The person behind The Hermits' Rest blog and many others. I'm a certified Texas Master Naturalist and love the nature of Milam County. I manage technical writers in Austin, help with Hearts Homes and Hands, a personal assistance service, in Cameron, and serve on three nonprofit boards. You may know me from La Leche League, knitting, iNaturalist, or Facebook. I'm interested in ALL of you!
This whole unpacking of boxes in the garage and general removing unnecessary stuff from my house thing is not becoming easier for me. However, I am still doing it! Yes! And that’s why I honestly think someone should give me a gold star or something. So, I made myself an award on Bitmoji. I’m very proud of this award.
What keeps me going?
Certainly the lifting of heavy boxes of books and empty CD cases (Lee’s) is not a motivating factor. The heat isn’t helping (though it isn’t bad in the garage). Yeah, having more space in the garage is nice, but the real thrill is…
Why, hello there, friends and readers! I haven’t been quite the blogging fool I usually am for the past few days, and for what I find to be an ironical reason. I got a new laptop.
I admit to putting the IT team off for about two years, because every time I get a new work laptop, things go crazy. I just didn’t have time for crazy, even though now most of my apps and storage are off living on some cloud and not ON the laptop. I didn’t even know if it HAD a hard drive.
My previous little system had served me well, though at some point in 2017 it stopped being able to hold power if it undocked. So, oh darn, I couldn’t present at meetings. </sarcasm> I just had docks everywhere I worked, and it was fine. The poor thing has a brand-new battery in it, but whatever the problem is, it’s not the battery. Okay, so I needed a new computer.
All of this mess actually works.
Finally, last week, the thing started randomly shutting down while I was minding my ow business, typing, mousing, or saving a vitally important Camtasia file. So, I let Josh, the nice young IT dude, swap me out.
I made myself laugh, because I brought three laptops home with me to the ranch last weekend (old laptop, new laptop, and my trusty Surface), so I’d be sure to be able to work anywhere. Ha ha! Silly me.
I have, instead, spent the last three days trying to dredge up passwords for things that live in the cloud, trying to log on to the RIGHT Office 365 account for the right office, finding where my fancy Adobe Creative Cloud licensed things were, and so forth.
This weekend so far has been all about my canine buddies. Thursday night we had the quarterly board meeting for the Milam Touch of Love group. Lots more people than I thought were coming were there, which made me wish I’d moved into the sanctuary rather than in the conference room. That made it rather cozy but also amplified the sounds of the folks who wanted to carry on conversations while we were trying to go through the agenda.
I’m officially official.
Though it was really different from most board meetings I’ve attended, we did get to hear from the committees eventually. And wow, a lot of good work has been started, and many new needs identified! The organization will have to be careful to stick to its mission and work with other entities, like law enforcement and other organizations, so we can all work together.
What about Penney?
And to exit my soapbox, Penney became officially ours on Friday. She even came to the office with Lee yesterday. All the noises in Cameron made her a little nervous but she did okay.
This is a guest post by Lee Bruns, reblogged from our real-estate redevelopment blog, Hermit Haus Redevelopment. Since it’s also about the ranch, I figure it goes here, too – Suna
Sue Ann recently posted about whether or not installing solar panels makes economic sense—spoiler alert: it doesn’t; it’s more of a religious or magical decision than an economic one. So, I thought I’d spend some words (as few as possible) to describe the installation process with pictures. And even though a picture may be worth a thousand words, I’m not going to take that truism to the Ikea extreme. Sometimes you need words to understand the pictures.
Site Prep
Our grid interface is dozens of yards from the building where the panels are to be installed. A trencher made short work of digging the trench. Okay, it took more than an hour, but that is much faster than digging an 18-inch deep trench by hand—especially through the compacted road base that makes up our driveway. The original trench for the power and water connections were about 36 inches, so there was little risk that we would cut power to the house.
Our little neighborhood book group met last night to discuss A Place for Us, by Fatima Farheen Mirza. This is her first novel, which makes it an even more amazing book. I’m glad we chose it! And look, a convenient way to buy it:
This month, we met at Maria’s house. We all enjoy inspecting each other’s houses for cuteness and signs of the owners’ personalities. I was most impressed that the house was mostly white, even though she has two small children. Many of us unwittingly dressed with a white theme, which made things even more festive than usual.
Anita, me, Gay, and Ruth in our white. I like how the extra cool light fixture looks like we have a halo. And what a nice bra strap I’m showing.
Another fun part of the evening that had nothing to do with the book was that we had a new member, Marilyn, who has just moved here from England. Her perspective was really welcome in the discussion of sibling issues, and she fit in so well!
I just had to stick in another picture. I wish I’d gotten one of Marilyn, though! This one adds Angela on the left and another Ruth on the right.
The discussion this month went a little more smoothly, because those of us who need a rational discussion made the effort to come up with a few discussion questions, and I brought a “talking stick,” which was actually a magnifying glass with a deerskin cover. It looks sort of like a microphone, so people kept saying, “Is this thing on?” and talking into it, like it was going to help.
Maria shares deep thoughts with the talking stick.
It did help us keep side conversations down to pretty much zero (that had been the issue last month; everyone talking at once about their own personal topics). When people spoke without the talking stick, the comments were all brief and in support of the main speaker. So, I got a lot more out of our thoughts and feelings on the book. Yay! (And later we got to just do chit-chat and neighborly support.)
Actual Book Report
As for the book, I enjoyed it so much that I took my time reading it, bit by bit, until I had to finish it for the meeting. There are actually a few really different reasons to love A Place for Us. And to me, they are equally important, so I had trouble deciding what to talk about first.
I’ve always been drawn to books about other cultures. I think it’s a great way to learn about how people live in the rest of the world AND enjoy a good story. I loved Maeve Binchy’s Ireland, Amy Tan’s Chinese-American families, and more. With my background in linguistics, I also have fun with learning politeness phrases and common terms in other languages.
This book had all that and more! While I’ve read lots of books about Muslims, most have been about Arab cultures, women in harems, and that kind of Islamic life. This book elegantly weaves normal day-to-day life for a normal Indian/Muslim family living in the US in among the story telling and life lessons.
I was especially pleased at how well Mirza included bits about the spiritual practices of each member of the novel’s family. If you aren’t familiar with the wide variety of practices in Islam (all with a common core) you might feel much more comfortable with Islam when you see how each person chooses what is meaningful to him or her, and the beauty they see in verses, prayers and teachings, just like so many Christians and Jews practice differently.
The story-telling is another thing I just couldn’t get enough of. I’ve always liked novels that present events and ideas from more than one character’s perspective. You really get to know Haida’s family (she’s the main character until a sudden shift in Part 4 of the book), their dynamics, and their virtues and frailties. I had a great time teasing out why each person acted the way they did, and realizing how small things can send a life in unexpected directions.
You pretty much end up liking everyone you encounter in the California community of Urdu speakers, because they seem so human. I drew a lot of comfort seeing how people can learn from their mistakes.
Speaking of family dynamics, here’s Maria’s family as Buddhas with succulents in their heads. Hmm
Our book club talked a lot about the family dynamics, and I enjoyed that older siblings sympathized with Hadia, middle children thought the middle daughter, Huda, got the short shrift, and younger ones had so much sympathy for how the younger brother dealt with what life handed to him.
I do look forward to more books from Mirza. She was born in the same year as my oldest son. Wow. I’ll stop before I give away a lot of plot, but one insight I had was that this actually was a mystery book, only it wasn’t a “who done it” but rather was a “why did they do it?” mystery.
The big thing I did yesterday was get a hair cut, which I hadn’t done since Kalea moved so far away and only works when I’m in Cameron. I found a place on the way to therapy and showed up on the wrong day, but it was okay. The lady who cut my hair was funny, my age, and did a perfectly reasonable job. Whew. Finding someone to cut your hair is HARD. I deserved a reward.
Since we worked so hard Monday, Anita and I capitalized on a break in the heat by sitting on the deck in a civilized fashion. We drank wine from the wine fridge and I twirled around in my white linen dress (which Vlassic managed not to get dirty).
Looking more and more like my granny every day. But happy.
I felt so relieved after reorganization stress at work. Every little thing looked beautiful to me. Even hybrid flowers got my love. Plants really do help with stress and anxiety (my eye stopped twitching, even).
Portulaca hybrid
I’m concerned about my nipple cactus. It looks like it’s imploding, though it has lots of babies. I’ll have to look this turn of events up.
Back in Austin, I knew doing some more sweaty unpacking would help me deal with the ridiculous amount of poorly handled work stress I dealt with today. So, I came home and immediately dragged out some really heavy boxes, so that I could create some empty shelf space to store tools and holiday decor.
Those empty shelves and that concrete were covered in boxes until today!
Most of the boxes had the knitting and craft magazines I swore I’d get rid of when I got to them, so I did. That’s painful. But I’m keeping my knitting books, so there! Sewing books will get donated. I really don’t think I’ll be getting a lot of sewing done in the future, since I keep having to work on new startups and nonprofits. And yes, I’m the one who volunteered to do this stuff.
My friend Gail wants me to re-enact this pitiful fundraising attempt from 1997 or so.
I’m really glad I looked in all the stuff before throwing it out, because I found numerous academic degrees, awards, and important documents. I even found the hospital bracelet my mom wore when I was born, in among the magazines. Whew. I’d hate to lose those diplomas and the all-important Phi Beta Kappa membership. I really should have put this stuff somewhere more secure.
This time of year, it’s usually looking pretty bleak out here in central Texas. By now, the grass is usually very brown and crunchy, and there are good-sized cracks in the soil. But this year it’s rained a lot more than usual, so how’s it doing?
Checking out the territory. Some green, some not.
It hasn’t rained in a couple of weeks, and that’s about all it takes to turn things back to their typical summer state. Sure enough, the grass is crunchy and the cracks are out. But the tanks (ponds) have lots more water in them than usual and the creek has plenty of water in it.
The Vrazels have made another bunch of hay out of our front pasture, which is also unusual. They are out there baling it right now, making round bales. The dogs enjoyed having a couple of days to look for vermin in the piles of grass as it was drying out. Both Vlassic and Penney like to pounce.
If you’ve been wondering how little Penney has been doing today, don’t worry, of course I have pictures! She’s been making herself at home and assimilating into the pack pretty darned well.
She slept mostly on Lee last night, but today she’s much more independent and not on top of one of us every moment. She’s had lots of firsts, like getting in and out of the dog door without any help, instigating play herself, and having her first grr-fest with Harvey and a scrap with Vlassic over laps. We knew THAT would come. I think they’ll work it all out.
Lee and I have stayed home most of the day today, other than when I taught my sister how to make her car talk to her phone. We will try leaving them alone maybe for a short time tomorrow.
It’s been hard on us since Brody died. Lee and I finally decided to look into a female dog, thinking we could use some balance. I talked to a couple of people about potential new dog friends. One sweet girl lives in Mexico and looks like a bigger Vlassic. One is a large and beautiful puppy. I don’t think we can do another puppy for a while.
Look at my pug wrinkles and loose skin! And this nice man.
I kept going back to a dog called Izzy I’d been following at the Cameron pound. She isn’t spectacular to look at, just a plain reddish dog. So, no one has adopted her. Apparently her mom is a pug/dachshund mix, but the dad is an unknown Cameron roaming stud. She gets pug wrinkles when she’s concerned.
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The Hermits' Rest 