I sometimes have trouble remember whether things really happened or if I just dreamed them. I've always had extremely vivid dreams, whose memories persisted with me long after I have woken up. When I was young (before my mid 20s), I used to go into trances in which I seemed to be partially dreaming and partially awake. These could happen when I seemed to be fully awake and could be quite disorienting. In my trances, I would feel that I had lost contact with the physical world to some extent and sometimes had the sensation of floating. I could also see different rooms from the one I was physically in. I think this happened partly because I am hypoglycemic and have passed out during some of the more extreme episodes of this. I have been able to control is (since my mid 20s) with diet, but more recently I was diagnosed with sleep apnea, and that may also have played an effect. I also go immediately into a dream-like trance under certain strobe lights, which have a hypnotic effect on me. The strobe lights have to flash at a very specific rate, but when they do, I immediately go under and enter a dream state. Afterwards, I do not remember where I am.

QUESTION: Today, we went out and cut off (as high up as we could reach with the extendable chain saw) any limbs on this severely damaged tree that are clearly dead, brittle and no new green shoots. There's still lots more dead branches higher up, but we don't do "saws up on ladders" at our age, and a pro will have to do the rest with a lift bucket. We fully understand we're likely going to lose an entire main trunk on this tree, if not lose the ENTIRE tree above ground. But for now, we're taking it out in stages, to see if there's any hope of saving it in some form or another. That said, I'm concerned about one limb about 5" inch diameter we decided to leave alone this morning. It has a number of clusters of new green shoots/leaves out on the ends of its remote branchings, but there is a 2' or so swath where the skin/bark is cracking (see photo below) where the thin bark is, in one place, actually peeling away from the branch. The inner limb tissue, as you can see below, is brown. Like I said, it is supporting new shoots and leaf clusters farther out on the limb just fine. Do you think I should do something proactive to manage this potential virus/insect potential entry site? Can I treat it with the black spray/gooey tar-like sealer I've used for years on tree cuts and tape that skin/bark maybe with duct tape to the limb so air and insects don't get in and kill off this limb? Or should we write off this limb and go ahead and remove it. Again, we are willing to resign ourselves to losing most above ground parts of this tree, if a slow death is what we are seeing (like the Tx. Mt. Laurel I lost, finally, despite some new shoots) Attaching a few pics of the bark cracking and the shape currently, after our cutting back this morning. The trimmed out limbs generated a 7' tall 10' wide pile of debris for pick-up Monday. City is really gonna love me, NOT. Haven't noticed signs of cracking bark on other limbs after a thorough inspection once this one was discovered, just this one location on a major limb visible at the lower left in the top photo, with said damage at the elbow bend in that trunk. Not sure if it cracked during on long after the actualy freezeing temps in February. What advice can you give me here? If it were your loquat, would you just top the tree so it will quit struggling to survive way up high, say perhaps cut it at the bottom electric line in the photo, hoping the tree will regrow anew off the clearly healthy roots? Please note, the bulk of the green visible in the ball of vegetative growth in the photo is actually a neighbor's tree right across the street, from this camera perspective. If photo is enlarged, only the bright lime green shoots are on MY tree. Or would you, at this 5 months out juncture, give up on saving this tree in its current iteration, now that is it showing serious bark damage and take down the main trunk at some level? If so, would you make that aggressive cut just ABOVE the fork, where the cracking seems to begin or BELOW the fork, leaving just the erect, bare trunk. Of course, we would thoroughly treat 8" cuts with a thick. This approach, although drastic, and aesthetically unsatisfying for a long time, would basically promote a brand new tree above ground growing off the well-established root system and main trunk. The ultimate shape on the resulting 'new tree' might not be so pretety, but perhaps with some creative pruning over the years, could once again be nearly oval in its form. My goal is for it to one day be the prolific fruiting tree it once was. I see the alternative approach not so appealing: letting it struggle another 5 months and maybe, put on a bit more new leaf growh, then eventually die a slow death.

I have sterling silver flatware that onky gets used a few times a year. I've never needed to polish it in the 25 years we've had it but it is stored in one of those boxes designed for sterling utensils. @3katz4me this statement made me chuckle "I was thinking about Downtown Abbey when I was doing this and how helpful it would be to have "staff" to polish the silver" When my paternal gandmother died, her grandkids were allowed to choose anything we wanted from her china cabinet. She was old school Italian with the plastic covered furniture and ornate formal dining room. One of the few things that I liked were her silver salt and pepper shakers. They were already somewhat tarnished, but they have been sitting in my china cabinet for 20+ years and look awful so I have never used them. My elderly but spry parents came over for Thanksgiving dinner. My father likes to keep busy so is always looking for a project. Having noticed the shakers while setting my table, I suggested to my father he take the salt and pepper shakers and polish them for me. He was happy to do it and already reported they are ready for me, and look nothing like they did before. So I guess I don't need a staff, just an elderly parent who needed a project.😀

Jen K, Austin was a lot smaller in the 1980s, and it still had a somewhat intimate feel to it. I don't know what it's like now. I also lived there Jan - Aug 1973, and it very much had a small town feel to it at that time, and many people there thought that it had already gotten too big. At that time, the only non-stop flight from Austin that left the state was to Phoenix. I remember shopping in Austin in the 1970s when I would visit family, and I went into one store where I was paying by check, and so I had to show them my California driver's license. The woman at the counter said to me, "We don't get many foreigner here," and so that might answer your question about whether it was a hick town in the 1970s. It was really backward in so many ways back then, and yet it thought of itself as a progressive city, but coming from San Francisco, I did not see that. I believe that now many people in Austin resent people from California moving there, and I see that as small-minded and regressive. I moved the other direction. In the 1970s, I got harassed by the Austin police quite frequently, even without crossing a street, and they would always want to see my ID. That has never happened to me in California.