The Hermits' Rest

Closet is clean enough

I did it. I packed up about half my clothing to go to the local thrift shop. Everything else is on hangers, folded, or in the correct drawer. Today’s push to the finish line took me three tries with some resting in between, but I did it.

Looking in from the door. The surface of the island/drawers is visible.

While some folding isn’t very good (ahem, the jeans and sweaters), it looks way better as it is. I know where my dresses and sleeveless tops that aren’t polyester are (polyester ones are gone). I can see my dress pants. Outfits are stored together. Lee wanted to know how I group things. It’s pretty idiosyncratic, but I’ll share. Here are my categories:

Fancy dresses/tops (small category)
Wraps
Dresses (long sleeve, short sleeve, sleeveless)
Tunics, same groupings
Button-up shirts
Nice work tops
Work ensembles (items with matching accessories)
Political t-shirts
Long-sleeve casual
Holiday and Buc-ees tees
Winter shirts
Long-sleeve plain t-shirts
Long sleeve state park
Solid t-shirts
Tie-dye t-shirts
State/national park short sleeves
T-shirts with birds, flowers, etc., by color
Dallas Cowboy shirts
Master Naturalist shirts
Sleeveless tops
Sweatshirts
Rock/folk music shirts
Dress pants
Vests
Scarves and belts
Jackets
Purses on top shelf
Boxes for bathing suits, gloves, etc.
Shoes. Yes they are organized, too. I’ll spare you.
This is ridiculous.

You can see the jean pile and jewelry area I still have to clean.

I even removed many shoes and the only ones on the floor are house slippers and summer sandals, which have a niche. That was a lot of work, too. I have about 200 empty hangers but do not plan to acquire that many clothes! Now I need to make myself hang clean clothing as soon as it’s finished. Wish me luck.

I found a couple of items to pass on to friends or family. But mostly I hope the good stuff I’m passing along brings someone else joy. I’m ready to pass out.

Is this not the most clueless selfie ever? The hair! The dirt and sweat on shirt! The eyes looking at who knows what! But I did my job.

Let’s just hope I can keep it going better than I usually do. It’s very hard to show people your closet. Makes you feel vulnerable.

Doing hard things can lead to rewards

I rewarded myself for all that closet cleaning I’ve been doing by saying yes to an invitation to meet our friends Mike and Martha at the bakery in town. Lee even agreed to come along, though he was displeased that screeching children were hurting his ears. Nonetheless we all had nice conversations.

The bakery is so cute and GOOD. Visit Shirley Mae’s Bakery if you’re ever in Cameron, Texas.

Since I am the lesser hermit, I enjoyed talking to Martha, my friend Mary who was there with her family, and my son and his partner, who also came in. Then I had to have a good chat with the bakery owner’s dad and their nice employee, who collects Native American jewelry and is a Master Gardener, so she knows some of my friends.

This, dear readers, is why small-town living can be pleasant. I enjoy it much more now that I’m not paranoid about gossip and mean-spirited people. I’m glad I’m better at not caring about people who aren’t nice.

After all that socialization I was fine with watching some TV (finished Hawk and got through much of Ride or Die today) in the quiet house.

Of course, I spent two more hours putting clothing into boxes and moving things around. I almost finished sorting everything hanging up, and I disposed of two garbage bags of plastic hangers from my old house.

This was a mess. It’s my work outfits, dresses, and what passes for dress-up attire.

I still have a big pile of stuff to hang, now that there’s room for it, and plenty of hangers! That shows you how big the purge was. Tomorrow the hanging stuff will be hung, and if I have time, shoes will be culled* and arranged.

The horror! Goal is to have the surface of this island visible tomorrow.

My teeth still hurt but it’s better every day. I think the dry socket is healing. I think I’ll join my sleeping beauties and indulge in my favorite activity, sleep.

Carlton and Benito are doing much better these days. B is healing.

(*Sue, that’s the word my typo was trying to be yesterday)

The difference between me and a hoarder is…

Sometimes I’m not sure. I’m more of a collector, or so I tell myself. And I have sentimental attachments to objects that seem to have meaning. Assigned by me, no doubt.

I should collect wildflowers. They disappear.

I decided I’d gone too far in my closet when it was getting to where it was just solid clothing with paths among it. It got that way partially because the contents of the “holiday closet” got shoved in there when the air conditioning unit was being worked on and no one put the boxes and weird foam mattress pad back.

That made it harder to hang clothing…and ugh. I also had been putting off my annual clothing purge, because I knew there would be things that had to go but meant a lot to me at one time (silly shirts I bought just to support a store, and horse show attire I’ll never wear again, for example). It’s my fault it’s painful; I need to get over my sensitive self.

Carlton is trying to look judgmental at me, but the yarn hanging from his mouth makes it look like he has a gang.

But, as I’ve mentioned, I got the process started last week and have made good headway. I have one whole side of the hanging clothing thinned out. I need to make space so I can rearrange clothing by my idiosyncratic categories.

Looks full? I culled this by at least half.

I still need to get the long wall of hangers sorted. I think there’s very old clothing Lee has brought in from storage, which also explains why I feel like a hoarder. Two separate wardrobes are crammed into one closet (albeit a very large closet). And I have always collected t-shirts. I purge them, and more magically appear with funny bird sayings and such.

This is long-sleeved shirts on top (right side is long-sleeved shirts from travels) and holiday shirts plus casual long-sleeves on the bottom. At left is the section of dressy tops that I have gone through.

I’m posting about this to keep myself accountable. Now that I’ve shared my project, I hope I’ll be more encouraged to complete it. And I know the local thrift store will be pleased. I have two more very large boxes for them. I’m not a hoarder, I guess. I just make piles and cull them.

My tooth still hurts a bit. I hope the dry socket didn’t dry out again.

A fictional dining companion

If you could have dinner with any fictional character, who would it be?

Just a quick one. I knew the answer to this one right off. I’d love to have dinner with Sherlock Holmes. I’d like him to tell me horrible facts about myself just from looking at me and proceed to tell me how insufferably boring I am.

Then I’d probably talk to John Watson.

And I choose Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock, please.

No wonder it hurt

Hello everyone, especially those I did not see in my brief visit to Cedar Park yesterday and this morning. I’m relieved to report that the outcome of my dental adventure this morning was good. I feel very much better.

And the crowd goes wild! Hurrah! photo from Pexels

When I dragged myself in to the dentist office, they knew what was up immediately. I should have probably gone in last Friday. I had dry socket, which more often happens in wisdom tooth extractions, but occurs in 1-2% of all extractions. The blood clot that usually forms at the bottom of the site gets dislodged and that exposed raw nerves and bone. Yeah, that could explain some extreme pain.

So they put a lot of anise-smelling stuff in there and packed it back in. I’m pretty sure I caused the issue by trying to swish water around to keep the site clean. That didn’t help at all, and instead made it worse. Live and learn.

Rules after extractions are to not smoke, not use a straw, and not swish water around. Well. I didn’t smoke.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it to the root canal part of the appointment, because I uncharacteristically tensed up when the dentist was putting the anesthetic in. It hit a nerve or something and really hurt. When he finished, I started shaking, turned pale, and began to have some impressive back spasms, over and over. Yow, that hurt. And it scared us all (me, the dentist, and the technician). It finally passed and I was okay for the procedure. Root canal is a piece of cake compared to a messy extraction.

During all the drilling and poking, I imagined I was back in South Carolina, looking forward woodpeckers.

Everyone was so kind to me, and we had good conversations when I settled down. Lots about dogs. And the receptionist was really impressed by my temperature blankets (it came up because I said I was excited it hit 100° yesterday so I could use hot pink yarn.

After Lee got me home (so nice not to have to drive), I fell asleep for a long time. I was so tired from hurting. Tonight I have just a little pain, but I’m optimistic it will be better tomorrow.

I look forward to two months of no dentist! Nice guy, but this week was hard.

Pampering is good for us

Lee is a good guy under his grumpy facade. When he realized I was going to drive in early tomorrow morning for a root canal on my still-painful teeth, he volunteered to drive me to Cedar Park this evening and get a hotel room near my dentist so I can sleep a bit more, and I’ll have him to drive me home. I feel so pampered

Oh look, it’s 183 and 620. That intersection was a four-way stop in the 1990s.

And then he offered to take me out to eat something both good and soft. Conveniently, one of my favorite quiet sushi/Chinese restaurants is within walking distance of the hotel. We could walk there, even in 103° heat and not suffer!

When I come to the old Lakeline Mall area, in the vortex where Austin, Cedar Park, and Round Rock meet, I am surprised at what nostalgia pops up. I am in a place I spent my child-rearing years, near many dear friends and places I once lived. I look out the window and know Catherine and Carolyn/Lyndy are not too far. Sniff. But I’m in no shape to visit!

The extent of the nostalgia I feel is limited to people, former homes, the interesting geological aspects of the limestone karst, and nice places to eat. I miss those. I don’t miss traffic and having so many people around. There are always trade offs!

My chirashi sushi dinner pampered me well, and a glass of plum wine drowns out the throbbing. I did make it through the day without painkillers, so maybe I won’t bruise up awfully tomorrow.

I’ve never looked less forward to a dental appointment. Just gotta go inward and get through it. I’ll never make fun of people who get wound up before dental work again.

Apps? What apps?

What app eats up most of your screen time — and do you even feel bad about it?

Great news for me—I have another fun question to answer while not much is going on around the ranch but work, heat, dogs, and my sore mouth. I have overdone the NSAIDs and it’s making my old lady red spots go into overdrive. The pain is a bit less, so I’ll cut down starting tonight.

Barely need to rub on the skin to get this. Yuck.

However, the question was about apps. Here’s what my phone has to deal with every day.

Merlin Bird ID: it has its own phone, so it’s on much of the day, but I only look at it every couple of hours. It’s very important for my bird data, you know. (Yeah, I’m such a scientist.)
Facebook: sorry, haters, but I keep up with old friends, new acquaintances, and lots of horses and dogs. I’m encouraged by the kindness and interesting ideas I come across. I skip repetitive ads based on the things I’ve been talking or thinking about, and only very rarely do I see offensive, ignorant, or mean content. I’ve curated my feed. No, I have no secret other than liking what I like and ignoring the rest.
Finch. I check this cute self-care app 3-4 times a day. It reminds me to do kind things and lets me engage in harmless play with a few friends. It’s really good for my mental health. I can send my friend code; just ask.
Crossword: the Redstone Games crossword app is great. There are themes, different creators whose puzzles you can play, and many levels of difficulty. There are always new games. It’s good for keeping your brain sprightly. I play a game or two per day. Lee is constantly playing.
INaturalist. I’d say I add one or two observations per day or hundreds when I’m traveling. I love to look up whatever plants, birds, insects, or other creatures are near me. It’s endlessly fascinating.
WordPress or JetPack or whatever they’re calling it. I do blog a while most days. Yesterday was too uneventful for me to dredge up anything, so I skipped. I like WordPress just fine. I have always enjoyed putting words on the internet and formatting them. It’s what I do. For me.
Others I use often are Clime weather (official live radar maps), Google for asking questions, LinkedIn to check on work buddies, Gmail for the occasional personal email, Zoom/Teams for chatting, the camera app (duh), and boring banking and financial apps.

Do I feel bad about any of it? Heck no. The only app I felt bad about using was Bejeweled. I used it to escape from my daily life for about ten years. Things got better and I stopped.

Benito is settling in well. He’s very attached to Lee.

No doubt younger readers have very different app preferences. These folks have never known a time without apps. I guess books and drawing paper were my “apps.” I got lost in them!

Make it go away

If you could erase one trend from history, what would it be?

I’ll tell you what trend I’d like to eliminate: charismatic psychopaths taking over the leadership of powerful countries and embarking on unstoppable campaigns to satisfy their need for praise and power.

Can we make this trend go away? Not without a destructive struggle, I fear.

Okay, people who came here to read the prompt response can stop reading. I’ll go on to ranch news. First, the dogs are making progress. And, hey, I discovered in the archives that we got Penney seven years ago this week, and she was my most recent acquisition. So we aren’t grabbing dogs Willy-nilly. (Kathleen rescued Goldie.)

Benito has started to both play with and assert himself with Harvey. I just hope they establish their boundaries quickly. It’s hard to keep B calm for his heart worm treatment when everyone wants to play and play. But they do sleep a lot.

We have noticed much less mounting and marking from Benito, which is really good. I’m not fond of that stuff.

As for the rest of us, we are muddling along, with no one feeling all that great. My jaw swelling has gone down, but I still hurt. I’ll let the dentist know, and I’m taking the antibiotics on schedule.

Sharing some white-mouthed day flowers, which got sprayed today. They were pretty, but it was time to trim some overgrowth.

Big thing for me: I am finally going through all my clothing from work and ranch and will be making some lucky thrift store shopper very happy. I got two boxes full of clothes today. More to come! This is one of my “issues,” having too many clothes. Comes from not having many growing up. But I go overboard. Sigh. I guess I could have worse issues (and probably do).

PS: haven’t lost a fish in my water garden! Yay!

Old technology memories

Which outdated technology do you miss the most, and why?

I still feel bad in the tooth department but I’m gonna answer this question anyway, since nothing exciting happened today(which is good). Anyway, I miss two things from the olden days of my youth, back in the 20th century.

One is standard transmissions in cars. It was just plain fun to drive a stick shift when I was younger. You felt like you were actually telling the car what to do, as opposed to today’s cars that control the speed, yell at you if you stray out of your lane, and park for you. Cars used to be fun.

The other thing I miss is just for the fun aspect, and that’s intercom systems in homes and offices. It was so much fun to yell at your siblings on intercoms (we didn’t have one, but well-off friends did.) I know it was supposed to be so cool to play the radio throughout the house…but I liked paging parents. And oh, my, did we have fun in my first “real” job in Illinois, calling each other into our offices and being silly until we were reminded that it WAS a business.

All I know is we removed a lot of those systems when remodeling houses.

Genuine news! Finally have the first half of the year of temperatures in my blanket. July was hot!

I’m trying really hard to feel less down in the dumps and to make sure my mouth is healing. The dogs are still entertaining, though!

My excuse was flimsy

What is the best excuse you have heard lately?

Today’s question was quite appropriate. I did something monumentally dumb and my best excuse is that I read too fast. My other excuse is mouth pain making me grumpy and prone to misinterpreting things. So I embarrassed myself in front of many Internet strangers (and a person I know).

Positive note: our property is covered with these beautiful golden rain lilies. A reward from the storms.

What happened is I got a text telling me that my subscription club was ending and that I had until September to use all my points or they’d expire. Or something to that effect. My mind immediately leapt to my monthly subscription to nail strips from Color Street (such a weird name, I know). I look forward to the monthly surprises, so I got sad.

You know, my extreme nail vanity I can’t control for long.

I immediately told my friend who sells the strips, who was shocked. I then posted about it on a Facebook group for super-users of the strips. Before I was able to see any responses, Rebecca asked me to show her the text I’d gotten. I then saw my mistake. It wasn’t my Color Play subscription that was ending, but the Color Club for my hair coloring stuff, Overtone. Oops.

By the time I got back on Facebook, a tizzy was occurring in the nail group, since no one else had heard anything, including the “stylists” (MLM marketing term). I quickly changed my post and apologized, though people kept demanding I change my original post, which I had already done. I felt so embarrassed.

Luckily people were mostly forgiving and one even asked about Overtone.

But wow, my excuse for that mistake, while honest, was merely the best I could do, not a good one.