daily life – Page 102 – The Hermits' Rest

Boxes of Tears: I Found the 80s

Why do people keep their old love letters, breakup letters, heartbreaking letters…? Heck if I know. To be honest, I didn’t realize I was one of those letter-saving people until tonight.

Anita and I were doing our weekly box opening, when we found a box of a variety of personal treasures. I found Lee’s first novel. I found some cards from my children. I found this box, all sealed up.

I did not recognize it. It was just a box. Anita said it was a treasure, so I came to look. I opened it and thought, huh, letters. They must be from my mom and grandmother, because no one ever wrote me.

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Productivity Level = Zero

Today I had lots of time to work on my blogs. However, my darn keyboard decided to stop working a couple of days ago. That means I have to type on my laptop which is nowhere near my actual screen. I cannot blog this way.

The “n” key has been broken for months. But I liked this keyboard.

I ordered a new keyboard on Tuesday. It was scheduled to come yesterday. I waited and waited and waited and visited the poor receptionist many, many times. But no keyboard.

I left for home around 10 minutes until 5 PM. Would you like to guess what time the keyboard arrived? That would be 4:52 PM. I’m annoyed.

I am shaking my fist once again. But this time, Elizabeth Warren is doing it for me. She’s coming to work with me today, because Jen asked me to bring her. She will join Ruth Bader Ginsburg in being annoyed at all the stuff.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post that I dictated on the phone. That was an interesting experiment. Now I really DO write just like I talk.

Back to your regularly scheduled grumpy Suna.

Hey, You! Stop Doing That!

First off, let me admit that I’m in a more fragile and sensitive state than usual, so things I might usually brush off as, “Oh, that’s just Person X being person X,” are hitting a raw nerve today. And as we noted with Vlassic last week, hitting a nerve can cause pain and involuntary reactions. Ow!

At first I was thinking that I was just bugged by stuff on Facebook, but then I spot the annoyances popping up in LinkedIn articles, Tweets (naturally, and why am I reading Twitter when I’m feeling overwhelmed?), and even in face-to-face interactions.

It happens all the time, and is one of those habits I started noticing when I had small children and was practicing very hard to adhere to the directive to:

Give information, not advice
La Leche League

The idea was that people don’t react well when told what to do and what to think about any topic (breastfeeding being a great example). My training also reminded me over and over again not to give out advice if I wasn’t asked for it. In other words, if someone parents differently from me, that’s their right, and it may well be working out just fine for them.

Wine Cellar vs. IKEA

Yesterday was totally lost for blogging, since I had zero minutes of downtime all day. Not that it was bad! I had a wonderful catch-up lunch with my friend and former co-worker, Melissa. We took turns updating each other on the past few months of our lives. I am so happy she loves her new job and is incredibly fit and glowing with inner peace. It’s good to be around people like that!

Once I got home from work (where I was doing fun stuff and figuring out answers to hard problems), the rest of the evening was consumed by trying to put together the new wine/shoe room furniture that had arrived that day.

Russ is all happy here, because he can find all the pins and such to build the first piece of furniture.

We lucked out in that we canceled a meeting of our Hermit Haus coworkers, but Russell, my former co-worker and business partner, had already blocked off the time, so he showed up to help us decipher the instructions for the two items of furniture we’d bought.

A Year of Classic Vlassic

It came as a shock to me when my calendar popped up that August 1 is our sleek black weenie dog mix, Vlassic’s “birthday!” Only a year ago, Sara saw something strange on her picnic table and called me over to get my new dog.

We never saw any posts looking for him, which is good, since he crawled immediately into our hearts. He’s my faithful companion who travels back and forth between Austin and Cameron every week with me. He sleeps next to (or on) me every night, and spends a lot of his waking time on my lap.

Luckily he spreads his love to other people’s laps, often unannounced. He has caused many beverages to spill. But when he rolls over and stretches out for a belly rub, you can’t be angry.

He loves his canine friends a lot, too, though he has to occasionally remind them he’s small. His little jaw snaps repeatedly when he’s wrestling with Carlton or Harvey. And when Penney joins in, it’s glorious. We humans just have to smile.

We Have a Wine Cellar!

Anita and I are very proud of ourselves. What was a giant mess you couldn’t enter, only a few weeks ago, is now well on its way to becoming a dream wine cellar/shoe closet.

Shoe closet?

Yeah. The Master closet in the Bobcat Lair house turned out way too small, even after I got rid of most of my clothes when I moved here. I put in a shoe rack and other storage stuff, but all I do is fall over things.

My real estate business partner, Carol, suggested I store shoes in the wine room, and suddenly it made sense. I’m always in the office when I leave for work and when I come home, so why not put the shoes there?

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I Deserve an Award

This whole unpacking of boxes in the garage and general removing unnecessary stuff from my house thing is not becoming easier for me. However, I am still doing it! Yes! And that’s why I honestly think someone should give me a gold star or something. So, I made myself an award on Bitmoji. I’m very proud of this award.

What keeps me going?

Certainly the lifting of heavy boxes of books and empty CD cases (Lee’s) is not a motivating factor. The heat isn’t helping (though it isn’t bad in the garage). Yeah, having more space in the garage is nice, but the real thrill is…

Little Rewards

The big thing I did yesterday was get a hair cut, which I hadn’t done since Kalea moved so far away and only works when I’m in Cameron. I found a place on the way to therapy and showed up on the wrong day, but it was okay. The lady who cut my hair was funny, my age, and did a perfectly reasonable job. Whew. Finding someone to cut your hair is HARD. I deserved a reward.

Since we worked so hard Monday, Anita and I capitalized on a break in the heat by sitting on the deck in a civilized fashion. We drank wine from the wine fridge and I twirled around in my white linen dress (which Vlassic managed not to get dirty).

Looking more and more like my granny every day. But happy.

I felt so relieved after reorganization stress at work. Every little thing looked beautiful to me. Even hybrid flowers got my love. Plants really do help with stress and anxiety (my eye stopped twitching, even).

I’m concerned about my nipple cactus. It looks like it’s imploding, though it has lots of babies. I’ll have to look this turn of events up.

Is Everything Dead Yet?

This time of year, it’s usually looking pretty bleak out here in central Texas. By now, the grass is usually very brown and crunchy, and there are good-sized cracks in the soil. But this year it’s rained a lot more than usual, so how’s it doing?

Checking out the territory. Some green, some not.

It hasn’t rained in a couple of weeks, and that’s about all it takes to turn things back to their typical summer state. Sure enough, the grass is crunchy and the cracks are out. But the tanks (ponds) have lots more water in them than usual and the creek has plenty of water in it.

The Vrazels have made another bunch of hay out of our front pasture, which is also unusual. They are out there baling it right now, making round bales. The dogs enjoyed having a couple of days to look for vermin in the piles of grass as it was drying out. Both Vlassic and Penney like to pounce.

Return of the 80s

While Anita and I were cleaning out boxes last night, I stumbled upon where I hid some treasures, including teen diaries, weird poems a friend wrote me, and the BEST were these photos from around 1983, which seem to have been singled out for some reason. We got quite a kick out of the fashion statements in the photos, so I thought I’d share a few.

80s perm and 80s soccer team! I still remember some of the players’ names. I think this is what I look like to myself, when I picture myself in my mind.

By the way, I have cropped a few of them, because I didn’t want to put photos of my boyfriend at the time up in public without his permission. He’s a nice guy (and brilliant) and I like him, so he is not cropped from spite!

I had a lot of fun identifying where the photos were taken. I assume if I get it wrong, my brother or sister will let me know.