UFOs and Brain Farts On Labor Day

On Labor Day morning we were out walking the dogs early as I had to be at Holiday when it opened at 6 a.m. Looking up, I saw a weird row of lights moving slowly across the star-filled sky. Unsure what kind of flying object it was, I posted this on my Facebook page:

At about 10 past 0500 this morning I looked up in the sky and saw a line of lights moving steadily from NW to SE. It looked like the lights of a 1000’ laker on Superior on a December night and tracked like a promotion banner towed by a Cessna. It was neither.

My assumption is that it was the contrail of one of the jets that pass over at altitude occasionally, reflecting the yet to rise sun. Whatever, it was a strange site and I thought I’d post this to see if anyone else saw it or has a better explanation.


Have I written about senior moments before? Sometimes frustrating, usually humorous, but dangerous if you leave the stove on and unattended for an hour or two. We all have those kinda moments, like not remembering if you’d written about something before.

When we walk the dogs, Fiona and I usually get into the house first. This morning, the Bohunk took the lead. She got the little ones in and went to the kitchen to start the dog’s breakfast. But she turned off all the outside lights and the lights in our vestibule, leaving me to stumble in the dark. When I walked in a few minutes later I scared the crap out of her.

“I thought you were in already,” she said.

For breakfast, I decided to toast up some bread and slather it with peanut butter. I thought I”d multi-task while waiting for the bread to brown so I pulled a glass and spoon to facilitate my morning dose of Metamucil.

If you don’t know it, Metamucil is a fiber supplement made from psyllium husk, a type of soluble fiber to help baby boomers and other elders with “digestive regularity.” It’s a powder that comes in a good-sized orange plastic container and you mix it with water to form a liquid that tastes like Tang mixed with foundry sand.

Turning from the toaster, I opened the refrigerator and stared open-mouthed into it, wondering why I didn’t see Metamucil. My Metamucil is kept on the top shelf in the pantry.

“Oh yeah, it’s in the pantry stupid,” I mumbled to myself. I went into the pantry, got it down, and mixed my morning cocktail.

The peanut butter is stored in the pantry too, so when I returned the Metamucil, I thought, “I’ll grab the peanut butter now too.” Multi-tasking.

The jar of peanut butter was pretty much empty. The bohunk uses the stuff to disguise the drugs that several of our canine residents need to take. There was enough of it left for Fiona’s allergy pill, but not enough for two slices of bread.

Becky keeps an organized pantry and told me there was a full jar on another shelf. Still waiting for the toast, I returned the near-empty jar to get the full one and found its rightful spot now held my Metamucil.


Becky thought my senior moment was laugh-out-loud funny this time. Usually, she doesn’t appreciate my memory fumbling in the morning.

Whether senior moments or brain farts, they are a fact of life for we boomers. The multi-taskers of yesterday, and I was a proud multi-tasker in my younger days, can barely manage one task at a time now.

As for the UFO I’d seen, my friend Tom Spence replied, “Sounds like Starlink satellites. Getting pretty frequent.” So I googled that, and sure enough, the pictures showed exactly what I saw.

Quite the Labor Day.

Comments