downstairs. I think the fire is part of it. And I woke during the night to the sound of drum beats.

Me to Bob: I did hear the multiple-toned hum last night, and it always seems stronger in the bathroom. I think that sound might have reappeared when we started the stove again, guess that is the connection, I just thought it was the time of year. What was the multiple presence? Or I should say “who”?

Bob and I then spoke this evening on the phone, and we both talked about the new noises we have been hearing. It does really seem to be related to the fact that now almost every night, we have the wood stove burning. I would like to try to begin to explore this vibratory-wave and see if perhaps it leads somewhere. I am extremely cognizant of the fact that we are approaching the end of Year 2 of events, and I remain completely clueless about what is happening, and more specifically, HOW it is happening. And I have yet to visit her world, and Bob has been there multiple times. I think she thinks that I am a fragile creature that would not be able to handle it. She could be right, because for goodness sake, who can say with certainty that they can handle a trip through the time-tunnel. Crap, I’m hearing bizarre noises, and now the dogs have started barking like crazy. Guess I better check it out.

I think it is just really windy outside. Weird sounds going on, but we still have tree branches laying on the roof from that October storm, so things might sound different. I calmed the pups down with a couple biscuits. Doesn’t take much.

And now just two more things: I have a friend at work who is a regular reader of all the blog posts, from the very beginning. She showed me today a picture she took with her phone of something that appeared at her house. I took a long look at it. It was an odd, old pair of sneakers that had been ‘arranged’ on a walkway next to her house. They face away from the house, about 2 ft. or so apart. I suggested that first she rule out an attempt to mess with the window on that side, and I think she already had, and 2nd, not to rule out that it might just be a relocation of objects, such as she has read about in the blog: “Just stuff moving around”, as it were. And the last thing? Today, our blog received it’s very first (non-spam) comment!

I hope that everybody has a very Happy Thanksgiving.

Event #272: Saturday, November 19, 2011

Today we had a contractor visit us to survey the damage and possibly do a quote on getting some work done (finally). Would be good if we could get some flood insurance money, but that hasn’t happened yet. Bob disappeared into the flooded area with him, and I was busy up front. I did not go back there, and I didn’t even speak to the contractor. I was not doing anything noisy, however, and after the man left, Bob came over and we were sitting having some breakfast in the stove room. Bob asked me what I was doing while the contractor was here. I told him, which included waiting on hold for 15 minutes with a credit card company, replacing the comforter in our bedroom, folding my laundry… stuff like that.

“Is that it?”, he wondered.

I thought he was quizzing me about my productive use of time, and I tried to think of something else I might have been doing… then I wondered,”Why do you ask?”.

I couldn’t think of anything else. And Bob offered, “Well, because when I was over there with ‘Tom’, at one point, I heard this knocking, kind of a rhythmic, steady, rap-rap-rap”, and Bob knocked steadily and rhythmically on the coffee table in front of us.

“Huh.”, I said. “Well, I don’t think that was me.  In fact I know it wasn’t me. If you had to pinpoint where it was coming from, where would that be?”

Bob thought for a second, and then said, “In our old bedroom”.

This would have been directly above where Bob stood with the contractor. Who, by the way, also heard it, as Bob reported… “Do you have to get that?” the man asked.

“No. Lois will deal with it.” Bob responded.

But I didn’t hear any knocking at all. If it was in the bedroom where Bob described, there would be no way I could hear that all the way over here. I reminded Bob that I thought this was Nuttah’s way of getting our attention. Well, one of the ways. I reminded him of that time, recently in fact, when I’d been awakened one morning in the new bedroom by a rhythmic knocking. Bob said it was just like that, not the ‘rap-rap-rap-rap’ of a typical knock on the door, but a steady, one second each, knock. So I said we should go over and check the upstairs bedroom and see if there is anything new or different there. Which we did, and there was not. But then when I went upstairs to the table display in the front bedroom, there were some pretty obvious changes. The corn, and the hearts are relocated, the characters are slightly different, but most important, Duke/Tëme have been moved up to be directly behind Bob. The thing that strikes me as most weird about these changes, is that I was IN the room where this is, most of the time that I was working on stuff. And I did keep glancing over at the table, and each time, it was just like it was on Monday. So when did this happen? It could easily have been while Bob and I were sitting downstairs talking about the knocking. She does seem to enjoy the corn-cob, keeps using that in arrangements, but one thing that seems to have been cast aside, is the little paper-doll girl that I used as a ‘stand-in’ for her. She moved that out of the arrangement.

The new arrangement after we heard that knocking sound.

Events 270-271: November 14-18th, 2011

The new arrangement from Monday 11/14

My email to Bob the morning of November 15:
There was more going on on the table besides Nuttah’s character being moved – the 4 of us characters are all bunched together, the corn points at Mom, a turtle is in front of us, and a heart points back at Duke/Teme and one points from them to us. Like we all love Duke/Teme, and they love us. I’ll try to get a picture of everything and send it to you. The blog now has 2045 ‘hits’, Saturday morning we hit 2000.

And to the left, I’ve inserted the picture of the 4 of ‘us’, the small ear of corn that was a gift to Nuttah, the pewter turtle and a small silver heart-locket pointing at the group. Next, I have a picture of what was going on behind this little scene with all of the pups. Note the flowery heart that points toward the human group, and then the stone heart that points toward the pup-group. Nuttah’s way of saying, I believe; “we love the pups, the pups love us.”

Behind the scene above, were all the pups; Mama wolf, the Duke/Teme wolf, 3 little wolf-pups, and Stupe & Wobbles off to the right

Then the night of  November 16th, I was sitting at the computer doing something, and I kept hearing some musical noise above the noise in my office. We had the satellite radio on in the other part of the house, and I had the TV on. I turned down the TV to hear better. No music. I went out to the living room to hear the radio. It was just talking. When I came back in and turned the TV up again, I started to hear the flute music again. It was very dim and distant, and not what might have been playing on the satellite station we always have on, which is a blues channel. Part of an email that I wrote to Bob that night:

“As I sit here, I feel like I keep hearing flutes. I went out to see what was on the XM, it didn’t seem like it was coming from there.”
And he wrote back to me the next morning: “Funny you mention the flutes. I was hearing them again and the drums as I went to sleep.”
Me back to Bob: “Interesting that you were hearing the flutes too, I think that’s what I heard, but I had a lot of noise going, I turned the TV down at one point, then couldn’t hear it. Went out to see what was on XM, it was all pretty inconclusive.”

But upon reflection, days later, I’m thinking that’s what it was. When I get upstairs to our bedroom, I hear that ‘buzz’ louder than ever. It’s the rhythm buzz, not just a vibration. It occurred to me that there is something I could compare this sound to, because one time I mistook it for this. This only makes sense if you live in a pretty quiet area, on a quiet street. Sometimes we have heavy trucks come down the street. You can hear them from pretty far away, especially at night when all is quiet. What you hear is the vibration of the engine, from far away and it gets closer and closer. Well, the vibration/hum/buzz that I hear, sounds like this distant engine approaching, but then it never gets closer, it just stays in the distance. It’s kind of a far-away noise, but at the same time right in my ear. My left ear, by the way, it never happens in my right ear, and I don’t know what that’s about.

My email to Bob the morning of Friday, Nov.18: There was a loud buzz in my ear everywhere I went too. Lying in bed, in the bathroom; as loud as the other night. It’s always the left ear. You got up at one point, did you notice/hear anything then?

Bob back to me: I woke several times, only once was I aware of anything, but I don’t know what time that was. I think around 1:30 AM.

Event #269: Sunday, November 13, 2011

Remember last week, the full moon week, Bob said that twice he heard music when he laid down in bed. The first time, he said it was just the drums, rhythmic, beating, drums, the second time he heard it, a wind instrument was in the mix too, like a Native American flute. So then Sunday night, up in the bathroom and bedroom, I was hearing the buzz that I’ve become familiar with, only this time, it had a little twist to it. I wrote the email below to Bob in the morning:

Had a loud buzz in my ear in bed and in the bathroom. Pretty sure she was around a lot.

And then Bob wrote back to me: Listen for the sound of drums or flute when you get the buzz.

Mine to Bob: When I hear that buzz, I also sometimes hear a rhythmic sound behind it, especially last night, that sound was really strong. But I think I’ve had that before too, about last year at this time. I wouldn’t call it a drum sound, and I don’t hear flutes, but it is in a rhythm nevertheless, it has a cadence to it, a beat. Why, is that what you are hearing too? It was really strong in my ears last night — I was trying to hear drums, and I do get a rhythm, it’s just not a drum sound.

Bob’s response: I got a pretty clear drum sound sound similar to what I have heard at her place.

Now me just narrating: Sunday night, the buzz/hum sound was definitely different than usual for me. Rather than just a hum/vibration in my ear, it seemed to have a purpose — a meaning. And definitely a beat or cadence to it, like music could have but through a filter. Maybe if you were deaf, and all you could perceive was the vibration, not the actual sound itself, that’s the best way I can describe it. Maybe something was going on at their place, a ceremony? Who knows. I just know I heard something, and it was strong upstairs in the bathroom and bedroom. Is there something about the cooler weather that allows this sound/vibration to come through? I looked up the last time I mentioned it, similar to the way I heard it Sunday. The date was December 22 of last year. Here is a link to that post.

Event #268: Saturday, November 12, 2011

Well this was just plain exciting. First, a tiny bit of background. As we know, we’ve moved to a different bedroom in the house. Friday, I moved my jewelry panel, from which I hang earrings and necklaces. I think that we’ve looked at this before, but a long-long time ago, back when things were just starting to happen in the old bedroom. On the way from the back of the house to the front, carrying the panel, I lost two of the earrings. I’m surprised it was only two. One particular pair, I didn’t care that much about, but the other pair was one that I liked a lot.

How the living room looked after Hurricane Irene: muddy footprints on the still-wet floor

I had set the two remaining mis-matched earrings on the kitchen counter, so that when Bob got home from work I could explain why they were there. Bob does the vacuuming in the house, and I wanted him to be on the lookout for these two missing earrings. I also explained which one I liked vs. the other one, which I didn’t really care if it showed up again. And that was that. Or so I thought. We had a lot to do Saturday, we were cleaning stuff and moving all around the house doing this and that. Actually started working on cleaning up the flood-room finally. To the left is a picture of what our flooded living room looked like back in August when it happened. It’s so hard to find the time to do everything. And then at one point, I was carrying something upstairs, and I checked the character-display on the table as I frequently do. Seeing what was there, I yelled excitedly for Bob to come see, as I ran downstairs to check the kitchen counter. Why I wanted to check was because one of the earrings I was missing was now part of the table-display. I had to run downstairs to see if it’s match was still on the counter. And it was — I now had a pair — the missing earring was on the table, and below I’ve included a picture of how things were arranged. Since it’s so tiny in the set-up, I’ve added a bright yellow arrow to point at the earring. And then next to that is a close-up of just the earring with the heart, as they appeared in a line. Nuttah has situated herself to look towards Bob and I, the earring [she found] directly in front of her, the silver heart-charm in front of that, and then a little ways away, Bob and I are combined now on the same doll stand. I was really happy to get the earring back, but even more so that Nuttah had heard me somehow, and understood my intent, and helped in getting it back to me. Missing things keep turning up again… first it was Nuttah that was gone, then my necklace, and then the found earring. Bob warns me not to push my luck.

A close-up of the found earring that I'd lost. I now have the pair back.

My missing earring has the yellow arrow pointing at it on the table-display of characters

Event #266-7: November 7 – 11, 2011

Bob wrote me this email the morning of Nov. 8:
I slept almost straight through except for waking to a “presence”, I think, although I could have been dreaming. Otherwise I slept to the alarm.

My reply:
When was it that you felt the presence? Was it before I came up? Cause there was a change with the characters — she has situated herself more closely with us, and the hearts have changed. Nothing else that I could see. I was also hearing the buzz a couple of times.

And Bob: I am pretty sure it was before you came up, but not positive.

And below is the picture that reflects the above comments. It is nice to have her back, but the absence is still a mystery to us. I have added some new characters; 3 wolf puppies, an elder woman (my Mother’s face is on her), and the Native American paper doll that I used to substitute for Nuttah’s angel when she was missing. So far no changes with any of those characters. The purple flowers to the right in the picture are purple asters that grow prolifically around here in the late fall. You can still find some isolated examples of them here and there, but for the most part, they have died off with frost.

Nuttah arranges herself in closer with the characters of Bob & I, hearts point at all

And then I delayed this posting by a day or two, and last night, Bob asked me if I’d been hearing drums and a flute playing at any time during the quiet of the night. I looked at him wide-eyed. “No… You’re hearing that?” I asked. Turns out twice this past week, sometime between Monday 11/7 and Thurs. 11/10, Bob was in the bedroom and heard the rhythmic sound of a distant drum playing. And beyond the sound of a drum, he could hear flutes or some kind of wind instrument. Could this be a full-moon ceremony? It was a full moon this past Thursday. Maybe it was the neighbors. Anyway, I didn’t hear it, and I was not home when Bob did.

And lastly, I would like to mention that I just checked the ‘hits’ on the blog, and as of today we have reached 1999 hits. Next time I look, it should be above 2000. I wish once in awhile I could hear from some of the blog readers — I’ve become more or less convinced that the blog is just being visited by automated web-crawlers or web-robots that just ‘hit’ the page, building our count but moving on, looking for who-knows-what, but probably up to no good. I hope that I am wrong, but the comments are always spam.

Event #265: Saturday, November 5, 2011

The red arrow points to the heart-pendant that is now missing

When we came home the evening of Friday November 4th, the power was finally back on. One week to the day without power. We entered the house realizing how much had been on the day it went out in the middle of that freak October 29th snowstorm: lots of lights were ablaze. But it was cause for celebration, it was a pretty tough week to get through.

My heart-pendant necklace reappears in the office

Around the time that Nuttah’s character went missing though (October 25) something else in the bedroom did too. It was a favorite pendant of mine: the one that Bob got me for Valentine’s Day this year.

I couldn’t pin point exactly when it went missing, but I knew it was gone, and was not sure if I’d lost it while wearing it, but I thought that highly unlikely. I’ve placed a picture of it to the left, with the red arrow pointing at it. Notice that it is, of course, a heart. Only recently, Nuttah had begun to use it in her arrangements. Then Saturday, I came into the office, and there on the pile of papers to one side of my keyboard, was the pendant, on the necklace string I’d last worn it with, which I’ve pictured to the right.

Then later Saturday, I took Wobbles for a long jog on the towpath; roughly 5 miles. About halfway into it, I saw something up ahead of us on the path – something white. At first I thought it was a goose. It was alive, that was clear, it was white, that was also clear, and as I got closer, I could see that it was a large white bird. White Bird! (here’s an opportunity to hear the song again). We got right up to it, and I stopped to look. It was a swan. A very large, white swan. Wobbles wanted nothing to do with it. This was almost comical, I literally had to drag him past the bird, who was not interested in yielding the path to us. As we approached, it stood up, spread its wings and poofed out its feathers so that it was now almost twice its normal size. It was also hissing at us very loudly. I’m familiar with geese; they will sometimes attack. But swans? Well, I’ve never encountered one like this before. What to do. I dragged my so over-protective Wobbles past the bird with me. And when we returned? No sign of it. Only a cat on the canal-bank near where the big bird had been, and an area of white bird-defecation where it looked like it might have spent the night. I’m mentioning this because of the oddity of a white swan in this unusual place, and of course for the fact that it was a white bird sighting. Oh — and it was tagged. A green plastic band on its leg with a C6 on it.

Event #264: Friday, November 4, 2011

I awoke Friday to a rhythmic knocking sound that seemed to come from outside the only window in the bedroom. We’re still “getting used” to this bedroom, as for 10+ years in this house, we’ve been in the back, and now we’ve moved to the front. When the knocking sound persisted, I sat up, and as soon as I did, it now sounded more like it came from behind me, which would be the crawl space of the 2nd floor, right behind the bedroom. But then it stopped. I listened for a few seconds, and now didn’t hear it anymore. I glanced around the room; power is still out and nothing at all in the house is on, and there, on the table with all the characters, I saw the change. There she was. Nuttah’s character has returned. Was this what the knocking was about? Was she trying to wake me up to see her? Hear her? Who knows. All I can say is that there she sits, right in the front of the whole group, looking at me and into the room. A little unnerving at first, with the knocking, but I was excited to see her back. Also relieved.

The whole array of characters on the table - Nuttah has returned herself to the very front

I got up out of bed to go over and examine the set-up on the table to see if anything else had changed, but the addition of Nuttah’s character was the only change. I immediately texted Bob with the news. (We are texting because we can’t email with the lack of power — only day 7 with no power by the way).

This is what I texted: “Nuttah’s angel is back with all the others. She sits front and center.”

Almost immediately, I got this text back from Bob:

“Nuttah has paid us a visit. I don’t know if there is any physical evidence, but I know she was here. I was worried. Nothing major, she was just in the room. Her presence woke me about 2-something.”

What I wondered at this point, was if Bob was responding to my text about her appearance. It didn’t seem so, because he didn’t say anything about it. And shortly after, I got another text from Bob:

“I got your text after I sent mine. So, there is evidence! Good news.”

And then me to Bob:
“I was wondering that. Thought maybe U staged it 2 send when U heard from me.” (Which in fact was what he had done — so as not to send too early and wake me up.)

So that was about it for the morning. Besides Nuttah showing up, only one other ‘event’ happened Friday. I needed a shower as we can’t run water in the house with no power. We still don’t know for sure when we are going to have it back, so I had a standing offer to go to Kate’s place to shower. I took advantage of that and got there around 2 in the afternoon. In the bathroom at her place, you can’t imagine my surprise when I discovered I was hearing the hum/buzz there too! When I mentioned this to Bob, he suspected that Nuttah had followed me.

Update: November 2, 2011

After a freak October 29 snowstorm that laid heavy snow on still-leafy tree branches, we (and most of our town/neighbors) have been without power due to the severe storm damage. I am sneaking on my account at work to give an update. We are projected to have power by possibly Sunday, Nov. 6 – woo hoo. No sign of Nuttah, at least her physical character – I continue to check every day, but she has not reappeared, and there were no changes on the dresser in the old bedroom. Today I moved all the remaining characters to the front bedroom, just to see if that would spark any activity. Something that has returned is the “buzz/hum”. I haven’t heard that in awhile, and I was surprised by it when it popped back in. The other night, returning from work in complete darkness, I opened the car door, and at first thought that Bob had gotten us a generator, and maybe it was set up around the other side of the house. But upon listening more closely as I exited the car, I realized it was the return of the hum in my ear. I’m still not really sure what that means, but I continue to hope that it means her presence. I only hear the hum at certain times of the year, and I believe I first began to be aware of it about this time last year. The power outage, going into day 5 now, has been interesting. I’m not as perturbed by it as I might have thought – the darkness is a little unnerving, but it’s caused me to think a lot about how our Lenape residents dealt (deal) with life on a daily basis. And of course we have the wood stove for heat, so we are not freezing, just have no lights, running water (except for the creek of course) and no refrigeration. We’re both making it to work as usual, and just dealing with it as best we can. A hot shower is the biggest thing that I miss. The area is like a war-zone. The amount of trees and branches and debris that came down was impressive. There is a massive amount of work to do in the area, and it’s going to be days before they can get it done. Well, I’ve snuck enough time, hope to give another update soon. Signing off ’til power restored…