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!
In addition to successfully working all day from the condo, I got a little note from my buds at WordPress. I feel as high as these here mountains.
Crop out a lot of road work, and you can see beauty here!
I know I feel compelled to blog every day, but it sure has added up. It really helps me think things through, and I prefer writing to talking (so I won’t be joining the great Franklin Habit and vlogging).
I also feel compelled to take pictures and share them. Someone even said they like that!
Thanks for all your input and thoughtfulness in your responses. I’m looking forward to another THOUSAND posts. Or maybe I’ll find a way to earn money by writing.
Dang…
Um, Hey
Wait a minute. I DO earn money by writing. I guess I go to so many meetings that I forget I’m a technical writer/editor. So, if I want to blog as a hobby, I can. I give myself permission! But, I may knit some more. Maybe. Yarn is coming.
Oh yes, I am enjoying being all by myself up here in some mountains that are hard to see because of all the resorts and construction. But it’s wonderfully quiet in my condo, and I have the windows open for fresh mountain air! Since they knew I’d be here for three weeks they put me at the back of the resort, with no next-door neighbors and as far as humanly possible from building noise, other than the occasional backup beeper (supplies are kept next to the building). But, it isn’t bad, at all.
Some funny things have occurred to me, though, so for those of you who, like me until yesterday, have never traveled anywhere this high up, I have a few hints, mostly to do with opening things.
First: all the containers of creams and liquids that you bring with you will remain on lower pressurization. I found this out in my ride from the airport, when my hand sanitizer ejaculated all over me. I had some very antiseptic pants!
Things that splatted all over the place since I got here.
It didn’t stop there. I went to put on hand cream, but did I use the one here at the condo? No, I used the one I brought from Austin. SPLAT.
At least my toothpaste was fine. But, then I went to apply my makeup this morning. The moisturizer is sort of thick, so I was able to control its oozing. But, then my foundation. The expensive foundation. I think I lost a month’s worth of that stuff. It would not stop, so I crammed the lid back on, and don’t look forward to tomorrow. And yes, I wear makeup. Gotta look good on Zoom, you know.
But the good stuff!
I’m being careful and not over-exercising, so I won’t get altitude sickness. ANd I’m taking in a lot of liquids, like the instructions say. Those are my other pieces of advice.
But I did take a little walk around the area. I had been concerned that I hadn’t seen any wildlife at all since I got here, but the walk helped a lot with that. I only saw two birds, but they were both very friendly, so I got reasonable photos of a magpie and a mountain chickadee.
A magpie on a solar panel and a chickadee in an evergreen.
And when I found the ski lift entrance, I got to see what was left of some nice wildflowers, and poop that is either from deer or elk. Good. I didn’t take a picture, but it looked like big deer poop.
Thistles, a ski life, and a little snow.
I didn’t get too tired, but my exercise app is going to be happy. With all the hills, I’m getting lots of “stairs” and heartrate-boosting effort.
Salt Lake City has a new airport. How do I know? I’m in Utah, holed up in a condo, watching football in a very comfy chair while a fire blazes.
I decorated the mantel with all the books I brought. (Not hearth like I said in the first draft)
What on Earth? Are You All Right, Suna?
Honestly? I’m worried about next week. Election anxiety. I’m afraid of upset Texans and all their firearms. I’m afraid I’ll say or do something I shouldn’t. I’m also really burned out by some things going on that aren’t bloggable. Just take my word for it. So I fled to a resort area in another state.
Our unit has the stripes. Heheh. I said “unit.”
I need to do some big-time meditation and centering. This will let me do that with peace and quiet. I think it will help. There is also nature here, so I can walk once I get used to the altitude.
I’m just using my condo points for this year, so it’s not costing more money than I’ve already paid, other than plane fare. And this place is a bargain, since there’s construction all around and not ski season yet. Still, I can see ski lifts from my balcony! Maybe it will snow next week.
Ski lift is on that hill. I swear.
Am I taking all this time off work? Heck no. I can Zoom from here! If our Agile coach could work from Hawaii last week, I can work in Park City. I don’t even have to go out. I got food delivered!
You don’t need to tell me travel isn’t real safe right now. I know. But if I get sick, at least I’ll be sick where I feel safe and won’t make my family sick. And it’s not like anyone desperately needs me. I’m good, right here. I feel selfish, but I’ve never done this before. I guess I’m still trying to burst out of my shell. I hope to emerge better able to do good in the world.
Tons of construction.
Oh yeah, Anita will join me later. And there is space for Lee et al., if they want to break in that new vehicle with a road trip. Meanwhile, I’ll work, read, and find the trail.
Yep. Not fond of them. First of all, most are definitely NOT sporty. They are more like harder to drive and less convenient mini-vans, to me. I have always had trouble getting in and out of them.
Most of all, I can’t park the behemoth ones. That’s why I’m so glad Lee just bought one size down from the true behemoth, a Tahoe. I even encouraged him. What the heck?
Basically, I like the grill.
Well, his knees are aging, and it’s hard to watch him getting in and out of cars I like. Plus, we need to drive clients around, and this new behemoth lite is really spacious inside. I can get into the back and seat quite comfortably (being short helps).
Black. So practical in Texas.
Lee figures it’s his last new car (I would never say that, knowing my love of cars). I doubt I’ll drive it much, but it will tow a horse trailer, so that’s a motivation. His truck brought a trade-in better than most, and there are two others at the house. I think we will be okay.
So, while I said I’d never own one, I lied. Actually, Lee had a Range Rover for a while, but that was more of a luxury barge than an SUV.
He’s smiling.
I do feel excessive, acquisitive, and not real eco-friendly right now. Next I’ll get an electric truck or something.
When I got home from Austin, I found 9 eggs. They were all in one spot and all plain brown. The place where Fancy Pants lays was empty, and there were no pink or white eggs. Hmm.
Lee says he sees hens in weird places. Sure enough, I found two pink eggs in the far left corner of the garage.
Eggs were in there. Nice.
We looked in the rest of the garage, and there was Bertie Lee, sitting on a mop, in the far right corner of the garage.
Oh, Bertie.
I picked that egg up.
She makes big ones.
I still don’t see any Fancy Pants or Hedley eggs. Where can they be? Meanwhile, I found Sapphire on the mop. This is gonna be fun.
I give you nice egg boxes, but you lay eggs here??
Him reports that the brown hens are refusing to go in at night. They are in the white henhouse. Not good. It isn’t safe. I guess some chicken effort is needed! Hoping the family can help out!
Yep. My Cameron office got broken into. Don’t panic, though. Lee and I did it. You see, yesterday I left work a little early to go on a special errand. When we got back, I went to go back and do a couple of things, but my door wouldn’t open.
The door looked fine.
Uh. The door would not open. I typed in the code. Green lights told me it was unlocked. I wiggled the handle and nothing happened. Um. My laptop was in there. And a burning candle. (Oops)
We tried to call the relatives, but there was no answer. Lee went and got a screwdriver. We banged on the door. The dang doorknob did nothing. So, we looked at the windows. The interior one is painted shut. The outside one would not budge.
The beautiful wood-covered window.
That left the window that was covered in wood, that is supposed to be replaced by glass…someday. Lee poked around and managed to get the wood loose (it wasn’t in there tight, since it was planned to be replaced).
Casualties
There was no way to remove the piece of wood without hitting stuff on the other side. You know, because my office is full of “shit” and all that. But only two candlesticks smashed! Not bad at all!
We can see in!
While the wood was there so my Zoom meetings wouldn’t disturb the people in the other offices, it’s no problem for the time being. I won’t be in the office for a while. We will have to leave the door open until the door handle is replaced, but the computer is out now! Nothing else is valuable, just shiny, like a magpie lives there. I am much like a magpie, after all.
Kudos to Lee for letting me in! The door works fine from the inside, not that it helps at all!
I’ve had so much go wrong lately that this didn’t phase me one bit. It just fit with the rest of the week. Hoping we can fix it soon! And I hereby declare that a new week starts today and nothing but fun is permitted. I even got happy nails yesterday!
Nails ready for fun. Thanks, Tina!
Have a good Samhain, Halloween, día de los muertos, or whatever you celebrate this weekend.
Like I said yesterday, I crashed hard and pretty much wasn’t good for anything yesterday afternoon. That became patently obvious as the day dragged on. Mistakes were made. Errors occurred. At least I managed to leave work, put the right kind of gas in my car, find my hair salon and get my hair cut safely (I like how much care they take there).
In good stuff, I got a nice postcard from a random person in Illinois asking me to vote. I am impressed by how many people have done volunteer work this year that’s not totally annoying.
But I’m not firing on all cylinders still, thanks to a combination of really intense work, coronavirus rates going back up, and US politics worries. Heh, I typed that and my stomach did a pang. My stress goes there.
What I Did
There was a board meeting for Master Naturalists last night, which I set up, myself. I’d made the agenda and sent it out. When I made it, I saw that there were instructions up there to do the meeting as a phone call. “Ah,” I thought, “I don’t have to do another Zoom meeting.” Later in the day I told someone how it would be easy to find the meeting, just dial the phone.
The meeting started, and half the board wasn’t there. Hmm. Then a half hour later, we got lots of requests for why the Zoom meeting hadn’t started. Well, it’s a PHONE meeting, said those of us who read the agenda.
Yep. It happens. Image from @clairegran via Twenty20.
The joke was on ME. I had actually set up a Zoom meeting at 6:30 AND a phone call at 6. I was so zonked when I set up the agenda, I couldn’t remember what I did when I set up the meeting. I’d left a whole bunch of people stranded. Perhaps my term as President will be a single term – I hear it’s popular.
UGH. We got everyone on the phone eventually, and I got to apologize many, many times, as each person felt compelled to inform us that they were waiting and waiting, and were SURE they’d done the right thing. They had. Everyone had done the right thing, depending on which set of my instructions they followed. While the agenda had phone instructions, they weren’t in bold or screaming to ignore the previous instructions, because I’d forgotten.
In the end everyone laughed. Or at least most people laughed. There are a lot of very serious Master Naturalists, and that is fine. I just know I look like a real doofus to them. But, hey, I’ve learned a lesson, which is what I am told I should do after messing up.
It Continues
Well, I DID need to update the watch OS. In Cameron I never have the Wi-Fi to do it.
Sigh. It turns out I actually declined my boss’s meeting request for today. That could explain why it wasn’t on my calendar. I kept wondering where that meeting went. I’m great at clicking the wrong thing on the phone!
Plus, I had this goal of getting back to Cameron at 10 so I could work from there the rest of the day. Nope, my watch insists on updating right this minute. It gave me time to blog, I guess.
Thank you all for reading this. Acknowledge your own humanity today by admitting that you screwed up, apologizing, and moving on. If you haven’t screwed up, don’t worry; you will. Stories of COVID-brain inspired mess-ups are welcome.
All week I’ve felt like a tumbling tumbleweed, going from meeting to meeting, issue to issue, emotion to emotion. That’s made this week feel two weeks long.
No longer tumbling. That’s good, because I was getting vertigo.
Today I finished another Program Initiative Planning week at work (lots of meetings, lots and lots of them, all intense). I ate my delicious free lunch of stuffed acorn squash and came back to blog for the rest of lunch hour.
It’s obvious this is my desk. There is a LOT of red, orange and pink in there.
Instead, I realized I was just staring into space, listening to the high whistling sound made by the industrial air conditioning system, mesmerized by my keyboard and mouse. I only figured out my keyboard did this light stuff yesterday, at about the same time that I realized my mouse changed colors.
I hope you can see the mouse…
The Chinese are very creative, are they not? But, with no English instructions, I didn’t figure out this stuff until I looked online for how to get the mouse to work. The USB dongle thing was very well hidden. Anyway, this thing SHOULD keep me awake, shouldn’t it?
It’s all black and white, and I’m slumping into a puddle of gray.
But, the point is, I just crashed. I had nothing left. All the color is gone (other than the keyboard, this place where I’m working is nearly all black and white). That’s not good, since there is still work to do, so I hope that writing this will perk me back up! It’s very rare that I crash, since I’m one of those people who always has something to do, plus two or three back-up activities. I predict some more crashing in the near future. My brain is telling me I need to slow down and breathe.
Now, I DO meditate, faithfully. But, that’s more of an “activity” to me, because emptying my brain is doing something, at least to my busy brain. It’s my favorite part of the day, but that peace rarely creeps out into the rest of the day. Hmm, the meditation peace is active in some way. This exhaustion peace is empty in a totally inactive way. Like nothing. Meditating is something.
I need some clarity on this, so I’ll go back and think about it more. Or, I’ll spend another 15 minutes watching the keyboard.
Lately I’ve varied the kinds of things I put on social media. Sometimes I share a thoughtful meme, sometimes I talk about how I’m feeling, sometimes I share a blog post, and other times I do a check-in, where I ask people a question.
Hey, now the hair on my avatar is exactly the right color.
By far the most engaging posts are ones that ask questions. Today, I was feeling a little bummed, so I asked people to share what the highlight of their day had been so far. I was delighted to see that by 6 pm it had close to 80 comments! I heard from so many people, some of whom I hadn’t heard from in a while.
Plus, conversations got started in the comments. I love it when I see my friends “talking to each other” thanks to a conversation starter from me. That may be my favorite aspect of the Facebook, conversations. I learn so much, and I am so often uplifted and encouraged when I read what my friends have to say.
I went to get a picture of random friends, and I was amused to see my most liberal friend right next to my most conservative friend (I’m not saying who’s who, because this selection has multiples of just about every kind of person). And they are both great people. I love that my friends are a mix of ages, locations, points of view, and dispositions.
In marketing, they always tell you to put a call to action on things you post (like, click, comment, please!). I am not all that great at that, though I do add a question to my blog posts when I sincerely want to know something. Marketing is SO not my thing, which is probably why I still only have a thousand followers and don’t get 40 WordPress likes every time I sneeze (I am guessing not being young, cute, and an “influencer” may also have something to do with it). I should be grateful that at least someone reads what a grumpy old Boomer with blue hair types! (I admit that I type mostly for me, anyway…it’s been said that I’m self centered…maybe a narcissist…I do stare in the mirror a lot.)<– humor.
But, seriously, the reason I’m here is to give YOU this little hint. If you want to hear from your friends and family ASK something! It works like crazy, and if you happen to have something you want to promote along with it, feel free (some of us do prefer subtle promotion that is not constant, though, just saying). People like to answer questions, it makes them feel like someone is actually interested in them (and in my case, I am!). This builds community, and it’s free PLUS you can do it from the comfort of wherever you happen to be!
So, what would you like to know? What shall I ask next?
Your friend, Suna
What if you’d rather answer questions than ask them? There are two people I follow on Facebook, who ask great questions nearly every day: Joanna Fontaine Crawford and Jonathan K. Horstmann. One’s a UU minister and one’s a filmmaker/musician (both are parents of attractive children, ranging from babies to young adults). I’ll try to share others as I’m reminded of them. You can “meet” interesting folks by reading other people’s answers, too, and in these times, I’ll take any kind of uplifting human content I can get!
Reaching deep to find something uplifting here. Image by @trac1 via Twenty20.
Let me know if you have any questions you’d like me to ask, either here on the blog, or on Facebook (I don’t ask questions on Instagram). Not connected? Tell me you’re a blog reader, and I’ll be your friend unless you start spamming or attacking others!
If I hadn’t put out decorations in my houses, I wouldn’t remember that Halloween is in a few days. All that fun spookiness and pretending to be scared has fallen by the wayside in my circles. Everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY seems to have real fears right now. It doesn’t matter who you are or what social group you’re a member of, you’re probably scared, or at least really concerned.
People in the US seem to be the most scared, but friends around the world have been expressing their concerns to me or in public forums. The elections coming next Tuesday are alarming people. People are scared of fraud, roaming militias, unseemly riots, government failures, mayhem, the apocalypse, a military coup, bombs…you name it, if it’s bad, people are afraid of it.
According to an article in today’s The USA Today, 70% of US adults are anxious about the upcoming election. That obviously includes people from all parts of the political spectrum! The article describes what people around me have been saying:
The majority of American adults say they feel it. The anxiety, the fear, the dread.
They feel it before bed and when they wake at night, at red lights and in grocery store lines, at desks and dinner tables. Quiet moments are no longer a refuge, but spaces to ruminate, contemplate, to grapple with how risky it is to hope.
Only 52% were anxious in 2016 (I should have been MORE anxious). The thing is, no matter who wins, the other side will be doubtful about the results. I can see that. It doesn’t bode well. And taking deep breaths won’t help in that situation, will it? I have been wondering if there are any ideas I can share with y’all, my real-life friends, and my family (who run the gamut of beliefs and expectations).
For example, let’s not imagine the future this way, okay?
Thank goodness for Alia E. Dastagir, who wrote this helpful article, and thank goodness I found it when I was faliling around searching for ways to cope. I’ll share her ideas for dealing with the next few days, weeks, or months, but feel free to head on over to the original article for details.
Avoid doomscrolling. That means don’t obsess over the news and check outlets repeatedly. You could even take some time off.
Prepare for a period of uncertainty. Ugh, I don’t want to do that! I want things to be DONE. Well, too bad. We need to find ways to remain strong while waiting for things to settle down. And there’s where I’m grasping at straws. Dastagir did NOT tell me how to do that.
Dare to hope. Dastagir points out that many people in the US no longer dare hope. At least there’s a suggestion on this one, which is to focus on finding something you can actually DO. I think all the postcard writing some of my friends did helped in that way.
Avoid black-and-white thinking. That is easy to fall into, especially for some of us. WE’RE DOOMED! I have been doing a fairly good job of avoiding that kind of thing myself. I try to remind myself that we are all fellow humans, and that awful stuff has happened throughout history and at least SOME people make it through it…so, maybe I’m not doing such a great job of avoiding doom and gloom. But, we can all try together, right?
Don’t despair. This may be easier said than done, but we are implored not to despair if our candidate does not win. The psychology professor quoted in the article recommended that we try to avoid people who may be gloating or in ecstasy for the first few days after a contentious election is settled. That is what I did in 2016, though that was easier then than it is now.
This time, I may have to leave town.
This looks nice. Image by @ctayers via Twenty20.
Hey, do any of YOU have any good suggestions for how to deal with what’s going to be a hard time for at least half of us, no matter what the outcome?
The Hermits' Rest 