There is…something, I don’t know what, hovering just beyond my perceptions. Some impending event or revelation is grasping towards me from an unformed future. I am no prophet or prognosticator, no diviner or fortune-teller, but I feel the shadow of something yet to be. There is not a lot of “woo” that I buy into: I don’t read horoscopes; I don’t think futures can be read with tea leaves or tarot cards or palms; I’d say that I don’t believe in ghosts but there’s a ghost in my kitchen.

The future cannot be reliably foretold because every moment requires decisions that continually alter that future. Multiverse Theory tells us that there are multiple, not just one, and possibly infinite, universes encompassing every possible future. In the present, though, the future is Schrodinger’s Cat, just a fog of possibilities until we open the box.

While I don’t think the future can be foretold, I do tend to fret about it. I’m a planner, a list-maker, I like to plan and enumerate everything. And the other side of that coin means that I am also a worrier. It seems like anxiety has been a constant companion for years. Thankfully I’m experiencing a bit of a reprieve from all of that because I’m on a beta-blocker now. I don’t feel anxious on a daily basis anymore, which is better for all of us.

But for some reason I’m feeling a kind of anticipation, not a foreboding as if something wicked this way comes. It is more a feeling of hopeful presentiment that something good is coming this way. There is a positive development, or new opportunity, or correct decision on the horizon.

Who knows what the future holds, but Schrodinger’s cat and I will let you know as soon as we open the box.

So, I find the weirdest crap on the internet. It always starts innocently enough, with a simple search for facts. Then all of sudden I stumble into one of those rabbit holes and, inevitably, follow it all the way down.

This particular rabbit hole appeared because I was looking up information about my blood type. I never bothered to find out my blood type until I started trying to get pregnant about 12 years ago. I had to have RhoGam shots with each pregnancy because I am Rh-negative. Several years later, in Microbiology lab, I found out I was O-negative.

Remembering something about blood types from an old “M*A*S*H” episode, I looked up O-negative blood type. In addition to finding out that I am a so-called universal donor (but not a universal recipient), I found out that my blood type influences my ideal diet and my personality! I scoffed at the diet recommendations and dismissed the personality stuff as pure bunk. But I was rather intrigued by the sixth entry Google gave me-this.

According to this dude on the internet my O-negative blood means much more than RhoGam shots and the Red Cross needing my services. Apparently my blood type indicates that I am descended from a race of super-advanced reptilians who secretly control the world. But then there’s this theory that rh-negative blood is a mutation from “normal” blood.

This is all very interesting but if I’m really descended from crypto-lizard overlords then I really must protest this shabby treatment! Where is my unimaginable wealth and power, huh? Why don’t I have fawning sycophants rubbing my feet and peeling my grapes? But no, I have to get my own grapes and earn my own money. And instead of adoring followers I have a nice husband who tells me I’m pretty and kids who sometimes decide to do what I tell them.

Of course there’s still that mutation-option. But I have to tell you that if I could pick the kind of mutant I was, I sure wouldn’t pick the type of mutation that causes painful shots and transfusion issues. No, I’d pick the kind that causes levitation, then I wouldn’t need anybody to rub my feet!

Maybe I’ll just call the Red Cross. They won’t peel me any grapes, but I understand I get to lay down and then they give me a cookie. It’s not ruling the world, but I guess it’ll just have to do.

Blog note: This post specifically addresses archetypes in Western literature and speaks to the broader experience of western, largely European, women in the western, christian cultures that contributed these archetypes. As a result, this post doesn’t touch upon the life-experiences of women in other cultures, women of color, or women of non-christian religious traditions.

My, my, my, aren’t we just the blackest-hearted creatures to ever walk the earth? I’m talking about women, of course. If Disney, the Brothers Grimm, Lewis Carroll, and Frank L. Baum are to be believed, that is. Ah, yes, mustn’t forget millenia of abysmal religion-based opinion of our fair sex as the instigator of this hate-fest.

Despite our near-universal status as chattel until very modern times (and our improvement in status  is not so universal), we women are apparently the worst of villains.

History’s despots and dictators have always been men. Oh, sure you can probably point to a handful of women who wielded power for selfish purposes, but always at the side of some man. Think you know Lucrezia Borgia? Think again. She was no soulless poisoner, only a pawn in marital-alliance games played by father and brother. And poor, poor Marie Antoinette! Beheaded because the wrong people didn’t like her. That whole let-them-eat-cake-thing? She never said it. Upon further study, the picture that emerges in one of a devoted wife and mother if not the most savvy queen.

There were queens that wielded real power and ruled in their own right. Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria, for example, tended to be good rulers who advanced England’s fortunes and status in the world.But, alas, any powers or privileges that a queen, dauphine, empress, or csarina enjoyed were never trickled down to her less well-situated sisters. Even with a woman ruling from the throne, common and gentle-women alike were still ruled by their husbands, fully endorsed by the Church. The Church which had a difficult time deciding if our gender was even in the possession of souls.

Why then were men so afraid of women that they had to cast women as wicked queens, wicked stepmothers, and (for the Church in particular) wicked witches? Or maybe it wasn’t fear. Maybe men were aware of the utter shittiness of their collective treatment of women. And they had to rationalize this somehow.

Humans aren’t always rational creatures but we are always rationalizing creatures. Nobody, except for sociopaths, wants to admit the real reasons why they treat others poorly, even to themselves. It’s uncomfortable and naked to admit that we step on other people, in ways great and small, to our own benefit. Or because we are self-centered, or unthinking, or presumptuous, or greedy (when you shut 51% of the population out of ownership, there’s a lot more to go around). Most people can’t be that naked, we have to cover ourselves in reasons, in excuses.

When the ruling men wanted to rook women out of their rightfuls and grab the goodies for themselves, they had to re-cast women from equals to less-thans. And they did it with words.

It is not language itself that separates us from the other animals. Our pets understand us when we say “down” or “no” or “food” to them. A handful of gorillas have been taught to use sign language. But gorillas could only use words to describe the past or the present, and only that which is real to them. We hairless apes differ because we are creators. We create and shape our realities and our futures using language, words.

Want to demote and discipline women? Make sure to use language that ensures we only be seen as helpless victims or intractable bad guys. Toss out the pagan, judgement-neutral “maiden, mother, crone”-descriptors and substitute them with “virgin/whore” or “goodwife/witch.” Cast us the foul temptresses, the sirens that lead men to their doom. All the while telling us that our place is toiling thanklessly in the home because we are the glue that binds civilization. Can’t have it both ways, boys.

When we say something you don’t like, when we refuse to be cowed, call us heretics and witches, and burn us and drown us. When we are so evidently innocent as individuals, blame the fickle and capricious nature of our sex, even if you have to make that up.

In stories, the hapless, helpless, and guileless victim is always a girl. And who is the victimizer? In reality, and throughout history, girls and women are far more likely, by an order of magnitude, to be victimized by men, not other women. But in the stories, she is victimized by the evil stepmother, the evil fairy, the wicked queen, the witch.

In “Snow White,” the wicked queen/stepmother (who is also a witch) sends her henchman/gameskeeper to kill the adolescent Snow White. Of course, the gameskeeper, who is obviously the better person due to having a penis and all, can’t bring himself to kill the the woman-child. He weeps and lets her go, into the cold, dark woods. Then he presents the heart of a pig to the witch-queen as proof of the deed. The wicked, but obviously naive, queen accepts him at his word.

As events unfold, Snow White literally stumbles her way to safety and eventual rescue and redemption, all at the hands of men (or male dwarves.)

These days, the word “witch” doesn’t carry the same kind of emotional or criminal weight in the West. So when modern men, or society in general, want to discipline a woman she is called “slut” or “bitch.” As far as we have come, there is still farther to go. When the opinions, rights, hopes, dreams, pleasures, and pains of women can be casually disregarded and dismissed with a reality-reshaping word, then we are still less-than.

But I claim the role of creator, I am shaping reality and the future right now, with these words. And I will go on being opinionated, obstinate, heretical and I will not be shaped by words that seek to lay judgement on me. Lord have mercy on any man who calls me a bitch, because I will not.

We should reclaim our old pre-christian descriptors. Once a maiden, now I am a mother. Someday, when my chicks have all flown the nest, when my hair has all turned white, and when my face is seamed with the topography of age, I will gladly embrace my status as crone. Maybe I’ll even buy a pointy hat.

Regardless of the truth or lie of words and worlds past, I think I would much prefer the company of the wicked witch/queen/stepmother over that of the insipid Snow White. Scary, uppity women like me are wicked–wicked fun to be around–and far more interesting.

And absolutely nobody ever met Prince Charming or Mr. Right while sleeping through life.

Bigfoot has been part of my life since I was a little girl. My first memories of watching television consist of two things: Sesame Street and the Patterson film. I was five when I first saw the Patterson film on TV, and it is so firmly impressed in my psyche that I can even picture the pajamas I was wearing when I watched it. My parents probably didn’t exhibit the best judgment on that one (but who am I to say, both my kids have seen it, too). And I’m pretty sure they regretted it later, especially when I made my daddy cut down the Bigfoot-shaped tree outside my bedroom window!

Later, we moved to a small town, into a housing addition at the edge of the country. Neighborhood legend claimed a monster lived back in the woods beyond the barbed wire at the end of our dead-end street. I would lie awake at night listening for him, but only heard trains and coyotes. There were a few times when I ventured into the wilderness, well as wilderness as my Girl Scout leader would allow. At night I kept my eyes tightly shut so I wouldn’t see Bigfoot’s shadow on my tent wall.

I’ve always insisted that curtains and blinds be closed after dark, “so Bigfoot doesn’t see me.” Although why I’m being so solicitous of Bigfoot’s sensibilities doesn’t make a lot of sense. But neither does my fear/fascination with him.

My peers have always had a lot of fun at my expense because of this Sasquatch-a-phobia. Several of the boys from my church youth group made a short Bigfoot mockumentary on a group trip to the Kiamichi mountains that I had to miss. Whenever we would see a large, hairy man driving by, my ex-friend and I would shriek, “It’s Bigfoot!”  Let’s hope none of them ever heard our display of extreme immaturity.

After the Patterson film came out, Bigfoot enjoyed a brief flurry  of pop culture attention. Then he largely faded into the background once again. Harry and The Hendersons tried to revive wide-spread interest in Sasquatch but, alas, it was a very stupid movie.

The past five years or so have been a veritable renaissance in all things Bigfoot. Once relegated by the media to northern California and the Pacific Northwest, sightings of Bigfoot and all his smelly cousins are being reported in every state except Hawaii. He goes by different names: skunk ape, Fouke monster, grass man, and let’s not forget his Tibetan cousin, Yeti.

Monster-hunting shows are always looking for Bigfoot, one was even set here in Oklahoma (in those same Kiamichi Mountains!). You can now buy Bigfoot greeting cards,  Christmas ornaments, and toys. And don’t forget that Yeti has been a part of Christmas ever since Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer came out! In fact, there are so many cool Abominable Snowman and Bigfoot-themed Christmas items, that I will be having myself a Yeti Little Christmas for 2010. Anyone who wants to receive our Sasquatch Christmas cards needs to let me know early.

Anyway, after all these years fearing Bigfoot, it’s time I address that fear, and him, directly:

Dear Bigfoot,

Look, I know you’re shy, a lot of big guys are self-conscious of their size. There’s no reason to be ashamed. Maybe it’s the language barrier, or the smell. It’s nothing a bar of soap can’t handle, and an ape named KoKo learned sign language and you are lots smarter than that dame. Perhaps it has something to do with all that bad press in the 70’s.

The Legend of Boggy Creek didn’t cast you in the best light, and don’t even get me started on Creature From Black Lake! But I think your nadir had to be your dubious appearance on The Six Million Dollar Man. Talk about your dark-night-of-the-soul, that had to hurt.

I know there was a half-hearted attempt in the 80’s to cast you as a gentle giant, all vegan and crap. But nobody bought it, it’s just not reasonable to suppose you got that big just eating twigs and berries.

If you haven’t been keeping up with your press (maybe you need a better agent), let me tell you it’s on the upswing right now. Frank Peretti wrote a book called Monster, he even made you the Big Hero. (Side note to Frank Peretti–if you want to disprove Darwinian evolutionary theory, making your hero gigantopithecus, not the best idea. Seriously, Frank, if my buddy Sasquatch is so adapted to his environment that he is virtually undetectable, then he pretty much proves that whole survival of the fittest thing.)  There are all these TV shows about you; you’re even selling beef jerky these days. And then there’s that whole Official Olympics Mascot-thing!

I think now is the time to go public. You couldn’t ask for a better time, look how well your buddies, the cavemen, are doing!

Anyway, when you’re ready, just let me know. I’ll try not to freak out.

Signed, Burning Prairie.

We had to get rid of our old sofa sectional recently. It had been a good and faithful friend for many years. We got it right after we got back from Chicago. The kids literally grew up on that sofa. It gave me a comfortable place to sleep when I was uber-pregnant, I timed my contractions (for Monkey) on it, and I nursed both babies on the chaise part of the sofa. And it became my bed when my poor hip joint couldn’t take side-sleeping anymore.

Eventually it began to show its well-used years. Mr. Prairie did something to the back cushion on his side; it became a misshapen lump only vaguely resembling a sofa cushion. I had to stomp it into submission whenever Nana came over, just so she could sit there. The seat cushion on my chaise first developed a rip in the fabric, then gradually the deeper layers of foam began to separate until it also got uncomfortable to sleep on.

My parents, bless their hearts, go through den furniture like nobody’s business. This latest time when my mom decided to redecorate her den, she informed me that we needed her old sofa and comfy chair with ottoman. The chair and ottoman is pretty comfy even though it is totally not my style and will be replaced as soon as we get around to it, but the sofa, while rather innocuous looking, is evil.

It hurts my hip, my back, and my sense of aesthetics. It will be replaced as soon as humanly possible. In the meantime, I have dubbed it the Widow-maker.

I think it’s trying to kill me.

Me, that’s who. Today, Saturday June 7, is my 40th birthday. (This is being written before Saturday because I don’t want to spend my birthday doing this.) I was born in 1968, one of the most turbulent years in recent history. The Vietnam War, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy (who died the day before my birth), protests and riots, the Chicago Convention, Nixon. “Sympathy for the Devil” and 2001: A Space Odyssey were both released that year. Those two pieces of popular culture neatly encapsulate both the darkness and the hope of the year of my birth.

Hope was abundant that year in the Apollo Space Program. Apollo 7, in October, was the first manned Apollo flight and a welcome success after the tragedy of Apollo 1. Apollo 8, in December, was the first mission to leave Earth orbit and travel to the moon. Humans left the relative safety of Earth’s orbit and traveled to another world!

I decided to look up other people who share my birthday. Here are some of my favorites:

• Beau Brummel, 1778
• Paul Gauguin, 1848
• Jessica Tandy, 1909
• Dean Martin, 1917
• Tom Jones, 1940 (yes, that Tom Jones)
• Liam Neeson, 1952
• Prince, 1958 (yes, that Prince)

Thanks to Brainy History for some of the dates.

I grew up in Claremore so I was literally steeped in Will Rogers lore. The Will Rogers Memorial Museum was not far from my house and every time we had out-of-town visitors, we’d drag them there. Heck, I even had my formal wedding portrait shot on the museum’s wide veranda. I don’t think I’ve seen any more of Will’s movies than the snippets they played in the exhibits, but the title of one really stuck with me–Life Begins At Forty. I remember thinking how impossibly old forty seemed even as my parents neared (and passed) forty themselves. How could life begin at such an advanced and decrepit age?

Well, now that I’m here, forty doesn’t seem so advanced, maybe just a tad decrepit. But I get the title, I finally get it. At the time that movie was made (1935) people tended to marry and have kids fairly young. My own great-grandmother got married at 13 and had my grandmother at 15. So if you get married, say, at 18 and have kids in your early 20’s, then by the time you turn 40, the kids are grown and gone or nearly so. The next phase of your life (one sans kids) would indeed start at 40. Now more people are holding off on having kids, waiting until their mid-30’s to mid-40’s, much like I did.

Even though I got married at 23, Monkey wasn’t born until I was 34, then Pumpkin came along right before I turned 37. I had plenty of time to live one sort of life, one sans kids, and get thoroughly set in my ways. Parenting infants can feel like a kind of timeless limbo, but things start to pick up once they become toddlers and preschoolers. So it does feel like a different phase of life is beginning. Plus, I’ve only got two more years of school then I will re-enter the working world. I finally feel like I have a concrete direction for my life, not just nebulous wishes.

Even though I live in same old ghost-ridden house, I am still married to my best friend after all these years, and I’ve decided to keep at this whole motherhood-thing, I feel like I’ve been given a fresh start, a do-over. Maybe life really does begin at forty after all.

Of late, the House of the Burning Prairie has been a veritable hotbed of ghostly activity. OK, not exactly a hotbed, but it has been rather active. And in some new areas.

The master bedroom has been the site of some paranormal goings-on. A bit of background-I can’t sleep in a bed right now on a account of something went wrong with my hip (bursitis, meh) and because, apparently, I snore like a buzz-saw. Of course I’ve never heard this snoring of which Hubby speaks, so I’ll just have to take his word for it. But the result is I sleep on the chaise in the den so I can remain in a partially upright position to take the pressure off the ol’ hip and to not disturb anyone else with the snoring. Eventually I want to get one of those Tempurpedic mattresses, but I digress.

In the past several weeks, Hubby has seen some apparitions in there. Once he woke from a dream convinced that Pumpkin, our 3-yr old, was standing by the side of the bed. He lurched up out of bed and stumbled over to her, thinking something was wrong, but she wasn’t there and was, in fact, still sleeping soundly in her crib. Then one restless night, he glanced over to the same area of the room (right in front of the master bath door) only to see a man-tall solid black presence just standing. Right. There.

He was completely spooked both times and came to tell me about it. As some of you may or may not know, I have seen the little apparition with my own eyes. While I was fully awake and standing up, and folding laundry, the toddler-size form floated into the room, “stood” in front of me and then slowly disappeared. It is about the height of Pumpkin, so I think this is what Hubby saw the first time, as for the dark thing, I don’t know.

And we have seen some things that others would call poltergeist activity. We had an infant car seat for Pumpkin, the kind with the pull-out infant carrier and since we’re lame, we left it in the den when she out-grew it. She’s quite the naughty little toddler, and we used it to block off one of her escape routes. We are also so lame that we left one of those little hanging baby toys hanging from the handle. One evening, Hubby and I were sitting on the couch when he said, “Oh my god!” I looked over at him and he was pointing at the infant carrier. Then I looked over at the carrier, the little toy was swinging back and forth by itself. What Hubby “OMG”-ed over? He saw it start, he was looking right at the thing when he saw it pulled forward, as if by an invisible hand, and released to start swinging. Just in case you were wondering, Hubby absolutely does not believe in the paranormal. Not that I do, or anything, mind you.

Small objects also tend to be found in unlikely places, places where we don’t put them. I suppose some of that could be blamed on two very naughty and inventive kids. But I saw something yesterday that cannot be explained away.

After dinner (hummus and tabouli), Pumpkin decided she’d seen enough of me for a while and went off to bother, I mean play with, her daddy. Hubby was in the bedroom playing with his computer, I mean working on stuff, when she went in there. I followed her and she told me, “Mama, you need to get out of here.” So summarily dismissed by a baby, I left. That was o.k., Monkey wanted to talk about his day at school.

It seems that there is a rather troublesome kid in his class. Yesterday Troublesome Kid, or T.K., told Monkey that the teacher said he (Monkey) was supposed to go to time-out. So Monkey dutifully asked the teacher and she said No, she didn’t want him in time-out. Guess who I think belongs in time-out? Anyway, I was telling Monkey about my own experiences with a T.K. when I was a kid. Monkey was sitting right in front of me the whole time, I didn’t take my eyes off him until I saw a slight movement out of the corner of my eye.

Pumpkin has a play kitchen, complete with pots and pans and six thousand (I exaggerate) little plastic pieces of play food, including play sushi! Well, as Monkey and I were talking, one of those little pieces of play food rolled into the room from out in the hall. It was the little tomato, which is not perfectly round, though it did roll as if it were. It looked as if someone had rolled it into the room from the front hall.

I picked it up, expecting it to feel too cold or too hot or have a slight electrical charge, but it felt perfectly normal. I could still hear Hubby and Pumpkin back off in the bedroom playing. I walked back and asked Hubby if either of them had left. They’d both been back there the whole time. We tried to come up with a logical explanation. Hubby, security-minded as always, checked all the doors and windows. Then we asked Monkey if he had seen what happened. He told us that he saw the little tomato under the couch when he was looking for another toy earlier. Hubby asked him if he could’ve kicked the thing out from under the couch, but that isn’t possible because I was sitting on the couch in question and hadn’t seen him do anything like that. And even if he had accidentally kicked it, how then did it roll in from the other room?

I also find it very interesting that something manifested itself when Monkey and I were talking about bullies. I was telling him that there will always be a T.K., I even had one of my own. And I told him about one of the times when my T.K. made me feel so scared that I didn’t want to go back to school. I could still feel an echo of that fear as I told the story. Then the tomato rolled in.

While I don’t have a personal theory about poltergeist activity, I do have one about hauntings. As I’ve said before, after someone passes away, surely he or she has better things to do than hang around in my kitchen. I do not for one minute think that the earth is populated not just with living people, but also with the spirits of the dead. That could get crowded.

There is speculation that hauntings are simply tears in the space-time continuum. This sounds reasonable. If some kind of traumatic event occurs-suicide, murder, battle-the violence inherent in the event rips at space-time. Then what we see are not spirits, but actual glimpses of the past. Or the future. But what about the non-traumas, the ghosts that haunt houses for no discernible reason? Place memory goes a long way towards an explanation.

How can a place have a memory you might ask. Well, I think, to a certain degree, some buildings are alive. Have you ever loved a house and then lavished that love, and time, and effort, on that house? Did that house seem happy? Have you ever seen a well-cared for, but empty, house? Did it seem sad, even though the yard was mowed and there was fresh paint on the outside? Maybe houses, and other buildings, are alive with spirits we invest in them. If a house or office building serves its purpose well, keeping people and possessions safe and comfortable, then it will be happy. But what of run-down buildings? I’ve often wondered which comes first–do people stop loving a building because it falls into disrepair or does the building fall into disrepair because people have stopped loving it?

And since something has to be alive to have a memory, that explains why hospitals don’t report a rash of hauntings even though lots of people die in them. Nobody loves a hospital, even when it’s doing its job, so hospitals never get invested with a spirit.

What if my silly, repairs-in-progress house remembers the other people who loved it? And it’s just showing us its memories, like someone playing slides from his latest vacation? I like that.

But that still doesn’t explain the tomato.