Sue Ann (Suna) Kendall

One Thing I Would Like to Change

What is one thing you would change about yourself?

If you’ve read more than a few posts on this here blog you know that this crone has a long list of things she’d like to change about herself, and that she at least says she’s working on them.

Today’s birds are white-crowned sparrows in a tree. They sang and sang.

So, what’s one thing I’d like to change about myself? Today I nominate my persistent and unwavering drive toward conflict and avoidance. I’d love to stop apologizing all the time and learn to take up for myself, whether it pisses people off and makes them dislike me or not.

The end.

Day or Night, It’s All Right

Are you more of a night or morning person?

Let’s answer this prompt. It’s harmless. I used to prefer nights, back when I did a lot of music stuff and going out with friends. I think I liked the activities, like choir practice and rehearsals more than the fact that it was night.

This is here just because I thought it was pretty.

Now that I mostly stay home, I’ve come to enjoy my morning routine out in the fields and woods. It’s grounding and gets my mind ready to get stuff done. I do enjoy having morning rituals like coffee and filling out my bullet journal for the day, too.

I often meditate while looking at lichen and bark.

I have evening rituals, too, like blogging and reading before I go to sleep. I guess I like to ease into the day and ease back out.

Magazine patiently waiting for me to finish blogging

I enjoyed the distraction of a lesson on Apache this afternoon. I wanted to build on last weekend, and it worked. We are doing well together, and I’m impressed with his eagerness to learn. I’m a lot more calm, too. He’s feeling better.

Next lesson will be for Drew, but it’s been postponed for family stuff. That gives me lots of time to work with them both at home, though. Drew and I have lots to practice, too! He is still weird about his head but otherwise tons of fun.

Daily Bird

I think the great blue herons on the ranch will be upset (or more upset) with me if I don’t feature them, so today’s the day.

At least today I didn’t scare one who was busily cleaning out the overflow pond like I’d done for two days. I just watched them flying and posing at water’s edge.

My favorite thing about these large birds is their croak. They yell when disturbed and made to fly off. Often they don’t vocalize enough for the Merlin app to catch them, but it did this week. It’s a great creaky sound.

I’m glad we have water to attract these and the other herons/egrets here. They have so many postures and look so elegant when they fly. And they’re so big! It’s a nice contrast with all the tiny woodland birds.

Sometimes Simple Is Spectacular

Send good thoughts our family’s way, since we’re experiencing a loss.

So let’s talk about yarn. Good idea.

I’m like a dog with a bone when it comes to needing to craft during stressful times.

Since I’m still waiting for my pale yellow yarn to arrive so I can get back to the temperature blanket, I’m experimenting. I saw a Facebook post by Lily M. Chin about crocheting a fancy hot pad/oven mitt thing using leftover yarn and a stitch called thermal stitch. This stitch is like double knitting in that it makes a double thickness of fabric.

I liked the looks of it and the idea of making something sturdy out of wool that would be oven safe and protect surfaces if you set something on it. Sounded like a good gift idea, from someone who isn’t buying gifts this year.

I followed Lily’s advice and searched for instructions for thermal stitch. Sure enough, there are plenty out there. I conveniently share the one I used, just so you won’t ask.

My sample swatch I made from two skeins of sock yarn held together. I had a bit of a learning curve since crocheting into the back of one stitch and the front of the stitch in the row below is harder with doubled yarn is challenging. I also was not very good at turning and starting the next row. But the pattern is really pleasant to look at.

I decided to make a “real” hot pad/potholder out of one strand. Hanging around in a tote rescued from my former knitting closet happened to be a bunch of beautiful teal blue Lamb’s Pride wool/mohair yarn that many years ago was intended to be part of an extremely complicated cabled sweater. Look at that sideways cable. Note it’s in the round. Check those stitch markers. Ooh fancy.

A partial sweater in light that makes it look green.

Yes, it sure was fancy. I’m not sure why I gave up many years ago, but one reason may be that the weather here in Texas will newer be cold enough here to wear a wool/mohair cable extravaganza, barring the occasional polar vortex. Never fear! I think I’ll make a pillow out of what’s finished.

Mostly I no longer feel the urge to make the most complicated project possible. When I looked at the thermal stitch in this yarn, I saw a beautiful and subtle movement and felt a satisfying thickness.

Thermal stitch doesn’t have a lot of “give,” so it’s not a good garment choice. But it’s great for household items! Here’s the first one I made. I was still a bit unsure about the edges, and my border idea did not disguise it. I think I’ll erase that.

The one I’m doing now has nice edges, so I’ll deem it gift worthy. I have enough yarn to make a third one, so I’ll use the first one myself.

Maybe when the temperature blanket is done I’ll make a large one like Lily Chin did. Hers was long, and folded over at each edge to make holes you can stick your hands in while slipping the main part under a casserole. It was cool. Also, turning it under hides any ugly edges, heh heh.

Photo by Lily M. Chin, used with permission. I like how turning the ends under would hide my ugly edges.

I really like the look of this textured stitch. I’m resisting any urge to embellish it with embroidery or threads running through it to make a plaid. Resistance is NOT futile.

PS: Daily birds will return tomorrow.

The Hippie Takes a Day Off

What are your two favorite things to wear?

I say I’m a hippie, because when I saw the prompt for the day, two things popped into my head: blue jeans and t-shirts. I have had that as my uniform since the day I was allowed to wear pants to school, which I think was in 1971. It sure saved Mom money, so she didn’t argue with me. My clothing budget shrank a lot. And I bought my own shirts.

My avatar wears my usual stuff. Jeans, t-shirt, jean jacket and cowboy boots.

The t-shirts have only changed in that now there are more horses on them and before I had stylized drag racing cars. Peace symbols and flowers have stayed.

The jeans started out straight, became bell-bottoms, got high-waisted and low-waisted and repeated in various ways. Mostly I wore basic Levi’s.

I didn’t catch it, but I did see this goatweed leafwing butterfly today.

Now, on to the day off. I felt so good after a very long night of sleep, that I decided to take it easy today. I spent a lot of time birding, including being startled by the blue heron twice. It’s been picking off fish in the dwindling overflow pond, and neither of us can see the other until we’re on top of each other.

The other encounter I had came when Carlton and I took a walk in the woods. Suddenly he froze. I think he was trying to point like a hunting dog. We’d come upon an opossum along the stream bed. he must have smelled it, since he doesn’t see well.

Carlton was a good boy and followed me so the animal could go on about its business. It was a good walk the rest of the way. I’m glad I didn’t bring the Mighty Huntress Goldie or we’d have had another bloodbath. Ugh.

Other than enjoying birds, I enjoyed the horses. This morning I caught them at playtime, which involved Drew and Dusty nuzzling then running down the pasture to the pens, rearing and pawing, then running back. Dusty still has it in him! (Pictures are blurry because I was far away.)

Mabel eventually got into the running, but not the rest of it. I’ve noticed that she’s now strong enough to chase off any horse who tries to nip her.

Eventually Apache thundered back and forth until they all gathered around the hay bale. It’s nice to watch them play, and I’m glad they have the space to do so.

See, he doesn’t spend ALL his time staring into space.

Later I spent quality time with everyone, which is always so nice. Drew is a little pissy lately, since his head injury. But the other horses and Fiona were fine. I got all the burs off Mabel, even. I just have to wait until it’s her idea to have a petting session.

I had plenty of time to make dinner, and was so relaxed I didn’t even get upset when Dish Network didn’t have the channel where Sunday Night Football was. Lee just went over and set up the antenna he’d bought weeks ago for just such an eventuality. Boom. TV. It comes in great, actually.

I made a potholder or hot pad. It’s very thick, because I crocheted it with thermal stitch.

And yes, I wore jeans and a t-shirt today.

Daily Bird

I’m featuring the orange-crowned warbler today, because I’d never heard one here before, just on one camping trip. I didn’t see it, but I can sure ID one by sound now. It sounded like one of those rhythm instruments you scrape across in Latin music, usually five sets of scrapy sounds.

They only drop by here while migrating, according to the map.

A bird I saw a lot today was the Savannah sparrow. It’s a basic brown sparrow, but it’s everywhere this time of year. It and the pipit make little peeps.

I Am the Champion

No, I’m actually not the champion, but I’m very happy with myself and the beleaguered Apache, my equine partner in the last Working Horse Central show of the year. We’d been scheduled to go camping this weekend, but with no pet care, we canceled. I’m glad, because that let me go to the show.

Apache was jittery in Functionality, the first part of the show. I didn’t think I was, since I knew the dressage pattern and knew he could do all the parts. I was ready to try to improve our performance by showing what we’d learned, but I insisted got to show how to deal with a horse that decides not to leg yield or turn right at a trot, both things he knows how to do. We were at Tarrin’s, too, the place he practices.

But after some initial irritation, I let Apache chill in a stall, and he settled down. We ended up doing our best Trail pattern ever. We even did the gate! He really didn’t mess up anything but the side pass and a bit with the garrocha pole. But we did it all! I think we were pretty calm, too.

He refused to look perky, though. Still a zombie.

After enjoying watching Sara and the others do their parts (Aragorn seems to feel great and was a superstar), we did the final event, Agility. On this one you try to go as fast as possible. And we DID. We just zipped through the curtains, over the rails, on the slalom, and everywhere. If we hadn’t made some mistake I’m not certain of, we’d have won that one, because we were fast!

It was so much fun to do. It finally feels like we can be partners. We were turning and just plowing through. I’m so glad to have had this experience. It felt like we were really riding, not trying to ride, if that makes sense. Apache really seems to feel better now.

Sara said we look ready to canter. Ooh like the big kids. Hey, I may be slow, but I’m progressing. Everyone was happy for me, which felt great. Our little group is so supportive of each other that it’s hard to get down!

After the show there were end of year awards. It was cute to see how many awards and prizes the young competitors got. I think the littlest one would have been just as happy to just play in the mud obstacle with the Rottweilers.

Generous donors enabled us to have some very nice prizes for the winners in each division. I was very happy for Sara and Aragorn, who really worked hard and attended every show. She is the actual champion, in her Novice group.

Apache and I were second in Beginners to our friends Jacqui and Jambo. I really enjoy watching them! We had a lot of fun with our ribbons.

The winners of each group received beautiful belt buckles designed by one of the group moms. What a wonderful surprise. Sara sure deserves one for her effort. The big surprise was that the reserve champion in each group also got buckles. That means I got one, and it has turquoise on it!

I feel so legitimate now. I guess I always wanted to earn a buckle and work hard for it. Sara can wear hers to her next Working Equitation show! We are champions.

After last week having to abort any try at filming a virtual show entry, feeling connected and successful today was a real win. Life sure has its ups and downs! Today was up.

Apache made me proud. Even of the yellow.

Hard Decisions That Turn Out OK

What’s the hardest decision you’ve ever had to make? Why?

You ask that, do you? I agonized a very this for about three years, during which time my mother passed away followed immediately by a breakup with the love of my life that was all my fault, followed by a serious of incredibly stupid relationship decisions and total failure at my career path. 1984-87 really stunk.

Here comes the brutal honesty for which I’m noted, for better or worse.

I’d say this was the period in my life when I realized that, no, I wasn’t the brilliant, nice, ethically consistent person I thought I was. That’s hard. I realized just how mentally screwed up I was in my drive to be perfect and that I was an emotional vampire who confused sex with love. Everyone has to realize they’re imperfect eventually (if they’re honest with themselves).

Worse, I ended up unable to stomach being an academic with all the drama, pressure, and competition. It just wasn’t what I’d hoped it was and I wasn’t actually very good at it.

So I decided to leave my career path and all the people I cared about at the university and do something else. I felt like a failure and that I’d let my family and friends down. That was hard. Acknowledging my inadequacy was hard. Admitting I was a bad partner was hard. Owning up to my anxiety and past trauma was very hard.

But no one really cared very much about my inner turmoil. They just wanted to see me stable, happier, and more positive. I ended up free of expectations and obligations and could move forward to use all I’d learned in a perfectly good career. I learned to love in a positive way. It was OK.

Oh look I’m crocheting something. It’s a hot pad in thermal stitch.

I make decisions much faster now. I’ve learned that whatever I do will be fine. I’ll learn the lessons I need to learn and keep putting one foot ahead of the other. Today is what matters and I want more peaceful, fulfilling days than stressful ones.

Daily Bird

I enjoyed a group of Harris’s sparrows today. I realize I’ve featured a lot of sparrows but we have eight kinds here! I heard these guys by the brush pile this morning, which pleased me because there was so much traffic on our road due to an accident that it was hard to hear birds in front of the house.

Harris’s sparrows make a less melodic sound than some of the others, more like very loud, low barks. It’s hard to decide how to describe it. But they were chatty and friendly today.

A pair of them started out in the honey locust, then got on the ground quite close to me, so I could easily see their interesting black head and chest markings. They’re the most distinctive ones, for sure.

By the way, the house wren and Carolina wren are loudly lobbying to be featured, so I’ll get something else soon. In the other hand, I’ve seen Mexican eagles (caracaras) doing mating dances in the sky twice this week. They do some loud wing flapping! So, they’re candidates. More to come.

Holiday Traditions Are Few This Year

Do you or your family make any special dishes for the holidays?

If they are referring to the winter holidays, like the Solstice or Christmas, then there’s only been one constant since my children were little, and that’s to have cinnamon rolls for breakfast. We used to eat them while opening gifts.

Something cheerful: Vlassic running at sunset.

For many, many reasons I’m not doing much for Christmas this year. It’s going to be a hard one for much of my family, and I’m not feeling very celebratory. I’m just going to go somewhere with Lee, if we can get someone to feed dogs and medicate Apache.

Speaking of horses, I caught Drew and Fiona being friendly today.

If not, I’ll stay home and eat cinnamon rolls then cook a meal for the same people I cooked Thanksgiving for. Maybe I’ll make pork loin and correct cranberry sauce. I think there will be small, handmade gifts for people.

You know, I think I just don’t want to do anything religious. I’m not happy with things being done in the name of religion these days, especially the ones stemming from Moses and his tribes. I’m disappointed in wars, book banning, misogyny, religious intolerance, and fundamentalism. All of it.

For the solstice, which at least predates Christmas, there will be candles and maybe a fire if the place we go has a fireplace. I’ll make decorations out of things from the woods and put intentions of peace into them.

It will be fine to skip materialism and shiny things for one year and concentrate on helping struggling loved ones however I can.

Daily Bird

We had some rain today, but it only rained hard briefly. It did quiet the birds down. The daily birds just have to be the European starlings.

As I went out to slog through the puddles to feed the horses, I heard sounds like tiny bells. It was a huge flock of starlings heading off to some field now that the sun was back out. It always amazes me how many there are.

I learned in a magazine that the flocks often contain the local grackles as well. Blackbirds like each other, I guess. I’m never going to love grackles, those resourceful parking lot scroungers with the incredibly annoying whistles, the great-tailed grackles. I’ll work on it.

We Made It! 15 Years Married!

It’s significant to me that Lee and I made it to 15 years of marriage. When you get married at age 50 you just hope you get some good years together!

Is the day after the wedding, opening cards. Lee looks like someone I don’t know. We’ve both gone a lot grayer.

We have done so. There have been times when we were both out of work and times when we were doing better than we ever expected. Now it’s medium! I’ll take it.

The emotional highs and lows have evened out, too, and I’m glad for that. It took a lot to get through some of the drama in our families, and that hasn’t changed. We just cope better now.

We’ve both done a lot of soul searching and gotten more emotionally stable, which helps when you have two people who don’t argue with each other well. It’s good to be able to step back and not react to each other’s quirky ways of being upset. You learn that through time.

I think this is the only time Lee has been clean-shaven since I knew him.

Anyway, I’m happy to have Lee to face the coming “interesting” times with. We are each other’s stability, I think.

We went to dinner in Rockdale, the next town over, where there’s a new Italian restaurant off the lobby of a motel. Yep. Small town living. It was excellent and a good change of pace since we still don’t go out much since COVID. All good.

Daily Bird

Today I’m going with the white-crowned sparrow, another friendly winter resident. They’re all over the place right now, with their white-throated friends. They don’t sing as much, but they have a pretty song in addition to a lot of chirping.

Mostly I enjoy watching them in the brush piles scratching for food. The younger ones completely blend in with their surroundings. See if you can find any immature birds in these photos of shiny adults!

Oh, Peeves, There Are So Many

Name your top three pet peeves.

Yet, more than once in my life I’ve been called elitist for mentioning some of my peeves. After all, educated folks who know and use standard English are looked at as suspiciously progressive or something.

I won’t put the Latin name for this common buckeye so I’ll seem less snooty.

I’m all for creative use of language, am well aware that language changes constantly. So I am fine with observing new language, even if I never call u bae.

And I don’t even know ow which checkered butterfly this is.

So my peeves are mostly language usage. Not New language, just wrong stuff. Other than number 3 below.

1. Please use the contraction “you’re” when you are shortening “you are.” It’s easy. The word “your” refers to something of yours. Like your ability to spell words even when you’re using autocorrect.

I hope this peevish list doesn’t make me look like one of these.

2. Speaking of apostrophes, (a word with no apostrophes in it, by the way), they aren’t like garnish on top of salads that you sprinkle wherever they look cute. You do not pluralize nouns by adding ‘s. Nope. If there’s more than one item, you add a plain letter “s” unless the word ends in an s or z sound. The. You add “es” with no apostrophe. Even people’s NAMES are pluralized that way! Lee and I are Kendalls and Brunses. Now if we own something? Stick an apostrophe in there! Ms. Kendall’s pet peeves are a great example.

3. Ooh, ooh! I have another one to add to my apoplectic elitist frenzy of prescriptivism! There is a recent trend to take perfectly innocent nouns and make them into some kind of cutesy verbs. Like:

What are you gifting this year? It’s the time of year to gift and gift some more!
What’s your favorite way to morning? Coffee, of course.
It’s time to football!

I think it started with things like weekending and breakfasting and has just kept spreading.

4. It’s versus its. At least this one’s harder. But in this one case, the apostrophe is only for smooshing two words together and not for possession. So I get it that it’s hard to get its nuances.

Enough of that. Today was a fine day with much sunshine, pleasant coolness, and many butterflies. As you can see, I got a few photos, but I saw many more, plus a caterpillar I can’t identify.

Daily Bird

Today, since it was sunny and not very windy, there were lots of birds to enjoy. I counted eight types of sparrows! But the bird I enjoyed the most was the hermit thrush. It’s hard to resist a bird who shares a name with your ranch.

Today’s thrush was skulking in the big brush pile that was created last year in the woods, and it was chupping up a storm. it even drowned out a very vocal wren. I saw it a couple of times, but like the pipits, it looks a lot like a little brown bird that’s hard to distinguish without binoculars. I’m glad I know what it sounds like.

I have to admit that once again I heard a cool “bird,” then sheepishly remembered we do have a few squirrels out here.

It Always Helps…

…to have someone supportive confirm that your instincts are not off and you can do things you need to do, with the right tools.

I’m not talking about my new yarn spindle, though it’s a nice tool.

Today Tarrin came here to do the horse lessons, which was very helpful, even though I’d managed to write the time wrong on my calendar. I need a personal assistant!

I’d been wandering around looking at the heron and not realizing I needed to groom horses.

Since I got Drew to come with me easily, he went first. I got some really helpful input on not pushing myself to trot and trot if he isn’t in one of his good frames of mind. I feel so much better practicing on straightening him out at a walk. I do wish I’d gotten pictures of him doing his warmups. He was pretty spectacular cantering and jumping high, calmly. Probably the very cool weather had him perky.

He’s doing better in lots of ways. But I felt validated when Tarrin got on him and had trouble the same way I did. He took a long time to relax like he was still a bit unsettled. Maybe we’re both more settled now.

I had a really good lesson with Apache. He even came up to me in the pasture. All those “treats” (medicine) seem to help with that. I got good information from Tarrin on how to deal with his lethargy. She explained that he’s losing some of his stubborn fat and the toxins in it are going to his liver, so we’re going to give him some milk thistle for a time. And he’s changing to different supplements that will support his metabolism. Luckily most of it isn’t too costly.

As for the lesson, he had good energy for his ground work. I’d say he did the best I’ve ever seen him going over jumps and low obstacles. And he was a joy to ride. I got great information on ways to keep him standing up better, then we went out to test his “issues” with going outside his comfort zone.

Tarrin used his lead rope to keep him from flinging his head down (without constricting his comfortable head movement). Once he realized that option for making me nervous was gone, everything was better.

Since I took no pictures today, here’s a bonus.

We made tons of progress on re-settling him when he first starts to act concerned (as a helpful blog reader mentioned as well). We stopped and breathed, and we did lots of circles and figure eights to give him something to center himself on.

I did really well staying centered and calm, myself, thanks to not having the threat of him jerking the reins out of my hands and Tarrin providing helpful cues. I ended up feeling really good and like I have ways to make riding at home more fun with both horses. Whew. I sure needed the insights.

Carlton points out that he does nothing but emit good vibes. I love him, too.

I’m very grateful to have had my coach here at home for some help with my situations. Both horses are doing so well at her house. I’d like to get there at home.

Daily Bird

It was really cold (for here) so not many birds were out. But I thoroughly enjoyed listening to white-throated sparrows settling in the big tree by the pond for the night. Oh, the tweeting and chirping! It was like a mini bird concert. I was charmed.