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!
It’s the spouse’s birthday. That’s why we took a trip! What fun that half the day was taken up doing business! Yes! Woo!
Me taking a break and wishing I was on the beach.
Um. It wasn’t horrible and we came out with some future travel fun. I want to go places before I die. Lee will put up with it, or send me off with Anita.
Whew, he’s as old as me again, and can still hold up a tree.
Birds!
We escaped the towering beach resort at last and made it to a state park. There, I had more Nature Girl fun that humans should be allowed to have. And even Lee enjoyed the walking around my favorite thing on earth, a marsh.
It’s a marsh.
The Huntington Beach State Park is beautiful. We didn’t look at all of it, but focused on the wilder parts. The trails we walked on were spectacular, with huge old pines and oaks and much evidence of fairly recent flooding.
What a huge oak tree!
We saw SO many birds. As soon as we got out of the car, I saw cheeky chickadees, and when we got on the boardwalk, there was a family of Eastern bluebirds. They have lots of nest boxes on the island, and they seem to be working!
Blue birds!
I took lots and lots of photos on our walk, and I got more and more excited with each new bird I saw. The causeway was a real hotbed of shore birds, and I had SO much fun with other birders looking at a group of birds hanging around together, with anhingas, ospreys, and bald eagles flying over head. Wow!
Of course, I took lots of pictures of plants. This is a wild blackberry or a dewberry or some bramble.
Enjoy these photos, which are enough to make any naturalist swoon, far as I’m concerned.
Pelican and herons
Snowy egret
Great white heron in breeding plumage
Brown peilican
Bird drama
Anhinga
Carolina osprey
Blue heron all excited
Bald eagle. I was lucky to get this shot out of the car window
Tiny crabs
The pond had many ducks in it
Such beautiful water
A tree tunnel
Little mussels or something
Me and grass
Me and trees
Lee being a tree
Beautiful grass
After all that, we had a beautiful birthday dinner at the Sea Captain’s House, a restaurant that has been here 58 years. I had she-crab soup and then oysters (of course) for my main course. Then we shared a wonderful birthday dessert.
The picture is dark so you can see the ocean out the window. Nice.
Was it a good day? Oh yes, it was. That blue bird of happiness followed us all day!
We have courage for the UU Lent word today. I think we’re all more courageous than we know. Life is challenging. Sometimes we wonder if it’s the most challenging time to be alive, like ever, but no, I think it’s always been hard to be human. It’s always taken courage to face each day.
It takes courage to stand on the balcony on the 26th floor if you aren’t good with heights.
Before we had to deal with evil viruses, our current political leadership, bad drivers, and mean people, humans still needed courage. I would have been scared to death to get pregnant before the late twentieth century. Well, I’d have died after the first try, so there’s a time when maybe I should not have been courageous (mis-shapen tail bone). People were always at war with the folks next door, and if you got sick, you just hoped you were strong enough to survive. And then there were wolves, bears, mammoths, and poisonous fruit,
To be honest, it takes courage for Lee to try a new beer. He likes familiarity.
Any of us who get up, greet the sun, and go do the needful, as they say in India, is courageous in my book. And you get rewards for your courage. You learn and grow, you find people to love, you create and contribute to society. Courage wins.
Sorry. I will never have the courage to get on this thing. I draw the line there.
It often happens that when I have the courage to do something that intimidates me, the reward is big. If I fail, I learn a lot, making it not so bad. And if I succeed, I get to add skills and have fun.
But, I think we all have things we haven’t worked up the courage to do. For me, it’s rides where I can’t see what’s holding me up, like roller coasters and Ferris wheels. Oh, and I am not going skydiving. It’s okay. I’ll be fine without these things.
Here is one of the first times I worked with Apache. He’s big and scary. That took courage.
Take riding Apache. It’s scary to sit on another living being and hope it doesn’t kill you. It took courage to get on, to walk around, to trot, and to get back on after falling off. But, it’s the most fun I have. I’m glad I pushed myself. I’ll be honest, I don’t like falling when I can’t see where I’m going, so every single time I dismount takes courage. We each have our “things.”
Courage to do hard things makes me shine. Here, I’m on a long car trip.
Starting our real estate business took courage, and some might say we failed at it. At least it wasn’t a glorious success. But we sure learned a lot, and it’s helped us be more confident with the Hearts Homes and Hands business. I’m glad we are willing to get out there and provide services people need. If we just sat around and lived on our passive income, it wouldn’t be just us who suffer.
Courage is everywhere. So is strength. We just have to remember.
I have friends facing life-threatening illnesses with courage. Their reward is to enjoy life as long as they have it and to learn how much love there is in the world. They also teach the rest of us to not fear the inevitable. I hope to face my health challenges with such grace.
Sending you all love as I have the courage to go listen to a condominium sales pitch and “just say no.”
This vacation to Myrtle Beach is for Lee to get some rest and relaxation, so I am trying to not impose my agenda on him. Today he wanted to scan in receipts and balance his budget, so okay, that’s what he did. I’m not great at just doing my regular job in a different spot (though I uploaded a post for another blog, dealt with a couple of issues for the Austin job, and such).
I just feel like if I’m in a new place, I should go check it out, so I spent much of the day looking around the resort area where we’re staying. This morning I walked a long way up the beach, and was actually glad for all the brightly colored hotels, condos, and resorts on the beach, because everything else was solid gray. The surf, sand, and sky all matched.
Gray sand, gray birds, grayish water, gray skies.
I did get to enjoy something you don’t get to see every day, though. They were tearing down a condo building that I guess isn’t big and tall enough or something. The wrecking ball had to be careful not to damage the building a few yards away from it. Half the building was rubble and half looked like people still lived there. Weird.
Future former building.
The nature watching was limited. I saw laughing gulls, pigeons, and dead jellyfish. The shells here are all broken (it’s the Atlantic, after all) but a lot of them obviously were big ole clams!
Poor jellyfish.
Lee came out of the building and walked with me to the next pier, where we had a very good lunch at the Pier 14 restaurant. Even veggies of the day were good (most places they are not even completely defrosted and have no seasoning, but these were hot and tasty). I had some good scallops. I’m managing to keep eating healthy!
The boardwalk is nice. I assume it’s much more crowded next month.
Most of Myrtle Beach reminds me of Ft. Lauderdale (a place of which I have never been fond). Not a lot of natural beauty, at least anywhere near the water. I think this place is designed for a different kind of tourist than me. If I wanted to drink, hear live music, buy cheap souvenirs, play golf (mini or otherwise), or ride Ferris wheels, though, this would be nirvana.
This is the most nature I found. The blue thing is where I had lunch.
But, I enjoyed sitting and watching the waves this afternoon, while chatting with a lady from Tennessee, and have gotten a lot of good knitting and reading in. Plus a nap. Yes, a nap! And Lee did go for a walk with me around 5 pm.
Mmm, shops and more shops.
So, I succeeded pretty well in doing nothing and avoiding large crowds. Tomorrow, though, I have been promised a trip to a park. They tend to not be hotbeds of disease.
Boom! I hit water yesterday, a long way from Texas. How convenient that the UU Lent word for today is water! Lee and I are both water signs, Pisces, and this year for our birthdays we got each other a trip to the ocean, carefully planned to be before the onslaught of spring breaks and such.
Kendall and Jan in the neighbor’s forsythia bushes.
We had a nice visit with my cousins (Jan and daughter, Kendall) and my stepmother (Florence). Jan’s the cousin on my dad’s side who’s kept in touch with me the most. I think I’m too “out there” for most of the rest of them. She made us a nice breakfast and then she and Kendall and I took an excellent walk around her neighborhood, which was blooming with daffodils, but no redbuds yet. We even got to pet some horses!
You can’t quite tell, but the paint is sticking her tongue out.
After that, we had a short but good visit with Florence, who’s doing well for 84. She had forgotten we were coming, or had the wrong day, so we didn’t interfere with her day for too long. She’s so cute in small doses, and was so happy to show us her latest paintings. She kept telling me to approach them straight, or they won’t come out right (once a professional photographer, always a professional photographer.
The bluebonnet painting
Where Is That Water?
Here’s the waterfall at the rest stop.
We got to see some new scenery on the way to Myrtle Beach from High Point, which was fun. Lots of small towns and pine trees. Yesterday I shared a picture of the rest stop with a living roof. That was so interesting. The view was amazing, too, and it had water!
We had an interesting time finding the place we are staying, because the GPS routed us to 1600 Ocean Blvd in NORTH Myrtle Beach, whereas our actual place was in regular Myrtle Beach. The check-in lady says that if we had been coming from the south, there would have been a third wrong way we could have been sent in the next town south. Great choice in naming roads. This place is trying to get their location fixed on mapping software, but it ain’t easy.
Water makes me happy.
But we are here now, way up almost on the top of a big resort building, with a nice partial beach view. That’s okay, because the land view has a ferris wheel and other interesting things to look at.
Night view of Myrtle Beach. It’s pretty, but I’d prefer a less urban vacation spot. I think the next one will be like that.
Lee and I took a nice walk on the beach, enjoyed a tropical cocktail and mostly just chilled last night. We are having a very nice time, and it’s so nice to not have to rush around for a few days. This is a perfect birthday present for hermits.
And, don’t worry, we will not be attending large gatherings of any sort. I think we are going to go to State Parks, mostly, though I do want to do a small amount of shopping. Small, really.
As for Water
Water means a lot to me, as a symbol as well as bringing life to us all. The way water moves has always fascinated me, which may be why I love that arroyo on the ranch so much. I am amazed that the spring springs and sends water down that little stream. And there is nothing more beautiful than an area after an ice storm, all sparkly and dangerous at the same time. And water brings us clouds!
Look! Clouds and water!
I spent more than a usual person’s time looking at maps of river systems, and love knowing where the water on my property goes on its way to the ocean. What a journey!
Here’s the Instagram of the day, in case you were curious.
The one thing I asked Lee for in the quest for our permanent “retirement” home (yes, I realize we have failed at retiring) was some kind of water. I was so happy to have the cattle tanks, utilitarian as they are, and frontage on Walker’s Creek, even though Ralph said it was the worst land on the ranch, because it floods. Well, I hadn’t planned to build a subdivision there, and keeping it natural is just fine with me.
I had to put the photo up in a larger format, so sorry for the duplication. Here is water in all its forms. There are some icy clouds way up there by the moon. Photo by Lee.
Water ties us all together, too. The water in us has been in many other people, in many other places. When they say we are all one, they aren’t kidding.
Nope. At least very rarely. I’m not coordinated and I’m also sort of embarrassed about it. So the UU Lent word for today sent me off in a different direction.
My step mom’s painting is like color dancing.
I love watching dances that come up around me. Flowers blowing in the wind. Vultures circling. Starling murmurations. Wind in trees. Clouds racing across the sky that’s my fancy dancing.
Today’s Instagram
I’m not sure why I prefer watching dancing to doing it. I did fail miserably at ballet. And when I got older, I sang rather than dancing. Now that I’m older, maybe I’ll be less inhibited.
Clouds dancing across the highway.
But wait! Just for this blog, I ran on top of the I73 Rest Stop living roof and danced!
Dancing on the roof.
I’ll blog more later. I’m enjoying scenery I’ve never seen before North and South Carolina.
Whew! I have a hint for you: don’t travel east the day the time springs forward, especially with someone who’s a slow starter in the morning. Today has been long, and we’re still 2 hours from our destination for the night. Vacations are fun!
We took the northern route, via I40. It’s mostly under construction. Lots of stopping next to big trucks. I’m very glad I’m a patient traveler.
Plums. Or pears.
I’ve enjoyed the scenery a lot. Much of yesterday I looked at so many beautiful wild plums. Or pears? I didn’t get close enough. Maybe it was both. They bloom such a short period of time, I felt lucky.
More plums. Or pears.
At the Arkansas welcome station I got to see pretty pansies, too.
Pansies just make me happy.
The best scenery, though, were dogs up for adoption we saw when we stopped for lunch. I got lots of great ideas for MTOL there. They had a storefront donated to them so adoption days are good in all weather. And they have their own van.
Pet adoption. Puppies!
Today all the trees were pink or red. I think it’s red maples. They are subtle but beautiful in the sun.
Hard to see but that’s them.
The worst part of today was driving through the area east of Nashville, Tennessee. The tornado damage from last week’s huge storms went on for miles. I’ve seen a lot, and this is the most damage I’ve ever seen from one system. I couldn’t bear to take pictures; I felt so sad for the people there.
Violet and teeny field pansies
The Tennessee welcome station had a river, violets, and tiny field pansies. I love both of those!
Rest stop view. Nice.
Then came all the slowdowns. At least the last one was in the middle of the mountains, and I could roll down the windows and listen to the river rapids.
Roadside rapids.
It just goes to show you that even traffic jams can be interesting. It’s all in your attitude!
Oh goodness. Today is Sunday, so the UU Lent word is extra UU: inclusion. This is, I suppose, to incite us privileged cisgender white womyn to give a pious lecture about including our rainbow of friends in all aspects of society. Politics! The Board room! Your church! Your neighborhood!
Sunrise over parking lot. All are included in this view.
Okay. So, go do that.
Inclusion starts in your own circle, though. It’s been a tough issue for me. I’ve felt left out a lot, especially as a somewhat weird adult. I can see all the lunches, parties, outings, etc. to which I’m not invited but thought I’d fit in with. Still hurts. Childhood stuff.
Pretty pink tree.
I do get included in things, especially in Cameron. That pleases me. And I do not expect everyone to like me. I’m over the people pleasing thing, except those leftover pangs. More growth opportunities.
Include me! (Adoptable dog we met in Arkansas)
This is the best I can do on one cup of coffee and without getting political. I guess I’ll just suggest you invite an outlier in your circle to join you and your friends, at least occasionally. You might make a new friend?
Onward to North Carolina, soon as I can move the spouse.
First, yay, we made it to scenic Jackson, Tennessee, which means we should be able to eat dinner with my stepmom tomorrow, even though we lose TWO hours thanks to Daylight Savings Time.
But, on to a brief rant. I’m sure you’ve experienced the extra creepy feeling you get when something you were just talking about appears in your Facebook or other ads.
I find it less than helpful. Why do I keep getting ads for stuff I just bought? Like I need another one?
Example. Last night my sister gave me a throw with a pattern of birds on it. She said, “It has birds,” and I looked at the picture on the label, then agreed it did have birds on it. It’s a nice blanket.
Less than an hour later, this appeared in my Facebook feed:
Geez!!! Ack!! Eww!!
It’s the matching comforter set. I did NOT describe the throw or say what it was called or take its picture. I understand Siri listening in to everything I say or browse to, but no one said what the dang throw looked like or its brand. Just birds. There are many throws with birds on them.
I believe Facebook has out-creepied itself. I may become a conspiracy theorist and claim it’s in my retina or something. Then today, when we stopped for lunch:
I already ordered soup! Go away!
It was taunting me.
Now friends, I don’t need advice on why I should leave social media or turn off settings x, y, and z. If someone, something, or some corporate entity wanted to gather intel on me, they already have it. I’m just not that fascinating. So spy away. I’m sticking with social media omnipresence.
I just wish they’d suggest more things I want or new places to eat, rather than things I’m familiar with.
Today’s word for UU Lent is play. Great choice, since Lee and I are taking a birthday present road trip to visit a new place and see some relatives. It’s my gift to him. We hope to get Lee relaxed and me out looking at water. Fun.
As you can see, he’s thrilled.
I’ve always tried to incorporate play into my life. Some of the goofy stuff I do, like weird hair colors and holiday-themed nails are play for me and a way to encourage others to bring some fun into their lives.
Tina really enjoyed making these St Patrick’s Day nails.
My two main sources of fun at this point in my life are the Master Naturalist activities and my animals. I learn so much in our MN meetings and classes, and I have fun sharing it with others.
Boy did I learn a lot about plant ID a couple weeks ago.
The dogs and chickens make me play. They can’t help it. But true play is when I’m with Apache and Fiona. They both love to play, and I love going along with them. They just like to hang out together. Like yes, when Trixie the farrier came, we spent most of the time cuddling and nuzzling.
My guys.
Apache loves when Trixie comes and he gets to get in those weird positions and then feels better. I think he thinks they’re playing.
Today’s Instagram post shows a horse playing!
Riding just exhilarates me. It’s the best playtime ever.
One More Way to Play
I must admit that some aspects of our work renovating properties is like play. I do have fun picking out colors, fixtures and such. And Chris and I tend to play pretty often. Yesterday, we decided to check out the well behind the Pope Residence.
Look! Water!
It has water in it. We are now working on ideas for what we can do with that. We both admitted we had wanted to look in there for a long time.
I’ll have a Pope update soon. Until then, here’s a hint of what we hope will be the next project.
The word of the day in UU Lent is imagination. Great, I thought, I already wrote a lot about this in my post about mind blindedness. I’m going to repeat a section from that post at the end of this one, because it explains a lot about my childhood and development.
Day-dreaming of beautiful and peaceful places…a fantastic use of imagination, right? Photo by @jesslowcher via Twenty20
My imagination has been my constant companion, sanity saver, and comfort zone my whole life. It’s almost as if I’ve lived in two worlds, the one I physically walk around in and the one in my imagination and dreams. Guess which one I prefer (even the weirdest of my weird dreams are at least fascinating!)?
Cautions – Too Much Imagination Can Be Damaging to Your Health
While using one’s imagination for temporary escapes from either too much stress or too little going on can be a good thing, I’ve sure seen a lot of times where too much imagination (or maybe it’s more like conjecture) can have some unpleasant consequences.
Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get me.
I used to have someone very close to me who had an issue with paranoia. He would experience something, and then use his vivid imagination to come up with consequences, motivations of others, and their effect on him. I can remember a two-hour conversation about how a higher-up didn’t say hello to him, which meant his entire career was in jeopardy, she had something against him…blah blah. I just kept repeating, “Maybe she was just thinking about her own shit.” I wasted many hours and much energy on this.
I didn’t hear from this guy for 20 years, so when Facebook showed up, we re-connected. He immediately launched into how his current employers were out to get him. I did not engage.
Or course, I’ve dealt with this kind of thing myself from time to time. Mostly it’s when someone suddenly drops out of my life, which happens to me periodically. I’ve spent way to much of my energy imagining possible things I said or did to offend people, or things that might have been going on with them that could have led to it.
Has any of that helped the situation even one little bit? Well, maybe, if I would have stuck to the imaginary scenarios where I’m a totally innocent victim of some huge misunderstanding and I’m better off without the person I formerly cared deeply about. But, no, I’ve spent way too much of my energy and time imagining less pro-Suna scenarios.
Two moms and three young women. In good news, Pouri and Ellie still speak to me. I wish all of them a good life, though!
What’s helped is that I’ve been training myself to live with ambiguity. I’d rather have that than to find out the paranoid truth. I think I’d rather have not known why Edie and Leigh (two young women who lived with our family when they were having problems) both suddenly went off on me and told me everything I did was for selfish reasons, they’d never loved me, and they’d hated being in my family temporarily. Like my old friend, they were twisted in knots with things they came up with in their heads, and it made me sad. But in both cases, I just listened, knowing my actual motivations and that I loved them anyway. They weren’t interested in my perspective; they must have needed to make a break for their own reasons. I just moved on.
I hate dredging it all up, but I wanted to share how painful over-imagining things can be to others. I don’t want to do it.
So now, I’m okay not knowing what other people’s imaginations have interpreted my actions and motives to be. Everyone has their own perspective, and if anyone wants to talk to me about it, I’ll listen, but I won’t endure abuse. I’ll move on. And I am consciously refraining from imagining why others might be thinking or doing what they do. It’s not helpful to me, and I end up much more mentally healthy and with lots more time for all the things I enjoy.
Instagram of the day,
From now going forward, I’m using my imagination to design dream homes, take mental trips to interesting places, conjure up a nation and world where differences are celebrated, and remember my departed loved ones.
Imagine all the people living life in peace.
John Lennon
My Imagination and Me, from February 11
In case you were wondering about me, I’m one of the 2% on the extremely vivid mental imagery side. I’ve always been that way, so I never knew any different. My mom said as a toddler, I was always wandering around talking to a tree. When she asked why, I said I was talking to Jose, who lived up there. Where this little Anglo girl got that name is beyond me. So, either I was seeing fairies, or I had a vivid imagination. It’s all the same to me.
Don’t shut the car door on meeeee!
I had an imaginary gang of cartoon characters that went with me everywhere, too. My parents loved to tell the story of the time Mom shut the car door on Theodore of the singing chipmunks. I apparently didn’t take it well. I was also a Highly Sensitive Person, ha ha.
My whole life I played stories in my head. It helped pass the time, since I was not the most popular child, and certainly not the most popular during the early teen years! I had an entire life I lived during the time between going to bed and actually falling asleep. In this soap opera, I was strong, smart, and always said the right thing. What a nice world. I also had very cute boyfriends, especially the one from the comic books who was the smartest guy in the universe, and also green.
Teen superheroes make for a fun imaginary life. Hey, don’t judge. All my human heart-throbs died.
This internal life was very vivid and had touch and smell, as well as visual aspects. I now fall asleep without my “dreams,” for the most part. I think it lessened so dramatically when I started anti-anxiety medication. I will gladly exchange that loss for my mental clarity and ability to handle things more calmly.
I still can enjoy a little mental vacation by imagining things, like what’s going on in the towns I drive through, or what animals and plants may be perceiving. I find that fun. No wonder I’m not bored easily (if ever).
Currently imagining what I will do with this future stairwell and landing when it’s done.
Is your imagination your friend or your enemy? Are you imaginative? Where do you go in your imagination?
The Hermits' Rest 