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!
…of the ceiling and walls in the stairwell. Chris is back at work after a well deserved rest, and he tried out our very light blue color, the final one paint at the Pope house. It’s called Dreamstress. He says, “I don’t know about no dream, but it caused me plenty of stress.”
Still a bit wet, but here’s the ceiling against the terra-cotta walls.
It’s a very subtle color, for sure. In some lights it looks gray, and in some it looks white. It’s just what I wanted. He started with the stairwell, where the ceiling and the former exterior wall got done. I think the color will look even better once the window trim is all installed and painted our creamy white.
Stairway wall blends together now that it’s all one color.
The former exterior wall in my office bathroom is also blue, which helps tone down the tomato red and shiny tile.
Original brick wall and new red wall.
By the way, before he had to go do caregiver duty, Easton almost finished the vinyl floors. It’s looking good!
This view looks almost done!
We have more trim to do, the ceilings in the main office and my office, the cabinets for the break room area, the tin accent walls, the lighting, and just a few more tidbits. Yay!
Contrasted with the original window trim, it looks more blue.
Hey. I’ve got to tell you ALL a big thanks for reading yesterday’s post and providing such positive and healing feedback. I feel much less alone, and am ready to go forth and find awe in the world around me again. Yep, that’s today’s word.
It’s not hard at all for me to find awe. Very often I am stopped in my tracks, just in awe of how the Universe works and the gifts we receive if we just pay attention. That’s why I put my altar in my Instagram post of the day. I’ve carefully put little reminders of things that tie me to the rest of creation, things I admire, and gifts I’ve received from the Universe.
My altar is on a shelf in the bookcase in MY room at the Hermits’ Rest house.
I’ve got art by people I admire depicting the mysteries (look at that big ole Persephone hole at far right), symbols of religious traditions I admire (Ganesha, Buddha, a dark godddess, and a St. Brighid’s cross you can’t see. There are crystals, including my beloved labradorite heart and a flint rock from my previous house. In front is my wand that I made from an ash branch back when I was in a spiritual circle in Urbana, Illinois. Well, you get it, a bunch of symbols that matter to me and reflect what I’m in awe of. The lady in the photo is Deb Frueh. She is someone whose guidance has helped me more than she realizes, and who understands so much more than I do about the things we can’t always see with our eyes.
Same picture, but it shows what I said on the Instagram.
That Tarot Reading
I did promise you a tarot reading. I don’t often do these for myself, but the cards were still sitting there from a reading I did last week, and I actually had a question I could use some guidance on. So, I did this:
Admission: I’m not feeling too great today, and this UU Lent prompt, forgiveness, didn’t help. I shall now indulge in some wallowing in self pity. You know, sometimes you just have to do it for a while, pick yourself up, and get going again. I promise, I’ll get going again. So forgive this post. I just need to say it.
I had absolutely no clue how to parent.
With the pandemic going on, it’s just killing me that forgiveness hasn’t happened in important parts of my life. Mostly, I just want to tell Kynan that if he did anything that led him to disappear from my life, I will forgive it, because I love him. And I so dearly want to be able to ask his forgiveness for anything I did that led him to desert his mother.
I tried really hard to be a good parent. Obviously I wasn’t perfect, because there’s no such thing as a perfect parent. I know I gave them too many presents, because I’m totally clear now that my love language is gifts. Oops. That’s okay, all the kids left most of the things I gave them at home when they moved out <insert smiley face>.
Memories! What a bright little kid he was.
So today, I officially ask forgiveness of my kids, people who I felt maternal toward, and anyone who I may have hurt when they were young and vulnerable.
I also want everyone who’s hurt me that I forgive them. People mess up. People get angry and do things they wouldn’t normally do. Mental illness can color people’s interpretations of others’ motives and actions, and I know that. If I love you, I love you, warts and all. Even if I don’t forget things that happen, I can forgive you and accept you.
I will always care for these three, no matter what happens in our lives.
That was all really hard to write. Today I’m still reeling from some terrible dreams I had about Kynan a couple of nights ago. He was there, which felt great, but he kept reminding me we’re really apart. At one point, he rejected an outreached hand and said, “You know, we never really did like each other.”
No, son. I adored you and thought you were the most amazing creature on earth. I only want happiness, growth, and love for you.
Interestingly, I am wearing that same shirt today.
Equal opportunity baby picture of Declan.
Hey, I know I’m not alone. Estrangements are more common than I once realized, and I am sending virtual hugs out to anyone going through this along with me. I’d just like to know why I’m estranged, but until then, I’ll go on living and hope to heck I get to see my children and all my loved ones again, and that we all make it through this disease.
Forgive someone. Forgive me. Life’s short.
End of self-indulgent wallowing. Supportive comments will be appreciated.
I’m betting the UU Lent creators didn’t realize the meanings some of their words would take on as the Lenten period went on. Acceptance is probably on everyone’s minds right now. As the Tiny Buddha points out, you really don’t have much of a choice but to accept.
You are so right. Tiny Buddha.
It very well could be that a lot of the anxiety and sleepless nights we’re dealing with today is from wanting to make things different, to go back to our old lives, to not feel trapped. But, that ain’t happening. This is what we have!
Perky little Suna, typing away.
Some days it’s easier than others. I realized with a jolt, just yesterday, that all this isolation, mask wearing, hand washing, and dread of learning the latest news felt totally normal, like it’s always been this way. It’s only been a MONTH!
I get upset with myself for feeling bad, knowing I’m lucky to have jobs that keep me earning money, at least for now, and am “essential,” so I can drive to work and back (for excitement, I take the OTHER route!). I’m not alone, either, which is a blessing, even for a hermit. I should be ashamed of myself?
At least I have a giant monitor. And blog readers, according to my stats.
NO! Every single one of us has had their lives changed really suddenly. Sure, some of us are dealing with different types of challenges than others, some are in more danger than others, and some have lost loved ones. But NO ONE’S grief, anxiety, sadness, or worry is better or worse than anyone else’s. I will do my best not to judge myself or others.
Accepting the new normal. The ranch is always here.
Support and kindness are what we need. If you need to vent, I’ll listen. And if I have to whine about how little I slept last night, my horrible dreams about my lost son, or my worries about others, I appreciate you for listening to me!
Keeping each other healthy means keeping our distance. It’s important. But our mental health still relies on our community. Thank you all.
Chris has been working so hard on the Pope House. Kathleen is making him rest.
Looking from the front to the back of the house.
The highlight for us ladies is the paint on the walls that aren’t brick. We were hoping really hard that the color we picked to complement the brick would work.
The upstairs landing.
We like it! It’s a shade lighter than the actual brick we matched it to and reminds me of a terra cotta pot. The contrast with the white trim and a great, and it will echo the warm tones of the flooring.
Looking into Lee’s office. You can see in the honey-colored bathroom.
The flooring is moving right along, too. Easton finished the remaining subfloor in Lee’s office and the vinyl is snaking out to other rooms.
Vinyl progress.
But the best floor (and hardest) is the shiny tile in my office bathroom. The tiles are teeny tiny. Oh my. That’s what I get for ordering online and not noticing the dimensions. Chris is my new hero for figuring out how to install it properly.
Tiny tiny tiny
It will look great once it’s cleaned up. Ooh. Aah.
Eek. Clashing reds. Trim will separate them. And the tiles will clean up.
You know what? We may actually finish this project!
Dudes. The UU Lent word for this first day of a new month is confession. There’s one thing I do enough of already in this blog is confess to my past mistakes, errors, and goof-ups. I don’t share everything, but I hope people can learn from my mistakes and it will be helpful. Confession is good for the blog. Or something like that.
Today I’m going to go the more light-hearted route and do a variation of a meme I’ve been seeing going around on Facebook, where people confess to things they just don’t like, but everybody else seems to love. I think we could all use a break right now, right?
That’s the Master Naturalists’ big Folgers. The other two are what Lee and I drink in the office. I need Folgers bods.
Gourmet coffee. I have tried to be a coffee snob, many, many times. I have owned some darned fancy coffee. But, I really like Folgers. The Black Silk kind is just great. But, any medium roast is fine with me. And I like milk or half and half in it. I fail as an elite in this respect.
Everybody is putting bears in their windows for little kids to look for when they are out on their walks. Well, no child has ever walked by the Hermits’ Rest house, so we figured we’d put something at the Pope house.
The fox says hi, but hey, don’t trespass.
All I had, however, was a dog and a fox. I decided the fox looked most like a bear, so there it is. I hope the kids next door like it. I believe those are the only children who will go by the front of the house, since the ones behind us are too small to go on walks (but do have adorable puppies, which we have safely observed from quite a distance).
Before, the cement stuff while wet.
After, a nice, smooth subfloot.
It’s really looking fine over in renovation land. Easton has single-handedly finished the subfloor on the entire first floor, which means it’s ready for the luxury vinyl flooring to go in. Before he could do the back of the house, they had to fill in a place where there was a flooring gap. The leveling stuff worked great, and dried pretty fast, even as damp as it’s been.
It will be fun figuring out a way to get a little dining set in here. A little one.
The area by the stairs looks like a real house now!
My very red bathroom, with the greenboard going in. The green wall at left will be covered with old tin.
Chris has painted both bathrooms, as well. My tomato red is very tomato-y and the honey color in the other bathroom will look really good, too. The greenboard is going down in the bathrooms, too. That will keep water from seeping through and damaging under the bathrooms.
Looking out of the second bathroom at the wainscoting.
Nicole, who just announced she and Easton will be having a baby boy late this summer, has been patiently adding more coats to the wainscoting. She is very patient. More painting is to come, and we are ready to order glass for the archway and my interior window. Squee, as the young folks say!
Today’s UU Lent word is rain. Let’s see if it’s as unpopular as “reach” was (yesterday was my lowest number of blog visitors in a LONG time). It’s all good, though, that’s the least of my worried! As for rain…
Rainy morning this morning in a strangely empty Round Rock, Texas. Photo by Amy Mathews-Muttwill, whose husband Thomas has a birthday today, so she was going to get donuts.
It’s been raining a lot for the past month or so. Here in the middle of Texas, we hope that happens every spring, so the tanks (ponds) fill up and the creeks flow for a while. The trees get their yearly long drink of water, and everything gets ready for two or three months of no rain come summer.
I spotted all these raindrops yesterday. I like them as much as “old greenbeans” (who is really Elaine) does.
Last year was the wettest year Lee ever recorded in our gauge, until the rain totally stopped for quite a while. We’ve learned to enjoy the intense green and all the wildflowers in March and April, then to have a different kind of enjoyment as it gets all brown and crispy later.
When it rains this much, I’m okay with it stopping. This is Walker’s Creek by the ranch doing its imitation of a river, April 11 2018 (the day I started this blog). Waterfront living at its finest.
I Like Rain
Lee and I used to always say, “I like rain,” to each other, after we said it at the same time early in our courtship. It was a bonding moment. I have one of those personalities that would be fine living in a damp environment, like Seattle or Ireland. Back when I had Irish inlaws, they’d apologize for the rain there, but it was mostly a light drizzle that made all the roses grow and kept the fields green. I loved it.
Rainbow in Northern Ireland. This is the kind of sight I remember from further south. Image by @joemelendez via Twenty20
And when it rains a lot, there’s always a chance of a beautiful rainbow! When the kids were little and we’d drive all over Ireland, we saw some doozies in places like the Dingle Peninsula. Good memories!
When I was a kid in Gainesville, Florida, we’d love it after tropical storms came through. We would have really big puddles and lots of water in the ditches in front of our yards. We’d get pieces of plywood and spend hours skimming in the water. Our parents would repeatedly tell us there were bad things in the water, but hey, a little ringworm was a small price to pay for all that fun.
Nope, none of these ever wandered up the ditches in Gainesville. We had a canal behind our house in south Florida, though, and it featured gators and water moccasins and such.
In high school, I lived in south Florida (Plantation, yeah I know it’s a dumb name for a town). There it also rained a lot. The typical pattern was to be all nice and sunny until later afternoon, when thunderstorms would come through for an hour or two. That always coincided with the time that 70s teen girls wanted to lay out in their bikinis and get their suntans. Probably it was Nature’s way of trying to prevent our future wrinkles and skin cancers. That rain was always warm, and if it wasn’t thundering, we’d often stay in the pool and enjoy the rain there (almost everyone had a pool back then, even the lower-middle class families like us).
A familiar sight from when I was a teen. You’d watch the rain coming down the street. Image by @cr819081 via Twenty20
No wonder I like rain. I have no idea where all those memories came from, but since I typed them, I’ll leave them here. It’s nice to think about good times in the past, anyway. It’s a good distraction.
Penney loves her little pond, which is all full thanks to the rain for the past few weeks.
So, go ahead! Share your memories about rain. Are you like Pickle, Anita’s dog, who truly loathes rain and wetness? Or are you more like Penney, who is grateful rain makes her swimming hole bigger?
I was surprised to see reach as the UU Lent word of the day, but then I realized it’s really appropriate for me, and probably for many of us right now.
Reaching Out
For me “reach out” is most important. It’s no longer optional to reach out to friends and family, but mandatory. With so many people living alone or dealing with challenges (like schooling children…or heck, just feeding and entertaining them), it’s important to be in contact with your peeps.
Don’t do as the cattle do! Isolate!
Goodness knows, I am not a great correspondent (other than blogging), but I’m doing my part. I write a couple of letters every day and make sure to say hi to someone I don’t often talk to, especially those who live alone. Today a friend reached out to ME on the day I was going to reach out to HER, which made me smile.
Gratuitous chicken picture. They are reaching up and grabbing at clover I picked for them.
Some of the things people have been doing for each other have really warmed my heart. People who have surpluses share them (we got some bread products that way just yesterday). Restaurants are selling supplies they don’t need due to not being open to the public. And there’s all that mask sewing going on! Way to go, sewing people!
I hope that when this is all settled down we remember all the kind and good things people have done for each other, and let the memories of people who aren’t considerate, run around in public, and hoard stuff fade away.
Reaching Up
My Instagram of the day featured Spice the paint quarter horse in a quest for delicious hackberry leaves, which she deserved after going for a ride and surviving being barked at by my dogs. It’s nice that Sara and I can still ride, as long as we take some reasonable precautions (we no longer share grooming tools, and only one person at a time can be in the tack room, which I keep forgetting).
Spice stretches out while being groomed after a nice ride.
I did a lot of reaching up (and down) yesterday while painting trim. But, now that much of it has multiple coats of creamy white, it looks great.
Nicole paints away on the trim yesterday.
Today, Chris is really reaching up as he works on painting the wall behind the new stairs. He has most of the priming done and is hopeful that there will be two colorful bathrooms very soon!
Looking down from the front door. Lots of white trim, new subfloor, and a primed wall, ready to be a cheerful color.
Peace within Reach
Other than being a mirror image, this shows me all dazed in a meeting, sharing the sight I get every time I drive down County Road 140 to my house. It’s lots nicer with that field of flowers to enjoy.
Many of my coworkers are doing their meetings on their patios or porches. It’s a great way to get outdoors a bit and enjoy some peace, while still getting stuff done.
I’m stuck in the basement for meetings. But never fear, I took a couple of photos of hos beautiful it is on the road leading to the ranch, so I use it as my Zoom backdrop. A little bit of peace for all!
The view without my head in it, and not mirror image. Not bad, is it? You can see my house around the bend.
I hope you can get out in nature, reach up and touch something not made by humans, and find a little inner peace. Let me know how you’re doing!
