Goals

Christmas has come and gone once more. I surprised Mary Lou yesterday by removing the decorations from our tree, organizing them for storage, dragging the tree around to the curb and sweeping up the copious pine needles both inside and outside. ML expressed "shock" when she arrived home from the gym. By lunchtime, all of our Christmas gear was packed in red plastic bins and stored in an attic closet. 

Christmas observances went smoothly. Jenny arrived a week ahead of time and Jane, who had undergone successful surgery for colon cancer, showed up for dinner at our house along with Mary O'Brian and the Phams. I managed to get useful birthday and Christmas gifts for ML (a vibrating heating pad and wireless earbuds) that she found pleasing.

I think a great deal while doing rather little. I just read an ESPN article about how Kirby Smart built the highly successful football program at UGA. It's all about relentless, disciplined pursuit of an overriding goal- to win National Championships. Tremendous sustained effort to learn and execute at a high level is demanded and required as is the case for any successful endeavor. I contrast this with the minimal motivation and effort I've exerted since retiring on July 2019.  My focus has become taking care of myself and our small world.. Relatively little effort, energy and creative problem-solving is required  Meanwhile the clock is ticking with no way to know when the buzzer will sound,

Mike Leach is dead.

Leach, the famously eccentric, creative, inquisitive, and influential football coach who developed the Air Raid offense, died at age 61 from a heart condition. "The future's uncertain/the end is always near." Jim Morrison. 

Jane Kelley and recurring dreams

Jane called Mary Lou this morning (written before Christmas)to report that she's been hospitalized for a bowel obstruction. Ominously, her doctor warned her the likely cause is colon cancer. If so, Jane is likely to die due to failing to get the colonoscopies recommended as standard preventive care. Jane called me about feeding her cats which I've done in the past and am happy to do. One can only hope this isn't the final chapter in the long, sad story of her life.

I continue to dream actively although I haven't written any down recently. This morning I had an elaborate dream as I awoke around 7am and another one when I went back to sleep for an hour. In the first one, I was riding a fancy new motorcycle in an unfamiliar city. Mary Lou and others were supposed to be following me in a car but I got ahead of them. I pulled to the curb to wait for them to catch up and some young men approached me. An Hispanic guy named Carlos engaged me in a conversation. He had a direct and self-confident manner. I wasn't particularly fearful but I wondered if these men intended to rob or assault me. I can't recall the conversation now except for me asking Carlos to tell me his name again. Then, another group of white guys who seemed to be a macho gang or club of some kind appeared and started dancing around on the sidewalk and in the street. The general feeling of the dream was being alone and disconnected from my support people in a vaguely threatening situation. 

In the second dream, I was still in an unfamiliar city but this time I was in a car that had an open sun roof. I was again trying to link up with Mary Lou to find my way to the route that took us back to a house in the countryside where we'd been staying. I thought about just trying my luck finding the route but decided this was a bad idea. I attempted to call Mary Lou on my cell phone but I couldn't get the phone app to come up despite frantic efforts. A black guy named George was standing up in the car with his upper body going through the sun roof. I asked him to call Mary Lou and called out her supposed number (which wasn't her real life number). George didn't seem to be in a hurry to call her and I continued to fiddle with my phone as various unhelpful screens came up. One or two screens had lines of code. I felt frustrated and a bit anxious. This situation didn't feel threatening as the people in my car seemed to be innocuous. When I woke up, I couldn't recall ML's phone number and had to check it to refresh my memory,