I think that life was made for celebration. I have decorated my cube at work. It is quite small, so a little decoration goes a long way. I have been baking almost every day and bringing muffins to work, and candy, and mixed nuts. Someone has been giving me little gifts. I find them appearing mysteriously in different spots in my cube when I enter it from time to time. I am supposed to think there are pixies at work.

I called Little Bird for a Christmas talk. My four-year-old nephew Ear Implant commandeered the phone trying to break through to me while Little Bird was wending her way to the telephone. His time was short so he had to talk fast. So fast, in fact, that I couldn't really make out what he was trying to say. It did sound a lot like secret code for "When are you going to bust me out of this nut house, Aunt? But I can't be sure.

Little Bird sounded the same and no wonder. She lives in a third world war zone in the picturesque county side pastureland of the gold and green prairie land in the middle of nowhere.

The old neighbors, you know, the people from California who are reputed to have operated a bordello (or maybe they just said they were bored, hello) out there and had that cabin on the main road and who also tried to re-survey everyone's land, move the ancient boundary lines, and close down the road so they would be landlocked, well, they're all gone now. The cabin burned down down down to the ground. Someone bought up all the land where the cabin was sitting and re-sold it to some guy who is going to have a parrot farm (or was that a ferret farm?).

That was the first story I heard about The Land Man. It turns out the essence of that story might be true, but some other people are now thinking of having a land grab too and burning out everyone else because, if you remember the place near the crossroads and how they sold it to the new people, then you know the new people just disappeared leaving a For Sale sign in the window which mysteriously ended up lying in the front lawn and was still lying there long after they had vacated, along with an angry bashed in white fence railing, maybe bashed by an angry pickup driver.

A few nights ago, Little Bird saw an eerie orange glow in the sky and went up to the main road just in time to see the last of the fire that ate up that place completely (which was formerly at the crossroads) just across the street from where the cabin once was and someone, word to your mother, told little Bird that she had better watch out because fires seemed to be going around. She says she's afraid to go to sleep at night for fear the house will spontaneously combust while she's off guard.

Fires must be catching because another place near the old railroad tracks burned down after that.The thing is, it's all true.

I told Little Bird that I remembered why I called. It was because it was so much fun out there.

I dream of putting in an orchard. It might last days before it was attacked by chainsaws or run over completely by a tractor or raptor or just disappear into thin air, as in, Did anybody notice what happened to my one hundred apple trees? They were there last week.