Snow, the Afterlife, and Behavioral Objectives

 

by Pa Rock

Farmer in Winter

It snowed in southern Missouri yesterday morning, right before daybreak, and now we have about an inch on the ground with temperatures so cold that it may never thaw.   It was a brisk twelve degrees f. outside this morning as I crunched through the thin layer of snow to do my few chores.  I will carry some water out to the roosters and guineas around 10:00 o'clock, but until then if my feathered boarders get thirsty, they will just have to peck at the ice and snow.  (Don't worry, they know the schedule and the routine.)

  

I emailed a friend in Phoenix yesterday and told her about the snow.  I described it as "pretty," and then added, "pretty damned cold!"  Phoenix is a nice place to live, December through February!  The rest of the year it is a race from one air-conditioned space to another!

This much I know -  it is hard getting in 10,000 steps a day when the outdoor temperature in in the teens and there is ice on the ground - but so far I am keeping up the pace.

Speaking of delusional activity, I dream a lot, and although I don't remember most of them, I usually wake up content and rested with the plot of the previous night's dream just beyond my recall.  However, last night I had a long and somewhat complicated dream about Heaven - or at least the afterlife - and I woke up with a vivid recollection of it.  

In that dream I was outside of a large high-rise apartment building, a boring gray affair with a plain lobby and a pair of elevators.  I boarded the elevator and rode to the top floor where the door opened onto an outdoor park type of area with benches and some young trees.  There was more building above me, but no elevators, so I climbed a stairs to the very top and found a barren landing outside of the highest apartments, with more construction still going on overhead.  A low wall surrounded the outdoor area, which I leaned over - but could not see the ground.  I dropped a couple of rocks over the wall in an effort to judge the distance to the ground, but could not hear them hit earth - or passers-by.  

Finally I grew tired and decided to leave.  I walked back downstairs to the evevators and then rode to the ground floor.  When I exited the building I ran into two older women whom I knew.  The younger of the two was not wanting to go inside because she still had things she wanted to do.   She was crying and talked about wanting to go to the movies one more time.  She mentioned knowing of one theater still in operation, close to a place where she used to live, and finally her friend and I agreed that we would go with her.

But before we could head out to the movies her friend suddenly remembered that she had not written her behavioral objectives.  "What behavioral objectives?" I asked.   She replied that there was a requirement that all new tenants in the high-rise building write and submit a list of behavioral objectives, ways I would change in the next life, and behaviors that I would exhibit to show that I had changed.  I told the woman and her friend that I would never write behavioral objectives in order to get an apartment in the new building, and she told me that in that case I would not be moving in.

I wrote way too many behavioral objectives as a teacher, and if they are a prerequisite for a room in the afterlife, I guess I will take a pass.  And while I am not sure what the disappearing movie theaters signify, I do know that it has been about three years since I have been inside of one, and I am surviving just fine at home with Netflix and Prime.

I guess I am destined to remain in the rustic, and sometimes snowy, hills of Missouri for the time being,  at least until I suddenly wake up in the middle of the night to find that I have filled a notebook with behavioral objectives - if I wake up!