I recovered from my flu bug a few days after Christmas. Mostly it was a weary feeling that hung onto me for several days afterwards. I felt cheated out of a decent Christmas visit with my sons, daughter-in-law, and other granddaughter but that's the way it goes.

So, it's the new year. One can't judge how the whole year is going to go just because the first of the year starts going a certain way but one can't help but wonder if the whole year is going to be just as ditzy or crappy or great or wonderful if the first week or two of the new year is one or the other. If I'm speculating about those factors, I might have to say that the rest of the year might not be a fantastic one for me. It seems I have turned even more forgetful since the start of the year. But it might not be because it's a new year that I am more forgetful. Amy said it was because I turned sixty. Oy, 60. Sixty seems so much older than being fifty-nine. I haven't despaired about rolling over into my sixth decade, or is it seventh since I've already lived for six decades, but I keep musing on the fact that I am this age now.

Call it morbid or what, but I can't help but wonder ahead about how many years I have left on this planet. Two things I'll regret about dying. The first is that I won't be able to see how my grandkids look when they're in their 20's and also see what they make out of their life. And not being able to see what their kids will look like or their kids and so on. And, two, I want to know what happens in this world next. Do we go into nuclear war and most of humanity is wiped out and there are mutants that attack us in the night? Or do we achieve world peace and a cooperative, unified government? What kind of technology will be discovered? Instant transport to other places wherever we want to go as in, "Beam me up, Scotty"? Cures for diabetes and cancer and AIDS? Living on Mars? Finding another habitable planet that is reachable in a couple of light years? Traveling at the speed of light? Cruelty and hatred wiped out everywhere (I can hope, can't I?)?

Oh, man, I could go on and on. See why I don't want to miss seeing what happens next? I know, though, that it could be devastating to know if mankind slides down a dark and horrible, more horrible than I can imagine, path of life and never return from it. Guess it's better to not know what happens next and die thinking that everyone will come to a wonderful utopia eventually. But, who knows? After you die, maybe you are in a place to see it all happen anyway. It could be one of the 'perks' of dying. You don't miss out on all that you thought you were going to miss out on knowing about. Sigh, I don't know if this mystery will ever be solved--the mystery of the afterlife and if there is an afterlife.

On another note, I have to share this picture of the immature Cooper's hawk that landed on the fence outside my window here today. He's come there before but this is the first time I've gotten a decent picture of him. I've never seen him score a dinner at my feeders and hope I never do. I can't begrudge him trying to find a meal but I wish he'd find it someplace else where I don't witness it. We could use a few less house sparrows, though, I say. There are three dozen of them that sit on that fence and take turns the whole day long desolating my millet AND sunflower supply out there. And they chase off anything that tries to nest within a hundred yards of our place.