The "Hero" sees a hand...

Well, I thought it was going to be a normal day at work - but the joke was on me. One of the women at work apparently passed out today. I found her on the floor under her desk. I don't sit that close to her and she couldn't really get any volume on her voice to call for help - but she tried... and I'm the only person that heard her...5 minutes prior to that I heard what i thought was a big report binder or big book of some sort hit the floor..but didn't think too much of it- people drop things at work all the time. Little did I know it was a person hitting the floor!

About 5 minutes later I heard her whispering a colleague's name - odd, but whatever, I thought..he sits closer to her but I knew he wasn't at his desk... a few minutes later I heard her whisper his name again...but this time the hairs on the back of my neck stood up...I got up out of my chair just in time to hear her whisper my name- then realized that was no book that had fallen. I ran around to the other aisle where she sits and didn't see her at her desk...but I heard crying - she was at the opposite end of her office under her project desk curled in the fetal position! - Jesus - i thought "Donna(let's just call her Donna), Donna - I said - what's going on?!?!" She couldn't move she was too nauseated to move..and she was crying...."I don't know what's wrong" she said "I don't know what's wrong with me"... I wasn't sure if she had hit her head and I didn't want her to pass out again..she said she was going to throw up and I couldn't reach her head under the desk....and I needed to call 911...I ran to the nearest person asked them to call 911 and went back to her...She still didn't want to move but was answering my questions...she didn't have pain - just nausea, dizziness and she was burning up. I told her to squeeze my hand - to help her stay alert. Her body was tensed but she wasn't twitching like a seizure...perhaps it was one though...

After what seemed like an eternity the ambulance arrived- they got lost on the way there and blamed it on "poor signage"...so I found her at 11:45...the ambulance took her at about 12:30. As of 5:00, she was still at the hospital, disoriented they said and not very communicative...Maybe I'll hear some positive news about her in the morning. She's only 39.

I decided that I was going to relax when I got home from work...kick back, enjoy a Corona..try to unwind after such a bad day..but on the way home I got another fright. I pulled up at a traffic light behind a white Chevy trailblazer with smoked windows...then I realized that where the hitch meets the body, and right by the license plate, there was a severed hand.

Oh I'm hoping it was fake - but it certainly wasn't one of those rubbery, wiggly Spencer's Gift's specials...it was not wiggly or rubbery at all..or that bright fake fleshy color..oh no, it was gray-ish- only a slight hint of pink with two dirty knuckles, a grease smear mark under the pinkie finger and dirt under every fingernail. I got my cell phone out to take a pic - I'd get the license plate and the hand!..but the phone said "not enough space!" What? - Stupid BlackJack!! Then the light changed and he or she went straight and I went to the right.

What a day.

It had to be fake, right???

I have predictive dreams...

Alright, so we all have dreams. Some we remember vividly when we wake up and with others we recall only that it was a funny, scary or odd dream in some way. I never used to have predictive dreams - it started in 2003 and the two that I have had seem to follow a specific genre of "transportation disasters".

When I awoke from my first one in January of 2003, I didn't realize it was predictive dream at all, just very real - the most life-like dream I've ever had in my life. I would have sworn I was really there and when you are startled awake by such dreams one of the first things you try to figure out, is where you are!!

In a nutshell, my first predictive dream was about an exploding airplane. This big, white chunky looking thing. It didn't just crash it exploded into a mass of fiery pieces that went streaming past me as I was standing...somewhere. The fire was intense and I could feel the heat. Next, I was seeing things through the eyes of some man in a jumpsuit wearing a harness. I, er I mean "he" was in a helicopter, in the back with the right side cargo door open. His harness was secured inside the helicopter but he was leaning out searching the desert floor for something..anything shiny, out of the ordinary. This helicopter was flying so low you could make out the individual rocks and tumble weeds. Then I woke up.

I sat straight up in bed because it was all so real and the explosion so graphic...I couldn't get back to sleep for some time afterwards. I felt such a profound sense of loss and tragedy, it was really disturbing.

It wasn't even two weeks later that the Columbia space shuttle exploded, strewing it's parts over the Southwestern US desert. A day or two later the evening news featured the recovery effort and they said how any objects or pieces recovered would be extremely important to the investigation. They had a shot of low flying helicopters, flying somewhere over the desert in the Southwestern US. Men in military jumpsuits, wearing harnesses leaning out the back cargo doors of the low flying crafts scanning the desert floor for what could be the key to the mystery.

My jaw dropped when I saw the "harness guys" on the news. I had suspected after the tragedy that this was what my dream was about. But the harness guys sealed the deal for me. I had a strange sense of wonder about this for several days...

I've had one other such dream since that time which I'll write about later. I'm happy to say that these sorts of dreams are not the norm for me, happening rarely. While weird things happen to me- I'd much prefer they didn't.

Until next time, sleep well. :)      "Paranormal Water Bottle"

Can animals read your mind?

Well, I think they can read mine, or there is at least one that can. Meet Natasha, my niece so to speak. She belongs to my sister and her husband...and this cat just loves me! I'm a city girl that lives in an apartment in the Philly suburbs, so when an opportunity to pet sit Natasha and her brother Boris in Jersey on several acres near the Delaware River comes along, I am so there. I can pick tomatoes and peppers in the garden and hit the pool afterwards.

So it was on one of my pet sitting excursions at my sister's house that I had an odd experience with my girl Natasha. I did my usual pick veggies in the garden then cool down in the pool thing. Went back inside to rinse my suit like a good girl with Natasha in tow, running ahead of me down the hallway to the bathroom, flopping on the floor in front of me over and over to get some attention.

Wet suit in hand I filled the bathroom sink with water and began to rinse my suit, all the while assuring her as she rolled on the floor and rubbed on my legs that I'd give her attention as soon as I hung my suit up to dry. Right after I said that, the phone began to ring. Not my house and most likely not for me, but I thought I better at least make an attempt to answer it. I dried my hands and told Natasha I couldn't stop to pet her because now I had to get the phone. She got up off the floor, looked me right in the eyes, and went trotting off to the den....meanwhile I went trotting down the hallway to get the kitchen phone which abruptly stopped mid ring just before I could answer it. I picked it up anyway since I had just made the Herculean effort to get it, and there was still someone on the line. It was my Mom. I said "Oh I thought you hung up - the phone quit ringing..." she responded with,"...I was wondering why it took you so long to say something." I said, "What?" She said, "you answered, but didn't say hello until just now."

Right after that I heard what I thought was breathing and tapping on another extension in the house. Great. I'm house sitting out in the middle of nowhere on 9 acres, supposedly alone. Heart in my throat I told my Mom not to hang up while I went to investigate the other extensions in the house... Seeing no hatchet murderer on the living room cordless I walked back towards the bedrooms and remembered that there was an extension in the den.. When i got to the den, - there was Natasha(Natty)- pawing at the phone receiver which she had knocked out of it's cradle and off the hook. It was dangling by it's cord...


I knew my sister would be checking her email while they were away, so I sent her a quick message that evening "Hey - why didn't you tell me Natty answers the phone?! It scared the crap out of me and by the way- how did you teach her to do that?". The next morning I had a response in my inbox. It said " ??????????".

When they got home from their trip I told them how I told the cat I had to get the phone and she took off to the den and answered it..and I got, you know..."that look" you get when you try to convince someone that something extraordinary really did happen and you are telling the truth...and they just don't really believe you... that's part of the reason for starting this blog. I can get all these weird items off my chest and know someone somewhere will read it - but I won't be able to see you give me that look... ;)