Went to get some fresh socks out of the travel bag to go check the outside temperature and then go out to the water tower to make sure its system heaters had automatically switched on as they're supposed to. Outside temp wasn't forecast to drop below freezing but it might have anyway. I just needed to go out and make sure. At midnight. And I might cook a bite to eat, too. Maybe.
It was dark in the room when I found the socks in the bag by touch and I felt something stuck to one of them. A row of what felt like seeds. The kind of meadow seeds that stick to socks in a neat row when someone traipses through the seed heads still standing in early autumn. That's exactly what I thought they were and that I had grabbed a pair of not-clean socks I somehow forgot to throw in the wash after returning from New Mexico where I had spent time looking at the wildfire destruction at the homestead for the second time in a month.
Peeling the seeds off of the sock, I hurried over to the office where I could get some light on them to take a look. Rolling them between fingers, they felt like marijuana seeds. WTF? I haven't had any marijuana seeds in that bag or anywhere else. How could marijuana seeds get on my socks?
Switched on the light, put the seeds on a paper plate and peered closely at them. Nope. Not marijuana seeds. Not any kind of meadow seed I'd ever seen before, either. What the hell are they?
Got the camera out and shot a closeup. Still no clue. Zoomed in and adjusted brightness and contrast. No help.
Used a thumbnail to try splitting one of the seeds open. It yielded too easily, not like a seed would yield to such abuse. It felt like a cracker might when assaulted by thumbnail. Took a photo of that split seed. Nothing new as clues go.
Some sort of...who the hell knows. Organic, for sure. Sort of disturbing to look at, as closeups of a lot of organic materials can be. Not rodent droppings, though. I know what that crap looks like. This was still a mystery. After spending about half an hour trying to find out what it was, I straightened and stretched a bit, feeling hungry. Then I wondered why do I do these things like this? What does it accomplish? Is it crazy to spend time doing things like this?
And the answer came quickly. Crazy or not, I do them because it's fun. It's interesting, and I enjoy doing such things, no matter the outcome. Then I started thinking back about all the things I've done in life and why I did them–sane, crazy and everywhere in between. Can't claim everything done was fun but can honestly say I ultimately enjoyed doing them all to some degree, mainly because I'm still alive to recall and reflect upon them, and to do still more things. Life experiences always yield sensations to be relished.
So, time to click the Publish button and move on to the next thing to do. I'm hungry.
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