After talking with my sister the other day, and bursting into tears at the oddest moments, she advised me to start watching or reading funny stuff. I know she meant fewer Datelines and evening news (national and world), and more funny videos, Bugs Bunny, and Dave Barry books.
I agreed, at that moment, but come on, I’m not giving up Dateline. As you all know, I’m living a Dateline episode. It’s no fun being in one, but the ones I watch actually give me hope that someday my son’s case will be solved and not just sitting on a desk somewhere gathering dust.
I have a Dave Barry book, and a collection of short snippets of everyday life by Tim Cotton, a retired Lieutenant with the Bangor Maine Police Department. Ever since I discovered Stephen King in the early 1980s, I’ve wanted to live in Maine. Specifically, Bangor. And I love to read about and watch crime, so when I stumbled across Cotton’s police department page, I was hooked from the get-go.
See, he writes about humorous arrests, but he also manages to treat the ones he writes about with dignity – as much as possible. Some situations just can’t make that mark, but that’s mankind.
His third book, Dawn in the Dooryard, is made up of brief essays about life. He brings Maine to life, and he can bring a laugh as well as a lump in the throat. I love how he shares snippets of his dog, Ellie. She can be seen on the cover of his book; you have to squint to see her, but she’s there.
Despite advice to the contrary, I’m also reading Teasing Secrets From the Dead, by Dr. Emily Craig, a former forensic anthropologist for Somerset, Kentucky. I learned about her from a newspaper article someone messaged to me after Clint’s podcast came out. With an unidentified set of remains still on the books from the time Dr. Craig served there, I have to go through this book carefully to see how I can find her. All of the other ways I’ve tried haven’t worked, so I’m on a mission to find her and hopefully get some answers.
Like I said, Dateline stuff.
You can’t blame a person living this nightmare if she gets nosy about her surroundings. Like when my security camera lets me know that a person was detected in the front/side/back yard. Of course, there are a few flaws in the system’s innards, like when it told me a pet was on my porch and it was actually the postal carrier. And it announced this arrival with a cute little paw in the upper right-hand corner.
Or the time it told me a person was on the porch and there was actually a bug crawling on the lens. Happened with a fly on the window a few times, too. Plus, there was the time it said a person was in the backyard and it was a bird hopping on the porch railing.
But it’s not all mistakes. One time I checked out a person sighting and found a man taking pictures of my house and the house next door. All kinds of spooky thoughts started going through my head until I later saw some folks walking around the house next door. I’m thinking the photo-taking guy was a realtor. Maybe.
Seems like the perfect time to check out the cartoons I taped this morning. Those should be good for a chuckle or two, right?
